OK, back from vacation. Glad to report that while in the US I had some good writing time, and hope to be ready to pop up an update later this month… in the interests of which, I’ll spend less time on the forum.
@Verand, here’s my current timeline for the Karagond Empire – a slight revision of the game text to date. The Karagonds discovered Theurgy nearly four centuries ago, spurring a decade-long unification of the Karagond city-states under the Hegemony of Hera the Thaumatarch. They then embarked upon a war of conquest that took up most of the century – conquering Erezza by 363 years before present (BP), Shayard by 351 BP, the Nyr 335 BP, and the Wiends 305 BP (the same year Karagon first invaded Halassur). 291 years BP the Xaos-lands came into existence, and 290 BP Thaumatarch Hera was assassinated, causing her successor to turn inward and create the great Wards.
I like the idea that Karagond tactics involve staff slingers (@cascat07) and air rifles (@idonotlikeusernames – I had no idea that compressed-air projectile weapons were a thing that far back).
@WulfyK, empires sometimes divide-and-rule by making small administrative units, and sometimes by making bigger ones – for example, by bringing together lots of rival ethnic groups into the same borders. (Causing major problems in e.g. the post-colonial Middle East and Africa). 300 years ago, the Karagonds snipped some of Shayard’s conquests and grafted them onto Wiendrj and Erezza – the former of which had never previously been under unified rule, and the latter of which had spent much more time as independent princedoms of varying size and cohesion.
There’s plenty of blue water between Moncesano and Shayard. Remember the scale; all those swerves in the coastline are huge. You can cut weeks off a sea journey by not hugging that coast. During times of truce, trade abounds with Halassur, and there’s plenty of sea trade south with the Abhumans. You make a great point that at least one dominant port would have to be a Cleruchy – I think Aegre and its sister city of Sescia across the strait in Erezza fit the bill.
@Wonderboy, you’re right that the Hegemony wants its troops to be resilient to Theurgy rather than experts in taking down Theurges. When encountering enemy Goety, Phalangite tactics boil down to “survive the attack; protect the Theurges until they’re ready to act; and leave any direct retaliation to them.” As for who the Phalangites are, I’ve now clarified in the World Index that they’re commanded exclusively by the nobility; the regular troops are not the equivalent of Goldman Sachs interns. And yes, the Karagond attitude toward helots is incompatible with a Mamluk-style slave army. The grunt soldiers are mainly free-born kids from poor urban families.
Though you wouldn’t know it from the story so far, set in the backwater of the Rim, the Hegemony does have a huge urban population – far bigger than the MC can imagine. Shayard’s Theurgy-bolstered harvests feed restive slum populations of a size that our world couldn’t sustain until modernity. The “middle classes” are also more visible in the cities than they are in the rural areas, and there are also a lot more Alastors per person – it’s still true that, as you say, “oppression on the homefront” soaks up a lot of the Hegemony’s human resources. (And that nobles, rural and urban, consistently get trained in combat because they need to be able to credibly threaten the underclasses).
The long-running, low-level war with Halassur is not consuming enough to require a continent-wide mobilization of ground troops. As you say, the proportion of the population involved in active military service is quite small, and the Hegemony prioritizes Nyrish troops for much of the actual fighting (along with the Erezziano – but much more of their surplus population is deployed to the mines).
Some Shayardene Phalangite units get deployed to the east, if only to keep them experienced enough to go to war with the Abhumans (should it ever come to that). But the real struggle to push out the border in Halassur involves Theurges, not massed troops; and the Hegemony has limits on how many Theurges it dares to train. Is the whole exercise “laughably futile”? Well, it’s been a long time since there was a serious push to conquer Halassur, but the Thaumatarchy keeps challenging the borders. Make of it what you will, and we’ll see more later on.
Halassur is slightly larger in land area than the Hegemony, and has a comparable population. As you’ve guessed, they rely much more on mass conscription and have a vastly larger army than the Hegemony.
@DenPobedy, you asked about splitting up the stats, and I don’t think I’ll do that – the stats screen is already overcomplicated for my tastes. So I’ll keep one noble cred stat, but it’ll be clear in the game text when and why e.g. foreign nobles are less charmed by you.