United Cities: Difference between revisions

The United Cities kept a unified standing army known as the Iron Legion, composed of twenty thousand men in lamellar armor, divided into footmen, cavalry and siege corps. It was augmented by city self-defense forces and private militias composed of slaves as needed. The troops of the Legion were renowned as experts at sieging fortifications and also at building them. The Iron Legion also pioneered the world's first dedicated rocketry force, the Wangdi Corps. Artificer made rockets from some that could be deployed and fired by only one or two soldiers to contraptions that could fire dozens of rockets at a time were instrumental in the Legion's battle order.  

The Iron Legion was able to repel the numerically superior armies of the Zhong for many years until reduced funding, corruption in the military leadership and the accelerated intake of slaves into its ranks drastically reduced its combat effectiveness and morale. Highly combat efficient in the first hundred years, the force began to experience a marked decline by the mid 1100's when the model of slave-soldier was permanently adopted for cost reasons. By 1215 the Iron Legion was a force more suited to putting down slave revolts than defeating another army in the field and it showed in the final war that ended with the obliteration of the United Cities.