Alex writes:
> I think that "centuries", though, are pretty standard,
>and have been since Dara Happan times,
Back in the early '80s we thought a bit about Lunar army organization and thought up several types of organizational charts (figuring the Lunars liked charts and systems.)
Both the decimal system and the 7x7x7x7 system were discussed. We thought 10's were Solar and 7's were Lunar (We were apparently right about 10's being Solar - see GRoY!) and came up with a couple of organization types:
The Millenium
1 commander, 10 officers, 100 noncoms, 1000 soldiers. Some debate as to
whether it should be this or 1,9,90,900 (total 1000). Wrote this up at some
point but forget if I ever posted it to the Net.
This is an old Light command structure.
"Lunar Reformed Century"
A reform of the Century (one commander, 9 noncoms, 90 men = 100)
Squads of seven men, including one leader per squad. Seven squads, plus
one officer make up a semicentury. One squad is the "command squad", which
attends the commander and acts as liason to the others.
Two semicenturies make up a Century, which can fit into the old DH organizational charts. Or seven can make up a cohort (I think...) with one semicentury as the 'command' unit. Seven cohorts made up a Lunar Legion, c. 2451 men (with a General commanding). Bureacrats argued as to the "perfect" Lunar organization. Meanwhile field commanders ignored the manuals and made up their own organizations half the time, sending back reports that agreed on paper with the Lunar hierachy but setting up their own squad sizes according to local needs. (Example: officially a unit might be a Legion + 500 auxiliaries, which are theoretically a separate cavalry force. Except that the commander is trying to make his pike squares work and 350 of those auxiliaries are actually hoplites beefing up squad strength to 8. There are only 150 cavalry; the rest of the horses were sold off and the proceeds go to line the commander's pocket. Meanwhile 350 infantry are supposedly drawing cavalry pay, and feed is bought for some 1000 cavalry horses which aren't there. Guess where the excess money is going...
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