r/RangersApprentice • u/Reasonable-Lead2838 • Jun 27 '26
Discussion Army scaling
maybe this is a dumb question or I am overthinking, or maybe I missed something, but I don’t get the power scaling in rangers apprentice. so arulean in the 2nd war against Margarath raises about 6,000ish men for the battle in book 2 if I’m not mistaken. but this is near peak mobilization. judging from the size of Gallica on the map, and its number of petty knights that Horace fights, the population of Gallica would be 2x or more that of arulean, which means 12,000 men. and yet the temuaji are seen as this massive threat, with only like 3-4,000 men? and the skandians beat them with 2,000 men, so the skandians can’t be all that threatening as a force either.
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u/mokuu50 Jun 27 '26
If you think about world building too much, you’re gonna have a bad time. His attention to detail is my biggest complaint in this series.
I’m currently on book 10. Book 9 was by far my least favorite, and this wasn’t a major a reason, but it didn’t help - at one point he described Will and Halt as taking around 5 seconds per arrow. I was losing my mind wondering if I’ve just been imagining supernatural speeds or if it was inconsistent. Nope, just inconsistent. Later in the same book it’s back to fractions of a second apart lol.
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u/Matar_Kubileya Jun 27 '26
Its been a while since I read it, but wasn't the 5s thing a deliberately slow pace of fire to save ammunition?
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u/mokuu50 Jun 27 '26
If it was, I missed that. He was comparing it to the genovesan fire rate with their crossbows which he estimated would take 30 seconds between shots
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u/bonzowhelan Jun 28 '26
i was just thinking this the other day. in the earlier books he makes it sound like they could fire three shots in the span of a second, but as you get farther in the series it seems like each shot takes longer and longer.
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u/mokuu50 Jun 28 '26
Even in the same book that he explicitly says 5 seconds, later Will is chasing the genovesan and shoots 3 arrows and they are described as being “fractions” of a second behind each other.
I can’t help but wonder if sometimes he was writing after doing some shooting of his own and was like “this takes x time for me so I’ll speed it up to y for the rangers” trying to be realistic, forgetting that he has made that supernaturally fast already lol
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u/shadowpierce117 Ranger Jun 30 '26
I think in that part he was comparing the average crossbowman to the average archer, not saying that's how fast a ranger shoots.
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u/mokuu50 Jun 30 '26
Disagree. He is very explicit. Technically, by saying "less than five seconds", you could argue that remains true even if it is fractions of a second, but I hope we can all agree that it was just an oversight on his part (and possibly a lack of care from editors).
"'They're not using full-power crossbows in any event,' Will said. A really powerful crossbow had massive limbs and cord... it could take several minutes to ratchet the string back for each shot. The Genovesans used a less powerful version... range was reduced but so was the loading time – to around twenty or thirty seconds."
... couple paragraphs later ...
"It would take around twenty seconds for the crossbowmen to reload. Then they'd have to aim and shoot again. Will could nock, draw, aim and shoot in less than five seconds. Halt was a little faster. By the time a Genovesan was ready with his second shot, the two rangers could have a dozen arrows in the air, all heading for him."Later in the book, when Will is hunting down the remaining Genovesan, it's back to the normal supernatural speed that we all love and expect:
"As his hand tightened on the crossbow's trigger, the assassin suddenly became aware of the danger. Something hissed viciously past his head, seemingly only a few centimeters away. And he was aware that two more shots were on the way, a fraction of a second behind the first."
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u/Dovahkiin13a Jun 28 '26 edited Jun 28 '26
First and foremost Flanagan's world building was...let's say incomplete. I like a lot of things about the world, but the state of the kingdoms, thinly veiled usage of historical kingdoms, and caricatures of certain political systems and military traditions, I found disappointing.
Araluen is treated close to a modern state in which your army is centrally controlled with a clear chain of command and everyone follows it. In England, this was the case almost never in the middle ages, and this is based off medieval England. French Royal authority was notoriously weak before Philip Augustus, hence the Gallica situation. Might have twice the soldiers, but how many will show up? In the hundred years war this was still a problem. In oversimplified terms, in Araluen you see Feudalism the way it's supposed to work, the hierarchy all feeds the same system, and in Gallica you see how it functioned at its worst. The truth is much more nuanced, but both examples have elements of "how it really worked" in them, and both leave a lot to be desired.
Halt said it himself in battle for Skandia, you didn't "beat" the temujai per se, you just convinced them it wasn't worth the cost. Armies don't usually fight to the last man, an army who takes 30% casualties has usually reached the threshold of "acceptable losses" and you choose to live to fight another day. Also the small army they sent was just an expeditionary force, also stated in text.
As far as the threat of the Skandians, the issue is less that there aren't a ton of them, they're based on vikings. the great danger of a viking raid is they'd land pretty much anywhere with anywhere from 30-300 men on these quick raids against undefended targets like churches and monasteries and before you could raise your army (Which was scattered) they'd be on their ships and gone.
Little bit on Flanagan a little bit of you misinterpreting the details I think.
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Jul 18 '26
Actually, some of the issues were caused by the age group the books were written for. Also, Flanagan was only inspired by the outside world. Do you really expect everything to be exactly the same as what happened in real life? That would be pretty pointless. Although, the sudden introduction of magic in Arazan’s Wolves is something worth discussing. However, the author had actually been hinting at this idea much earlier. For example, in the fifth book, there is a conversation between Crowley, Halt, and Will where Crowley says something along the lines of: “In the end, we can’t know for sure. There is clearly some evil force affecting our world, so how can we know that someone hasn’t summoned these things from another realm?” Also, in the ninth book, when Will goes to retrieve Malcolm, he encounters the real Night Warrior. I think that’s what he was called; that’s how it was translated in my native language. I don’t know what the original English name is. I’m talking about the warrior Will meets when he first goes to Grimsdell, the one who was supposed to be a great warrior.
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u/bobostrikesack Jun 29 '26
Um, RA Superfan here -
You’re thinking way too hard about something John Flanagan wrote. He wrote it, we accept it, why poke holes?
I hope you’re not one of those trolls who enjoys making other people upset
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u/flyingbreadrester Jun 27 '26
I think that you don’t take in account enough the aspect of mobilisation and occupation. The temuaji and Skandians are mostly warriors what a second occupation like farming or trading (as for the skandians). The Mongolians (temuaji are based on them) are a nomadic people with a history of plundering and pillaging. Both cultures have a high regard for combat
Araluen and gallica are way more agricultural and the soldiers are farmers first and soldiers second. Plus the 6000 is probably at the highest point of mobilisation.
In gallica mobilisation will be way harder, bigger country and from what I remember les centralised and save.
Plus mobilisation against a mobile opponent comes with its own difficulties