Forum adverts like this one are shown to any user who is not logged in. Join us by filling out a tiny 3 field form and you will get your own, free, dakka user account which gives a good range of benefits to you: No adverts like this in the forums anymore. Times and dates in your local timezone. Full tracking of what you have read so you can skip to your first unread post, easily see what has changed since you last logged in, and easily see what is new at a glance. Email notifications for threads you want to watch closely. Being a part of the oldest wargaming community on the net. If you are already a member then feel free to login now.

This came up in the female Guard thread- the lore states the Imperial population overall is collossal, and that recruitment is vast. Meanwhile, major warzones (such as Armageddon below) seem to have oddly small numbers of troops present. What is going on?

I'll post the relevant quotes from the other thread, then some thoughts of my own:

 A Town Called Malus wrote:
Also, the casualty rates of battles and wars in the 40K universe are actually very small compared to actual historical wars, because the same people who wrote that 1 million space marines can be important on the galactic stage also wrote how many imperial guard are involved in wars spanning the entire surface of a planet.

For example, there were 1 million more French and British forces at the Somme alone than there were Imperium forces in the entire Armageddon subsector at the onset of the third war for Armageddon. There weren't enough Imperial forces in an entire subsector to attack a single section of the line on one front in World War 1.

For another instance, WW2 resulted in the loss of around 3% of the total world population over the 6 years of the war. If wars in the 40K universe were to be equal to that, then Terra alone (population in the quadrillions, supposedly) would have to lose at least 13,698,630,137 people per day, every day for those 6 years to pull its own weight in those casualty numbers.

A Town Called Malus wrote:

 Gert wrote:

What numbers are you using for Armageddon subsector?

Helsreach and the Armageddon Codex I would assume. Armageddon has always been a very cool but very cursed warzone though and it's been long known that the numbers are very very iffy for a supposedly sub-sector scale war.

Yep, those are the ones.

Haighus wrote:

 CthuluIsSpy wrote:
Does quality even matter that much? I mean, if you have an absurd population to work with like what the Imperium has, you can afford to play it a bit loose with quality control. Especially if you're a state that doesn't even care all that much for the masses' wellbeing. Like the IoM.

Well, there is a tension in the lore between the Imperium's supposedly vast and endless reserves of manpower, and the actual numbers of soldiers that seem to get deployed in major warzones (see the brief mention of the 3rd War for Armageddon earlier). Often the numbers of Imperial Guard troops are in the ballpark of millions at most, when individual worlds have the population to support billions under arms.

That would suggest* that there is some kind of bottleneck in recruitment. However, at that point, why not maximise quality of individual troopers where possible? But this isn't really supported by the lore on the Imperial Guard, where many are dregs not high quality troops.

Another possible reconciliation is that casualty rates are so insanely high that the Imperium cannot mass into the billions on a given day, but billions get fed through the grinder over the weeks and months. That doesn't really tally with the number of veteran units we see though.

Overall, the Imperium feels a bit like medieval feudal nations, in that surprisingly small armies fight for and control (proportionally) surprisingly large numbers of people. The peasants are, to a large extent, treated like property being fought over and not a military resource in their own right. Some of this historically was over concern of rebellion, so the Imperium may do the same and deliberately keep the majority of populations demilitarised to maintain their authoritarian control.


*Really it suggests a mistake on scale by the writers and/or a choice to keep numbers a bit more relatable to readers. But I think it is more fruitful and interesting to try and reconcile the lore we have than simply abandon it as "wrong".

Flinty wrote:I think the bottleneck is getting materiel mated up with the meat. I fall on the side of the lore writers struggling with scale and numbers rather than it being an in-universe problem in keeping large numbers of troops alive. There will be some war zones where life expectancy will be in minutes or hours, but on the other hand there will be war zones where it is the Imperial forces that are doing the kerb stomping for very little loss, or relatively benign garrison or pax-keeping duties.

Overread wrote:The distances and numbers do certainly mess with the writers because the Imperium operates with numbers that are just so far removed from the real world that its very hard to calculate things sensibly.

As for bottlenecks I'd wager there are a few depending on the area. From not enough people in some (yes there's bodies but they are all employed in the manufacturing and farming industry that's supporting the war effort and the whole sector); to not enough transports to move material and people around; to not enough munitions to even political elements whereby one commander steals another's Tithe or such.



I would argue that quality is important, its just often secondary to quantity. It may also vary general to general. Some will have their elites already and just want cannon fodder; others will want for both and some might want for only quality and see the value in an elite army and just never get it.

Clearly the Imperium at large recognises that quality is important, which is why it has worlds like Catachan and Cadia and turns a blind eye to clones on the battlefield from Krieg. However it seems that its not an element the Imperium can muster at large over its whole expanse.

Being in a state of constant war also likely makes speed a limiting factor. Quality takes time and requires more input and sometimes the Imperium just needs an army at X location and can't wait years to train up the troops so they choke their enemy with a mass of bodies and munitions.

Automatically Appended Next Post:
I do think that the Imperium, despite having an unimaginably vast population, is not well distributed over its million worlds. If between 10-25% are hive worlds (according to Urban Conquest), these clearly concentrate the overwhelming majority of human life in the Galaxy. Terra alone has a quadrillion people living there. Particularly well developed hive worlds like Necromunda likely reach into the trillions. "Typical" hive worlds have >100 billion inhabitants, although this is from older lore and the definition of a hive world may include less populous worlds under other sources.

In contrast, typical agri, feudal, feral, and death worlds have a few million. Mining worlds are similar. Civilised and industrial worlds are typically in the 100 million to low billions ballpark. Forge worlds are the only planet type that can approach hive worlds, but no guarantee of this.

As such, much of the Imperium is incredibly sparesly populated and relatively small armies probably are capable of controlling the population of a typical agri world or mining world or death world.

Unfortunately, certain very high profile warzones also have some idea of numbers, which are oddly low. Armageddon, in an existential war with a population numbering in billions and huge industrial output, should be able to output billions of soldiers under arms. The exact numbers are not known, but the existing lore would struggle to be extrapolated to forces reaching a single billion fighting on Armageddon.

This is somewhat odd.

I think the GW writers do have a large problem comprehending numbers, but I think the setting provides some explanations for such numerical disparity. Keeping massive forces in reserve has serious problems of its own.

I'd equate the Imperium less to modern armies but as hinted at earlier medieval or even Napoleonic logistics. Gathering a large force requires mating trained soldiers with their equipment and food to sustain them over time. Large unused forces tend to consume their own resources, and unlike in the past on our planet there is little chance for soldiers to forge for themselves.

One of the biggest issues I see is transportation of these resources, together in the correct proportion and to their intended front. It's been established that warp travel is quite unreliable at times, so juggling these factors becomes an issue of its own that isn't really comparable to planetary forces deploying.

There is also the danger of gathering a massive force in any one location if all it takes is a quirk warp storm or alien artifact to wipe everything out. Still, it can't be denied that GW grossly misunderstands the scope of major military engagements or what would actually be required to subdue a populated planet.

Definitely something where There Is No Answer.

A given world will likely be able to give some indication of how many Regiments it’s raised, and how many it continues to support.

So, let’s invent a planet. I’m gonna go with an Industrial World, and call it Maddocia.

Maddocia’s adminstratum drones are able to confirm that the latest Regiment raised was the Maddocian CXXVIth, or if I’ve done me numerals right, the Maddocian 126th.

Comparing this to their known strength at founding, each regiment is comprised of X companies, of Y Platoons of Z Squads.

Inset your preferred numbers, depending on your preferred source.


And they can confirm that of the assumedly 126 Regiments raised from the planet, they currently provide replacement fresh recruits for 50 regiments.

From there some kind of rough calculation can be made for How Many Troopers There Should Be At Any One Time Across The Maddocian Regiments.

Then realise Maddocia is but one planet. And it may not be in a particular trouble hotspot, so its troop tithe may be comparatively modest compared to another near identical planet, also called Maddocia, which is situated bordering the Damocles Gulf and just can’t seem to catch a break. If it’s not Orks, it’s Tau. If it’s not Tau, it’s Tyranids. If it’s not Tyranids, it’s Malcador’s Witnesses and their insipid leafleting campaigns.

And there’s no way to accurately even guesstimate the true size of the Imperial Guard.

 amanita wrote:
I think the GW writers do have a large problem comprehending numbers, but I think the setting provides some explanations for such numerical disparity. Keeping massive forces in reserve has serious problems of its own.

I'd equate the Imperium less to modern armies but as hinted at earlier medieval or even Napoleonic logistics. Gathering a large force requires mating trained soldiers with their equipment and food to sustain them over time. Large unused forces tend to consume their own resources, and unlike in the past on our planet there is little chance for soldiers to forge for themselves.

One of the biggest issues I see is transportation of these resources, together in the correct proportion and to their intended front. It's been established that warp travel is quite unreliable at times, so juggling these factors becomes an issue of its own that isn't really comparable to planetary forces deploying.

There is also the danger of gathering a massive force in any one location if all it takes is a quirk warp storm or alien artifact to wipe everything out. Still, it can't be denied that GW grossly misunderstands the scope of major military engagements or what would actually be required to subdue a populated planet.

There is something to be said for the challenges of logistics and supplying Imperial armies in the field, and I think your reasoning is plausible. I suspect the Imperium also uses this to their advantage when on the offensive, in that a typical Imperial hive world will have most of its population concentrated into dense hives. A relatively small force may be able to bottle up enormous populations with siege lines and allow the starvation and disease of a blockade to do most of their work for them. I doubt many worlds have much in the way of substantial food reserves for sieges, so traitor worlds can be bottled up.

Doesn't really explain why hive worlds on the defensive are not able to mobilise vast numbers, but then maybe they just don't have the infrastructure to do this in the short term. The 3rd War for Armageddon, for example, was only in its second year of combat by the time the Great Rift occurred. They could have been ramping up the militia output over that whole time as infrastructure was adapted and built to support this.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
On the subject of sieges, the Siege of Vraks is one of the few conflicts we have good numbers for.

~6 million* Guardsmen and ~500 million labourers besieged a world of (initially) up to 8 million combatants and labourers. Eventually, after nearly two decades, the world was reduced and pretty much all the original traitors annihilated at a cost of 14 million guardsmen dead. I suspect this is supposed to be a large war for the Imperium, but not a huge one.


*Krieg regiments are unusually large, with 200,000 troopers at mustering (according to the Siege of Vraks books). Wildly varying regiment sizes being one of the challenges of estimating the size of Imperial Guard forces.

WW2 levels of recruitment and attrition were not sustainable.

If the IoM was throwing and suffering the same percentages it would have collapsed a long time ago.

From the old analysis thread, the Imperium seems to have a lower percentage of the population under arms than one would think from all the grimdark. Something like low trillions of Guard recruited from low-to-mid quadrillions of humans, yielding <0.1% of the population in the guard, maybe up to 10% in the PDF.

When it comes to the ridiculously low numbers, total marines or guard at Armageddon, I mentally add an order of magnitude or two or three. Some writers have a better sense of 40k’s scale (like McNeill) than others, so there are plenty of contradictory sources to allow this interpretation.

Quick googling tells me 0.033% of the total global population is under arms, so that sounds ok.

 Tyran wrote:
Quick googling tells me 0.033% of the total global population is under arms, so that sounds ok.

That might actually be true.

Consider that as players and background readers, we’re kind of inherently focussed on active or brewing war zones. And so in what we consume and portray in turn, we naturally see a fairly disproportionate number of soldiers on both sides.

Also consider that most PDF’s, whilst the butt of many in and out of universe jokes are still more than enough to maintain order, or failing that, hold on until The Proper Soldiers Arrive.

Piratical Raids, Cult Uprisings, even a small fleet of Orks farting out the Warp are all perfectly containable by a PDF. And if the attack is of sufficient force (or the PDF is particularly poorly trained by a lackdaisacal Governor), it still need only hold out until reinforced. And it seems most worlds are indeed perfectly capable for fending for themselves, with only true lynchpin worlds having permanent Imperial Guard Garrisons, on account they’re the most likely target of a deliberately concerted assault.

Even then, the Imperial Guard most just relies out outnumbering and outgunning a foe, relying on a constant stream of potential reinforcement until the job is done. Given it’s only really Orks, Nids and I guess Tau able and willing to commit millions of troops on a regular basis? That’s going to inform how big your standing forces need be.

 Tyran wrote:
WW2 levels of recruitment and attrition were not sustainable.

If the IoM was throwing and suffering the same percentages it would have collapsed a long time ago.

I think the issue is not the recruitment rate for the entire Imperium, but instead the recruitment rate on certain embattled worlds, like Armageddon. WWII recruitment rates are not sustainable... but neither is being overrun by Orks.

 Haighus wrote:

 Tyran wrote:
WW2 levels of recruitment and attrition were not sustainable.

If the IoM was throwing and suffering the same percentages it would have collapsed a long time ago.

I think the issue is not the recruitment rate for the entire Imperium, but instead the recruitment rate on certain embattled worlds, like Armageddon. WWII recruitment rates are not sustainable... but neither is being overrun by Orks.

Do we have such figures? the most I can find is the initial number of guardsmen (which probably doesn't include PDF).

 Tyran wrote:

 Haighus wrote:

 Tyran wrote:
WW2 levels of recruitment and attrition were not sustainable.

If the IoM was throwing and suffering the same percentages it would have collapsed a long time ago.

I think the issue is not the recruitment rate for the entire Imperium, but instead the recruitment rate on certain embattled worlds, like Armageddon. WWII recruitment rates are not sustainable... but neither is being overrun by Orks.

Do we have such figures? the most I can find is the initial number of guardsmen (which probably doesn't include PDF and militia).

There are two known snapshots for forces fighting on Armageddon, this is the later one in 999.M41 (with more troops):


There are no numbers of troops, only regiments. However, we do have typical sizes for Imperial regiments. It is hard to come up with a number here greater than a few million troopers under arms. This does largely represent just the "teeth" and the "tail" could be a much greater number (only labour corps are mentioned). In addition, it is plausible that these are commited troops on the frontlines, with unmentioned troops in reserve or recuperating. With typical reserve doctrine, that would suggest the displayed troops are a third of the total deployed combat strength.

Even so, that is a small number compared to the likely several hundred billion strong population of Armageddon.

As a side note: the other snapshot states Armageddon sector. I think this snapshot still represents forces on Armageddon itself, as the Ork forces state the same yet clearly only reference Ork forces on Armageddon itself, with the obvious exception of naval forces in both cases. I am confident additional, unlisted forces for both factions are fighting elsewhere in the sector.

 Haighus wrote:

There are two known snapshots for forces fighting on Armageddon, this is the later one in 999.M41 (with more troops):
snip

There are no numbers of troops, only regiments. However, we do have typical sizes for Imperial regiments. It is hard to come up with a number here greater than a few million troopers under arms. This does largely represent just the "teeth" and the "tail" could be a much greater number (only labour corps are mentioned). In addition, it is plausible that these are commited troops on the frontlines, with unmentioned troops in reserve or recuperating. With typical reserve doctrine, that would suggest the displayed troops are a third of the total deployed combat strength.

Even so, that is a small number compared to the likely several hundred billion strong population of Armageddon.

As a side note: the other snapshot states Armageddon sector. I think this snapshot still represents forces on Armageddon itself, as the Ork forces state the same yet clearly only reference Ork forces on Armageddon itself, with the obvious exception of naval forces in both cases. I am confident additional, unlisted forces for both factions are fighting elsewhere in the sector.

I'm confident that list doesn't event mention the entirety of the forces present at the frontline because it is missing the Armageddon Defence Force, which is Armageddon's PDF and should naturally be the largest Imperial force present because that's what actually can recruit from those hundreds of billions.

 Tyran wrote:

 Haighus wrote:

There are two known snapshots for forces fighting on Armageddon, this is the later one in 999.M41 (with more troops):
snip

There are no numbers of troops, only regiments. However, we do have typical sizes for Imperial regiments. It is hard to come up with a number here greater than a few million troopers under arms. This does largely represent just the "teeth" and the "tail" could be a much greater number (only labour corps are mentioned). In addition, it is plausible that these are commited troops on the frontlines, with unmentioned troops in reserve or recuperating. With typical reserve doctrine, that would suggest the displayed troops are a third of the total deployed combat strength.

Even so, that is a small number compared to the likely several hundred billion strong population of Armageddon.

As a side note: the other snapshot states Armageddon sector. I think this snapshot still represents forces on Armageddon itself, as the Ork forces state the same yet clearly only reference Ork forces on Armageddon itself, with the obvious exception of naval forces in both cases. I am confident additional, unlisted forces for both factions are fighting elsewhere in the sector.

I'm confident that list doesn't event mention the entirety of the forces present at the frontline because it is missing the Armageddon Defence Force, which is Armageddon's PDF and should naturally be the largest Imperial force present because that's what actually can recruit from those hundreds of billions.

It does- they are listed as Ash waste militia and Hive militia. Note the hive militia is the single largest number of regiments on the list.

 Haighus wrote:

It does- they are listed as Ash waste militia and Hive militia. Note the hive militia is the single largest number of regiments on the list.

A militia and a PDF are usually not the same thing. Militias are made of non-professional soldiers, are temporary in nature (usually during a time of need) and usually play supplementary roles. Meanwhile planetary defense forces are supposed to be standing armies (and thus are supposed to be professional in nature) and the primary defense force of a planet.

Now it is highly likely that whoever wrote that list simply forgot that Armageddon is supposed to have PDF and/or assumed a militia is the same thing, but militia being the same force as the PDF of a Hive World doesn't make much sense.

Its also entirely possible that Armageddon's PDF has been wiped out due to the grinding nature of the conflict, or simply had its leftovers rolled in with the militia.

If you have a bunch of fresh volunteers/voluntolds and a battered shell of remaining professional soldiers from the same world it might make more sense to have the few remaining PDF soldiers form the officer corps of the militia units rather than keep the husks of the original units alive. After enough time the practical difference between militia and PDF troops would be merely chicken scratch on requisition forms. Heck, even the actual Steel Legion regiments might have little real difference between them and the militia units fighting on the surface. And once its all done the Imperium will just grab all the experienced soldiers and make a few experienced regiments out of the whole mass.

 Tyran wrote:
Quick googling tells me 0.033% of the total global population is under arms, so that sounds ok.

I think you are off by factor 10. 2020 the official number of men under army was 27.5 million, which is about 0.34 % of 8 billion.

Note that countries like Northkorea and China have another several millions in reserves and paramilitaries and that states doing conscriptions like cold war West Germany could more than double their personell numbers by calling in reserves.
Even today a lot of western countries have >0.1% under arms without currently fighting of invasions on their home turf. For example USA (0.4%), France (0.3%), UK and Germany (~0.2%) or Greece (1.4%)

So I think 0.1 to 1% of the population under army is a fair number in the WH40k universe.

 Tyran wrote:

 Haighus wrote:

It does- they are listed as Ash waste militia and Hive militia. Note the hive militia is the single largest number of regiments on the list.

A militia and a PDF are usually not the same thing. Militias are made of non-professional soldiers, are temporary in nature (usually during a time of need) and usually play supplementary roles. Meanwhile planetary defense forces are supposed to be standing armies (and thus are supposed to be professional in nature) and the primary defense force of a planet.

Now it is highly likely that whoever wrote that list simply forgot that Armageddon is supposed to have PDF and/or assumed a militia is the same thing, but militia being the same force as the PDF of a Hive World doesn't make much sense.

We see Cain do more or less just that during the second Siege of Perlia. Citizen Militias are assigned Troopers to start some kind of command chain and reliability. And I don’t recall it being considered a particularly novel solution.

 Tyran wrote:

 Haighus wrote:

It does- they are listed as Ash waste militia and Hive militia. Note the hive militia is the single largest number of regiments on the list.

A militia and a PDF are usually not the same thing. Militias are made of non-professional soldiers, are temporary in nature (usually during a time of need) and usually play supplementary roles. Meanwhile planetary defense forces are supposed to be standing armies (and thus are supposed to be professional in nature) and the primary defense force of a planet.

Now it is highly likely that whoever wrote that list simply forgot that Armageddon is supposed to have PDF and/or assumed a militia is the same thing, but militia being the same force as the PDF of a Hive World doesn't make much sense.

Whilst possible... the Armageddon pdf is mentioned on the preceding page of Codex: Armageddon (the source of the earlier list):


I think the intention is that the militias are the PDF, or at least what is left of the PDF by the time this list is made. The use of the term regiments suggests a more formal structure to me. Contrast with the cityfighting provisional companies, which are true ad hoc formations thrown together in desperation. Grey Templar raises a good point in that the pre-invasion PDF may have been distributed over the militias as they are raised.

I may as well attach the earlier list too- this is from earlier in the war than the list from Epic: Armageddon above. Interestingly, the hive militia regiments have more than doubled in number over what is probably a handful of months, so the idea of recruitment and mobilisation bottlenecks is probably true.



Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Grey Templar wrote:
Heck, even the actual Steel Legion regiments might have little real difference between them and the militia units fighting on the surface.

Technically, the proper tithed regiments are, apparently, all mechanised or armoured, whereas only some of the PDF regiments were. In addition, tithed regiments are more likely to include units attached from offworld before they were recalled to Armageddon, such as abhuman auxilia or tank variants that are rare on Armageddon. Although attrition and rearrangement of depleted units would water down this distinction over time too.

If nothing else, I found this in the 5th ed Imperial Guard Codex

For a hive world such as Armageddon, caught in throes of an all-consuming war, a draft of at least a hundred million men at arms and several million armored vehicles is typical - a tiny fraction of the total populace which numbers in the hundreds of billions.

And I believe it has been repeated in more recent Astra Militarum Codexes.

So there is evidence that the IoM had hundreds of millions of troops in Armageddon.

 Tyran wrote:
If nothing else, I found this in the 5th ed Imperial Guard Codex

For a hive world such as Armageddon, caught in throes of an all-consuming war, a draft of at least a hundred million men at arms and several million armored vehicles is typical - a tiny fraction of the total populace which numbers in the hundreds of billions.

And I believe it has been repeated in more recent Astra Militarum Codexes.

So there is evidence that the IoM had hundreds of millions of troops in Armageddon.

Ah, good catch. Still somewhat low as a proportion of population but probably due to mobilisation bottlenecks as discussed above.

I did do some rough back-of-the-envelope calculations. If Armageddon hive militia regiments are 100,000 strong, which is not unreasonable for hive world PDF formations given the size of Valhallan and DKoK regiments being >100,000, then those alone would reach 28 million troopers at the end of the season of fire.

 Haighus wrote:

Technically, the proper tithed regiments are, apparently, all mechanised or armoured, whereas only some of the PDF regiments were. In addition, tithed regiments are more likely to include units attached from offworld before they were recalled to Armageddon, such as abhuman auxilia or tank variants that are rare on Armageddon. Although attrition and rearrangement of depleted units would water down this distinction over time too.

Oh yes, on paper the Steel Legion is always a mechanized force.

But given attrition and the Imperium sending assets where they are needed and not necessarily just where the paperwork says stuff is supposed to be you probably would have a much murkier composition on the ground. Militia units might get tanks they normally wouldn't and the proper regiments go without, relatively speaking. So everyone ends up with some mechanization, but nothing gets concentrated so you end up with militia regiments and actual numbered regiments being almost the same in practice.

keep in mind the populace of Armageddon might be a lot smaller than you'd think for a world with 8 hives on it. by the time of the 2nd war, the populace on the planet had only been there for around 500 years. they'd been imported to repopulate the hives after the imperial sterilization of the previous populace after the 1st war of armageddon. and we've never been given numbers either, just "unknown, in the billions"

so it might not have hundreds of billions, it might not even have tens of billions.

 Tyran wrote:
WW2 levels of recruitment and attrition were not sustainable.

If the IoM was throwing and suffering the same percentages it would have collapsed a long time ago.

Sure, in the long term, but that is also the point. The Imperium is beset on all sides because its culture cannot allow for diplomacy with "lesser species" except as a delaying tactic for war, resulting in it being completely unable to secure any of its borders. The point is that the defeat of the Imperium is inevitable, that it is slowly decomposing like the corpse it calls its emperor, like all empires inevitably fall as their reach exceeds their ability to hold onto the ground they control. In order for that to remain true, the Imperium does need to be being bled, which requires it to be taking meaningful casualties.

Not only are the numbers of men often small, but often so are the timescales of the conflicts, which is very odd when you have such a large timescale to put stuff in. The Second War of Armageddon only lasted 2 years, for example. The current open war in Ukraine will overtake that next year. The entire Damocles Crusade lasted 3 years, half the time of World War 2. The Damocles Crusade involved the invasion and counterinvasion of multiple planets, yet lasted less time than the US' active involvement in World War 2.

And the Indomitus Crusade lasted 12 years, the Badab War lasted 11 years, the third Tyrannic War has lasted for at least 3 decades (and has spanned multiple sectors and trillions of combatants), Vigilus lasted 24 years, the Sabbat World Crusade lasted over 35 years, etc.

Also all things considered the Armageddon conflicts were not particulalry large nor long so I'm also unsure why this entire thread seems to be built around them.

 Tyran wrote:
And the Indomitus Crusade lasted 12 years, the Badab War lasted 11 years, the third Tyrannic War has lasted for at least 3 decades (and has spanned multiple sectors and trillions of combatants), Vigilus lasted 24 years, the Sabbat World Crusade lasted over 35 years, etc.

Also all things considered the Armageddon conflicts were not particulalry large nor long so I'm also unsure why this entire thread seems to be built around them.

Primarily because GW states it is an unusually large conflict- the largest Ork incursion since the War of the Beast nine millennia earlier. The other aspect is we have unusually good numbers for the conflict.

I do agree the war was not particularly long- only going into its second year at the time the Great Rift formed. It lasts at least another 20 years as a three way war between Imperials, Orks, and Chaos (incl. daemons) before Space Marine relief arrives lead by the Salamanders. The implication though is that the scale is uncommonly large over that short time period. A lot of long Imperial wars appear to be slow burns, like the Siege of Vraks- this had a moderately large Imperial Guard force in the region of 6 million troopers at any one time, but eventually more than double that number of initial troopers was expended over 18 years. The total number of deployed Guardsmen (including survivors and casualties) is probably a little above 20 million over this period. That is one 5th of the minimum Armageddon alone raised in a single year during its defence.

I do agree that the Sabbat Worlds Crusade was vast and on a comparable scale. It is actually interesting to see what the Imperium can field when it is able to dedicate resources to a sustained offensive. Based on the levels of force deployed by Slaydo, I think the Tau Empire is extremely lucky the Damocles Crusade was effectively called off due to pressures elsewhere.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 A Town Called Malus wrote:

Not only are the numbers of men often small, but often so are the timescales of the conflicts, which is very odd when you have such a large timescale to put stuff in. The Second War of Armageddon only lasted 2 years, for example. The current open war in Ukraine will overtake that next year. The entire Damocles Crusade lasted 3 years, half the time of World War 2. The Damocles Crusade involved the invasion and counterinvasion of multiple planets, yet lasted less time than the US' active involvement in World War 2.

I agree with Tyran on this, there are loads of longer wars in the Imperium. For a start, you could argue that the Armageddon wars represent two parts of a much larger, single, 80 year campaign against Waaagh! Ghazghkull. Other battles and wars including the likes of Piscina IV, Golgotha, the Battle of Haunted Gulf etc.

The war against Waaagh! Garaghak has been waging for nearly 70 years, including a 3 year war for Tallarax and 8 year war for Forsarr.

The civil war on Krieg famously lasted 500 years.

The war against Waaagh! Grax in and around Ryza has been ongoing for 75 years.

The Stranthium orbital space docks were blockaded by Ork freebooterz for a decade.

The rebel hive world of Derondii was besieged for ten years.

The Siege of Broucheroc had been ongoing for a decade.

As mentioned, the Siege of Vraks was 18 years.

The Damocles Gulf Crusade lasted 9 years from what I could find, but that might have been retconned.

I think part of this is what is considered a war though- the Imperium does not seem to count COIN type garrison and occupation as part of the preceding war, but simply typical "peacetime" duties. Not suprising for an authoritarian empire. So something like the Iraq war would not be a decade long conflict to the Imperium, but instead victory in a few months followed by simple garrison duties.

For reference, WWI was 4 years, WWII was 6 years up to arguably 14 years, the Napoleonic wars lasted 12 years, the Seven Years' war was... 7 years (shocker! ). These are all major global conflicts.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
Re. Damocles Gulf Crusade- the source I was looking at (5th ed Imperial Guard codex) states it was running roughly from 979-988 or 992.M41 (depending on source), and was broken off to defend against Hive Fleet Kraken.

In other sources it is 250 years earlier, around 742.M41 and was called off to fight Hive Fleet Behemoth. Behemoth was defeated in 745 or 746.M41. This is in accordance with the original 3rd ed Tau codex so probably the "correct" timeline.

Fairly substantial difference.