Guild Wars 2

So I did some research and calculation on the amount of charr in the True Legions (Ash, Iron, Blood). I might be wrong here, so don’t quote me as a legitimate source.

According to the wiki, every charr warband has 5-15 soldiers. That makes an average of 10, which we will be working with.
Every centurion commands a company of undetermined size. According to a military buddy, a company in real life is 2-3 platoons of 20-50 men, giving us a 150 max. We’ll be assuming a company is 150 charr.
The wiki states that a primus centurion controls 3-5 large companies, which is stated to be a “sizeable amount” of a tribune’s forces. I’d argue that this means that a tribune controls 15 companies, as 33% of something could generally be considered a sizeable amount.
The wiki furthermore states that Iron Legion has 6 tribunes.

So 150 charr soldiers in 15 companies makes for 2250 charr per tribune.

With 6 tribunes, Iron Legion has 13,500 charr soldiers.

Blood is known to be the largest of the True Legions, and the wiki says that a Legion will “rarely have more than ten tribunes,” so I’d clock Blood in at 10 tribunes, giving them 22,500 soldiers.

Ash is likely the smallest. They have four known tribunes in Ascalon, and I’d assume they kept at least one back at home, so let’s say they have five tribunes in total, netting them 11,250 soldiers.

The grand sum of the True Legions is then 47,250 soldiers.

If we then include the individual warbands of imperators, tribunes and centurions, then that adds another 970 to Iron, 1610 to Blood and 810 to Ash, giving us a new grand sum of 50640 soldiers in the True Legions, gladium not withstanding.

I don’t know if there can be said to be any truth to my calculations here, and I did fail maths in college, so take this for what it’s worth: pure speculation by some nitwit at nearly one in the morning with nothing but better, more productive things to do.

And let’s not forget that the charr are basically the krogan of Tyria; they suffer constant heavy losses which keeps their population at a somewhat stable number, but because they churn out so many cubs and because they grow up so fast, in the event that the Foefire is actually abolished, the charr would probably spread like wildfire.

Numbers seem fair and reasoned. And they do seem to have a pretty constant stream of replacement troops flowing in (i.e. reserves and training cadres at least equal to their front-liner numbers). Those numbers are comparable to some larger clans/alliances in feudal Japan, so they don’t seem too out of whack to me. The last remaining human kingdoms don’t seem all that big either.

Keep in mind also there are more warrior-Charr in the world who have sworn themselves to the Three Orders (and later the Pact) rather than serving in the true Legions. Plus the Flame legion seems very big – able to fight at least a holding action against all of the others put together. So the total Charr presence in the setting is even larger.

The total charr population, including gladium, Flame Legion and charr outside the High Legions is bound to be a lot larger. The Flame Legion alone would probably add numbers similar to Iron, give or take, but it’s hard to say with recent events, what with the Molten Alliance and Baelfire’s death.

Again, bear in mind, that this is all just guesstimation.

About 50K Charr? Mmm…
How many Charr would not be in the legions? I always assumed gladiums were in the minority, at the very least they couldn’t be equal to all three legions combined or else Charr society would be very different (i.e. why would the majority allow themselves to be treated like second class citizens… particularly given Charrs disposition toward combat). It always seemed that the majority of Charr were part of Charr society and thus were in the legions.
But then how many Charr are in the Orders… Again I can’t imagine that the majority of the Charr population would be in the Orders and not in the Legions.
I don’t know, no matter how you look at it it seems based on those numbers that in the entirety of Tyria the Charr number in the hundreds of thousands. Probably not even a million.

I’m not sure where you get hundreds of thousands of charr. As far as I can tell, we’ve got ~50k charr across Blood, Iron and Ash. Probably ~63k if we include Flame.

Gladium are a minority, but are still technically part of the Legions, and a lot of the charr in the Orders will be gladium. The amount of charr who operate without any influence from the Legions, some perhaps never having been part of the Legions to begin with, is going to be a miniscule amount.

These numbers are all really vague. It’s borderline impossible to say for certain.

Hm… not really comfortable with that Ash figure, honestly. I don’t know if it’s stated anywhere, but I’d always assumed the other two legions sent a minority of their forces to serve under Iron’s command. 80% seems very high. This figure is also working off the assumption that we’ve seen all the tribunes Iron has. Between the two, I’d say the estimate probably falls somewhat short, but it’s still a very interesting result. Good work!

It’s stated specifically that Iron only has 6 tribunes.

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Vivika_Venomspit

As for Ash, for all I know, it could very well be larger. Let’s say it’s as big as Blood, and Iron is only under strength because it’s right in the thick of everything. That would send the total sum of charr in the True Legions up to 62690.

But I digress, and you’re right: this works off a lot of assumptions when it comes to exact figures.

Dott.5672:

Ash is likely the smallest. They have four known tribunes in Ascalon, and I’d assume they kept at least one back at home, so let’s say they have five tribunes in total, netting them 11,250 soldiers.

I can’t imagine that Ash would have all but one tribune in Ascalon, tbh, and none in the Blood Legion Homelands. I’d imagine 1 in Blood lands and 2-3 in Ash lands. I just can’t imagine Ash or Blood sending in half – or more than half – of their forces to Ascalon. Even if that’s the main area of conflict (Flame, Branded, Ogres, Ghosts, and formerly, Humans), and even though two of the Ash tribunes (if their names aren’t mistakes – it seems weird for two tribunes to be in the same warband, operating in the same location with the same task of taking down the Flame Legion) aren’t really sent to assist Ascalon so much as on the assignment of fighting the Flame Legion.

However, to me, those numbers seem a bit slim. I’d imagine that – in total – the number of the three legions would be in the 100,000s.

Dott.5672:

but because they churn out so many cubs and because they grow up so fast

Charr actually have the same maturation rates as humans – give or take.

Nike.2631:

Those numbers are comparable to some larger clans/alliances in feudal Japan, so they don’t seem too out of whack to me.

You’re talking about Japan – a relatively tiny series of islands – and comparing it to the great unknown to the east on top of Ascalon and what’s marked as the “Blood Legion Homelands” on the in-game map.

I think charr lands are bigger than Japan, tbh.

Aaron Ansari.1604:

Hm… not really comfortable with that Ash figure, honestly. I don’t know if it’s stated anywhere, but I’d always assumed the other two legions sent a minority of their forces to serve under Iron’s command. 80% seems very high. This figure is also working off the assumption that we’ve seen all the tribunes Iron has. Between the two, I’d say the estimate probably falls somewhat short, but it’s still a very interesting result. Good work!

For how many forces are in Ascalon, all we have to go off of is this:

Although the three legions bicker and occasionally squabble, they have managed to maintain the general state of accord. Each legion is independent, but all three send troops and support to Ascalon to eradicate the human threat. Smodur knows full well that Malice’s troops are there not only to aid, but also to spy for their imperator; however, the two leaders respect one another. Bangar is the true wild card, distrustful and prone to rage. Still, his hatred for humans overcomes his suspicions about the other imperators, and he has committed a great number of troops to the Black Citadel’s command.

As far as I know at least. Source: http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/The_Legions_of_the_Charr

And technically, only two Ash tribunes were sent to Ascalon – the other two we meet are sent to fight the Flame Legion on their front doors specifically, not be part of Ascalon’s forces.

As for the Iron tribunes – we’ve actually only met 4 of the 6.

I’m just not sure how we’ll get a charr populations in the hundreds of thousands to fit into the figures provided by ANet. I agree, but I can’t see it happening with the information we currently possess.

It’s a bigger stretch, but it’s not really outside the realm of possibility. For example, just tweaking your figures a bit, if I change company size to 187 (the largest historical size I could find on google in 2 minutes, although wikipedia claims it can go up to 250) and drop the definition of sizable amount from one-third to one-fifth, the sum comes out at 100,583 (rounded down).

EDIT: Corrected a mistake in my inputs.

It still feels underwhelming.

But then, it’s difficult to really pinpoint a real-world equivalent of Tyria’s current era. The charr are in a stage of industrial revolution, the asura have lasers and something akin to nuclear power plants, the humans wield muskets and use trebuchets, the norn seem to eschew anything short of bows and giant weapons, and the sylvari just grow everything themselves.

Everything is in a melting pot of historical eras. Couple that with the limited information we have available and it really is no wonder that we’re having trouble determining the population size of the charr, let alone any of the other races.

Dott.5672:

I’m not sure where you get hundreds of thousands of charr. As far as I can tell, we’ve got ~50k charr across Blood, Iron and Ash. Probably ~63k if we include Flame.

Gladium are a minority, but are still technically part of the Legions, and a lot of the charr in the Orders will be gladium. The amount of charr who operate without any influence from the Legions, some perhaps never having been part of the Legions to begin with, is going to be a miniscule amount.

These numbers are all really vague. It’s borderline impossible to say for certain.

What I mean to say is that even if we lean on the extremes of the vagueness the entire Charr species would be less populous than a reasonable sized city in real world.

Dott.5672:

It still feels underwhelming.

Exactly what I’m getting at.

Dott.5672:

The grand sum of the True Legions is then 47,250 soldiers.

Nah. Imperial Rome had like ~1 mil citizens in city alone. 50k seems WAY too low.

That one city was larger than an entire GW2 Zone and given that most militaries have a 10:1 support to front-liner ratio on a good day “50k troops” is still half a million people in the army…

It’s also worth remembering that the charr are a carnivorous species. It takes substantially more farmland to produce a certain quantity of meat than it would to produce the same quantity of vegetables and fruit. Combine that with the charr being somewhere between 800-1,500 pounds (just eyeballing them and estimating the weight) while having a high activity metabolism befitting a mammalian predator, and the charr would need a massive source of food to sustain their population.

It’s extremely unlikely the charr Legions are comparable in size to major human empires in the real world. The sheer amount of farmland they’d need would be tremendous.

Anothing thing to keep in mind is that there’s more to the charr’s population than the military. While “all” charr serve the legions, not all are militant – you have the traders and questors and primuses, etc. to consider, and it’s possible that they might not have been included in the figures Anet presented.

Furthermore, taking rl numbers of companies for what’s under a centurion is hard to argue because the charr have a different structure beneath platoons (warbands) which throws a wrench into the equation as how the chain of command functions becomes questionable.

Rednik.3809:

Dott.5672:

The grand sum of the True Legions is then 47,250 soldiers.

Nah. Imperial Rome had like ~1 mil citizens in city alone. 50k seems WAY too low.

Must say it was a wild ride in ancient rome, as far as population is concerned http://davidgalbraith.org/trivia/graph-of-the-population-of-rome-through-history/2189/

Konig Des Todes.2086:

Anothing thing to keep in mind is that there’s more to the charr’s population than the military. While “all” charr serve the legions, not all are militant – you have the traders and questors and primuses, etc. to consider, and it’s possible that they might not have been included in the figures Anet presented.

Furthermore, taking rl numbers of companies for what’s under a centurion is hard to argue because the charr have a different structure beneath platoons (warbands) which throws a wrench into the equation as how the chain of command functions becomes questionable.

Rox was in a warband even though all her warband did was mine. So I’m not exactly sure if traders and farmers wouldn’t be in warbands as well. As far as I can tell there are no civilians in Charr society, simple non-combat warbands. I think they function in a total-war mindset, in total-war civilians are difficult to identify. Well I guess the closet to a civilian would be a gladium.

I think that the numbers are more or less correct (even if we have to consider that there is also retired veterans working instead of fighting) for the High Legions. But the fact is… that’s probably only the High Legions.

I wouldn’t be surprised to learn that in the Blood Legion homelands, and to the east, there is several Low Legions operating since quite some time (after all, if the concept of High legions still exist, then it means that smaller Legions have to exist, or this wording would have disappeared already), and the population of the charrs is thus probably larger.

Things to take into consideration:

- The centurion from “The Legions of the Charr” is known to have 6 warbands to organize.
- Centurion Sinestra Burngunner, inside the Imperator’s Core, says that she has 12 rifle warbands that report directly to her and 2 more currently under review.
- Castella Swordstrike, at the Mustering Grounds, says her centurion’s got a dozen other warbands to worry about.
- Centurion Korrak Blacksnout, from “Edge of Destiny”, led 300 charr soldiers.
- Centurion Harrow Shroudweather, from “Sea of Sorrows”, was the captain of an Iron Legion experimental naval vessel, originally crewed by 17 charr, grouped into 2 different warbands.
- The “Sentinels” unit as a whole is said by an NPC to be a brigade. The size of this kind of unit in RL typically ranges from 3,000 to 5,000 soldiers, its commander often being either a colonel (high-ranking field officer) or a brigadier general (low-ranking general officer). This is, of course, assuming literal interpretation (which seems fairly reasonable, as they include multiple “cross-Legion” companies commanded by centurions, so its size must be way bigger).

Also:

Konig Des Todes.2086:

Furthermore, taking rl numbers of companies for what’s under a centurion is hard to argue because the charr have a different structure beneath platoons (warbands) which throws a wrench into the equation as how the chain of command functions becomes questionable.

This is true, and a very important fact to consider when it comes to estimating numbers.

Warbands are squad-sized units, and they’re supposedly grouped directly into companies, with platoons nowhere to be seen. Taking the numbers from above as a reference, we could argue that a charr company could be anything ranging from a platoon to a small battalion (or one of those “large companies” a primus centurion would command).

Ehecatl.9172:

It’s also worth remembering that the charr are a carnivorous species. It takes substantially more farmland to produce a certain quantity of meat than it would to produce the same quantity of vegetables and fruit. Combine that with the charr being somewhere between 800-1,500 pounds (just eyeballing them and estimating the weight) while having a high activity metabolism befitting a mammalian predator, and the charr would need a massive source of food to sustain their population.

It’s extremely unlikely the charr Legions are comparable in size to major human empires in the real world. The sheer amount of farmland they’d need would be tremendous.

I feel this is actually a really important note. Humans are capable of a much wider range of diet because of our omnivorous diets. Charr, on the other hand, have a much lower rate of growth because of their carnivorous diets.

As far as their weight goes, in Gates of Maguuma Taimi says that her, Scruffy, Braham, and Rox altogether weigh “as much as ninteen kasmeers”. I’ll assume that Scruffy took up about 45% of that weight, being a contraption of metal and magic and such, leaving Braham and Rox (assuming they both weigh about the same) to be 27.5% of the weight.

Kasmeer seems to be an “average” human woman (curves notwithstanding) and stands about 5’6" therabouts. That puts her weight at about 130 pounds. Doing a little math, that puts Rox’s weight at 680 pounds (rounded). Now, female charr are smaller than males by a few inches, so we can presumably look at them and simply add about 40-50 pounds. This gives us an average of 700 pound weight to charr.

This is important because it gives us a sense of scope. Large male siberian tigers can hit up to 700 pounds, while females weigh closer to 400. so the average siberian tiger (weighing in at 550 pounds for the purposes of this) eats about 20 pounds of meat per day, up to 60 pounds if they’re starving. Now, because of Charr society they’re most certainly not starving, and the added weight means they have to eat about 25 pounds of meat per day or so. We can pare that down a bit if they have a metabolism similar to humans, but even then that only takes it down to about 6 or 7 pounds per day.

That’s still huge. Let’s assume for a moment they can eat like hyenas and eat bones as well for the marrow (not an unreasonable assumption, given the hyenas that live in Ascalon) and it’s still pretty massive. As Ehecatl pointed out, they simply don’t have the farmland necessary for too big of a population. Add in the fact that they’re apex predators, as well as the fact that females don’t actually like to be sidelined due to pregnancy, and you’ve got 100k-200k Charr in Tyria being a reasonable estimate. There’s only about 3200 tigers left in the world after all, and that’s with only about 7% of their natural habitats remaining. If anything, charr are facing overpopulation for the land they have.

Harnel.6810:

That’s still huge. Let’s assume for a moment they can eat like hyenas and eat bones as well for the marrow (not an unreasonable assumption, given the hyenas that live in Ascalon) and it’s still pretty massive. As Ehecatl pointed out, they simply don’t have the farmland necessary for too big of a population. Add in the fact that they’re apex predators, as well as the fact that females don’t actually like to be sidelined due to pregnancy, and you’ve got 100k-200k Charr in Tyria being a reasonable estimate. There’s only about 3200 tigers left in the world after all, and that’s with only about 7% of their natural habitats remaining. If anything, charr are facing overpopulation for the land they have.

Well that does make more sense…
Still I keep hoping for the Charr to get back to what they do well: going forth and conquering. Maybe in a future Charr expansion (betting on the Blood Legion here).

Another piece of information about charr numbers:

Maul Shadowharm of the Ash Legion says his warband of 9 is small. So while warbands tend to be 5-15 per Legions of the Charr, the median is not the average but rather still considered “small”. So most warbands are likely to have 15-20 members (I recall Ghosts of Ascalon stating twenty or twenty-some as the average number of charr in a warband, actually), rather than 5-15 – and if 15 is some “absolute” for the standard high number, then most warbands are likely 12-15 solders, and not averaging in 10 soldiers (which is the median, not average).

As for warband numbers…. Murethor’s list is 100% Iron Legion, which gives us a good chance at figuring out their numbers. From said list:

• We have 4 centurions with warband numbers listed: 2, 6, 12 (with 2 pending), and 13. We also have one with just soldiers listed: 300.
• I’d say that Harrow was likely leading other warbands – it’s just that 2 were on the ship. Either way, however, he was doing a special assignment, so that 2 is likely unusually low. This will skew results unless we omit him.
• Korrak leads 300 soldiers, but wasn’t a Primus Centurion (he had Legionnaires, not centurions, reporting to him). So 300 is the only stable number we have for what a Centurion leads…

There’s something important to fix for what the OP mentioned:

The wiki states that a primus centurion controls 3-5 large companies, which is stated to be a “sizeable amount” of a tribune’s forces. I’d argue that this means that a tribune controls 15 companies, as 33% of something could generally be considered a sizeable amount.

The wiki does not state that the primus centurion controls a sizeable amount of a tribune’s forces, but rather that the primus centurion’s forces are a sizeable amount of soldiers. To quote the full line, as it becomes highly important in my further calculations:

A legion rarely has more than ten tribunes, and this office oversees an entire theatre of war or large swath of controlled territory. Beneath the tribunes are centurions. Each centurion commands a number of warbands (a “company”) and coordinates maneuvers on a broad scale within the tribune’s authority. In areas where multiple centurions are coordinating, a primus centurion might be appointed—the “first among equals” of the centurions. The primus centurion leads an active assault force of 3-5 large companies; this is smaller than the numbers encompassed by the tribune’s authority, but still sizeable.

Here’s what’s important to denote from this list:

• While a legion rarely has more than 10 Tribunes, they can. Each Tribune focuses on a single war front.
• A “company” in the context of the charr simply equates “a number of warbands” thus the 60-150 soldier number that the OP gave is null and void – completely irrelevant.
• A Primus Centurion will lead 3-5 large companies, meaning two things: 1) he will have 2-4 centurions working under him, and 2) all 3-5 centurion’s companies will be considered larger than the average.

Now to figure out Iron Legion numbers…

The average of the four centurions we have is 11 if we remove Harrow, so using this as an average for how many warbands are under a Centurion, and using 15 as an average for warband size (as 9 is “small” and warbands are known to go to 20), this becomes 165 soldiers per Centurion. This is oddly half of what Korrak leads, indicating that he led an unusually large company – likely under a Primus Centurion. Thus giving us an approximation of 150 (small) to 300 (large) as a company size – with a Primus Centurion thus leading 600-1,500 soldiers.

The big question is how many centurions serve under a Tribune – we know a single Tribune runs a battlefront, and that a Primus Centurion naturally leads less than a Tribune, but nothing more than that. However, it would make sense for at least two Primus Centurions to be able to serve under a Tribune. That means that minimally, we can expect around 3,000 soldiers per Tribune. Going with that number, and the Iron Legion’s 6 Tribunes, we’d have an estimated 18,000 soldiers in the Iron Legion.

Blood Legion is said to be the largest Legion (which makes sense given the known size of Blood Legion lands being larger than Iron Legion lands), so I would argue 8 to 10 Tribunes. If we presume the same warband and company sizes as Iron, that places Blood Legion at having approximately 24,000 to 30,000 soldiers.

Given the stealth nature of Ash Legion, I’d argue that their average warband size is smaller – even though Maul calls his warband of 9 small, I’d say this is probably close to average for Ash; the most prominent Ash Warband in GW2, the Scorch Warband aka Kalla’s Killers, only has 7 known members and they’re an elite warband who took in a Flame Legion prisoner. As such, let’s say for simplicity in calculations, the average is 10 soldiers per warband. If we presume company size remains the same as the other two legions, this makes 110 soldiers per company/centurion. Above, I considered Korrak’s 300 to be a large company compared to the supposed number I got for other centurions which was roughly half that. Continuing that equation, then Ash Legion companies can be approximated to 100 to 200 soldiers. If a tribune’s command is double the maximum size of a primus centurion’s command, that makes 2,000 soldiers per Ash Legion Tribune. We see 2 Tribunes in the Black Citadel (standard for all legions), and 1 in the Flame Legion front lines (NOTE: I find it highly weird that two Tribunes share the same warband name and are in the same battlefront when lore states that a single tribune commands a single battlefront – I consider one of the two is a typo and should be Centurion or Legionnaire, as we have other examples of a Legionnaire in the same warband as a Tribune). It would seem weird for the Ash Legion to send out the majority or even half of their troops elsewhere; as such, I’d argue that Ash has 7-8 Tribunes.

That would place Ash at approximately 14,000 to 16,000 soldiers.

TL;DR
I estimate the following sizes for the allied High Legions:

• Ash: Approximately 15,000 Charr
• Iron: Approximately 18,000 Charr
• Blood: Approximately 27,000 Charr
• Total: Approximately 75,000 Charr

This does not include Sentinels, Renegades, Gladium, Lion’s Arch charr, or Flame Legion

Another bit of information in terms of scale comes from Kyron Darkshield, an Iron Legion hydro-engineer in charge of the Ebonshore Plant in Diessa Plateau. It is said to “purify water used by more than a hundred different camps and the Black Citadel itself”.

Back to unit size (and naming), from an old thread discussing centurions:

Murethor.4935:

The smallest military unit in Ancient Rome was the contubernium, a group of 8-10 soldiers who lived and fought together; multiple of these units formed a century, which were then grouped as maniples (2 centuries, pre-Marian reforms) and cohorts (6 centuries, Marian reforms).

The Blood Legion area in the home instance has a point of interest called “20th Blood Cohort”, whereas the Iron Legion has the “12th Iron Maniple”, which happens to make sense in terms of each legion’s main role (Blood being organized for higher scale, frontline combat).

CureForLiving.5360:

About 50K Charr? Mmm…
How many Charr would not be in the legions? I always assumed gladiums were in the minority, at the very least they couldn’t be equal to all three legions combined or else Charr society would be very different (i.e. why would the majority allow themselves to be treated like second class citizens… particularly given Charrs disposition toward combat). It always seemed that the majority of Charr were part of Charr society and thus were in the legions.
But then how many Charr are in the Orders… Again I can’t imagine that the majority of the Charr population would be in the Orders and not in the Legions.
I don’t know, no matter how you look at it it seems based on those numbers that in the entirety of Tyria the Charr number in the hundreds of thousands. Probably not even a million.

For note, in pre-industrial civilizations IRL the percentage of the population in the military was around 2-6%, leaning more towards 3%. Thing is, you need A LOT of support for an army. I’ve also always felt Charr numbers were greatly exaggerated by dint of land requirements for an all (or primarily) meat diet as well.

What about Flame? Do their evil-doing cousins not follow the same structure?

It’s really hard to tell because the Flame Legion have a religious group, the remnants of the Shaman Caste, that are led by Hierophant Improaster that we kill during CoF story. We don’t know if the Shaman Caste adheres to the standard warband structure. Same with their elite units – the Godforged.

Furthermore, they enslave their women without putting them into warbands or letting them fight – which means that they have a population that don’t adhere to the same structure as the other half and legions.

Then there’s the complete unknown of how many tribunes they have (we know of 2), and then there’s the fact that post-Gaheron’s death the Flame Legion splintered into at least three factions (each CoF explorable path) if not more (Molten Alliance group).

And finally, the Flame Legion’s primary means of expanding their numbers is recruiting from the other legions – those who are power hungry, the spellcasters tired of being shunned by others, etc. – in an attempt to both bolster their own numbers and lower their enemies’. Which results in an unstable number of troops under the leaders’ commands.

The numbers are probably close. Would put the total char population around 1 million which fits with the size of a midevil kingdom

I don’t think you can really put a figure to the number of soldiers in any Legion, purely because the unofficial scrapper bands, ‘retired’ soldiers and gladium aren’t being taken into account here. There’s also the fact that every Charr, whether they be farmer, blacksmith or carpenter, is also a soldier. There is no such thing as a Charr that isn’t a soldier, at least not inside the Legions themselves. For that simple reason I’d put the number of soldiers as high as the number of Charr on Tyria, and for all we know that could be in the range of a few million, considering the size of the territories that they control.

There’s a difference between being a part of the military structure and being a soldier. You wouldn’t call a porter or wagon driver a soldier.

The charr would though.

The problem with basing population figures off a series of estimates is compounding error. The final number can end up anywhere from a few thousand to a few million.

Regarding weight and food consumption, keep in mind the “nineteen Kasmeers” thing was an off-the-cuff remark that the lore department wouldn’t have vetted too carefully. You’re dealing with a + b + c = x, where we don’t know exactly where a, b or c fall and even x is a rough guess that the writers aren’t obliged to pay too much attention to. You can assume the average charr weighs several hundred pounds; that’s about it.

An update. Seems like whole argument “numbers are limited by meat supply” is wrong.

Catnip! That’s clearly it! The explains why the Charr are much more mellow now than back during GW1.

I didn’t see any comment on this, but as to the land and ranching they have available limiting their meat supply, I think it pays to remember that the game cannot properly demonstrate the ‘true’ scale of the lands we’re looking at. We can run across the Shiverpeaks in a single in-game day, but the actual trip would be perilous, taking weeks.

So, the various ranches we see in game would probably be substantially bigger, and have much higher production, than what seems implied from the in-game representation.

Still, it would be a lot of meat!

Rednik.3809:

An update. Seems like whole argument “numbers are limited by meat supply” is wrong.

It depends. It could be they are metabolically like bears which are categorically carnivora but practically omnivores. It could also be they are like canis who only eat plant matter as a digestive aid and supplement. I lean more towards them being more dedicated carnivores than humans who supplement their diet accordingly.

Lost in Hyrule.2963:

Catnip! That’s clearly it! The explains why the Charr are much more mellow now than back during GW1.

I didn’t see any comment on this, but as to the land and ranching they have available limiting their meat supply, I think it pays to remember that the game cannot properly demonstrate the ‘true’ scale of the lands we’re looking at. We can run across the Shiverpeaks in a single in-game day, but the actual trip would be perilous, taking weeks.

So, the various ranches we see in game would probably be substantially bigger, and have much higher production, than what seems implied from the in-game representation.

Still, it would be a lot of meat!

That’s not really the point, the point that has been pushed here is that for a given area, you can grow more plant calories per acre than you can meat calories. Which is true. So given two similarly sized nations, the one which leverages primarily plant calories (especially grains) will provide more net calories to its population than the one that primarily ranges cattle.

On the topic of Charr diet and farming it’s really important to remember that the Charr have the best (physical) technology in the known world. Their farming technique is probably vastly superior to the humans’ for example. Don’t let the steam punk look make you forget they have the likes of water treatment technology.

The size of the Blood Legion lands being pretty much only an estimate is a huge factor too. I really don’t know how well you can estimate the Charr populations based on in game stuff, because like others said the matter of scale in game does not reflect the vastness of Tyria in lore. Traveling from Ebonhawke to Ascalon on foot takes the majority of an entire book, and that’s only a relatively small swath of Iron Legion territory, which is only the second largest.

Edit:
It appears some old lore info claims the Charr do not have farms. That is clearly contradicted by lore in game though, so perhaps it was old information or historical information from the time when the Flame Legion’s control was cast off. A Charr cub in the Black Citadel outright says he wants to be a farmer.

We see only one charr farm in-game (the heart in Diessa) who’s a bit of a secluded odd-ball charr; the rest are ranchers. The cub wanting to be a farmer may be wanting to be something unusual.

Konig Des Todes.2086:

We see only one charr farm in-game (the heart in Diessa) who’s a bit of a secluded odd-ball charr; the rest are ranchers. The cub wanting to be a farmer may be wanting to be something unusual.

He says “like you, mother”. So its not unusual.

Rednik.3809:

Konig Des Todes.2086:

We see only one charr farm in-game (the heart in Diessa) who’s a bit of a secluded odd-ball charr; the rest are ranchers. The cub wanting to be a farmer may be wanting to be something unusual.

He says “like you, mother”. So its not unusual.

Unless the mother is unusual.

At any rate we have a lot of lore that says charr are carnivores. One asura saying they can eat fruits and vegetables shouldn’t trump all of what we already know. And it isn’t like there aren’t carnivores in our world that can also eat the occasional vegetable when needed.

The asura’s quote doesn’t state a charr can survive on primarily vegetables, only that they are capable of eating it.

The usage of the word ranch outside the United States is so uncommon, that the terms meaning in german translates to an american farm. After searching a dictionary it seems the term has spanish origin and wasn’t used until the late 19th century.
Well then. Cattle farming takes place all over the western Diessa Plateu, but the Charr also eat fish, wurm eggs and possibly devourer eggs, as devourer queens can produce large amounts of eggs in a short amount of time. It doesn’t seem reasonable to use all of them as warbeasts.
There is also a cattle farm in the plains of ashford near Smokestead, where the farmer claims to supply the entire town with cattle. This wouldn’t be feasible, if the game was an accurate depiction of the world. Naturally, the map designers take liberties with the ratio of farms to camps/barracks/towns/cities, as the map wouldn’t have the same variety, if we were looking over huge cattle producing estates for kilometers on end.
Cattle doesn’t seem in short supply, though, since Mad Mardine does extensive testing of his prototype and doesn’t seem concerned, that he’d run out of cows to launch at moorwatch tower.
The Iron legion seems to have most of its food production seated in the Diessa Plateu, western Ashford and the Iron marches (presumably). From what is shown in the game the Charr have a large lumber industry, mining operations, forges and kitten nals.
This gives an outline of their industrial capacity.
Their machinery is more advanced than the rest of tyria (except the asura) but we learn from warden Scourgejaw, that the Iron legion is suffering from manpower shortage, trying to balance their economy and fighting multiple wars.
Currently, the Iron legion produces enough food, but is running low on manpower, while Flame legion soldies hunger, as seen in the Iron marches, where Flame Soldiers will try to steal devourer eggs and several NPCs state that without the shamans, the Flame collapses into miserable, hungry, disorganized charr.
It is unclear where the flame shamans get their food from. They can buy it on external markets and teleport it in, but from what we see, Fireheart Rise has a somewhat poor economy, due to poisoned land. The only large operation there is the mine, that relies on slave labour.
To sum up: The charr economy is working like a robust war hardened machine, that if anything, is currently overproducing its needs.
Therefore the number of living charr in Ascalon is lower, than it could be under ideal circumstances.
The charr farmland seems to be less than Kryta, but with better equipment and technology. Let’s say they have comparable output.
This would but the number of Charr in Ascalon below Kryta in terms of population, but keep it comparable to a kingdom in size.

Konig Des Todes.2086:

Anothing thing to keep in mind is that there’s more to the charr’s population than the military. While “all” charr serve the legions, not all are militant – you have the traders and questors and primuses, etc. to consider, and it’s possible that they might not have been included in the figures Anet presented.

Non-militant charr are still part of the military hierarchy, however, so they probably still count in the numbers. It’s possible that they have a more informal chain of command than one that goes up to the tribunes, though.

Regarding the meat versus plants discussion: It’s been known all along that charr can digest plant matter. However, basically all of their agriculture is herding, and thus, while they could supplement their diet with vegetable matter, in practise it seems to mostly come through animal sources, with the majority of vegetable harvest probably coming from trading (they are an industrial economy, after all). So it’s likely that the estimate of taking twenty or so times as much arable land to support a charr as to support a human is still valid – they CAN eat vegetables, but they rely on less efficient animal sources for most of their food. What we’re shown in game isn’t everything that exists, but it is intended to be broadly representative.

It’s also worth mentioning that Kryta is said to be a leader in agricultural technology. The gap in tech between the charr and other races is not as large as you might think by looking at the cities – charr and asura like the aesthetics of their technology, but the other races don’t like the aesthetic, so theirs tends to be less “in your face” than other races.

I think, though, another perspective to consider here is to look at what the other nations are likely to have:

Kryta is basically one city (let’s call it a large one by early modern standards, accepting the scaling between ingame appearance and lore size) with a collection of towns and villages around it, plus the exclave of Ebonhawke if one was to count that. It’s entirely possible that the total human population in Tyria is under a million. Taking the figure of roughly 5% of the population under arms, we’d be looking at an estimated total size of the human military of around fifty thousand. That’s consistent with humans and charr being in stalemate given the figures above.

Sylvari and asura are likely smaller in population than Kryta. The Grove appears to be less populated than Divinity’s Reach, and the sylvari don’t have any secondary cities or towns, just a few villages in Caledon (and outposts elsewhere, but those are mostly military in nature). Asura are a bit of a wild card, since they’re individually smaller and we don’t know what they might have west or north of Rata Sum. However, I’m still inclined to think there are less asura than humans.

Norn, meanwhile, are a bit of a mix of a hunter-gatherer and craft society. They have a lot of mining and the occasional logging and quarrying, going towards craftsnorn making products out of the various materials; however, their primary source of nutrition seems to be someone going out and hunting (or buying the proceeds of someone else’s hunt). Some of the norn inns have a small herd, but these seem to be oriented towards being living pantries rather than being a commercial farming operation per se. Somewhere there must be some small-scale agriculture for the production of alcohol at least (and the same goes for the charr, although for both it could ultimately be being imported from Kryta), but culturally, the preference is overwhelmingly for wild game.

Coupled with the physical size of norn, I’m inclined to think the norn population is fairly small. While norn have a presence on a lot of maps, their presence in most is fairly thin. As an estimate, the norn would have control over about as much real estate as Kryta (spread over Wayfarer, parts of Snowden, eastern Lornar’s, northern Dredgehaunt, northeastern Timberline, and southwestern Frostgorge) but their food economy is considerably less efficient. We could probably use the population density of Norway as a ballpark and it would likely be an overestimate.

On the topic of the Charr that count as part of “the military” yeah, they all likely do. In fact I suspect even Evon Gnashblade is still counted amongst the Ash Legion legionnaires for example. Not all Charr are always actively fighting, but they do all have training and I think even most (or perhaps many) living abroad are still technically part of their legions. The reason that they are likely all counted in the numbers is that duty is extremely important to the Charr. If serving to one’s ability involves farming or being a merchant that is still considered a duty. The combatants are more highly regarded but the largely non-combat roles are not scorned (in general at least) either.

It’s been pretty much stated the Charr and Asura are quite a bit ahead of the others in the field of physical and magical technology respectively.

Notably, ArenaNet has said prior to the game launch pretty much all mechanical devices you see are derived from older Charr technology. Does something in game say Kryta leads in farming technology though? The Charr are indisputably as far as I’m aware quite far ahead when it comes to physical technology, but that doesn’t mean they lead in all areas and I’ll admit if I’m wrong.

I believe it’s the opposite though, not that the difference in aesthetics exaggerates how far the Charr are ahead, but that the steampunk look actually understates how far the Charr are ahead. If we could see the Charr tanks in motion, that would probably be quite a bit more clear. Years after the Charr technology started to spread perhaps the gap isn’t quite as large even if their innovations largely came first, but I still get the impression without fighting wars on so many fronts and without a Charr faction interested in truce the humans would not have the slightest chance of fending off the full might of the modern Charr Legions. Even a great many years prior to the game in the novel Sea of Sorrows, the main character is blown away at how advanced Charr technology is in comparison to the propaganda he was taught growing up.

This does make me really curious though. Proficiency in the design and construction of machines doesn’t automatically make them the best farmers. It is most definitely not unusual though. The mother’s response to the child in question that was brought up for example amounts to “we’ll see what your strengths are when you go to your fahrar.” The fact Charr society is in a period of rapid social change (with not all areas or Charr equally enthusiastic about that change) confuses matters further.

I don’t think it’s explicitly mentioned ingame – I believe it was mentioned in an interview or similar, discussion the relative achievements of the races. Charr are ahead in physical technology in general, but other races, particularly humans, have taken some of those concepts and steered them in directions the charr didn’t think of.

One good example is probably those automated watering systems you see in Queensdale (when the well isn’t poisoned and the pipes aren’t destroyed, anyway). It is explicitly mentioned that the airships were a combination of asura, charr, and human technology (and there is, or at least was, a line in the second part of Season 2 that implies the Seraph have their own airships now, although obviously humans didn’t build those entirely on their own). There’s also Uzolan the Inventor and the Watchknights (even if the latter were based on Ceara’s work).

Regarding the tanks: We do see the small car-things in motion in one of the Orrian story arcs. They’re pretty slow and fragile for an armoured vehicle: they represent an advantage over dolyak-drawn artillery, but probably not actually by a whole lot.

The big things we haven’t seen moving, and I think there’s a reason for that – they’re really only suitable for sieges. (And in terms of the walls of Ebonhawke, it’s mentioned a few times that the Vanguard is good at finding ways to destroy charr war engines.)

Either way, aesthetics do have an impact on the perceived tech level. For the last century or two charr have been leading the charge when it comes to technology, but other races have been picking up their stuff, reverse-engineering it, and taking things in different directions. The difference is that humans like to keep their stuff “under the hood” while charr prefer to leave the fairings off and flaunt their machinery… with the probably desired effect of emphasising the technological difference that is there.

For the record, I’d probably be inclined to peg the charr at late 19th century – with some technology that was probably possible at the time that people didn’t think of, and some things that are probably partially made possible by magic. The designs of Ebon Vanguard and Krytan rifles and pistols, by comparison, are consistent with the early 19th century. The presence of magic (including magical materials that can resist bullets) has masked that development by preventing many things that were obsolete in the 19th century from becoming obsolete in Tyria, but they’re around those ballparks.

I haven’t read the whole thread, but since it was not brought up, in-game an asura states (albeit in a round about way) that steam technology is superior to the crystals that asura use today.

Zegg: And imagine if we could harness steam! Control crystals would become obsolete.

It is impossible to draw exact real world parallels with steampunk or magic. Charr water treatment for example actually surpasses our real life technology, with relatively small devices able to cleanse entire bodies of water. Of course stuff like ghost traps, ghost disruption, and devices to attract branded have no real equivalent.

About that Asuran comment, I did think I remembered ArenaNet saying the Charr are the most advanced, and at least one Charr in game boasts that they are way ahead, but I had no idea any Asura said as much.

As to Charr technology being the root of most other mechanical technology, I suppose sifting through hours of prerelease interviews is the only way to find the exact wording.

Confusingly some stuff in game does contradict prerelease lore too, even stuff still cited in articles. I see the article on the Charr has been updated since I last read it though because the old version emphasized promotion through killing superiors, and the Charr in game seem more a meritocracy with advancement in rank through killing seemingly far less common though not rare (and doing such does not on its own guarantee support or respect).

As to the tanks in game being slow or fragile, I have to check out the Black Citadel later. I could swear high speed races are mentioned.

There’s a charr who mentions they essentially have NASCAR, but he says they’re experimental and prone to killing their drivers- probably not what the charr take out into the field.

Oh! One thing I forgot to mention, before I get into more serious discussion: There absolutely are other Legions than the big four (again, stuff we’ve been told out of game but not really in-game). They’re a lot smaller and less influential, and it probably wouldn’t be too far off to guesstimate their total number as being equivalent to just one of the High Legions. But they do exist… just not with any significant presence in Ascalon (the Garbage Legion is tongue-in-cheek, not a serious legion).

You’re correct in that magic and steampunk do muddy the waters somewhat. However, assuming they haven’t gone full magitech (like the asura) magic and steampunk tend to affect things in reasonably predictable ways.

Magic has a tendency to allow otherwise obsolete technologies to remain practical. Historically, for example, guns won the weapon-armour race from the invention of the musket to the appearance of armoured all-terrain vehicles in World War 1 – however, the existence of magical alloys such as darksteel and above allows armour to remain relevant in Guild Wars 2 despite the presence of rifles, muskets, and heavier and more advanced weapons. Magic also allows a technologically inferior culture to hold its own militarily – the ‘magic versus technology’ trope has been used a few times in fantasy and science fiction. ArenaNet has been pretty kitten-poor at showing this in-game, but the human-charr war has been a less extreme example of this trope since the charr rebellion: the charr used technological development as a substitute for a deficiency in magic, and the greater availability of magic among human forces has allowed humans to hold their own against technologically superior charr. Again, ArenaNet has done an abysmal job of showing this in-game, but the best example might be to look at the Renegades and Separatists. It’s probably reasonable to think that these two groups are representative of the general makeup of the besiegers and the Vanguard respectively before the ceasefire, and while the Separatists have a number of magic users, the Renegades are low-magic. A similar example could be gained from looking at the Aetherblades: Charr Aetherblades tended to be more on the technological side of things, while human Aetherblades were more likely to use magic.

Steampunk, on the other hand, is based on the principle of taking a historical period and imagining that the things that they imagined was possible at the time, actually was (thus handwaving the reasons why it actually wasn’t). This is why we have charrcopters and not fixed-wing aircraft – historically the latter came first, but scholars knew the general principle behind the helicopter in the Renaissance (Leonardo’s drawings would supposedly have worked using modern engines, but back then they obviously didn’t have the engine power). Mobile, gun-bearing fortresses (which would eventually become armoured cars and tanks) is another idea that was imagined in the Renaissance, but wasn’t practical until much later.

Looking at the charr stuff: it’s very much consistent with late 1800s steampunk. They obviously have the engine, and make good use of it (albeit not having come up with the idea of trains), which puts a bottom limit on their development. Apart from the steampunk charrcopters, however, their technology largely comes across as pre-WW1: they have submarines (largely experimental, and needing collaboration with other races to perfect) and armoured cars (inferior to WW1 tanks: the smaller ones are lightly armoured, the large ones are ungainly, and neither is going to handle rough terrain very well).

Humans… don’t have the steampunk, obviously. However, they developed and, as far as we know, invented hot air balloons*, which historically appeared in the late 1700s. They have water pumping technology, demonstrated in their various farming operations and the mechanical band in Divinity’s Reach. It’s also been mentioned in an interview that a lot of races have adopted ‘convenience’ technologies like mechanical operation of lifts: we see a few lifts in Divinity’s Reach where the method of their operation is hidden in the wall (an example of the aesthetic difference: charr lifts show their mechanism proudly).

With the asura, of course, magic pervades everything they do to the point where it’s hard to make any call. It is mentioned in a few places that asura nonmagical technology is not as advanced as that of the charr. However, their results are probably more powerful than charr technology, if less mass-producible. In comparisons between asura and charr, it’s really hard to say which one is ahead, and it’s more of a matter of them going in different directions: the asura take a shortcut that charr prefer to avoid if at all practical. As a result, the charr have developed the mechanical and purely technological alternatives to magic a lot more, and the asura are just now starting to consider the advantages to using those alternatives themselves. Simply put, charr and asura development is in different directions, and combining them usually gives better results than either individually.

*Which would certainly explain the human technology Trahearne mentions as going into the airships, even though we didn’t actually see the Krytan balloons until afterwards. There was no antecedent in charr pre-Pact technology to lighter-than-air flight, so humans may well have provided the most important part.

Regarding water purification: We see miraculous water purification in Queensdale as well, after collecting samples of the contaminant for analysis. This appears to be another case of assuming things people thought were possible actually were possible at the time. In this case, it’s the idea in alchemy that any contaminant has an antidote which, if a sufficient amount is introduced into the water supply, the water is made safe again. It’s just a matter of identifying the contaminant: for the charr that’s easy (it’s usually tar that was introduced into the water by the Flame Legion) so it’s just a matter of keeping the machinery running, while for the Queensdale event the poison needs to be identified and analysed, and once it has been an antidote is immediately developed and administered and suddenly the water is potable again. Of course, in reality water purification is more complicated than that, but in Tyria it really is simply a matter of developing the right alchemical antidote.

To go into a little more length on ArenaNet doing a poor job of representing human magic: ArenaNet has a tendency to be minimalist regarding variety of unnamed NPC types for a friendly faction. It’s probably a reasonable rule of thumb that if a single, monoracial faction has unnamed NPCs with more than three fighting styles, you’re going to have to fight them sometime. Ascalon is a good example of this: from GW1 you could easily conclude that apart from named characters, PCs, and the Flaming Sceptre, that all Ascalon had was swordsmen and archers. However, the ghosts – which are basically the same army – have a much wider range of types.

While I find this disappointing from a lore perspective, it’s understandable: players care a lot more about the skills used by their enemies than those used by cannon fodder NPCs running alongside them. For game purposes, a couple of representative types does the job, even if lorewise it’s likely more diverse.

The charr manage to avoid this because they’re essentially three allied factions. If the charr had had the same treatment as the Seraph, there’d probably be an axe charr and a rifle charr. However, ArenaNet wanted to establish the individual character of each legion, resulting in greater variety.

The Seraph, on the other hand, are a single faction that, with the exception of one story step, is always friendly. The majority of the Seraph probably are warriors, either melee or archers, so the generic “Seraph Soldier” and “Seraph Archer” works as a representative sample. If you look at the minis, though, there is evidence that ArenaNet put some work into making a more representative sample (probably around the time they were planning for the dredge leadership in Sorrow’s Embrace to be in cahoots with corrupt Seraph rather than the Inquest) – there are minis for a Seraph Mage and Seraph Medic (both in Caudecus Manor light armour) and a Seraph Archer in Caudecus Manor medium armour (probably planned to be a ranger). Since the Seraph are now only enemies for the odd story instance, though, it was probably decided that it wasn’t worth fully developing them ingame.