Chrom should have surrendered to Walhart

[Jotari]

So Awakening gets a lot of flak for its writing. Back in the day I generally liked to defend it based on the concepts it presented even if the execution was lacking but there's always been one line that really stood out to me as completely ridiculous. It's this one.

Quote

 Walhart is said to command a million men now. Perhaps more. Sooner or later he will stamp out the Resistance entirely, if we do not unite.

A million men. A MILLION MEN. It's just so completely and utterly ridiculous. I hope this is a translation error because for them to write that just shows a serious lack of commitment. Medieval armies did not have a million men. Eight to twelve thousand was considered large. At the very, absolute highest, in the middle east armies could reach one hundred thousand but a million is massively exaggerated.  The mongol hoard, a name that is synonymous with a massive amount of fighters, didn't even break one and a half hundred thousand. And they managed to conquer pretty much all of Asia! Currently the USA has just over a million people in it's military pay roll and during World War II you could see armies of several million but that's with modernization and much higher population numbers. We need people to maintain and pilot thousands of different machines. Even Napoleon, long after the middle ages when artillery was a thing, only reached six and a half hundred thousand.

But okay, most wars our world have been between countries. Walhart controls almost the entirety of a continent. So let's see exactly how big the continent is using some inexpert geography. I don't think the games have ever given us exact numbers for distance on the continents but they have given us a number for the height of the mountains in northern Archanea. Five thousand meters, no, perhaps higher than that. Now we don't have any idea what the plate structures of the planet is but since Fire Emblem is Eurpean, let's compare them to the largest mountains in Europe, the Alps. Which can get to around four thousand meters, a bit smaller than Archaneas.

So then overlay that map onto Archanea and resize to cover the north eastern mountain range and we get this.

That would put Archanea at a bit bigger than the size of modern day Ukraine. Now granted, I'm no geographer and this could be a wildly inaccurate way of measuring things but it's the best I have to go one. And it would be consistent with the amount of travel time it takes for Marth to go from one place to another. I mean he manages to march around a pretty large portion of the continent without several years passing as would be the case if Archanea was the size of Asia.

Anyway Valm, compared to Ylisse is about the same height but half the length. So if Ylisse is a bit bigger than Ukraine, Valm would be roughly the size of modern day France. Now to do a quick google search of the population of France in Medieval times. Before the arrival of the black death it was said to be 17 million (not sure of the exact size of France back then compared to the modern day but I think it was roughly the same, or at least not so widely different for our comparison to have no merit).

So, then if Walhart can field an army of 1 million soldiers, this means he can have 1 in 17 people employed by the military. And this is after our protagonist have already "stopped a thousand of their ships". Although maybe Valm has a higher population than Medieval France but either way to support that large a military for such a kingdom size shows that Walhart's administration must be some kind of economic genius. Either that or it's about to collapse in on itself regardless of what Chrom does. But if Walhart really can maintain order with the level of resources of a typical Medieval kingdom (admittedly he does have magic which might help some stuff) then holy cow he's like the best ruler ever. It doesn't really matter if he's a warlord who's threatening people's loved ones. He's keeping order on a magnitude that should be completely impossible. The only sensible and ethical response from Chrom is to say screw it to Say'ri and her rebellion and go home to wait for Walhart's empire to go the way of the Soviet Union. And if that doesn't work then bend the knee and just admit that he is basically the most capable guy ever.

 

And that's why it's best that Fire Emblem should just avoid using solid numbers and allow us to imagine the scale of these conflicts to be as big or as small as we want. If anyone more worldly on me with these statistics notices any errors in my estimations than I urge you to point them out.

Edited July 14, 2017 by Jotari

[Zapp Branniglenn]

SoV's DLC makes a ridiculous boast of numbers as well. Supposedly 1000 men are at the gates of Zofia castle during the Deliverance's last stand, which you play through as a defense chapter. How many enemies do you face? About twenty to thirty counting the 2-3 at a time reinforcements each turn.

Perhaps Fire Emblem should avoid giving specific numbers, but then we will only have the game to on. In Awakening/Fates, most paralogues have you dealing with a band of brigands and cuttthroats. But those maps can include hordes of them, say 50 enemies. This significantly drops the sense of scale one has for story chapters about clashing armies where you also face off against 50 enemies. These brigands attaining a group size as large as a national military is crazy. Aren't these the most un-trustworthiness men around? How would they function in such a large group without turning into a small country of their own?

For the big army to army clashes at forts and castles, this is the way I've always looked at it: each enemy is a fictional representation of a troop engagement. Think like Advance wars where it's not one tank, it's five engaging another group of five enemies. So in Fire Emblem, Cain and Abel ride as a small platoon of cavaliers instead of riding alone. Now, obviously this is not how the game represents its battle scenes. It's always one on one affairs, excluding pair up. But the thirty minute chapters we experience as players probably represent a day long battle involving far more troops on both sides. We just play out a cliff notes version of it.

[MadJak91]

I chuckled. People often say gameplay =/= reality but I think sometimes you should just go with reality. More so when it is about flashing out the conflict. I guess this is not really something people think about AT ALL so good of you to do otherwise :D

I agree with Gustavos and I think at least Thracia and Geneology make it sound like there are hundreds of soldiers fighting in reality per unit where applicable. Otherwise (like during a temple/prison/similar mission, you really just have a group of guys against maybe 20 guards). Or against brigands.

During one mission in FE5 there are civilians evacuating and going through a pass. The game explicitly says there are 600 or 700 of them traveling in convoys. The mission has 6 or 7 villager NPCs so let's say one person represents those 100 people. The pass had to be pretty cluttered considering two whole armies were also duking it out there. I do not even know how capturing civilians works there...

As for Awakening, I always thought Walmhart went down too easily considering exactly that. The size of his supposed forces all across the continent. Even when parts of his army gave up (if I correctly recall the story).

Edited July 14, 2017 by MadJak91

[Jotari]

36 minutes ago, MadJak91 said:

I chuckled. People often say gameplay =/= reality but I think sometimes you should just go with reality. More so when it is about fleshing out the conflict. I guess this is not really something people think about AT ALL so good of you to do otherwise :D

I agree with Gustavos and I think at least Thracia and Geneology make it sound like there are hundreds of soldiers fighting in reality per unit where applicable. Otherwise (like during a temple/prison/similar mission, you really just have a group of guys against maybe 20 guards). Or against brigands.

During one mission in FE5 there are civilians evacuating and going through a pass. The game explicitly says there are 600 or 700 of them traveling in convoys. The mission has 6 or 7 villager NPCs so let's say one person represents those 100 people. The pass had to be pretty cluttered considering two whole armies were also duking it out there. I do not even know how capturing civilians works there...

As for Awakening, I always thought Walmhart went down too easily considering exactly that. The size of his supposed forces all across the continent. Even when parts of his army gave up (if I correctly recall the story).

Walhart being defeated so easily is probably the most annoying thing about this reference. Like sure, if you actually want to depict someone that has an insane amount of soldiers than go for it but Walhart demonstrably didn't have that much force. After just a little but of retreating and negotiation, Chrom marches straight into Walhart's hall and beats him with no trouble. Not only was the reference completely overblown and inaccurate, but it wasn't even necessary for the plot!

[MadJak91]

Mm-hm! Any similar line, really. I wonder if that sort of thing ever worked, haha.

You know it is there to make the villain sound all powerful and everything but then... this always happens. I recall quite a few "Bwahaha! I have unlimited power now!" villains only to be defeated ten minutes later. I also remember Palpatine saying he is sending the best of the best Imperial troops on Endor to their doom against bad forest navigation skills and teddy bears.

I am no story teller but maybe sometimes it is better to just avoid such lines altogether unless you have a good reason. Show the power in an actual way. Which did not happen here since Walhart got cornered while his MILLION MEN army was probably watching Super Bowl finals.

I know, I know. We are talking classic tropes and a Fire Emblem plot on top of that. I guess I processed it as yet another usual scenario but your analysis is still funny!

Edited July 14, 2017 by MadJak91

[DisobeyedCargo]

8 hours ago, Jotari said:

So Awakening gets a lot of flak for its writing. Back in the day I generally liked to defend it based on the concepts it presented even if the execution was lacking but there's always been one line that really stood out to me as completely ridiculous. It's this one.

A million men. A MILLION MEN. It's just so completely and utterly ridiculous. I hope this is a translation error because for them to write that just shows a serious lack of commitment. Medieval armies did not have a million men. Eight to twelve thousand was considered large. At the very, absolute highest, in the middle east armies could reach one hundred thousand but a million is massively exaggerated.  The mongol hoard, a name that is synonymous with a massive amount of fighters, didn't even break one and a half hundred thousand. And they managed to conquer pretty much all of Asia! Currently the USA has just over a million people in it's military pay roll and during World War II you could see armies of several million but that's with modernization and much higher population numbers. We need people to maintain and pilot thousands of different machines. Even Napoleon, long after the middle ages when artillery was a thing, didn't even have half a million men.

But okay, most wars our world have been between countries. Walhart controls almost the entirety of a continent. So let's see exactly how big the continent is using some inexpert geography. I don't think the games have ever given us exact numbers for distance on the continents but they have given us a number for the height of the mountains in northern Archanea. Five thousand meters, no, perhaps higher than that. Now we don't have any idea what the plate structures of the planet is but since Fire Emblem is Eurpean, let's compare them to the largest mountains in Europe, the Alps. Which can get to around four thousand meters, a bit smaller than Archaneas.

So then overlay that map onto Archanea and resize to cover the north eastern mountain range and we get this.

That would put Archanea at a bit bigger than the size of modern day Ukraine. Now granted, I'm no geographer and this could be a wildly inaccurate way of measuring things but it's the best I have to go one. And it would be consistent with the amount of travel time it takes for Marth to go from one place to another. I mean he manages to march around a pretty large portion of the continent without several years passing as would be the case if Archanea was the size of Asia.

Anyway Valm, compared to Ylisse is about the same height but half the length. So if Ylisse is a bit bigger than Ukraine, Valm would be roughly the size of modern day France. Now to do a quick google search of the population of France in Medieval times. Before the arrival of the black death it was said to be 17 million (not sure of the exact size of France back then compared to the modern day but I think it was roughly the same, or at least not so widely different for our comparison to have no merit).

So, then if Walhart can field an army of 1 million soldiers, this means he can have 1 in 17 people employed by the military. And this is after our protagonist have already "stopped a thousand of their ships". Although maybe Valm has a higher population than Medieval France but either way to support that large a military for such a kingdom size shows that Walhart's administration must be some kind of economic genius. Either that or it's about to collapse in on itself regardless of what Chrom does. But if Walhart really can maintain order with the level of resources of a typical Medieval kingdom (admittedly he does have magic which might help some stuff) then holy cow he's like the best ruler ever. It doesn't really matter if he's a warlord who's threatening people's loved ones. He's keeping order on a magnitude that should be completely impossible. The only sensible and ethical response from Chrom is to say screw it to Say'ri and her rebellion and go home to wait for Walhart's empire to go the way of the Soviet Union. And if that doesn't work then bend the knee and just admit that he is basically the most capable guy ever.

 

And that's why it's best that Fire Emblem should just avoid using solid numbers and allow us to imagine the scale of these conflicts to be as big or as small as we want. If anyone more worldly on me with these statistics notices any errors in my estimations than I urge you to point them out.

I really just thought of it as political jargon spread around Valm to make Walmart sound even more powerful to the citizens of Valm and any possible invaders. 

If he really did have an army of a million men during the time period of FE, it would collapse on itself with near certainty.

[Rex Glacies]

I personally agree with @DisobeyedCargo - it was just made up in order to strike fear into Walhart's enemies and awe into anyone else. I mean, the quote is "Walhart is said to command over a million men." It is not said that he does. It is said that he is said to.

Your continent calculations are neat though. I haven't really seen anyone try to calculate the size of any of the Fire Emblem continents yet aside from you, though I would peg Archanea as the size of approximately Europe with Russia at the top as the frozen wastes/Ferox.

3 hours ago, MadJak91 said:

I am no story teller but maybe sometimes it is better to just avoid such lines altogether unless you have a good reason. Show the power in an actual way.

As a story teller, this is correct. If your villain is said to have unlimited power, then make him have unlimited power (or at least explain why he lost so easily). Show, don't tell.

[Jotari]

5 hours ago, MadJak91 said:

Mm-hm! Any similar line, really. I wonder if that sort of thing ever worked, haha.

You know it is there to make the villain sound all powerful and everything but then... this always happens. I recall quite a few "Bwahaha! I have unlimited power now!" villains only to be defeated ten minutes later. I also remember Palpatine saying he is sending the best of the best Imperial troops on Endor to their doom against bad forest navigation skills and teddy bears.

I am no story teller but maybe sometimes it is better to just avoid such lines altogether unless you have a good reason. Show the power in an actual way. Which did not happen here since Walhart got cornered while his MILLION MEN army was probably watching Super Bowl finals.

I know, I know. We are talking classic tropes and a Fire Emblem plot on top of that. I guess I processed it as yet another usual scenario but your analysis is still funny!

If there's one unintentional defining trait of Palpatine that they accidently gave him in Return of the Jedi, it's that he's absolutely rubbish at setting up traps. Not only were his best soldiers completely wrecked by the primitive locals, but he majorly screwed up by giving the rebellion accurate and usable material to destroy his super weapon! He was the one that leaked the second death star plans to the rebellion. That navigating they were doing at the end to get to the core? Only possible because he gave them the map. All he had to do was edit the plans so all the rebellion ships immediately flew into a wall.

2 hours ago, DisobeyedCargo said:

I really just thought of it as political jargon spread around Valm to make Walmart sound even more powerful to the citizens of Valm and any possible invaders. 

If he really did have an army of a million men during the time period of FE, it would collapse on itself with near certainty.

It would be nice to think that it's just hyperbole but it's not just one line in actual fact. The game almost seems to go out of its way to dissuade that possibility.

Quote

 

Say'ri
Would that I knew, good sir. Yen'fay was a good man once, but he is my brother no more! If we meet on the battlefield, I would cut him down, same as any other imperial. Walhart is said to command a million men now. Perhaps more. Sooner or later he will stamp out the Resistance entirely, if we do not unite.

Lissa
Um, Chrom? Did she just say he has a MILLION soldiers?

Say'ri
Ha! And what are one million men against the Ylissean dogs of war?! You stopped a thousand of their ships, did you not? Your daring strategy has awoken and inspired people across all of Valm. Together I know we can yet unite the Resistance and break Walhart's grip! Help me, Prince Chrom! I beg of you!

 

That's in Chapter 15. And later, in Chapter 17

Quote

 

Soldier
Milord! Dire news! Our forces to the north and south have been decimated by Walhart and Yen'fay! What's worse, most of the survivors have turned their coats for the empire!

Say'ri
B-but our troops numbered in the hundreds of thousands!

Basilio
The empire must have had more.

Flavia
Or perhaps been better trained and equipped...

Say'ri
Blast! Walhart and my brother—where are their armies not?

 

So by Say'ri's own admittance the rebellion had troops in the hundreds of thousand. And this is sometime after Walhart is said to have over a million men, and most of their troops defect to Walhart! The line also seems to suggest that this ridiculous number of soldiers were in just two locations. True Flavia suggests there might not be as many as there seems but unless Say'ri is exaggerating to make herself seem big, this really is the scale we're supposed to be dealing with. The only way this can possibly rationalized is that Say'ri (the only one who quotes the numbers) simple doesn't know how to count.

Edited July 14, 2017 by Jotari

[DisobeyedCargo]

15 minutes ago, Jotari said:

If there's one unintentional defining trait of Palpatine that they accidently gave him in Return of the Jedi, it's that he's absolutely rubbish at setting up traps. Not only were his best soldiers completely wrecked by the primitive locals, but he majorly screwed up by giving the rebellion accurate and usable material to destroy his super weapon! He was the one that leaked the second death star plans to the rebellion. That navigating they were doing at the end to get to the core? Only possible because he gave them the map. All he had to do was edit the plans so all the rebellion ships immediately flew into a wall.

It would be nice to think that it's just hyperbole but it's not just one line in actual fact. The game almost seems to go out of its way to dissuade that possibility.

That's in Chapter 15. And later, in Chapter 17

So by Say'ri's own admittance the rebellion had troops in the hundreds of thousand. And this is sometime after Walhart is said to have over a million men, and most of their troops defect to Walhart! The line also seems to suggest that this ridiculous number of soldiers were in just two locations. True Flavia suggests there might not be as many as there seems but unless Say'ri is exaggerating to make herself seem big, this really is the scale we're supposed to be dealing with. The only way this can possibly rationalized is that Say'ri (the only one who quotes the numbers) simple doesn't know how to count.

Exactly, she doesn't know how many soldiers there are, so she goes with what has been spreading around, a million or so. If I was trying to fight an entire empire, I would never underestimate the amount of soldiers the enemy has, so I would be guessing that the empire would have a large amount of soldiers.

that or she's exaggerating to get chrom's help

[Jotari]

10 minutes ago, DisobeyedCargo said:

Exactly, she doesn't know how many soldiers there are, so she goes with what has been spreading around, a million or so. If I was trying to fight an entire empire, I would never underestimate the amount of soldiers the enemy has, so I would be guessing that the empire would have a large amount of soldiers.

that or she's exaggerating to get chrom's help

Did you miss the part where she claims to have hundreds of thousands of soldiers herself? Regardless the fact that the number is in anyway believable is ridiculous. It would be like an army in the modern day claiming to have one hundred million troops.

Edited July 14, 2017 by Jotari

[Interdimensional Observer]

48 minutes ago, Jotari said:

So by Say'ri's own admittance the rebellion had troops in the hundreds of thousand. And this is sometime after Walhart is said to have over a million men, and most of their troops defect to Walhart! The line also seems to suggest that this ridiculous number of soldiers were in just two locations. True Flavia suggests there might not be as many as there seems but unless Say'ri is exaggerating to make herself seem big, this really is the scale we're supposed to be dealing with. The only way this can possibly rationalized is that Say'ri (the only one who quotes the numbers) simple doesn't know how to count.

So basically we're looking at ~2, possibly 3 million with the thousand ships burning, soldiers drawn from the Valm continent? Plus however many Ylisseans and Feroxi get brought over by Chrom and co.; they realistically should have at least a few hundreds of thousands as well, unless this is 100% a case of the heroic few crushing the villainous many. With so many troops, I have my doubts as to how fast they could possibly be moved around.

I should also bring up how Valm the country is said to have originally been very small until Walhart swept the continent (which had to have taken some time, maybe a few years, given Gangrel noticed it as King of Plegia). How much of his army was that of former states he pressed into his services is uncertain, but wouldn't you think they'd fight less than ferociously if they were pressed into Walhart's services? Unless he was just that popular among the rank and file. If Walhart's army is entirely his own without impressment (prior forcing the Resistance into his fold), then it only serves to inflate the population and military numbers even more. 

Edited July 14, 2017 by Interdimensional Observer

[Jotari]

One possible slight justification for the high numbers is that in the Fire Emblem universe there seems to be no concept of war being something exclusively for men. Granted we don't see a lot of female enemy mooks outside of Pegasus Knights and Valkyrie but given the number of females peacefully accepted into the protagonist armies, it seems that there's no real sexism when it comes to who's allowed to fight. So theoretically it would be a bit easier to raise an army if you're not halving your population. That's only for getting the numbers though, the sheer amount of organisation that would need to be put in to effectively keep such a number together is still insane.

Edited July 14, 2017 by Jotari

[DisobeyedCargo]

3 minutes ago, Jotari said:

One possible slight justification for the high numbers is that in the Fire Emblem universe there seems to be no concept of war being something exclusively for men. Granted we don't see a lot of female enemy mooks outside of Pegasus Knights and Valkyrie but given the number of females peacefully accepted into the protagonist armies, it seems that there's no real sexism when it comes to who's allowed to fight. So theoretically it would be a bit easier to raise an army if you have twice the population to actually choose from. That's only for getting the numbers though, the sheer amount of organisation that would need to be put in to effectively keep such a number together is still insane.

I still believe that in real life, there would be no way in the seven hells that Walhart could keep an army that large organized. Look at the Roman Empire as an example. It eventually grew so large that it became nearly impossible to communicate and distribute military around its vast reaches. It collapsed due to its shear weight. I believe that this would eventually  happen to Walhart's army.

[Jotari]

7 minutes ago, DisobeyedCargo said:

I still believe that in real life, there would be no way in the seven hells that Walhart could keep an army that large organized. Look at the Roman Empire as an example. It eventually grew so large that it became nearly impossible to communicate and distribute military around its vast reaches. It collapsed due to its shear weight. I believe that this would eventually  happen to Walhart's army.

Pegasus and Draco Knights would help build communication networks better (and while I don't believe we see high numbers of either of those unit types in Walhart's forces, Valm does contain Wyvren valley...for some reason. That's another problem entirely).

 

...Yes I'm now playing devil's advocate against something ridiculous that I brought up in the first place.

[DisobeyedCargo]

5 minutes ago, Jotari said:

Pegasus and Draco Knights would help build communication networks better (and while I don't believe we see high numbers of either of those unit types in Walhart's forces, Valm does contain Wyvren valley...for some reason. That's another problem entirely).

 

...Yes I'm now playing devil's advocate against something ridiculous that I brought up in the first place.

Wow you are lol.

 

its still an insanely high number of troops to have. Correct me if I'm wrong but I don't think that empires like the Romans or people like the Mongols had armies that were even close to Walharts. Even with Pegasus knights and Wyvern Riders, it would still take a miracle to keep it all together.