Historical accuracy of starting armies and manpower

[Antiochus_Soter]

How historically accurate are the sizes of the starting armies for each nation in this game? When I played as Epirus, I noted that the army size seemed to match what the wikipedia article says about the size of Pyrrhus's army. (about 25,000)

However, the Diadochi kings seem to start with really huge armies. The Seleucids start with a whopping 60,000, and the Ptolemies almost double that (100,000). If the Ptolemies really had such a massive army then one wonders why they didn't just roll over the Seleucids in the Syrian Wars, especially considering the Seleucids were dealing with invasions from the Gauls and independence movements in Armenia, Cappadocia, Bactria and Parthia at that time.

I cannot find anything on Wikipedia to back up the 100,000 troops for the Ptolemids, or even the 60,000 for the Seleucids. Apparently at the Battle of Ipsus, fought in 301 BC, the combined forces of Seleucus, Cassander, AND Lysimachus only numbered about 70,000. It therefore seems hard to believe that about 15 years later Seleucus would be able to muster 60,000 troops by himself, and the idea that Ptolemy could muster 100,000 by himself would seem very far out.

Does anybody know if there is any historical evidence that these armies really were so large? Or evidence that Ptolemy was capable of mustering such a larger army than the Seleucids?

 

[vanin]

Actually, the Ptolemies had a very hard time managing their manpower up until Raphia. The reason was that the Hellenes and Macedons regarded the Egyptian natives as inferior and not fit to serve in a traditional hellenistic army. Instead mercenaries, ranging from Galatians to Greeks to Jews, were hired to serve in the Ptolemaic armies and the availability of such troops steadily sank throughout the first 50-100 years of this game. By Raphia, in 537 AVC, the Ptolemies had been forced to concede and accept the native population into their armies, as without them they really had pitiful manpower. These native troops were called machimoi if my EB-memory serves me right, and they performed admirably in the battle against Antiochus III. The Seleucid king bested Ptolemy IV's cavalry which he lead in person, and then chased the Ptolemaic king from the battlefiled in the hopes of killing him and thus winning the battle. However, he couldn't catch up and the Ptolemaic troops with Egyptian machimoi at the core managed to defeat the Seleucid infantry.

The reasons for the steep reduction of available mercenaries are many, but mostly due to Rome's entry into Hellenic affairs and the Seleucids under Antiochus III experiencing a revival. Frequent wars in Hellas would have lead to mercenaries staying at home as fighting was intense there already, and the Seleucids could solidify a hold upon central Asia Minor, thus being able to enroll Galatians into their armies more directly. Antiochus would recieve the epiphet Megas for his success in recovering the far flung territories of the Seleucid domain, finishing the reconquest at Panium 17 years after Raphia, finally defeating the Ptolemies and confining them to Egypt and Cyprus. At the time Egypt was ruled by the young Ptolemy V who couldn't yet lead armies on his own, and considering his later life it is unlikely that he would have done better at Panium than his generals did.

Following Raphia the Egyptian population had their confidence restored, and soon a war down the Nile began, where an Egyptian pharaoh arose. The Ptolemies would for a long time struggle to reclaim Upper Egypt from these rebels, and when they finally did they were almost immediately put under Roman and Seleucid influence completely. Despite that the natives recieved the prominence they probably deserved, Egypt was at that point far too weak to prove much of a threat to anyone, least of all Rome which had defeated Antiochus III Megas in the Syrian war with relative ease.

In short, the game calculates the Egyptian manpower as if they were all Egyptians and thus could draw upon the huge Egyptian population to fight. It would be more accurate if the Ptolemies were of 'Greek' culture instead of Egyptian, as the Seleucids are also Greek and thus can't profit from their large Asian population, whilst the Egyptians can.

Edit: On the Seleucids, they did actually field pretty large armies. They couldn't rely on Hellenes as mercenaries and permanent settlers the same way as the Ptolemies (afaik, the largest concentration of Hellenes east of Asia Minor was Bactria, and the Seleucids didn't hold it for very long and it was far to the east) so they had to rely on the natives from the very start. Also add that the Ptolemaic kingdom was much smaller than the Seleucid kingdom, and had alot less immediate threats. Where the Ptolemaic pharaohs hardly had to worry about the Axumites to their south, thus being able to focus all their attention north (until the rebellion following Raphia of course), the Seleucids had trouble brewing on every side of their empire. This also means that even if the Seleucids technically could field 150'000 troops, you could expect more than half of them to be tied to designated conflict areas and as garrisons all across the Empire. The Selecuids inherited most of the Achaemenid realm, and we know that they fielded absolutely huge armies, and the Seleucids saw no need to change that.

 

[Cheexsta]

The game generates army sizes, positions and country manpower at the start of the game; they aren't placed there specifically by the designers. Epirus is a special case, which gets extra troops given to them by event.

So yeah, don't put too much stock in the numbers you see at the start.

 

[Annibal]

Starting armies are not too important. The game itself is so unbalanced. They should work on it first. But I guess they don't. I hope they will release Rome II