[quote=@Kho]
These army sizes are not one or two clans, they're the combination of 20+ tribes and clans - and that only got them to 40,000 - only when a whole other confederation joined with 10,000 did the number go to 50,000[/quote]

My bad there; I misspoke

[quote]
And plus, I believe we have naturally occurring metals that are harder than bronze - the swords and other weapons Rukbans use come via merchants from the tedar and whatnot - and perhaps there is the odd blacksmith who has learned. So we're not actually in the 'bronze' age on that front.
[/quote]

I don't think the presence of other metals (if they are even worked and/or widespread) can really be used to justify having technological advancements beyond those of the Bronze Age.

[quote]
I definitely think that somewhere like Alefpria would have populations north of 100,000
[/quote]

Alefpria is a magical place with too many blessings and benefactors to count, hence why it has the mist to keep out interaction from other cultures and justify it being allowed to have so many things. As such, I don't count it when talking about general population sizes or technology levels and I don't think you should either.

[quote]
Edit: plus, steppe hordes whether in 2000 BC, 100 AD, or 1200 AD lived in pretty much the same way. If Attila and the Mongols could muster such large forces, any significantly large steppe culture should likewise be able to. It's not like the Mongols had medicine and technology which was far greater than that of the Huns
[/quote]

I reject this thesis. You take for granted small things like the saddle, stirrup, spurs, cattle branding, and the domestication of a variety of livestock. Even those things were all major innovations that didn't just appear overnight. The fact of the matter is that the Mongols and Huns that came well after the ancient Scythians and Sarmatians (which are probably the closest comparison we can make to the Rukbans, and even then the Sarmatians and Scythians both were around in early Roman times which puts them well after the early Bronze Age period we should be looking at) had larger populations.

Now you can argue that this is just a function of time and them being able to have more generations, but I can just as easily claim that their ability to support a greater population comes down to advancements in herding, medicine, and any number of other small technologies that might be like those aforementioned. Or perhaps trade, raiding, and general interaction with larger cities and agrarian sizes enabled the nomadic people to grow in size. Either way I think it's still silly to have the Rukbans field armies so big and so clearly outnumber every other culture.

[@everyone using CK2 as the basis for arguments regarding steppe nomads vs agrarian societies]

Yes, by this logic the people should all worship Vestec and Jvan because in CK2 every priest and his mother is a member of Lucifer's Own/The Fellowship of Hel/The Cold Ones/*insert other copy and paste demon cults here* and they all get OP powers for virtually no penalty. :/

Point being that CK2 is silly lol