Army size vs Civilian Population

[Imperial Dave]

2. Playing a no-win scenario is not much fun.

the story of my wargaming life!

[Erpingham]

Of course, a possible spin-off question and thread is whether rules and army lists encourage appropriate army sizes and structures.

A good question and worth a thread, indeed. Though, I think you make an a priori assumption that that is what army lists are for, rather than balancing the relative strengths of tabletop armies.

[Erpingham]

Playing a no-win scenario is not much fun.

The trick with this is asymmetrical victory conditions. So, for example, challenge the weaker side to hold on for a length of time, or cause a certain amount of damage.  I think Lost Battles uses some sort of handicap system to balance up uneven contests, though I've not played it myself.

[Nick Harbud]

Final quirk (for now) is, how long since your last bloody war? Pre-industrial societies often had a slow growth rate.  Take out a large chunk of prime manpower and it will be some time before you recover your previous strength. 

One might add to this that the same caveat applies for your last major plague outbreak.  For examples one might look at the effect of the Black Death on the Hundred Years War and other European conflicts, as well as the Athens plague during the Peloponessan War.

[Nick Harbud]

Incidentally, you may find my article Over the Top - Castillon 1453 from Slingshot 333 helpful in answering your question.  I can also recommend some of the titles in the further reading section of the article as a starting point for estimating what the civilian population might have been.

[Imperial Dave]

sat on my bookshelves as I type

Slingshot 333, not me

[Keraunos]

Yes, trying to model civilisation is very complicated and even our modern day comprehensive models sometimes fail to allow for the impact of the Quantum Weather Butterfly

Quite a few years ago, at a time I should probably have been doing something more useful for society, I remember working out a scheme to generate realistic probabilities of weather conditions for an integrated campaign and battle system that involved generating patterns of high and low pressure and deriving weather conditions in each region based on the interaction of these patterns.  I cannot remember how it worked but I do remember being staggered at my ingenuity in creating a thing of simple beauty without a butterfly in sight.

[Swampster]

A good point and of course relevant. Two points I am sure have come up before but are worth re-mentioning -
1. Generals often avoided a battle if they thought they couldn't win so uneven battles not as common as you might otherwise expect.
2. Playing a no-win scenario is not much fun.

An ACW set that I played quite a bit had a system which meant that most battles were asymmetric but so were the victory conditions. A small force vs. a larger force may be a delaying action, for instance.

When I used Spanish in Napoleonics, surviving the first few turns was something of a victory and getting a draw was worthy of a triumph.

[dwkay57]

My supplementary question was more about how are your armies organised and sized to match known historical sizes and population, rather than are the two sides of equal fighting potential.

So, if you have Ancient Brits: is your army organised into tribes and sub-clans? And is the size of each individual tribe realistic taking into account its likely population? E.g. My Trinovantes field about 18,000 men (including some peasants) which might be a tad high.

If you field Greeks is your army organised into various city states with each contingent containing the likely number of hoplites and other types that state could field?

[Jim Webster]

It's always a tricky one David, as for some peoples, we're frankly guessing at population numbers, and even proper historians with time to do research can have the population of an area vary from 2 million to 6 million 

[Erpingham]

My supplementary question was more about how are your armies organised and sized to match known historical sizes and population, rather than are the two sides of equal fighting potential.

My comment I think remains relevant, however.  Most tabletop battles don't represent total military potential of states matched against each other. There is also that issue of balancing out. Given the historic interest in ancients of historically mismatched armies fighting each other, you have, for example, to be able to match your sub-Roman British with your classical Indian, even though one has a couple of thousand men and the other tens of thousands.  And gamers want to have all the range of options, even if, in reality, the scale sized detachment wouldn't.  As I said, it is an interesting topic.

[Jim Webster]

My supplementary question was more about how are your armies organised and sized to match known historical sizes and population, rather than are the two sides of equal fighting potential.

My comment I think remains relevant, however.  Most tabletop battles don't represent total military potential of states matched against each other. There is also that issue of balancing out. Given the historic interest in ancients of historically mismatched armies fighting each other, you have, for example, to be able to match your sub-Roman British with your classical Indian, even though one has a couple of thousand men and the other tens of thousands.  And gamers want to have all the range of options, even if, in reality, the scale sized detachment wouldn't.  As I said, it is an interesting topic.

In this case (which is an extreme example which does make the point really well) the absolute size of the population is less relevant than the size of force the society has the logistical wherewithal to support at a distance.