>For a population base of only 100,000 this is stretching it quite
>some distance.
True, but we don't know how many small cities and towns they have either. According to the only map of even slightly decent scale, the entire area of the state is flat and white with no other cities. Plainly there is more to it than this, but we don't know what. I'd say the capital may be 10,000 and there are a couple of small cities (say 3000) with a bunch of towns and villages. Its the latter that would likely be raided, if unwalled.
> >By definition a large city is the equivalent of a Roman provincial capital
> >like Lugdanensis or Antioch, therefore it is in the heart of civilisation.
> >Look at the density of cities in and around Loskalm, Dara Happa
> >and Safelster. Those places are the heart of civilization, not
> >remote places like the Upper Janube valley.
>I'm not saying they are the "heart" of civilisation,
>Pardon me, but you did say exactly that above.
Smeg! I hate it when I do that.
>but they do have large cities and they have enough density of people to
>attempt to equal the Sartari fight against their raiding Hsunchen, the
>Telmori, who are more effective than the Rathori in fighting as a group
>anyway.
>The Telmori don't really need tactics. They fight in a group because
>that's their totemic tradition.
Agreed
>The Arrolians OTOH are not even half as good as Sartarites in fighting.
They are >Pelorians who fled rather than take up arms against Sheng Seleris.
This doesn't mean they are bad at fighting. The Carmanians fled the GLs but were rather good af clobbering. Often the toughest and best survive such journies, not hippy peaceniks.
>For them to be stalwart doughty fighters kind of repudiates their reasons
for >coming here.
I don't agree, the just wanted a life without slavery, which was all Sheng offered and the other free lands probably had enough refugees and kept them moving on.
>Besides professional soldiers are not everything.
>When it does say that what other forces it can rely on are
>"ragged peasants and city dwellers", it's clear that the
>professional soldiers are pretty much all they have and not
>Thematic Byzantine part-timers.
I don't know, it seems to great a simplification to me. There _has_ to be some tougher people on the borders, otherwise there wouldn't be a border.
> >We were talking about "a quick reaction and warning system", not
> >a "response ability". As said before, the Janubians do not have
> >any amount of forces to deal with raiders effectively.
>You don't need much. I'm not talking regiments or serried ranks of
>cataphracts or anything. The local lord should have a couple of
>dozen men in his employ, he summons his peasants and yeoman,
>Already we are handling non-Arrolian concepts. The Arrolians
>are at heart a community of equals.
Who still have leaders like any other culture. Some are surely more equal than others?
>The Byzantines developed a simple strategy for raids. They would often
>ignore the raid force until after it had raided, position themselves at the
>point of exit for the raiders and then slaughter the laden raiders with ease.
>And given the vast border between Arrolia and Rathorela, where
>exactly is this point of exit? The geography is nothing like
>Anatolia.
There will be choke points, trails and river valleys that funnel movement. Besides, as I said above, we really don't know what the terrain is like. I would agree that its not like Anatolia, but besides that, I have no clue from the map we have.
Martin Laurie
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