The majority of the Roman warriors were frontier legions that were never gathered together for combat. The Romans also used a mobile army to carry out offensive wars. The Persians did the same, and so do the lunars. The lunars have a large manpower reserve, so every province boasts its own military force. Tarsh has the Native Furthest Corps. The Redlands has its own militia. No doubt Carmania's militaristic nobility have their own troops as well, under the lunars' watchful eye.
But the government is unable to summon Carmania's militia force to face enemies in Furthest. Why? Because an army that is too large simply can't supply itself on the march unless it totally devastates the countryside -- not good in your own territory! Not only that, but if an army is too big, in order to forage and support itself it has to spread over an enormous area each day, which greatly lessens available marching time. If the army supplies itself instead, it's still slowed down, because the wagons carrying the food have to constantly travel back and forth between the supply areas and the main army -- so the army is progressively slowed the further it gets from the main supply. A 200,000 man army couldn't possibly carry enough food for the whole army for more than a few days.
Consider an army of 200,000 men. They get word that Argrath is attacking, and march out for battle. Their marching column would be over 100 miles long! An army of that size could not possibly march more than 15-20 miles a day (if that), and would be unable to bivouac together. The Lunar road "grid" is insufficient to let the armies march along parallel routes, as did Napoleon. Since to get the whole army together for battle takes 4-6 days while the tail end catches up, they could never fight an enemy as a group -- the foe would either just attack the first-arriving Lunars, or run away before the Lunars were assembled. During the 17th century, a number of highly experienced generals remarked that a force of 40,000 was the ideal size for an army. Any more was considered too unwieldy. They faced problems of supply and transport similar to the Lunars'.
Now consider geography. If the 200,000 man Lunar army is in the Redlands fighting nomads and the Sartarites invade, the Lunars must gather the army and march to Tarsh taking weeks to get there. By the time they arrive, Furthest is plundered and a row of Sartarite hill forts are set up across a river line. Meanwhile the nomads pillage the abandoned Redland towns. Obviously, the Lunars could never survive if they had a huge centralized army in the modern fashion.
Now, one might object that they don't put their whole army in any one place to fight their foes, but divvy it up among them. EXACTLY! That's what they do. The Redlands has a permanent defence force stationed there. In fact, the vast majority of the soldiers in their heavily-militarized empire are local militia. These strategically-immobile frontier forces are intended to hold off an attacker long enough for the elite central army to get there.
In this manner, the Lunar Empire takes advantage of its interior lines to move its mobile force against one attacker, then another. First they can strike at the Redlands, then into Tarsh, wherever a crisis happens, using the same main army for all their different battles.
The Lunars know exactly where the invaders are coming from - -- Pent, Charg, and Dragon Pass. They have standing armies there to watch and be ready for a fight. They've used whatever money is left over to equip a mobile reserve.
Now, the way for an enemy to defeat someone using interior lines is, of course, simultaneous advances. If the Lunars are marched upon from two points at once, they can only defend one of them.
So to sum up. The Lunar Empire DOES have a great big army. But almost all of it is in frontier regiments.
Sandy Petersen
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