lyonheart wrote:Hi Don,
The AoG controls at least a third of the republic's territory, somewhere around 3 million square miles which can easily swallow 200,000 trained troops on police type territorial control duties; ie 3 Million square miles divided by 5024 square miles [the radius of a day's march] means just over 597 such camps to cover that entire area, each having just under 335 men [less than 3 infantry companies], though this example is too simple it demonstrates how spread out the AoG could be.
The local TL militia, which was down to 473,000 total throughout the republic in MTaT according to the Raw Meat post, or roughly one for every 19 square miles if they were evenly spread out, but given they were concentrated in the western provinces, a 2-1 ratio would drop that to 1 every 15 square miles for the whole western half of the republic, while the eastern remainder would be down to 1 for every 26.
That was before the ICA arrived and the RSA was able to catch its breath, so I expect that number is down considerably from that by March 897 YoG.
We may also get an update soon on the ~20,000 ICN marines helping the RSA in south Siddarmark from MTaT we haven't seen since.
L
This sort of rear-area security does seem to be the most likely explanation for the differences in troop strengths between when the armies are first mentioned and when they actually show up, but for some reason it doesn't quite satisfy me. It feels somewhat haphazard compared to RFC's normal storytelling techniques for such a large force to be frittered away off-page.