Quote Originally Posted by Conradus View Post
84,000 is really, really small by modern standards. That's in modern times, when you have advanced agriculture and industry to support a large army, and the large population needed to recruit that large army, and a mechanized supply chain to get it all to them. When you go back to medieval times, it's pretty damn big. Garlemald has some pretty impressive technology, but how widespread is it? They've only been fielding this tech for a few decades. You have to have implemented it across society, from top to bottom, and had time for the population to grow in response to the increased agricultural output, to be able to field the kind of army sizes seen in modern times.
I give you another example of what has actually happened in history. Look at Japan. During the Meiji Restoration (late 1860s) technology in Japan was, as an estimate, equivalent to 1600s Europe. Firearms were only starting to proliferate, there were still scuffles in the Boshin War where fights were conducted with swords and armor. In 1873, after the dust had settled and the Meiji emperor firmly in charge, they began to modernize. By 1905, they had defeated both China in 1895 and Russia in 1905. By WWI, they were a world power. By the 1930s, they were approaching the status of military superpower.

So yes. Rapid modernization does happen.