Numbers of troops in empires vs city states

[Lazy O]

but the persians had 600 000 in the sythcian campaign of darius and millions in the Greek campaign of Xerxes. And despite what people say about the quality of persian troops, even a levy had to eat as much as an elite soldier didnt they? also the perisnas had huge amounts of cavalry which were probs made up of noble families from asia as well as their elite heavy infantry the immortals and Greek mercenaries

And apparently the Assyrians and Median empires before the persians raised an average of 1 000 000 troops per campaign

No.

At Thermopalae, greek performance was....miserable. 7000 men, could not hold a 14m pass for some 3 days, since 99% of all casualties occur during a rout, it is safe to say that *very* few Persians died .

As an example, at Martahon, 18 ships means 18000 men . Immortals did not exist, and Greek mercenaries were the Satrap's responsibility .

[konny]

but the persians had 600 000 in the sythcian campaign of darius and millions in the Greek campaign of Xerxes. And despite what people say about the quality of persian troops, even a levy had to eat as much as an elite soldier didnt they?

So do tell me, how to feed 1,000,000 people on the march on the Ancient Balkans? I remember to have read that there wouldn't even had been enough water for Xerxes' 1,000,000 in the region he was operating, leave alone food and fodder.

also the perisnas had huge amounts of cavalry which were probs made up of noble families from asia as well as their elite heavy infantry the immortals and Greek mercenaries

Ah yes, not to forget noble cavalry! I can't speak for Ancient Persia, but in the European Middle Ages, for example, it took four to five men and a minimum of two horses to get a single heavy horseman into battle.

And apparently the Assyrians and Median empires before the persians raised an average of 1 000 000 troops per campaign

Now we are at an average of 1,000,000 per campaign! Let me guess, for important campaigns they fielded about as much as the Red Army, some 20,000,000? Possible because not only there were some 350,000,000 people living in Ancient Mesopotamia but also because they already had railroad running everywhere. Not?

I am afraid the figure is not correct. After about 2000 years, Napoleon's invasion of Russian only have 500,000.

Not to foreget that 500,000 was the overall ammount of troops fielded for that campaign, not the ammount of troops that marched with Napoleon on Moscow (that was less than 1/4 of the total army).

I remember doing a research paper on Xerxes' invasion of Greece. At the Battle of Thermopylae, and from memory, contrary to popular belief the Persians are estimated to have numbered between 70,000 (Lowest estimate I found, according to a British Colonel based in Greece during World War 2, if I remember correctly) The calculations were made according to the geography of the traversed areas, potable water availability, food supplies and demographics of the Persian Empire by the British General

I guess he didn't say that Xerxes had 70,000 men but that the maximum number he could have possibly fielded would have been 70,000 - you see the difference?

[seleucid empire]

Now we are at an average of 1,000,000 per campaign! Let me guess, for important campaigns they fielded about as much as the Red Army, some 20,000,000? Possible because not only there were some 350,000,000 people living in Ancient Mesopotamia but also because they already had railroad running everywhere. Not?

i said "apparently" because i was questioning the numbers of millions of troops myself. as i said they were the numbers on Assyrian documents which state this number. As other have already pointed out they could just be propaganda to strike fear into their enemies
dont be a smartarse yeh?

[Lazy O]

Read some more yeh?

[seleucid empire]

between a 5 day engineering course, work and friends i hardly have time to play EB let alone read up on the military history of every single large empire. Thats why i posted on here in the first place although i didnt except to get trolled like this, just cause cause im less knowledgeable than you

[konny]

You don't need to read up the military history of each and every Ancient empire. A single text on (pre-railroad!) military logistics would do to get an idea what was needed to move around and supply some 30,000 men, leaving a healthy doubt when anything larger than 50,000 men is stated in the sources, and rendering any numbers of more than 100,000 in a single army as "completly impossible", and some 1,000,000 a joke at best.

[Lazy O]

between a 5 day engineering course, work and friends i hardly have time to play EB let alone read up on the military history of every single large empire. Thats why i posted on here in the first place although i didnt except to get trolled like this, just cause cause im less knowledgeable than you

You were not trolled, you made an absurd claim and it was promptly taken to pieces, this is how the Interwebz works .

[moonburn]

people calm down

as for a city with 1 million people kart hadast had 600.000 and they couldn´t muster more then 40.000 and even then they where very reluctant to do so except on special ocasions because the carthaginians + libo poeni where no more then 25% of the entire city of kart hadast wich after cutting children (normally around 50% or more of the population ) non poeni or libi poeni women and old men 40.000 seems exagerated

alexandria had 1 million but still the ptolemaioi couldn´t or wouldn´t field large armies even with such an high availability of manpower


one of the things i would love to see implemented in eb would be a sistem to fill up a generals slots and for every new trait (such as blooded) he would get a new slot to be able to recruit more regiments this would make it more historically accurate on how important it where certain individuals since most regular generals where unable to recruit efectivly due to lack of experience or keep men in the field

only a 10 star general with alot of other auxiliary traits or 3-4 family members in 1 single stack could make for a full stack that would make the game far more interesting and make the use of mercenary generals important