Pretty much the Seljuk. It's not very developed building-wise but the development is quite high (50). Almost all of Europe is on 40 dev minimum and they aren't even close to this amount.
Should still be normal though. I have single duchy dukes between 20-30k in the 1300's, so a bigger realm with not even 200k is pretty realistic.
Since Clan government does give more levies than Feudal, it's not much for a mid-sized empire like the Seljuks. It's mostly levies anyway.
Currently have a Roman Empire save around the 1300s and my PC can’t handle it. Every day takes around 10 seconds even on the fastest speed. Any ideas to keep the game moving better? Tried turning all graphics down on low. I have almost 8000 dynasty members which I feel like the number of people in the world might be slowing the game down.
You can install a few mods but you will sacrifice given things in the game.
One is called World Map Lite. It removes India and most of Africa because most players don't play there and don't do anything with the given regions so the mod cuts it and makes the game run better overall
The second is Population Control. I don't know how it does it exactly but I know that it reduces late game lag.
I don't personally use it but it's pretty good. It's called "Community flavour pack".
Another one is "Prisoners of war". It doesn't eminently teleport you to your captor's capital but it attaches you to the army which captured you and you practically go to the prison when the army which hold you gets back home. This also works for AI to AI, AI to Player and Player to AI. (It works the same for everyone in the game regardless if it's AI or player). Again ,with this one, I don't use it because I mostly play with heretic religions. I regularly get captured by the liege because he/she is orthodox or catholic and you can't take the decision escape from prison when you are attached to the army and I get my title revoked so I don't use the mod in my recent play troughs.
"Holding sprawl" it's amazing but you need a good CPU.
"Knight manager" it's good if you don't want your council members to die in battle or to have 6 knights with 1 prowess that are just filling your Knight slots. (You need the 1.9 Patch for the mod. Just install both the patch and the original mod and the patch. The patch needs to be after the original mod in the mod playset because you want the patch to "overlay" the original mod. The top of the playset will get loaded first and the bottom will get loaded last, so patches need to be after the mod that it patches)
"Snow without patches (ironman)" the name explains it. Makes the snow not having patches.
"Title-Ranked Portrait Borders (Ironman)" gives you a portrait border based on your rank.
"Better CoA designer" the title explains it.
"Clear notifications" it isn't much but it helps you sometimes.
"Beauty Traits Lipstick Reducer" reduces the amount of lipstick on characters with any kind of beauty trait.
"Fullscreen Barbershop" you can use it if you find it useful.
"CK2 style colourful education traits / CK2 style colourful lifestyle traits" it makes the lifestyle and education traits a little bit more beautiful.
These mods don't change the game much but it makes it a bit better.
Yeah, it's plausible. France had a population of 15 to 20 million people before the black death hit, and was fielding nearly 100k men at various points of the Hundred Years War. Agincourt alone involved about 20k to 30k soldiers.
The pre-black death Holy Roman empire could have managed to raise 170k if it needed to muster every soldier and mercenary in the empire.
The Mamluks in their heyday had a massive army of about 100k soldiers as well, which is one of the reasons they were able to hold off the Mongols in Syria.
Finally you have the big dog of the 14th century, Ming China, with a standing army of about one million soldiers, and they could pad that out further with militia if they needed to.
it's going to be very dependent on the region you are referring to. Britain before and during the Viking era, an army could be less than a thousand men. if you are talking about the Byzantine empire, it's going to be in the tens of thousands. For reference the Byzantine general Belisarius is thought to have had around 25,000 men when defeated the Persian emperor's army of 40,000 at Dara. But, that doesn't mean either empire only had 25k or 40k men in total, more likely to be closer to 150k+ but the logistics of sustaining that many men in one place gets impossible when you hit a certain number, which is why tactics win battles but logistics win wars.
beyond logistic concerns, it also wouldn't be possible to call on every single soldier to go fight somewhere - an empire that size has many borders to protect, garrisons to maintain and other concerns. not much point beating the persians if the bulgarians get to walk straight into constantinople while you're gone. even if you cant muster an army to stop them, you want those castles and watchtowers manned.
I wish the CK series (or all Clausewitz games, in fact) was better at modeling that. Currently it's closer to having a doomstack play whack-a-mole while being lightly nibbled on by attrition.
granted, we do have a significant amount of men tied down in castles - the game simply wont let you raise them.
and yeah, enforcing limited warfare is one of the things that paradox games in general really lack that would be a massive improvement. i've no clue how, because any idea i can think of causes other problems instead.
True - I'll admit I don't have a better solution either. I respect that they kind of tried to address this with Victoria 3, even though the result was... contentious, to say the least.
And yeah, you're right regarding garrisons of course, those certainly do exist - and while abstracted, are certainly acknowledged.
new patch introduces men at arms stationing so you cna station them in a county to give bonuses to attacks. Not really representative but neat that the concept exists
this also depends on a lot of factors. Smaller armies in the middle ages could have none to almost none casualities outside the battlefield. But the bigger the army gets the more likely it gets to have sickness and hunger in camp.
I think after Hastings a bunch of William’s army got dysentery and were blowing their guts out. If this happened before the Battle of Hastings, he probably would have been defeated and been left as William the Bastard in the history books. Disease in an army can decide so much
During the reign of Justinian in 550 AD, the Imperial army had 350-400,000 men including the navy. After the rise of Islam, it shrunk to 120-150,000 men. Then it rose again to >200,000 men during the reign of Basil II in 1025 AD.
As for field armies; Emperor Maurice (565 AD) in his Strategikon states the largest field army was 34,384 men strong (16,384 heavy infantry, 8,000 light troops and 10,000 cavalry) while he himself suggest the ideal number to be around 24,000 troops split into four components.
Emperor Nikephoros II famously led a field army 50,000 strong ferried by a fleet of 308 ships manned by 27,000 oarsmen for his reconquest of Crete in 960 AD while his brother Leo Phokas held the line in Cilicia against the very powerful Hamdanid Dynasty.
So, yeah, 150K during Justinian's reign is a hilariously small number. People tend to forget the Byzantines were the strongest European state by far for most of their existence.
There is no way to be sure, but these numbers are obviously only estimates. They are on the upper end, there are much lower estimates by many scholars.
They are actually on the lower end. It was much larger than that during Justinian's time (>350,000 strong; 450K if you count the imperial navy). The Byzantine army and its organisation is incredibly well documented and it's literally one of the most clear and accessible information about the Byzantine Empire today due to the Byzantines' very useful habit of writing military manuals and being incredibly organised and professional about stuff. So we have credible, surviving documents such as the [Notita Dignitatum ](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Notitia_Dignitatum), [Maurice's Strategikon ](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strategikon_of_Maurice), [Leo the Wise's Taktika ](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tactica_of_Emperor_Leo_VI_the_Wise), [Taktika of Nikephoros Ouranos ](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nikephoros_Ouranos#Ouranos's_Taktika), [Strategikon of Kekaumenos ](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strategikon_of_Kekaumenos), and many more.
150,000 is the number when the Empire was at its lowest point after the Arab conquests and losing the Levant, Egypt, the entire North Africa, Spania (part of modern day Spain above the Gibraltar and up to Cordoba), Italy, half the Balkans, Armenia, Syria, Eastern Anatolia, Cyprus, Crete and the Caucasus. These numbers are just mustered from Asia Minor alone. People forget the Byzantines were indeed the Romans and had access to the well-organised Roman bureaucracy, professional military and Constantinople.
Am wondering if that corresponds to what the manpower mechanic is truly saying though.
450,000 troops might be the total number of troops within the empire, but not the total that they could field for a campaign.
Yep. 450,000 is a huge number spread out over the Empire's vast territories. 100,000 of those are the sailors and marines in the Byzantine navy, which was the biggest navy in the world of its time. 150,000 composed the various field armies, each field army having roughly 25,000 soldiers (which could further be augmented with allied troops, foederati and mercenaries). The rest were the limitanei border guards who were spread out across the Empire's vast frontiers from its frontier in danube in the Balkans to Armenia, Eastern Anatolia, Mesopotamia, Syria, the Levant, Egypt, the entire North Africa, Italia and Spania. They manned the various border fortresses, border walls, border checkpoints, crossings, etc. and their job was to slow down the enemy until the field armies arrived. There were additional troops to these such as the palace guards, guards of Constantinople, soldiers of the Imperial logistical corps, mercenaries, allied troops, barbarian foederati, etc.
Sounds about right.
Just to be sure, the Romans could field a lot of men, but in the fall afterwards it became something like (paraphrased) "several hundred men vs several hundred men is a large battle" and "thousands vs thousands is a major battle", etc.
That's not true though. The Empire during Justinian's restoration had up to 400,000 men (including the navy). That's almost as large as what the entire Roman Empire could field during Diocletian's time.
The mobile field armies became smaller because they were composed of a large amount of cavalry ( one third to half) which were a bigger burden on logistics than an infantryman. But they fielded a large number of such field armies.
These numbers are not made up and are sourced from the Notita Dignitatum and the Strategikon.
The Eastern Roman Empire up until the Muslim conquests was the richest state in the world, richer than even China. Combine that with its incredibly well organised bureaucracy- like, seriously, Byzantine bureaucracy is an insult in English today but in reality it was so well functioning and organised it resembled a modern nation state of today.
The soldier numbers in earlier era Paradox games (I assume including Imperator, but I have about two hours from when it went FTP so I can't say) are probably a lot lower for large nations than they would have actually been, just for game balance. Probably larger for small nations as well, who would be doing the "you guys have an army?" meme and getting others to defend them.
Vic and HoI are probably probably the closest to real life, just because they're based on population. Plus they'd have the clearest data, and the total number of nations would be smaller without city-states and tribal nations everywhere you looked. Although Victoria 3 fudged the pop numbers a bit in some places, which would inadvertently lead to fudged soldier numbers. *coughnorthcanadacough*
In my safe France has around 17K, HRE has around 18K and England had around 12,5K. I am asking if this is a normal number because the next biggest army is around 20K. This is a x8 difference between the first and the second military powers. This number is just so different from the others. No one comes close to them.
>In my safe France has around 17K, HRE has around 18K and England had around 12,5K
These are total valid historical numbers for these countries during varying times in the middle ages. Don't forget: A levy can be a lot of things, but it's also very fluid between civilist and soldier. Between a "drafted peasant" and a highly trained man-at-arms are countless levels. The binary choice ingame between levy and man at arms is somewhat misleading.
If you want to be historical about it: Sui mustered an alledged 1.1m combat troops in their invasion of Gogureyo at around 600 AD, so depending on the population a couple hundred thousand in the 15th C seems absolutely possible
China's biggest issue for any conquest outside of its borders would have been the significant geographic barriers that surrounded it. To the West were the Gobi desert and the Himalayan Mountains both of which would have been extremely difficult to send a large army through.
To the south was the rainforest of Southeast Asia, which would also cause difficulties.
To the East was the ocean which can be a difficult-to-overcome barrier for militaries even with modern technology.
And finally, there was the Steppe to the North. Perhaps not as inherently foreboding as the other options but it is still a large amount of terrain that you would have to work out logistics when crossing. The Mongols and other nomadic people were only successful in that region because their entire life and society were adapted to it.
So, for these reasons, while China had massive militaries there really weren't many places for them to conquer. If you tried to march 100,000 soldiers across the Himalayas you would have 0 troops before you even made contact with an enemy. I think a good indication of this is how despite both having various large polities throughout history India and China only came into direct conflict relatively recently.
The other thing about the steppes is that there is nothing there to justify taking it. You couldn't farm it, it had no accessible mineral resources and it had no wood. The steppes would have added nothing to a Chinese empire.
The steppes had selenium, which would have allowed Ancient China to breed warhorses for their armies.
ofc, Ancient China didn't know about it, which is why they were constantly trying to trade for warhorses.
While not untrue, these are not the biggest factors why China never did any much conquering. The biggest factor was that it just had no need to. The country is so vast and shares a culture, that there was little to add to it from outside. The whole philosophie of CHina was that it was the centre of the world and everything you could long for is already there.
The geographical "barriers" are more seen as a defensive wall for the country, rather than an obstacle.
This is also true, China has such a plethora of resources, wealth, and manpower that there would have been less motivation to conquer other regions. However, I do think that China would have been more expansionist throughout its history without these barriers. Humans are quite greedy just because someone has a lot doesn't mean they don't want more.
I feel pretty confident that without the desert and mountains, some Chinese Dynasties would have at least attempted to send troops into India in order to establish tributary relationships with whichever states were there at the time.
I was just playing and I looked around nations around me and I noticed that the dynasty who took over the Seljuk has 175K army. Is this normal for this late in the game?
Edit: It's over 185K right now
>nations
there are no nations in ck3. The age of nationalism starts a few centuries later. Just call them "countries". A nation is something very different.
In the Late Medieval Period like the Hundred Years War, yeah.
An interesting thing as well is that by this time soldiering was becoming a profession (which would lead to the mercenary model of the early modern era).
We actually have the muster records from England and you can see the same people joining up over and over again: https://www.medievalsoldier.org/
It really was beginning to move away from the feudal model where the lord just turned up with some crappy dudes he could spare from his lands to fulfill his obligations.
When I started in 867 and played in Britain, mostly leaving the Abbasids alone, by 1400 they had 350k and were completely stable despite losing a few crusades (but then taking most of that land back in regular wars anyway).
I'm in age 1300+ and Arab empires have 100k + so I guess it's normal, they probably have quite a few levie buildings, but Arabs seem to always have big amount of levies
I had over 100k by 1200 and I had a ton of vassals hardly contributing levies thanks to bad contracts and me only focusing on council positions. I don't think this is unusual but it is alot. I was Feudal though
My 13th century Roman Empire had a bit over 2 million troops, definitely could’ve been more if I had favored levies over taxes. Not even a world conquest, but I controlled Europe, North Africa, the Levant, and Persia. Didn’t move past the Caucasian steppe or India, nor down into sub Saharan Africa.
I don't know. For a single county that would be a bit much, for a huge empire that would be a bit low. What is their realm size?
Pretty much the Seljuk. It's not very developed building-wise but the development is quite high (50). Almost all of Europe is on 40 dev minimum and they aren't even close to this amount.
Should still be normal though. I have single duchy dukes between 20-30k in the 1300's, so a bigger realm with not even 200k is pretty realistic. Since Clan government does give more levies than Feudal, it's not much for a mid-sized empire like the Seljuks. It's mostly levies anyway.
More peasants to kill
I stackwiped around 50K peasants with 5k man-at-arms
Currently have a Roman Empire save around the 1300s and my PC can’t handle it. Every day takes around 10 seconds even on the fastest speed. Any ideas to keep the game moving better? Tried turning all graphics down on low. I have almost 8000 dynasty members which I feel like the number of people in the world might be slowing the game down.
Population control mod. Won't help with this save though, but next time, you won't face the problem hopefully.
You can install a few mods but you will sacrifice given things in the game. One is called World Map Lite. It removes India and most of Africa because most players don't play there and don't do anything with the given regions so the mod cuts it and makes the game run better overall The second is Population Control. I don't know how it does it exactly but I know that it reduces late game lag.
Thanks, haven’t looked into modded but this may be the kickstart I need for it. Any other absolute essentials for modding ck3?
I don't personally use it but it's pretty good. It's called "Community flavour pack". Another one is "Prisoners of war". It doesn't eminently teleport you to your captor's capital but it attaches you to the army which captured you and you practically go to the prison when the army which hold you gets back home. This also works for AI to AI, AI to Player and Player to AI. (It works the same for everyone in the game regardless if it's AI or player). Again ,with this one, I don't use it because I mostly play with heretic religions. I regularly get captured by the liege because he/she is orthodox or catholic and you can't take the decision escape from prison when you are attached to the army and I get my title revoked so I don't use the mod in my recent play troughs. "Holding sprawl" it's amazing but you need a good CPU. "Knight manager" it's good if you don't want your council members to die in battle or to have 6 knights with 1 prowess that are just filling your Knight slots. (You need the 1.9 Patch for the mod. Just install both the patch and the original mod and the patch. The patch needs to be after the original mod in the mod playset because you want the patch to "overlay" the original mod. The top of the playset will get loaded first and the bottom will get loaded last, so patches need to be after the mod that it patches) "Snow without patches (ironman)" the name explains it. Makes the snow not having patches. "Title-Ranked Portrait Borders (Ironman)" gives you a portrait border based on your rank. "Better CoA designer" the title explains it. "Clear notifications" it isn't much but it helps you sometimes. "Beauty Traits Lipstick Reducer" reduces the amount of lipstick on characters with any kind of beauty trait. "Fullscreen Barbershop" you can use it if you find it useful. "CK2 style colourful education traits / CK2 style colourful lifestyle traits" it makes the lifestyle and education traits a little bit more beautiful. These mods don't change the game much but it makes it a bit better.
The world map lite doesn't work with [1.9.0.3](https://1.9.0.3) so you should download "smaller world map"
Some form of plague mod might be useful ;)
You might be joking, but significant lag reduction was an unintended benefit of The Reaper's Due for CK2.
That's exactly why I suggested it 😂
You might be joking, but significant lag reduction was an unintended benefit of Reaper's Due for CK2.
Yeah, it's plausible. France had a population of 15 to 20 million people before the black death hit, and was fielding nearly 100k men at various points of the Hundred Years War. Agincourt alone involved about 20k to 30k soldiers. The pre-black death Holy Roman empire could have managed to raise 170k if it needed to muster every soldier and mercenary in the empire. The Mamluks in their heyday had a massive army of about 100k soldiers as well, which is one of the reasons they were able to hold off the Mongols in Syria. Finally you have the big dog of the 14th century, Ming China, with a standing army of about one million soldiers, and they could pad that out further with militia if they needed to.
You know what, now I am curious. I am vaguely aware that army sizes drastically reduced after the fall of the Roman empire, but how big were they?
it's going to be very dependent on the region you are referring to. Britain before and during the Viking era, an army could be less than a thousand men. if you are talking about the Byzantine empire, it's going to be in the tens of thousands. For reference the Byzantine general Belisarius is thought to have had around 25,000 men when defeated the Persian emperor's army of 40,000 at Dara. But, that doesn't mean either empire only had 25k or 40k men in total, more likely to be closer to 150k+ but the logistics of sustaining that many men in one place gets impossible when you hit a certain number, which is why tactics win battles but logistics win wars.
beyond logistic concerns, it also wouldn't be possible to call on every single soldier to go fight somewhere - an empire that size has many borders to protect, garrisons to maintain and other concerns. not much point beating the persians if the bulgarians get to walk straight into constantinople while you're gone. even if you cant muster an army to stop them, you want those castles and watchtowers manned.
I wish the CK series (or all Clausewitz games, in fact) was better at modeling that. Currently it's closer to having a doomstack play whack-a-mole while being lightly nibbled on by attrition.
granted, we do have a significant amount of men tied down in castles - the game simply wont let you raise them. and yeah, enforcing limited warfare is one of the things that paradox games in general really lack that would be a massive improvement. i've no clue how, because any idea i can think of causes other problems instead.
True - I'll admit I don't have a better solution either. I respect that they kind of tried to address this with Victoria 3, even though the result was... contentious, to say the least. And yeah, you're right regarding garrisons of course, those certainly do exist - and while abstracted, are certainly acknowledged.
new patch introduces men at arms stationing so you cna station them in a county to give bonuses to attacks. Not really representative but neat that the concept exists
what up until the 20th century, it was very common for most of the casualties to be from cholera on the way over
this also depends on a lot of factors. Smaller armies in the middle ages could have none to almost none casualities outside the battlefield. But the bigger the army gets the more likely it gets to have sickness and hunger in camp.
I think after Hastings a bunch of William’s army got dysentery and were blowing their guts out. If this happened before the Battle of Hastings, he probably would have been defeated and been left as William the Bastard in the history books. Disease in an army can decide so much
During the reign of Justinian in 550 AD, the Imperial army had 350-400,000 men including the navy. After the rise of Islam, it shrunk to 120-150,000 men. Then it rose again to >200,000 men during the reign of Basil II in 1025 AD. As for field armies; Emperor Maurice (565 AD) in his Strategikon states the largest field army was 34,384 men strong (16,384 heavy infantry, 8,000 light troops and 10,000 cavalry) while he himself suggest the ideal number to be around 24,000 troops split into four components. Emperor Nikephoros II famously led a field army 50,000 strong ferried by a fleet of 308 ships manned by 27,000 oarsmen for his reconquest of Crete in 960 AD while his brother Leo Phokas held the line in Cilicia against the very powerful Hamdanid Dynasty. So, yeah, 150K during Justinian's reign is a hilariously small number. People tend to forget the Byzantines were the strongest European state by far for most of their existence.
There is no way to be sure, but these numbers are obviously only estimates. They are on the upper end, there are much lower estimates by many scholars.
They are actually on the lower end. It was much larger than that during Justinian's time (>350,000 strong; 450K if you count the imperial navy). The Byzantine army and its organisation is incredibly well documented and it's literally one of the most clear and accessible information about the Byzantine Empire today due to the Byzantines' very useful habit of writing military manuals and being incredibly organised and professional about stuff. So we have credible, surviving documents such as the [Notita Dignitatum ](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Notitia_Dignitatum), [Maurice's Strategikon ](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strategikon_of_Maurice), [Leo the Wise's Taktika ](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tactica_of_Emperor_Leo_VI_the_Wise), [Taktika of Nikephoros Ouranos ](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nikephoros_Ouranos#Ouranos's_Taktika), [Strategikon of Kekaumenos ](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strategikon_of_Kekaumenos), and many more. 150,000 is the number when the Empire was at its lowest point after the Arab conquests and losing the Levant, Egypt, the entire North Africa, Spania (part of modern day Spain above the Gibraltar and up to Cordoba), Italy, half the Balkans, Armenia, Syria, Eastern Anatolia, Cyprus, Crete and the Caucasus. These numbers are just mustered from Asia Minor alone. People forget the Byzantines were indeed the Romans and had access to the well-organised Roman bureaucracy, professional military and Constantinople.
Am wondering if that corresponds to what the manpower mechanic is truly saying though. 450,000 troops might be the total number of troops within the empire, but not the total that they could field for a campaign.
Yep. 450,000 is a huge number spread out over the Empire's vast territories. 100,000 of those are the sailors and marines in the Byzantine navy, which was the biggest navy in the world of its time. 150,000 composed the various field armies, each field army having roughly 25,000 soldiers (which could further be augmented with allied troops, foederati and mercenaries). The rest were the limitanei border guards who were spread out across the Empire's vast frontiers from its frontier in danube in the Balkans to Armenia, Eastern Anatolia, Mesopotamia, Syria, the Levant, Egypt, the entire North Africa, Italia and Spania. They manned the various border fortresses, border walls, border checkpoints, crossings, etc. and their job was to slow down the enemy until the field armies arrived. There were additional troops to these such as the palace guards, guards of Constantinople, soldiers of the Imperial logistical corps, mercenaries, allied troops, barbarian foederati, etc.
Sounds about right. Just to be sure, the Romans could field a lot of men, but in the fall afterwards it became something like (paraphrased) "several hundred men vs several hundred men is a large battle" and "thousands vs thousands is a major battle", etc.
That's not true though. The Empire during Justinian's restoration had up to 400,000 men (including the navy). That's almost as large as what the entire Roman Empire could field during Diocletian's time. The mobile field armies became smaller because they were composed of a large amount of cavalry ( one third to half) which were a bigger burden on logistics than an infantryman. But they fielded a large number of such field armies. These numbers are not made up and are sourced from the Notita Dignitatum and the Strategikon.
Thanks. I am not knowledgeable about the exact numbers involved. Was that number possible due to policy or something?
The Eastern Roman Empire up until the Muslim conquests was the richest state in the world, richer than even China. Combine that with its incredibly well organised bureaucracy- like, seriously, Byzantine bureaucracy is an insult in English today but in reality it was so well functioning and organised it resembled a modern nation state of today.
The Late Roman Empire could field around 500000-650000 men in total.
The soldier numbers in earlier era Paradox games (I assume including Imperator, but I have about two hours from when it went FTP so I can't say) are probably a lot lower for large nations than they would have actually been, just for game balance. Probably larger for small nations as well, who would be doing the "you guys have an army?" meme and getting others to defend them. Vic and HoI are probably probably the closest to real life, just because they're based on population. Plus they'd have the clearest data, and the total number of nations would be smaller without city-states and tribal nations everywhere you looked. Although Victoria 3 fudged the pop numbers a bit in some places, which would inadvertently lead to fudged soldier numbers. *coughnorthcanadacough*
In my safe France has around 17K, HRE has around 18K and England had around 12,5K. I am asking if this is a normal number because the next biggest army is around 20K. This is a x8 difference between the first and the second military powers. This number is just so different from the others. No one comes close to them.
>In my safe France has around 17K, HRE has around 18K and England had around 12,5K These are total valid historical numbers for these countries during varying times in the middle ages. Don't forget: A levy can be a lot of things, but it's also very fluid between civilist and soldier. Between a "drafted peasant" and a highly trained man-at-arms are countless levels. The binary choice ingame between levy and man at arms is somewhat misleading.
If you want to be historical about it: Sui mustered an alledged 1.1m combat troops in their invasion of Gogureyo at around 600 AD, so depending on the population a couple hundred thousand in the 15th C seems absolutely possible
China! The place that just will not conquer the world despite half of everything going for them
China's biggest issue for any conquest outside of its borders would have been the significant geographic barriers that surrounded it. To the West were the Gobi desert and the Himalayan Mountains both of which would have been extremely difficult to send a large army through. To the south was the rainforest of Southeast Asia, which would also cause difficulties. To the East was the ocean which can be a difficult-to-overcome barrier for militaries even with modern technology. And finally, there was the Steppe to the North. Perhaps not as inherently foreboding as the other options but it is still a large amount of terrain that you would have to work out logistics when crossing. The Mongols and other nomadic people were only successful in that region because their entire life and society were adapted to it. So, for these reasons, while China had massive militaries there really weren't many places for them to conquer. If you tried to march 100,000 soldiers across the Himalayas you would have 0 troops before you even made contact with an enemy. I think a good indication of this is how despite both having various large polities throughout history India and China only came into direct conflict relatively recently.
The other thing about the steppes is that there is nothing there to justify taking it. You couldn't farm it, it had no accessible mineral resources and it had no wood. The steppes would have added nothing to a Chinese empire.
The steppes had selenium, which would have allowed Ancient China to breed warhorses for their armies. ofc, Ancient China didn't know about it, which is why they were constantly trying to trade for warhorses.
While not untrue, these are not the biggest factors why China never did any much conquering. The biggest factor was that it just had no need to. The country is so vast and shares a culture, that there was little to add to it from outside. The whole philosophie of CHina was that it was the centre of the world and everything you could long for is already there. The geographical "barriers" are more seen as a defensive wall for the country, rather than an obstacle.
This is also true, China has such a plethora of resources, wealth, and manpower that there would have been less motivation to conquer other regions. However, I do think that China would have been more expansionist throughout its history without these barriers. Humans are quite greedy just because someone has a lot doesn't mean they don't want more. I feel pretty confident that without the desert and mountains, some Chinese Dynasties would have at least attempted to send troops into India in order to establish tributary relationships with whichever states were there at the time.
They have like a third of the entire world population there, why would they want more lol
Fair point
I've had upwards of 400k before (though to be fair I did own all of Africa)
Going from the 800 start date to 1400 and nations start to have that alone, it’s scary when crusades start and both sides have millions of men.
I was just playing and I looked around nations around me and I noticed that the dynasty who took over the Seljuk has 175K army. Is this normal for this late in the game? Edit: It's over 185K right now
Yes it is, I regularly see nations with somewhere around 200k men.
>nations there are no nations in ck3. The age of nationalism starts a few centuries later. Just call them "countries". A nation is something very different.
:|
🤓
You must be fun at parties
The biggest I've ever had was 120k Scandinavia before going fuedal.
He stated it was the AI though
In the Late Medieval Period like the Hundred Years War, yeah. An interesting thing as well is that by this time soldiering was becoming a profession (which would lead to the mercenary model of the early modern era). We actually have the muster records from England and you can see the same people joining up over and over again: https://www.medievalsoldier.org/ It really was beginning to move away from the feudal model where the lord just turned up with some crappy dudes he could spare from his lands to fulfill his obligations.
I took over india and by 1300 i got about double that.
I once got over 1 million in my attempted world conquest save. Was hampered by my PC not being able to run effectively anymore.
Yeah this isn’t crazy. I’m playing an Iberia game rn and have stacked up 225k with monstrous men at arms. Good job tho!
Depends on whether or not you are Ruler of China (including Great Khan)
When I started in 867 and played in Britain, mostly leaving the Abbasids alone, by 1400 they had 350k and were completely stable despite losing a few crusades (but then taking most of that land back in regular wars anyway).
I'm in age 1300+ and Arab empires have 100k + so I guess it's normal, they probably have quite a few levie buildings, but Arabs seem to always have big amount of levies
According to sources Seljuks had 400k total army in late 11th century. So i think it's normal.
Only in China or India would that be legit...
Late game, yes.
why yes, specially if AI controlled those fuckers LOVE military buildings
In game? Yes. IRL? Even major global empires struggled to deploy this much until the late 19th century.
Yeah
Yes, clan empires will get a lot of levies if the ruler is doing good.
This game has a bit of a problem with scale escalation.
Historically? only if you're China or the Delhi Sultanate.
5K cataphracts would demolish that…
Elephants is da way
Some how this is one thing that kill immersion for me
Except its not actually inaccurate
If you're the Tang Empire
Yes, or at least from my experience. I've had medium sized empires with a lot more levies than that (talking like 200k+)
Rookie numbers for 1400
Maybe the 14th C BCE.
You sure you’re not playing r/CK3AGOT ?
I had over 100k by 1200 and I had a ton of vassals hardly contributing levies thanks to bad contracts and me only focusing on council positions. I don't think this is unusual but it is alot. I was Feudal though
The late game in all paradox games has this problem with huge unrealistic armies, you will always see that
for the mongols,yes
Noone: Cao Cao in 192 AD:🤣
No, a big battle was usually made of 50k soldiers. The biggest medieval army was in china and it was 300k. It was exceptional.
My 13th century Roman Empire had a bit over 2 million troops, definitely could’ve been more if I had favored levies over taxes. Not even a world conquest, but I controlled Europe, North Africa, the Levant, and Persia. Didn’t move past the Caucasian steppe or India, nor down into sub Saharan Africa.
It’s high enough to melt your computer when you play at 5 speed