I get the itching feeling that this was already discussed more than once, but I didn't find it on the first 3 pages so I went ahead with this thread.

Going by the landmass of Daggerfall, Illiac Bay is roughly the size of Great Britain, right? Since Illiac Bay comprises both Hammerfall and High Rock than High Rock itself should be the size of England plus Scotland. (Correct me if I'm wrong.)

The comparison is adequate because High Rock has both rich low lands throughout the peninsula, but it also has the less populated highlands in the eastern mountain range (which suits Scotland I guess).

The number of men a province can muster would depend on:

1. The wealth of a region (and how it would maintain a standing army)

For comparison, England during Harold Godwinson's time could muster arround 10.000 men (Battle of Hastings). Two hundred years later, England showed up with 25.000 at the Battle of Bannockburn. Advances in technology, commerce and agriculture allowed England to become a much richer country than it did during the 11th century.

Imperial rule would've secured trade routes and provide prosperity for the region of High Rock, but by the time of Skyrim, that prosperity ought to have reverted back a bit. High Rock seemed completly divided in Daggerfall, each noble looking after his own interest. The Empire did get involved every now and then to pacify the disputes. A house that's divided is much weaker than a house that's united. However if constant civil war is reality, then the militancy and fighting traditions would be higher than in a united kingdom. Think of the Swiss.

2. The population of the region (and the militancy of its people)

How many settlements were there in Daggerfall?

Let's say there's 4 types of lands. Taking the size of England as an example, England is a (Good) land with a high density, Bangladesh, which is about the size of England is an (AWESOME) land with huge density. Greece is also the size of England and it's a (Okay) land with medium density, Oman on the other hand is a (Bad) land with low density.

Which would you reckon are the more prosperous lands in the Empire? Not Provinces as a whole, but parts of provinces (i.e. Nibenay Valley vs. Colovian Highlands)

3. It's leadership and society.

This is very important. Tribal societies (I'm guessing Black Marsh comes close to this) have a much higher militancy than feudal societies. Feudal societies are build around the warrior caste, so military services is only reserved for the high born, while the peasants are often reluctant to take up arms. Tribal societies teach each man from a early age to use weapons (to hunt or protect the village), most men in a tribe would know how to fight (and they'd be pretty good at it too, think of the Mongols or the Seljuk Turks).

The Imperial method though, would be cross between the too. Warriors aren't a separate caste, each can join the ranks, but there are probably more farmers in that society than soldiers.

The Royal Houses of Morrowind functioned around this basis too. Everyone had membership, provided he was loyal to that house alone. They were also based on blood ties and had some similarities to the Ashkan tribes in Vvardenfell.

There's also slave armies that House Dres could build up. You take the children born in slavery and raise them as fighting men from a young age. They're more loyal than mercenaries, but they can still turn on you as it happened with the Egyptian Mameluks during the Crusades. The size of a slave army depends heavily on the size of your treasury. Saladin had slightly more men than the Crusaders, but the more wealthy Ottoman Turkish armies were almost twice the size of anything the Europeans could throw at them.


Care to speculate about this? I think there were some books that actually gave concrete numbers of the size of armies during historic battles. But I haven't played or read anything from the game in such a long time.

Mah boi, once the ansei start atom-splitting, once the numidium starts stomping, once the aedra and daedra enter mundus, once the dragons and sunbirds fly over the world and the God-Kings remake the fabric of reality, all the mortal men in the world will do for naught. The descendant folk are nothing but the shadow of a shadow, and it does not matter if there are one thousand or ten million to each province, once the metaphysical and fantastical rulers of Tamriel come, they will fall like wheat to the scythe.

Post above, slightly amusing.

On topic, it would first depend on the population of a certain area before anyone can figure out how big an army could be there. So there is no real concrete way to figure out how big of an army an area can boast if we don't know their population which I don't think is mentioned in books or lore in actual TES games. If we don't figure that out, the rest doesn't matter.

Well, Daggerfall (the city) had ~200,000 people if I remember correctly. I'd assume that other cities like Wayrest (it's situated at the mouth of a river, in general that means a large city), Orsinium (I'd bet that Orcs are/were flocking to the city) and Northpoint (it's in a prime position for trade with Skyrim) would have similar numbers, so I'd guess that High Rock as a whole could muster upwards of 100,000 men.

I don't recall anything on the population of Hammerfall. But I remember that it's very rich, so it could probably afford a lot of mercenaries. Sentinel is a big trading city probably roughly the size of Daggerfall. But really, I have no idea.

I'd think Nibenay would have more people than Colovia and it would be a more prosperous region. However, Colovia has a bit more flatland and farms in Oblivion, so it may have a high population too.

Morrowind, accoring to the book On Morrowind, was/is traditionally reliant on millitas bolstered by Redoran mercenaries and Ordinators. Army size post-ministry-falling-and-blowing-up-Red-Mountain-and-forcing-the-Dunmer-to-flee-and-Argonians-invading then they couldn't muster any army at all.

Black Marsh, if you would believe the Infernal City, could muster hundreds of thousands of Argonians. I doubt their population is very big so I'd take that with a pinch of salt. If it is correct, then the army sizes of every other province/region would stretch into the high hundreds of thousands, maybe millions. Though I doubt it.

Basically, I have no idea for anywhere other than High Rock.

Those hundreds of thousands weren't a traditional army, however; that represents the whole population of the province, or close to it. At least, that's what I would think.

That's what I thought. I imagine a huge horde of screaming, half naked Argonians charging through an Oblivion gate with Dremora and Daedroth running in fear while screaming like little girls.

Argonians have the advantage of having a hive-mind type setup, what with the hist.

I suspect that as propaganda, but regardless it would certainly need to be plausible for people to believe it.

Well, considering Wayrest is much richer and has a bigger population than any other place in High Rock thanks to the Siege of Orsinium(trade flowed through Wayrest more then anywhere else), I'd imagine they could boast a bigger army then that of Daggerfall(we're talking cities, not Kingdoms). So, let's just guess that around the time of Skyrim, Daggerfall has about 250,000 people, meaning Wayrest should have somewhere near 300,000. That would mean these two cities alone could easily produce 100,000, not including mercenaries which thanks to their prosperity, I'd say at least another 50,000. Now, add in everywhere else, and I'd say it wouldn't be a shocker to see an army near the half-million mark.

The Imperials did pretty well for themselves. While they were led to victory by Dragonborn and had metaphysical trump cards for some of their victories, they couldn't have succeeded without their armies.

I think if all 5 great houses united, they could gather around a few hundred thousand troops. Skyrim is an barbaric and warriorlike land so i think they could also make a huge army.

Bull. The Aldmeri Dominion had the Imperium at a standstill and would have eventually overcome them. The Tribunal were holding their own against the imperial legions with a much inferior army.

The legions wouldn't have stepped a foot into valenwood, or put one fishing boat off the coast of anvil without the tribunal and numidium and other "metaphysical trump cards" backing them up all the way. This isn't even getting into the intervention the Imperials have been getting from the Aedra.

At the end of Oblivion, the imperium, with it's strong mortal legions, would have collapsed if the Aedra hadn't stepped in. Really, battles in TES are fought by metaphysical constructs and ideas. In TES, single men who mantle and other things can make a differences, but any army at your back means NOTHING if you don't have some god or magical entity willing to step in for you.

Need I remind you yet again that everything the imperials did, they did with aedra or big stompy robots backing them up?

Inferior army or no inferior army, Morrowind had a trio of gods. The fact that nothing beyond a mortal army and one Dragonborn was able to convince a trio of gods submit and agree to join the Empire on optimal terms while they can speaks pretty well for Cyrodiil. As for Summerset, it was likely that the inability to invade was a naval issue; just look at how the Ayleids fared in open combat. And I've never seen anything actually saying that Numidium was needed to conquer Valenwood, or any province aside from Summerset.

As for the Oblivion Crisis, it was a long time coming, don't forget that Mehrunes Dagon had been previously defeated by mortal battlemages (probably why he attacked Battlespire), and as great as the Imperial military was, his Daedric forces were numerically and technologically superior.

I enjoy this type of practical lore, but we have such a small amount of info on the population of the various provinces that it's really tough to speculate. Going by Oblivion, Cyrodiil has a standing army of about 30 guys, so that puts the grand total for Tamriel at about 270.

Seriously though, according to the History of Daggerfall, Daggerfall has 110,000 people in 3E 400, which is said to be considerably more than Wayrest and Sentinel. I'm not sure if there's much more to go on than that. The political stability brought on by the Warp would probably swell the size of Daggerfall, Sentinel, and Wayrest, but it's possible that the decline of the empire sapped any potential population boom. Armies, even in fairly militaristic societies, tend to be somewhat small compared to the overall population--for instance, when the Roman Empire had 90 million people, its standing army was about half a million, and even that created such an enormous military budget that the society started to cave in on itself.

So assuming Daggerfall has 110,000 in the city, the total population of the kingdom might be around 300,000-500,000. Assuming Wayrest has about the same, and the other kingdoms are much smaller, all of High Rock might have 2-4 million people. Using the Roman ratio as a completely arbitrary reflection of the size of a population's military, 4 million people would result in a standing army of maybe 20,000? Of course, in a dire situation, more of the population could be conscripted/inspired to fight, and we could be looking at much larger numbers. Since Tamriel is full of magic, it's also possible that mages could teleport in food and provisions and equipment, making an army cheaper to maintain and supply, which could increase the potential size.

So to answer your question, I don't know.

Morrowind had no real Tribunal at this point. Thier power was significantly lessened with thier severed connection to the heart. Morrowind was only occupied a few years prior to the game.

Ah, I liked this post. A forum member after my own heart, bringing up the Roman Empire and all...

To balance these numbers, I just finished a book on the Asante Empire of West Africa, which suggested that Asante (~3 million people in the entire empire, with a little less than a third of that number living in metropolitan Asante alone) had the potential to muster 200,000 fighting men (although actual armies with such a strength were never encountered).

In this example, it looks like the total population matters little. Armies could only grow to a certain size because they were hard-capped by things like logistics. Large armies were unwieldy as is, and there comes a point when adding people to your army only results in negative performance.

To again use the Asante for example, who normally fielded armies in the tens of thousands (rather than hundreds of thousands) we have to take into account everything that went into an expedition. Not only did such an army have to be provided with food (normally-sized Asante armies often stripped the land clean in very short amounts of time) but such armies were often accompanied not only by soldiers, but by wives, priests, blacksmiths, slaves, diplomats, councilors, medical orderlies, etc., who also needed to be sustained. Therefore, we could assume that an army of 30,000 Asante soldiers and officers might balloon to something in the ballpark of 40,000 or 50,000 people. Fielding 200,000 in a single army would have been nigh impossible, as they would all starve. Fielding them in multiple, smaller armies would be more effective, but the financial burden and logistics of supporting that number of soldiers and support staff would have bankrupted even the absurdly rich Asante.

So, we have to think about this in three steps: Total population? Potential full mobilization numbers? Realistic mobilization numbers?

Though, like The Byzantine stated, I'm sure Tamriel could see larger armies fielded, due to magic and stuff.

But, don't we have any lore on army sizes at all? Don't we have any info on numbers at famous battles like Pale Pass or Sancre Tor? Getting the size of actual armies could probably give us a good estimate on the mustering power of a province...

No... Morrowind was occupied centuries prior to the game. The Tribunal still had a lot of power.
The heart chamber was occupied in 2E 882. Morrowind was conquered in 2E 296. Morrowind takes place in 3E 427 (I think).
So no, it was not "a few years".

I'm 99% sure Morrowind wasn't occupied by the Empire until not long before the game.

Though I may be thinking of Vvardenfell alone...

If I'm wrong, the empire had a big smashy robot, anyhow. The Tribunal went for the "good" image, and I doubt they'd want to kill them all. And I don't think they'd be willing to fight off another big stompy robot.

Your thinking of Vvardenfell, which was opened to colonization 3E 414. Morrowind hsa been part of the Empire for the entire third era. Also, Tiber Septim got the Numidium from Morrowind.

Yes, there’s a lot more to an army than just the fighting men, and there are tons of factors that count just as much as population. (I’m not familiar at all with the Asante Empire, but I’ve always been interested in learning more about the various African empires. Someday.)

So far I haven’t noticed any figures for the size of any armies in Tamriel, but Disaster at Ionith is probably one of the best books for this area of TES lore. Here’s a very interesting section:

“A new Far East Fleet was created for the campaign, which for a time dwarfed the rest of the Navy; it is said to be the most powerful fleet ever assembled in the history of Tamriel. The Fifth, Seventh, Tenth, and Fourteenth Legions were selected for the initial landing, with the Ninth and Seventeenth to follow as reinforcements once the beachhead was secured. While this may seem to the layman a relatively small fraction of the Army's total manpower, it must be remembered that this Expeditionary Force would have to be maintained at the end of a long and tenuous supply line… Perhaps most crucially, the Navy had only enough heavy transport capacity to move four legions at a time.”

There are a couple notable things here. (Kudos to whoever wrote this particular book, they really seem to have a good understanding of how armies work.) First, it lets us know that there were at least seventeen legions, and that six legions was apparently a small part of the total fighting force, so it’s safe to bet there were a good many more than seventeen. Maybe as many as sixty? This section also mentions that the enormous navy could only move four legions at a time, which means a legion would have to consist of an awful lot of soldiers and support staff. Later on, it’s mentioned that the navy was sufficient to move “thousands” of colonists. Also:

“ The Commission believes that on the contrary, even if shipping could have been found to transport and supply more legions (an impossibility without crippling the trade of the entire Empire), this would have merely added to the scale of the disaster.”

This seems to indicate that just transporting four legions was a huge strain for the empire’s resources—the Akavir invasion represents the maximum amount of manpower the Empire could expend without starting to cannibalize itself. Finally:

“…the loss of the Expeditionary Force left the Empire in a dangerously weak position relative to the provinces, as the current situation makes all too clear. This suggests that the invasion of Akavir was beyond the Empire's current strength; even if the Emperor could have fielded and maintained a larger force in Akavir, the Empire may have disintegrated behind him.”

Basically, four legions were too many to lose. It sounds a little like the situation referenced in Morrowind, where the legions were in danger of being recalled if something went wrong in the Imperial City. All of this points to an enormous army that is functioning just at or even beyond realistic sustainability. If we only knew how many were in a legion, this info would be quite illuminating. It might be somewhat helpful to look at Morrowind—was each legionary fort a “legion” or was one legion in charge of all Vvardenfell?

If anyone could discover a single reference to any army size, we could blow the field of Socio-economics Pertaining to Made-Up Nonsense wide open.

The tribunal had numidium. They could have killed every last man in the world if they'd wanted. Also, Morrowind is still technically are war with the empire. An armistice was declared, not a peace treaty. The Tribunal wanted the Empire to go on and do it's things.

And tell me this, Paladin, if the Empire could have conquered Valenwood ANYTIME THEY WANTED, why did they wait until after they got numidium. And why were they at a standstill on the Valenwood Front, with the Aldmeri Dominion moving closer and closer to the capital with Septim's army away?

When the men defeated the Ayleids, I remind you they had Pelinal and Akatosh backing them up.

The Imperium wouldn't stand against the combined might of Altmeri sorcery and trickery.

Technically, while the Tribunal had the Numidium, it was not operational.

They wouldn't use Numidium because they needed the Heart of Lorkhan. And I'm not sure if it even could be controlled if the Heart was powering it. They never used it against Reman or Mehrunes Dagon.


http://www.uesp.net/wiki/Lore:Pocket_Guide_to_the_Empire,_3rd_Edition/Valenwood seems to say that the armies of Tiber Septim did conquer Valenwood. I've yet to read about anything saying Numdium was needed to conquer it.


But the Ayleids had Umaril, a half-god. And Pelinal's death didn't change anything for the Ayleids.

It's my theory that the empire could never have a standing army large enough to suppress uprisings or defend provinces everywhere at once. What I'd like to see them do is have the local legion (not legion post, the whole legion) be placed strategically between enemies, and act as a pro empire city within the region. With their wives, children, all that stuff. Since local armies raised quickly would be strong in numbers but not always strong in fighting skills, the role of the Legion would be to judge which side they think will win, and join the winning side.

Often times it shouldn't matter to the empire who controls what in the provinces, as long as that power is loyal to the empire. If people know the legion is going to decide who wins, all the nobles will be doing all they can to prove their loyalty to the Emperor. With his favor and the legion's backing, it would be less likely someone would attack them. If the noble in the good graces of the Emperor starts trying to take over everything, the emperor can tell him to stop when enough is enough. It would be an interesting control structure.

According to the game Redguard, the Imperial armies on their own weren't that great. They made no headway into Hammerfell whatsoever until the country was divided, and the losing side of the civil war ran to the empire for help.

I think this is pretty dead on. Something that's hard for us modern folk to comprehend is just how little central control was possible in a "pre-industrial" society. Tamriel is roughly the size of Alaska (?) and travel is primarily by horse. Even a perfectly run state (which the Septim Empire was anything but) would only be able to exercise a bare minimum of control over far flung territories. They could collect taxes and move armies to face large, longstanding threats, but almost all day to day power would be in local hands. Look how long it takes to travel around in Daggerfall--days and months for long journeys. Imagine trying to get a message from Daggerfall to the Imperial City and back again. By the time a response from the emperor finally came, the situation would have totally changed. Like your example with Redguard shows, most empires don't win through simple military might, but rather by winning pre-existing local strongmen over to their cause.