Yes, the empire has different types of counter-insurgency forces, including:
And so on - even before we talk about magic support (interdicting supply lines with the Crater Cult!), Blue Moon Assassins to decapitate dangerous hero bands, insidious 7 Mothers hearts & minds psyops, etc!
BUT Individual units are rarely any more effective than their commanders allow them to be, and this holds true all the way up the system. Having a fair number of units able to operate in CI ops matters very little if their commanders won't use them appropriately or the overall strategy in-theatre is inappropriate. Fazzur, a Tarshite, understands DP and Orlanth and, IMO, uses these assets pretty well. Tatius the Bright, on the other hand, is a very different type of commander. Not for him the slow hearts-and-minds, divide-and-rule accretional political-military strategy of a Fazzur, with a textured and nuanced understanding of local conditions (including developing Ironfist as a powerful local proxy who also draws the venom of Far Point in his direction rather than the empire's!). Instead, Tatius, with all the grandiosity and disregard for local conditions of a good Heartlander, goes for an all-or-nothing massive magical operation to pacify the whole region in one move.
This doesn't make Tatius stupid. To be fair, he almost makes it: from his calculations he had no reason to expect such a potent response from the Orlanthi. (It's not exactly a usual mission parameter: 'OK, this look as if it would work, but what if a hitherto-unknown dragon appears beneath us?') But it does meant that, beyond disrupting major rebel operations, his use of conventional forces is quite defensive, they are there primarily to protect the ritual and the construction of the TotRM. This proves a waste of his political and military assets. Above all, it allows Argrath to do what Kallyr could not: build up a complex and sizeable military and magical force, and also the political infrastructure that will turn individual herobands into an army. In a way, this allows Argrath to go beyond Michael Collins and head towards the Ho Chi Minh direction!
And the rest is history...
(Trust me, this *is* a short post. It's not even footnoted.)
Mark
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