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Message: <blockquote data-quote="SWBaxter" data-source="post: 2341977" data-attributes="member: 27926">Kinda depends on the type of medieval society you've got. In a feudal society (or a quasi-feudal D&D pastiche) then one of the duties of the local nobility is to guard borders, and the standing royal army (if there is one) would only be in the area if war was likely. Historically, lands on both side of a feudal border often belonged to the same noble family, which actually made it much less likely that border incidents would occur. If you do go the feudal route, then I think the way to figure out a good army size is: 1) Work out how many feudal manors your country has. This is the basic feudal unit of land, granted to a knight and worked by peasants and freemen. Depending on the historical model you use, this could be anywhere from 600 acres to 3000 or more. For population, A Magical Medieval Society recommends that 75% to 90% of the acres be arable, and there be about 2 adults per acre devoted to staple crops. 2) Come up with the number of warriors each manor is required to provide to the next noble up the chain. Most likely, this is something like: one knight, one squire, and 0-5 footmen, for one to three months a year. Exact values depend on manor size, political strength of nobles vs. kings, and so on. 3) Multiply 1) by 2) to get the total feudal levy. Probably about half of that will be available in campaign season (high summer with time to get home for harvest). The rest will be spread out throughout the rest of the year. This gives the bulk of the feudal levy, and the main force any feudal king would lead into battle. There might also be a standing royal army, but chances are it's pretty small - maybe 25% or so of the size of the campaign season feudal levy. So if you've got a nation of 1000000 population, with about 90% living on manors, then you could have on the order of 900 manors with about 1000 peasants each. If on average they each supply three soldiers as feudal levy (one knight, one squire, and 0-2 footmen), that's a feudal levy of 2700, around 1350 of which will be available in campaign season. Of course, a full third of those are knights, so it's still a decently tough force.  Go for about 1 per peasant household, which is going to work out to around 10% of the peasant population - 90000 in the above example. But very likely, only the militia in the immediate threatened area would be called up, and most of the time they'd be used for garrison duty to free up better trained troops.  They're actually pretty much the same thing. You can find historical examples of well-trained medieval militia (some English militia armed with longbows, for example), but they're far more the exception than the rule.  A feudal lord generally wouldn't want to pay for soldiers if he can possibly avoid it. What he'd do is advertise for freelances and sellswords, offering food and the opportunity for loot; the latter could draw in quite a few troops, if the noble had a good reputation. A feudal king (or other high noble) might also tempt powerful figures with offers of nobility or other offices. It'd be quite possible to double the size of the feudal levy this way, possibly even triple or quadruple it depending on how good the noble's reputation is and how rich the plunder looks to be.</blockquote>

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