Talk:Baharuth Empire/@comment-107.152.104.181-20180511084646/@comment-34666853-20180511144608

The concept itself of a standing professional army in a medieval-set era (where the norm is to for the king to rally his lords who will then rally their landed nobles/knights to get farmers off their field and into the king's army with bare minimum training and whatever weapons and armors availabe) cannot be understated. By having a paid, well-equipped (with standardized equipments no less), all-year-round active, trained, disciplined army with a naturally integrated logistics train, you have the advantage in every single category, except maybe numbers.

But generally, its mass at the point of contact, and not total numbers that matter. And a professional army will have manuever advantage, not to mention a proper officer corps and proper division of men instead of attaching Lord Whatshisface who may or may not be learned in the art of war to the levies he brought and nothing else. The professional army will have the discipline and the training to be able to pull it off and manuever to bring mass into the point of contact, with less risk of demoralization throughout the ranks that'd be caused by the constant avoidance of fighting. A professional army would ideally know their officers are doing solid decisions and trust in them. Levies would laugh at their lord and call him a coward or lose faith because they are avoiding fights.

Casualties are usually the greatest during the retreat, not during the battle itself. Conscripted peasants, once their formations are broken, would have a chaotic retreat where they could easily by harried by light cavalry once they turn their backs, lose their way to their unit, or go the mass desertion route. A professional army would have a more organized retreat, have rally points, and -depending on their training, instilled pride and camaraderie, and punishment- would probably think twice about desertion.

Actually, let me get back to the standardized equipments for a bit. Standardized weapons throughout the ranks not only allows a professional army to be grouped based on their weapons and general role (i.e. spearmen grouped anti-cav, archers there, crossbows here, etc.), but also simplifies the logistics of their maintenance. Everybody ideally would have the same general weapon and armor, and therefore the task of gathering the materials and the men who could fix/maintain them becomes simplified and easier.

Furthermore, once you have an established army, a medics corps (and in the case of the Empire, established research institutions) generally follows for the most dangerous killer of all warfare: diseases.

tl:dr: The very concept of a professional Imperial Army itself is overpowered enough, with or without >10,000 mages corps unless their enemies cannot be hurt by normal weapons and smart tactics because they have damage nullification and your Lvl 10 ass is staring at a Lvl 100.