Of course there are, This is why I explicitly excluded commander ability, army size, and also made it an exceedingly simplistic 4-point scale.
>Esrolia 1
Dave: I think Esrolia is worth a bit more than this when defending.
At least 2.
I don't. I see no evidence that Esrolia is particularly accomplished in any aspect of their military, except sheer numbers. They are better when defending, but so is _any_ army that can retreat to fortified cities.
>Lunar Empire 4
>For troop quality, probably Imperial Bodyguard and LCM 4, Heartland
>Corps and Cavalry Corps 3, Native Furthest 2.
I would divvy them up into just two basic groups -- the core army (Heartland Corps, Bodyguard, and Cavalry Corps), and their frontier units (Nativd Furthest & co.). The core army qualifies as a 4 overall. The frontier units vary from 1 to 3. Furthest is clearly a 2.
>Kralorela 2
>Dave: Though with elite units equal to anybody elses. Possibly a 3 for
>their navy?
I deny that my gross oversimplification applies to individual units. An army with a few elite units might be a 2. An army with no elites may be a 3.
Dave is curious about naval skills. So here goes my rough guesses.
Loskalm 1 Wolf Pirates 4 (but few in number) Nolos & co. 2 Teshnos 1 Kethaela 2 Kralorela 3 Vormain 2 (formerly a 1, but improved recently) East Isles 4 Amazons 1 Fonrit 2 Elamle 3 Vadeli 4 red / 2 brown Dwarf 1 (but hard to destroy)>I don't know enough about Vormain to judge, but less than that for
>Vormain 4
Not if they can get their soldiers ashore. Once ashore, few East Isles natives can withstand the fury of the Vorumai. You have to keep your ships watchful and alert at all times. This has slowed the Vorumai expansion, but once they get ashore an island, so far they have always conquered it and added it to their empire. To date, the East Isles have not got their act together enough to carry out an organized naval interdiction among Vormain's scattered islands.
>Horali 5
>Iron Dwarfs 5
>Kingdom of War 6
>Dave: I'm not sure if I agree with the KOW as being more effective
directly than >either of these two.
Both Horali and Iron Dwarfs are overrated. Horali are individually mighty, but their tactics are rigid and crude. Iron dwarfs rely primarily on technology, and while they are very difficult to defeat, they cannot exploit a victory, quickly react to changing circumstances, nor outwit an opponent.
Both types of warriors are very vulnerable in that they are essentially irreplaceable -- a single large defeat would shatter their power forever. Think of them as rather like the Byzantines before Manzikert. Neither Horali nor Iron Dwarfs are really armies. Instead, they are tools of dissuasion -- their function is to frighten off potential foes.
A force of Iron Dwarfs cannot conquer a human land. All they can do is stomp around breaking down city walls and frightening farmers. Every so often, a band of humans manage to trap one alone and push him into a lake, or kill him in a forest fire, or whatever. Thus the Iron Dwarfs gradually dwindle until they flee the horrid place, never to return.
Peter Metcalfe
>The KoW are *better* than the Iron Dwarves or the Brithini? *gulp!*
>(Sog City land prices plunge to new lows...)
Terrifying, isn't it? Actually, an individual Horali or Iron Dwarf can handily defeat the average Kingdom Warrior. But army combat is not the same as heroic individualistic duels. A full army of the Kingdom facing an equally-large band of Horali would almost certainly win handily. The individual French knights at Crecy would no doubt have handily trounced a Welsh longbowman in one-on-one combat. The individual Persians at Marathon are recorded by contemporary Greeks as being far more skilled in combat than the hoplites and peltasts they faced. The Greeks did not fight individually, but as a band.
>How would you rate the Seshnegi [My guess: 3?], Pasos [2 Navy-3]
Ralians [2], >Wolf Pirates [Navy-4] or the Masloi Flanchi [2
Navy-3]? Do the Arbennan >Confederation and the Kresh have armies
(as of 1621) to register on your list? >Do the Slarges?
Seshnegi: Army 3, Navy 1
Pasos: Army 2, Navy 3
Safelstrans: 1-3
Ralian Orlanthi: 2-3
Wolf Pirates: Navy 4
The Arbennan Confederation and the Kresh don't have recognizable armies in the Northern sense, though they have tactics for mass combat, and are known to band together. A Kresh Wagon train would probably be rated a 2, at the moment, and a band of typical Doraddi a 1.
HOWEVER, after a _very_ short time of warfare, their tactics and skills would improve considerably -- they are quick to learn, non-rigid, and have easy access ancient memorized lore teaching them about a wide variety of mass combat systems. They are probably the quickest-learning folk in Glorantha.
Slarges: hard to evaluate, since they've only (so far) combatted neolithics and a little-known Fonritian expedition. The neolithics have been losing for decades, and the Fonritians, despite a large number of warslaves, were totally wiped out. Of course, it is possible that they were destroyed by something other than slarges, but no other force in Tarien is known to be deadly enough to destroy an entire armed caravan.
Jose Ramos
>Elves 4 forest, 1-2 outside
Or even a 5 inside the forest. Except that, as I've pointed out elsewhere, elf "armies" are incredibly rare, and seem to have only appeared as regular forces once or twice in all Gloranthan history.
>Enlo 1
>Argan Argar Enlo 2 (with Dark Troll backing)
>Uz 3
>Uzdo 4
This is too small a scale for me to have any confidence in in my crude rating system. You can't encounter a dark troll army that lacks enlo, or a Genertelan troll army that lacks uzdo. I would just rate the dark trolls as an average of 3, or 2 for modern Kingdom of Ignorance trolls.
>Dragonewts 2 (crested)
3 (beaked infantry) 4 (beaked cavalry)
Barbarian 'newts: 4 Civilized 'newts: 5 (found only in Dragon Pass and Kralorela)
Lewis Jardine
>Horali -- These guys are ALL at over 100% in at least 5 weapons
MINIMUM <deleted >lecture about how tough they are)
>Iron Dwarfs -- the Iron Dwarfs are even tougher.
I know how tough the Horali and Iron Dwarfs are, Lewis. I probably know at least as much about them as do you. And I STILL rated the KoW tougher. Think about it.
>Personally, I don't imagine that the KoWs are any better than the elite
>troops of most nations
Imagine them as you please, Lewis. Your campaign needs are doubtless very different from mine.
The thing about the KoW is not only that they are all top-notch elite warriors, but that they are highly skilled in _mass_ combat, combined arms, enemy lore, etc. etc. They are definitely NOT superior to the Horali or the Iron Dwarfs one-on-one, at least not in most cases. But they don't fight one-on-one.
Individual Mongol warriors in the time of Genghis and Subotai were no more skilled than a good Chinese soldier or a Hungarian knight. And the Mongols were outnumbered in all their important battles in Europe and China, too. Their generalship was good, but King Bela was no oaf, and nor were the Chinese leaders. So, we have slightly better generals with equal or inferior troop quality man-for-man and inferior numbers. Winning every battle.
This is not to say that the KoW would not have to plan a campaign against the Horali or Iron dwarfs _very_ carefully to emphasize their enemy's weaknesses and their own strengths. Probably armies such as the Horali, Iron dwarfs, Dragonewts and similar "5" class groups are the only forces in Glorantha that have a chance of defeating the KoW in battle.
In general, my rule for the ships was that an army that was 2 levels above another army would win every battle, unless something _very_ unusual was going on (exceptionally poor generalship for the good army, or humongous size differential, etc.)
Sandy
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