Actual numbers of troops..

[Nerouin]

I've noticed this- for example, in STW, when you conquer all of Japan you may have something like 20,000 troops in your armies.. twenty FULL armies (armies are 960 men max.. maybe twice as big if you're playing with units of 120, I don't know). This may even be a bit on the high side.

Meanwhile, there were hundreds of thousands of troops on the battlefields in Japan! At Sekighara- the battle in 1600 (also the biggest battle in ancient Japan, I believe) that established the Tokugawa shogunate- there were around 220,000 alone. Altogether in Japan there must have been at least 300,000.

Thus I tend to look at each "man" in STW or MTW as ten men, just to keep things realistic. A loss of an army of one or two thousand men in Europe or Japan in the Medieval ages would hardly have given a leader pause, in many cases, whereas in our case in these games it can be a near catastrophe.

[Foreign Devil]

Actual numbers for battles that long ago can be hard to determine. Of course, they were certainly higher than what we have to work with in the game.

It mostly likely is to simplify the gameplay. Managing thousands upon thousands of troops at once would probably be more difficult than the current system. It's probably also eaiser on the processor to use fewer men.

[Colovion]

numbers are always inflated in historical accounts

almost always anyway

[Duke of Gloucester]

As I understand it, the engine considers indivicual soldier, so having armies of a realistic size would make to great a demand on processing and graphics power. I think this is fine as long as the fighting is reasonably realistic. I would agree that, even taking into account exagerations, army sizes are too small.

[CBR]

Yes in general armies are too small compared to many historical battles. But current PC technology simply cant deal with such big numbers yet.

A 1:10 ratio is a fair way of looking at it.


CBR

[EatYerGreens]

I've noticed this- for example, in STW, when you conquer all of Japan you may have something like 20,000 troops in your armies.. twenty FULL armies (armies are 960 men max.. maybe twice as big if you're playing with units of 120, I don't know). This may even be a bit on the high side.

Meanwhile, there were hundreds of thousands of troops on the battlefields in Japan! At Sekighara- the battle in 1600 (also the biggest battle in ancient Japan, I believe) that established the Tokugawa shogunate- there were around 220,000 alone. Altogether in Japan there must have been at least 300,000.

There is a reference to army sizes, in the "The Way of the Daimyo" document in STW. It makes the comparison between the size of clan armies, being numbered in the tens of thousands each and the combined size of the armies on either side in the English Civil war, less than a century later.

As has already been pointed out, there are limits to processor power and graphics card memory - or rather, there were, at the time of its release - so the limit of 16 units per side, in battles was necessary.

Check your logfiles too. If you take more than one stack into battle and the opposition does too, every single man in every unit is accounted for in the logfile. Sometimes, a side will be routed to the extent that even though it had a stack of reinforcements due to appear, they don't show up and they're all recorded as NOT_DEPLOYED in the logfile. Two or three thousand on each side makes for a huge logfile as things stand. Perhaps it's better not to model 20,000 each!

Incidentally, I've just finished an STW campaign, Hojo, normal difficulty, unit size 60. By the time it was all over, my army maintainence cost was on or under the 10,000 mark. I did have a number of ashigaru garrisons, away from the frontline (half-cost) but total numbers couldn't have been much more than 11-12,000.

The Final battle was about 1.8 stacks of mine versus 3-and-a-bit stacks of Imagawa but, as described above, most of their reinforcements never showed up, so they 'vapourised' while 12 units went into their newly completed fortress and the game granted me Total Victory without even waiting for the siege losses and/or assault to occur. Very odd. I'd expected at least two or three failed 'attrition' type battles to grind them down.
Garrisons aside, I think I only had enough for 4 or 5 full stacks on the frontline, at the end. I see what you mean about regarding 1 man representing 10 but it just goes to show that it's all relative anyway. You can still win the campaign with much smaller forces.

Its interesting to note that the farmland output settings they put into the game (and the other income sources), even when improved by 100% are scaled in such a way as to restrict the overall size of armies you are able to raise. I think 20,000+ would be a stretch and, besides, you will have beaten all the AI clans long before you reached the stage of needing that many.

[Katana]

Computer technology simply isn't at the level to render 100, 000+ troops per battle. There are also several game design problems presented by this - battles could take upwards of a couple days to complete, and designing an effective control scheme would be a nightmare. Besides, I have enough trouble controling my 700 troop armies, thank you very much.

[shogunKatzumoto]

ok i have a stupid question...even though we all know the only stupid question is the one un asked.......ok in the options i clicked "keep battle log" or what ever it says.......where is it?
i am honored by your assistance

[ah_dut]

Computer technology simply isn't at the level to render 100, 000+ troops per battle. There are also several game design problems presented by this - battles could take upwards of a couple days to complete, and designing an effective control scheme would be a nightmare. Besides, I have enough trouble controling my 700 troop armies, thank you very much.

agreed we have quite enough problems with 960 let alone 100,000

[Ludens]

ok i have a stupid question...even though we all know the only stupid question is the one un asked.......ok in the options i clicked "keep battle log" or what ever it says.......where is it?

In the MTW/STW folder, subfolder 'logfiles'.

By the way, there may be 220.000 at the battle of Sekighara (though you shouldn't always believe the historical accounts), I doubt all of them fought at once. But how are you going to control even half of that amount?

[shogunKatzumoto]

Ludens,
i am greatful for your reply.

shogunKatzumoto


WOW!! a log file of what all my troops did...but which one was from which battle......wow was there alot of logs...lol...almost makes me want to delete them all and start a new game so i can label them all...hmm... may be next game...
i am honored by your assistance

[Sociopsychoactive]

Well, you can have battles of about that size if you really want. Simply play byzantium in early, and have 20,000 or more men waiting for the horde to arrive. The size of stacks in the provinces they arrive in has some effect on the size of the armies, so without bringing in more they almost always have enough for a win on auto-calc. If you brought 20,000 crack troops that means they would have around 30,000.

I actually fought a few battles of that scale. On auto calc over 10,000 of mine and over 20,000 of theirs died. When I fought it we stood our ground for over 5 hours, re-inforcing when we had a breather and positioned close to the back of the map to allow for quick replacements. After all that time, over 5,000 captives (and the mongols really do not run away easily as anyone will know) and more than twice that number dead they managed to rout all my units on the field, and the effect was such that any troops coming on would run at once because of so many of mine routing.

A terrible failure, even though it was a fortress over 8,000 captives had to be ransomed (nearly took half my money, and this was the byzantines...) and then they made the mistake of attacking the fiortress, THAT was a slaughter.

THe battle took over 6 hours in all, and only ended because I saw it was hopeless and ordered all troops to flee. It was not fun past the second hour.

[Sethik]

After reading all these Mongol stories on the forums I'm developing a severe mongolphobia. I don't think I'll ever play an eastern nation in Late ever again. ~:p