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Message: <blockquote data-quote="SHARK" data-source="post: 155928" data-attributes="member: 1131">Greetings!I can't respond properly at the moment, as I'm about to go see a movie with my wife. However, upon my return, I shall provide a thorough and detailed response.<img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" />Semper Fidelis,SHARK(Edit: I have returned!<img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" />)The size and expansion of a nation's armies can be dependent on a series of factors. Alignment, military organization, economy, population, and magic all have significant impact. For some real-world examples, in the First Century AD, the Roman Empire had control of over 100 million people. At any particular time, the Roman Army had a standing strength of approximately one million Legionnaires. This proportion of forces was divided between general all-purpose Legionnaires, at about 500,000 troops, and an equal number or about an additional 500,000 troops that were specialists, territorial, or ethnic auxilliaries, such as Gallic cavalry, Numidian raiders, Palmyran archers, or German barbarian horsemen, and so on. Thus, the total Roman forces would represent approximately 1% of the empire's population.This figure is deceptively weak, however. As my history professor in my honors history class explained, during the Punic Wars with Carthage, particularly with Hannibal's rampage through northern Italy, Rome lost many battles. One huge battle--The Battle of Cannae--a Roman army of roughly 80,000 troops were defeated in one day. The Carthaginians slaughtered them. The Romans were cought in poor terrain, pinned by mountain slopes hedging them against the shore of a lake. Rome lost many battles--but always won the war.The amazing thing about the Roman military, though, was its ability to "regenerate" itself. In short time, whenever Rome lost a battle, and tens of thousands of soldiers--like at Cannae--the lost armies were swiftly replaced. This is one of the secrets of Roman domination of an empire of over 100 million people for over 1000 years--unlike other nations, that fielded a small army of elites, supplemented by larger masses of untrained levies--and this was so in ancient times as it was in the Middle Ages--the Romans had perfected an in depth, comprehensive system that operated like a machine to recruit, train, and equip armies on a mass, and more importantly, constant scale. When Rome lost one battle, or several--within a short time, those lost armies would be replaced by equally well-trained and well-equipped--armies. The enemy, of which there were many, could never, ever keep up with such a machine-like precision of armies. The ancient world society couldn't *concieve* of what the Romans had done. In many respects, it was unnatural. The Romans perservered though in their efforts to maintain a professional army at all times, and supported by a system that was in constant motion to replace any losses.In a similar vein, a fantasy army isn't under the severe real-world limitations that an ferociously powerful Roman Army was. Instead, with all of the food magic, disease magic, healing, life-enhancing magic, there is reasonable cause to extrapolate that a fantasy population could easily be three times larger than the real-world Roman Empire. I say *easily* The force multipliers are enormous! The regenerative abilities are astounding compared to the real world.With these thoughts in mind, it *ISN'T* unreasonable to concieve of an empire where there are millions of soldiers available. Thus, if one had several large, powerful, sophisticated empires, then the armies would be huge, and the wars would indeed be on an epic scale!I say go BIG!<img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" />Semper Fidelis,SHARK</blockquote>

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