So i was reading TWO when this question came to me : how do they know the numbers of enemies when it's in the thousands ? Do they count them one by one while fighting ? Please answer if you can it's making it hard for me to read
Yeah but it kind of happens in every war novel they're like the enemy has 4000 here and 3000 there and then they go we killed 2400
Depends on how they are building up the skills in the novel. But it can be like they do in real life, and take a small area of an enemy get a rough idea of how many units are in an area based on density. Or X number of units per campfire/tent/camp/regiment depends on how they do the world building.
Are you asking how people could tell in general or in a VR game? In real life, people can tell largely due to trained eye/understanding and knowledge of formations and military structure. A trained military personnel such as a general could tell by seeing the battlefield, info from scouts and intel, and use his knowledge to guess the size of groups. You can tell how many companies there are (Dunbar's number is shown in military sizes) so you'd count in sets. And in VR, it could be a counter or the system would provide that intel and be told to the player by an NPC like scouts or general.
scouts count the enemy before the battle. after the battle they count the number of corpses to know how much they and the enemy lost
its usually divided from squads to formations. plus usually one can tell just by thier density if you are trained they usually relied on formation back then and military division on ones strategy. you can see like those on Strategy games like Total war they are divided by troops one consisting of hundreds or so. plus if you read the manga you can tell by the rank of the enemy general and how many are deployed
Im pretty sure they know the amount of space a certain number of men take up, so a quick glance enables them to estimate
Number of enemy soldiers can be find out in many ways Spies :- As we know spies can learn it from there senior officers or other solider Senior officers will have to know the number of solider they have because they have make arrangements for food supply for that number Estimation :- or they guess size of army by looking at them In kingdom manga ou sen currently useing food and number tactics to defeat zhou
Ancient army uses flag and banner to mark company and 100-man-or-above group for managing and tactical purposes so you can earmark the number of flags and arrive at an estimation. A more accurate guess could involve directly stealing the census from the enemy, garrison data, supply train size etc... Even then, it's mostly guess work. The only reliable number is how much can the enemy possibly send. Same goes for kill tally. If there's no flagbearers left, then the unit can be considered wiped. They would need to regroup to receive order, and without orders, they will either die or get routed.
I find it more strange how battles in fiction often end with one side completely annihilated, considering in real battles you will usually have more wounded than dead and possibly even more that simply escaped or got captured.
Well, if they’re invading by ship, you can use the number of ships and their size for a reasonable guess as to how many are being transported. Then use travel time to guess how long until they get reinforcements. As for the number of dead bodies, they probably count them so they can either cremate or bury them. They can’t just leave those corpses lying around.
That depends on if it is a populated or unpopulated area, if it is unpopulated and they don't plan on staying around then it isn't really necessary to bury them.
That reminds me of something I heard about the french revolution. There were so many bodies lying around, that the crows picked up a taste for human flesh. They liked it so much that they began attacking still living humans for substance.