[MUD-Dev] Depth of realism

[Travis Casey]

On Monday, November 22, 1999, Wendy Winkler wrote:

> Your contentions are of considerable interest.  To be specific:

> On Mon, 22 Nov 1999, Marian Griffith wrote:
>> On Sun 21 Nov, Jo Dillon wrote:
>> > Travis S. Casey (efindel at io.com) spake thusly:
>> > > > Also, on a medieval mud, medieval army sizes should be used.  Until the
>> > > late part of the medieval period, few battles involved more than a few
>> > > hundred people total.  You can break those up into units of 10 or so, and
>> > > have only 10 to 50 units to handle for most battles.
>> >   I'd have thought a couple of thousand and up more typical - it depends which
>> > area and time you're talking about of course.
>> A couple of hundred is a fairly good estimate for medieval armies. Romans
>> had a bit larger armies, but even they rarely brought a thousand soldiers
>> in the field at the same time.

> It depends a great deal upon what you mean by an "army".  A couple of
> hundred men might make a useful skirmishing force, same as today.  But if
> you're talking about the sort of outfit which could be expected to fight a
> regular battle:

[snip various examples of large medieval forces]

I probably wasn't as clear as I should have been -- I said "few
battles involved" because I wanted to include not just formal armies,
but all medieval battles.  Remember, most medieval battles were local
things -- struggles between local lords, rather than national-level
battles.

That's the context in which I spoke of a few hundred being the average
size.  Naturally, there were battles in the medieval period which
involved a lot more soldiers -- but they were vastly outnumbered by
the local "wars".

--
       |\      _,,,---,,_        Travis S. Casey  <efindel at io.com>
 ZZzz  /,`.-'`'    -.  ;-;;,_   No one agrees with me.  Not even me.
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