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Hi guys!

So me and my pals are doing an WH40k RPG supplement, and we were thinking about stuff like Eldar population and "loose" Eldar. And hell, every source has different opinion on these!

First, Eldar population. This is a pretty simple thing: ow many Eldar lives on a Craftworld? We thought about 60 billion for a mid-sized Craftworld, and 500-600 billion for a major craftworld (like Biel-Tan). But one of the sources said that it is actually 400-500 million for a major Craftworld, and much less for mid/minor ones. WTF? That sounds quite... few for a major intergalactic power.

Second, other-than-anything Eldar. Okay, this needs a little explanation: here, we thought about Eldar who get fed up with their Craftworlds and the strict rules of the paths and said "GG guys, we are outta' here" and simply left the Craftworld to live elsewhere. Not Outcast style, but they simply moved elsewhere to make a home there. They brought all their stuff, they even brought some of their friends too, and all they want to live free (or at least live however they want without Farseers messing around them and seeing doom in every corner). We could actually find nothing about these guys. Yeah, there are corsairs and rangers and whatsnot, but those guys are not the people we are looking for. This actually gave us the idea that maybe they don't even exist.

So what are your thoughts? What is the general consensus on Craftworld population? And what about the Eldar immigrants?

There's a reason that the Eldar are a dying race. They're the closest to going extinct of any major race in the galaxy. I'm not sure if 400-500 million is accurate, but 500-600 billion is way too much. I'd put my money on around a few billion in each Craftworld, but then, I could be way off.

There's this group called the Dark Eldar that pretty much did exactly what you're talking about. They live in their own way. That way just happens to be a sadistic life of unadulterated torture and excess.

The Eldar are quite rare. They really only have a population in the high billions, maybe slightly over a trillion. Not counting Dark Eldar.

Craftworlds are big, but they also are sparsely populated.


This wouldn't include Maiden World eldar. They might have some higher populations but they just stay on their planets picking flowers.

My guess is each Craftworld has a population of several million plus several hundred Exodite worlds with probably populations in the low millions. People are making them out to be too big. They take forever to reproduce and only the smallest fraction of their population remains.

There are probably tens of billions of Dark Eldar though, if not hundreds of billions.

Like the people said, Eldar Craftworlds number in millions of Eldar citizens - not billions.

Harriticus wrote:There are probably tens of billions of Dark Eldar though, if not hundreds of billions.

Based on what? I'm just curious.

I mean, the Dark Eldar apparently, for the most part, all live in one city that a few hundred Space Marines can beat the hell out of, lol.

iirc the Space Marine force that attacked Commoragh was three chapters strong, and even then they were taking heavy casualities... and that's with Vecht deliberately sabotaging his fellow DE's war efforts in order to take control of the City.

If anything, I'd say that the Imperial assault on Commoragh was a far greater showing of Dark Eldar lethality than a good showing for the Imperium.

 Veteran Sergeant wrote:

Harriticus wrote:There are probably tens of billions of Dark Eldar though, if not hundreds of billions.

Based on what? I'm just curious.

I mean, the Dark Eldar apparently, for the most part, all live in one city that a few hundred Space Marines can beat the hell out of, lol.

Commorragh is far more then just 1 city. It's described as immense beyond measure and there are many satellite realms connected via Webway portals. They also reproduce via cloning and are difficult to stay dead, unlike Craftworld Eldar.

Besides Dark Eldar and the Harlequins, Eldar come in three general flavors.

(1) Craftworld Eldar -- which you seem to know about.

(2) Exodites -- They struck out on their own before the Fall and are now (generally) comparatively primitive. On contrast to the space-faring Craftworlders and renegades, Exodites tend to stay on one planet (usually an Eldar Maiden World).

(3) Renegades -- These are the Eldar that get tired of the strictures of the Craftworld or are exiled the Craftworld. Sometimes, they return to the Craftworld and sometimes they build formidable pirate fleets. The most famous example is probably Prince Yriel.

BlaxicanX wrote:
iirc the Space Marine force that attacked Commoragh was three chapters strong, and even then they were taking heavy casualities... and that's with Vecht deliberately sabotaging his fellow DE's war efforts in order to take control of the City.

If anything, I'd say that the Imperial assault on Commoragh was a far greater showing of Dark Eldar lethality than a good showing for the Imperium.

The Impurium has a thousand more chapters where they came from. How many more cities do the Dark Elves have?

 Testify wrote:

BlaxicanX wrote:
iirc the Space Marine force that attacked Commoragh was three chapters strong, and even then they were taking heavy casualities... and that's with Vecht deliberately sabotaging his fellow DE's war efforts in order to take control of the City.

If anything, I'd say that the Imperial assault on Commoragh was a far greater showing of Dark Eldar lethality than a good showing for the Imperium.

The Impurium has a thousand more chapters where they came from. How many more cities do the Dark Elves have?

How is that related in any way, shape or form to what I'm talking about?

Billions is way too high... even combined I always believed that the craftworld eldar were only perhaps 50 million of so. Its always said in the fluff that they are going extinct?
As for those who leave, there are the exodites, and there are outcasts such as rangers and pirates. Other than that I think it would be too hazardous for eldar to strike out on their own. Slaanesh would snatch them up as soon as he/she/it could and they would be killed by just about any other race in 40k, including other eldar (thinking dark eldar here).

There are probably a billion eldar on each of the major craftworlds. The smaller craftworlds have a population of hundreds of millions to tens of millions.

Otherwise it doesn't work. Craftworlds, unsurprisingly, are the size of PLANETS, or at least moons. If there were 1 or 2 million eldar per craftworld, they would be completely depopulated structures, where you could walk for months without seeing another elf. That isn't the impression I get.

The total eldar population is way less than a trillion though. There are only barely more than a trillion humans, who outnumber the eldar literally thousands to one.

And going extinct on a galactic scale doesn't mean there are virtually none left, it means they face a series of problems which are insurmountable, and will inevitably destroy them. It's separate from the fact that there aren't very many eldar. There are battles in 40k were the casualties number in the billions, so having 12-20 ships with around a billion civilians on them is still very much in the 'you're screwed' range of populations for 40k.

I would agree with the billion mark for a Craftworld's population. They're the size of small planetoids so must have a certain population density or you wouldn't need them that size.

60 or 500 billion is far too many though. I wouldn't think there are that many Eldar in the species. That's more than some Hive Worlds, which are supposed to be the most densely populated places in the setting.

The Eldar are a dying race after all. On a galactic scale about a billion per Craftworld (for the larger more populated ones) seems about right, certainly no larger.

Billions might be too much for Craftworlds, but there are Maiden worlds that have had growing populations and have been untouched by combat since before the Fall. That would mean at least 10,000 years of uninhibited growth.

I wouldn't hesitate to say that, combining all the Craftworlds with Maiden worlds, the race is probably around the 100 billion mark, easily.

You guys have to keep in kind that the "Dying Race" thing is a matter of scale. To our measily 7 billion strong population, 100 billion seems huge. But compared to a Galaxy that has trillions of humans, and trillions of orks, and and billions if not trillions of Tyranids, 100 billion would be a drop in the ocean.

 Silverthorne wrote:
There are probably a billion eldar on each of the major craftworlds. The smaller craftworlds have a population of hundreds of millions to tens of millions.

Otherwise it doesn't work. Craftworlds, unsurprisingly, are the size of PLANETS, or at least moons. If there were 1 or 2 million eldar per craftworld, they would be completely depopulated structures, where you could walk for months without seeing another elf. That isn't the impression I get.

The total eldar population is way less than a trillion though. There are only barely more than a trillion humans, who outnumber the eldar literally thousands to one.

And going extinct on a galactic scale doesn't mean there are virtually none left, it means they face a series of problems which are insurmountable, and will inevitably destroy them. It's separate from the fact that there aren't very many eldar. There are battles in 40k were the casualties number in the billions, so having 12-20 ships with around a billion civilians on them is still very much in the 'you're screwed' range of populations for 40k.

I don't know where you are getting your population for humans from, because it is far larger than a mere trillion.

The Hive Worlds of the Imperium are classed as having upper limit population of 500 billion (3rd edition 40K rulebook, p. 114). The 5th edition rulebook on p. 115 estimates there to be 3.238 * 10^4 or 32,380 hive worlds in the Imperium. If all 1,000,000 worlds of the Imperium were hive worlds with 500 billion people that is 5 * 10^17. That is an UPPER limit for the Imperium's population because we know that not all worlds are maximum population hive worlds.

Minea from that page in the 5th edition rulebook is described as a typical example of a hive world, and it has 154 billion population, well under the 500 billion maximum. For ease, if we give them all the same population as Mimea. 32,380 hive worlds of 154 billion population each is 4.98652 * 10^15. In other words, that is 4986.52 trillion.

Against such a population level (for the hive worlds alone), for the Eldar to have anything less than tens of billions per major Craftworld renders them insignificant on the scale of 40K. If the entire race numbered a trillion, they would still be outnumbered nearly 5000 to 1 by just hive world humans. Yet by virtue of them having a Codex, and how frequently they seem to fight and meddle in galactic affairs, we know they are not insignificant.

Iracundus wrote:

Against such a population level (for the hive worlds alone), for the Eldar to have anything less than tens of billions per major Craftworld renders them insignificant on the scale of 40K. If the entire race numbered a trillion, they would still be outnumbered nearly 5000 to 1 by just hive world humans. Yet by virtue of them having a Codex, and how frequently they seem to fight and meddle in galactic affairs, we know they are not insignificant.

QFT. This is why we calculated with billions per Craftworld. A mere few-hundred million is simply waaaay too few for anything other than mere existence. It would actually justify the Invaders scenario, where a single Chapter extermianted a whole Craftworld. And as i saw it, everyone loathes this bit of fluff.

Oh, and for the "dying race" thing we always thought that it is their low birth rate/high attrition rate. I mean, wheny you are dying, then you should grow weaker and weaker with each passing moment. And with a population of a few billions, the Eldar would go extinct within a few of those moments.

The Farseers don't 'mess with the eldar peoples heads' they guide the population to try and avert disaster.

Iracundus wrote:

 Silverthorne wrote:
There are probably a billion eldar on each of the major craftworlds. The smaller craftworlds have a population of hundreds of millions to tens of millions.

Otherwise it doesn't work. Craftworlds, unsurprisingly, are the size of PLANETS, or at least moons. If there were 1 or 2 million eldar per craftworld, they would be completely depopulated structures, where you could walk for months without seeing another elf. That isn't the impression I get.

The total eldar population is way less than a trillion though. There are only barely more than a trillion humans, who outnumber the eldar literally thousands to one.

And going extinct on a galactic scale doesn't mean there are virtually none left, it means they face a series of problems which are insurmountable, and will inevitably destroy them. It's separate from the fact that there aren't very many eldar. There are battles in 40k were the casualties number in the billions, so having 12-20 ships with around a billion civilians on them is still very much in the 'you're screwed' range of populations for 40k.

I don't know where you are getting your population for humans from, because it is far larger than a mere trillion.

The Hive Worlds of the Imperium are classed as having upper limit population of 500 billion (3rd edition 40K rulebook, p. 114). The 5th edition rulebook on p. 115 estimates there to be 3.238 * 10^4 or 32,380 hive worlds in the Imperium. If all 1,000,000 worlds of the Imperium were hive worlds with 500 billion people that is 5 * 10^17. That is an UPPER limit for the Imperium's population because we know that not all worlds are maximum population hive worlds.

Minea from that page in the 5th edition rulebook is described as a typical example of a hive world, and it has 154 billion population, well under the 500 billion maximum. For ease, if we give them all the same population as Mimea. 32,380 hive worlds of 154 billion population each is 4.98652 * 10^15. In other words, that is 4986.52 trillion.

Against such a population level (for the hive worlds alone), for the Eldar to have anything less than tens of billions per major Craftworld renders them insignificant on the scale of 40K. If the entire race numbered a trillion, they would still be outnumbered nearly 5000 to 1 by just hive world humans. Yet by virtue of them having a Codex, and how frequently they seem to fight and meddle in galactic affairs, we know they are not insignificant.

That's a good analysis. I didn't realize there was such a ridiculous number of humans. The other option is for there to be around a billion space elves for craftworld, and just a bunch more craftworlds, IE thousands of thousands, than are named in the background. That number of hive worlders also makes the number of Spazz Murines seem pretty ridiculously small, but I've always felt that.

BlaxicanX wrote:
iirc the Space Marine force that attacked Commoragh was three chapters strong, and even then they were taking heavy casualities... and that's with Vecht deliberately sabotaging his fellow DE's war efforts in order to take control of the City.

If anything, I'd say that the Imperial assault on Commoragh was a far greater showing of Dark Eldar lethality than a good showing for the Imperium.

Technically, they were just trying to hold the line until they could rescue that captured Strike Cruiser. Conquering/destroying Commoragh wasn't really the goal; don't know about the former, but if they wanted to do the latter, they could have just fired countless vortex torpedoes and imploded High Commoragh into the Warp. Seeing as High Commoragh is the center of the Dark City, this might trigger a chain reaction that would rip entire sections out of the Webway...

Iracundus wrote:

 Silverthorne wrote:
There are probably a billion eldar on each of the major craftworlds. The smaller craftworlds have a population of hundreds of millions to tens of millions.

Otherwise it doesn't work. Craftworlds, unsurprisingly, are the size of PLANETS, or at least moons. If there were 1 or 2 million eldar per craftworld, they would be completely depopulated structures, where you could walk for months without seeing another elf. That isn't the impression I get.

The total eldar population is way less than a trillion though. There are only barely more than a trillion humans, who outnumber the eldar literally thousands to one.

And going extinct on a galactic scale doesn't mean there are virtually none left, it means they face a series of problems which are insurmountable, and will inevitably destroy them. It's separate from the fact that there aren't very many eldar. There are battles in 40k were the casualties number in the billions, so having 12-20 ships with around a billion civilians on them is still very much in the 'you're screwed' range of populations for 40k.

I don't know where you are getting your population for humans from, because it is far larger than a mere trillion.

The Hive Worlds of the Imperium are classed as having upper limit population of 500 billion (3rd edition 40K rulebook, p. 114). The 5th edition rulebook on p. 115 estimates there to be 3.238 * 10^4 or 32,380 hive worlds in the Imperium. If all 1,000,000 worlds of the Imperium were hive worlds with 500 billion people that is 5 * 10^17. That is an UPPER limit for the Imperium's population because we know that not all worlds are maximum population hive worlds.

Minea from that page in the 5th edition rulebook is described as a typical example of a hive world, and it has 154 billion population, well under the 500 billion maximum. For ease, if we give them all the same population as Mimea. 32,380 hive worlds of 154 billion population each is 4.98652 * 10^15. In other words, that is 4986.52 trillion.

Against such a population level (for the hive worlds alone), for the Eldar to have anything less than tens of billions per major Craftworld renders them insignificant on the scale of 40K. If the entire race numbered a trillion, they would still be outnumbered nearly 5000 to 1 by just hive world humans. Yet by virtue of them having a Codex, and how frequently they seem to fight and meddle in galactic affairs, we know they are not insignificant.

Numerical superiority on a galactic scale means relatively little in a setting where these numbers simply cannot be transported. The billions of people on a hiveworld will largely remain on that hiveworld and unless their world is directly attacked they will play no great role in the conflicts of even a neighbouring solar system, simply because the number of people which can be transported trough space is very limited. Since the Eldar do not fight the kinds of wars that pit them against billions of potential opponents i see no reason why they should be able to match the billions of people found on hiveworlds with billions of their own.
The Eldar have their codex because, unlike other species, their psychic abilities and their far superior technology allow them to punch far above their weight and not because they can be found fighting wars of attrition in every imperial sector ( which they simply can't).

Not true at all about Space Marines being able to easily deal with dark eldar in Commoragh. Consider in the space of a few moments..maybe an hour, 250 space marines were killed.

How big is a chapter of space marines? 1000 strong? and in an hour the Dark Eldar killed 250 of them?....that doesn't sound to me like the Space Marines were in any kind of position where they could have done much if Vect hadn't been pulling strings to help them to leave.

Bottom line...those space marines were played...hard....just like the other Archons in Commoragh that vect wanted to destroy.

Remember, the story said all of their guns were silenced by Dark Eldar weaponry. There would have been no firing of Warp Torpedoes or anything else. If the goal of Vect had been to destroy every single space marine and every single space marine ship it would have happened. But that wasn't the goal.

At any rate, there is no real numbers given for how many Eldar populate a Craftworld in the 41st millenium. Consider, many craftworlds were thrown back and forwards into time and space with the birth of Slaanesh. Many others took their chances and left the galaxy. It is only the ones that stuck around that we know anything about. And GW hasn't given population numbers for them in a very long time.

At the time of the fall, there were only a few hundred thousand per craftworld. And the craftworlds were only the size of large cities.

Now they are the size of small moons. Ask yourself, from a population of hundreds of thousands and ships being the size of cities, to ships now being the size of small moons, why would the Eldar need to build so much space if there weren't a lot of Eldar?

I think the Eldar population per craftworld is far larger than any here have said, simply based on the size of growth of their ships.

I put the total population of craftworlders at somewhere between 1 to 3 trillion eldar. Not counting the ones that were thrown through time and space or left the galaxy at the fall.

Even with those numbers, compared to every other race in the galaxy, it is enough to say they are a dying race.

 KingDeath wrote:


Numerical superiority on a galactic scale means relatively little in a setting where these numbers simply cannot be transported. The billions of people on a hiveworld will largely remain on that hiveworld and unless their world is directly attacked they will play no great role in the conflicts of even a neighbouring solar system, simply because the number of people which can be transported trough space is very limited. Since the Eldar do not fight the kinds of wars that pit them against billions of potential opponents i see no reason why they should be able to match the billions of people found on hiveworlds with billions of their own.
The Eldar have their codex because, unlike other species, their psychic abilities and their far superior technology allow them to punch far above their weight and not because they can be found fighting wars of attrition in every imperial sector ( which they simply can't).

It does matter because the Eldar have been shown attacking hiveworlds such as in Planetstrike. In that attack, Aspect Warriors cleared out a hive city in close quarter combat. That is a massacre of millions to billions right there. That number of civilians is enough to stampede down a small number of enemy infantry in close quarters no matter how brilliant they might be in close combat. Sheer weight of numbers and bodies if nothing else would have been enough to drown them if the Eldar were not more numerous than they are often given credit for.

This is just one of those:
http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/ScifiWritersHaveNoSenseOfScale

The number of people being transportable being some sort of limitation is also one of those things that does not make sense if one thinks about it. Why? Because hiveworlds are depicted as requiring vast imports of food and resources to be able to stave off starvation and to be able to feed the factories. That means there is a substantial amount of merchant shipping in the Imperium feeding these hiveworlds. This means some of that vast merchant shipping is available for conversion to troop transport in case of military emergencies. And if that is true, then the number of bodies available to ship to any interstellar conflict is far greater, which then feeds into the necessity for Eldar populations needing to be greater to have any hope of standing in the face of such lopsided numbers.

Iracundus wrote:

 KingDeath wrote:


Numerical superiority on a galactic scale means relatively little in a setting where these numbers simply cannot be transported. The billions of people on a hiveworld will largely remain on that hiveworld and unless their world is directly attacked they will play no great role in the conflicts of even a neighbouring solar system, simply because the number of people which can be transported trough space is very limited. Since the Eldar do not fight the kinds of wars that pit them against billions of potential opponents i see no reason why they should be able to match the billions of people found on hiveworlds with billions of their own.
The Eldar have their codex because, unlike other species, their psychic abilities and their far superior technology allow them to punch far above their weight and not because they can be found fighting wars of attrition in every imperial sector ( which they simply can't).

It does matter because the Eldar have been shown attacking hiveworlds such as in Planetstrike. In that attack, Aspect Warriors cleared out a hive city in close quarter combat. That is a massacre of millions to billions right there. That number of civilians is enough to stampede down a small number of enemy infantry in close quarters no matter how brilliant they might be in close combat. Sheer weight of numbers and bodies if nothing else would have been enough to drown them if the Eldar were not more numerous than they are often given credit for.

This is just one of those:
http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/ScifiWritersHaveNoSenseOfScale

The number of people being transportable being some sort of limitation is also one of those things that does not make sense if one thinks about it. Why? Because hiveworlds are depicted as requiring vast imports of food and resources to be able to stave off starvation and to be able to feed the factories. That means there is a substantial amount of merchant shipping in the Imperium feeding these hiveworlds. This means some of that vast merchant shipping is available for conversion to troop transport in case of military emergencies. And if that is true, then the number of bodies available to ship to any interstellar conflict is far greater, which then feeds into the necessity for Eldar populations needing to be greater to have any hope of standing in the face of such lopsided numbers.

Yet millions of Eldar in a single attack are simply not supported by any of the available fluff (at most we get "hundreds" or a few thousand or, much more often, no exact numbers at all ) just as tens of thousands of merchantships for a single sector/ subsector are not supported by any avaiable fluff. "Hundreds, perhaps thousands" of merchantships participated in the gothic war ( ships of the gothic war, the transport entry ) and not the tens of thousands we would need if the numbers actualy made sense.
We have the same problem with spessmuhreen fluff. Somehow the Iron Hands managed to defeat an entire rebellious subsector, the Ultramarines suceeded against many times their number in the Fail of Damnos, the Imperial Fists easily conquer an entire Fortressworld held by the Iron Warriors and many more examples of idiocy.
Hells almost all numbers we get from GW are downright stupid. A major military endavour like the Sabbat crusade is a billion strong? Realy? The first hiveworld they meet will be downright impossible to conquer ( unless they want to ruin it trough extensive orbital bombardment ) and they would still need between 10000 ( if each ship can transport on average 100000 people, which is unlikely given the numbers we have ) and 50000 ( for 20000 people per transport ) troop transports for it.
This doesn't even touch the idioticaly low numbers for imperial warships we get, which would somehow have to ensure the security of all these trade ships and troop transports.

Seriously, the best we can do with GW's numbers is to smile, nod and hope that we didn't get any dumber just from reading them.

I think GW sees numbers for things like population like they see skulls on their architecture. The more the better!

I always saw Craftworlds as being very large US cities in space. Large parts of them are always described as being empty parkland, with small groups taking strolls. The main Craftworlds (with the obvious exception of Iyanden) probably have a population of over a million, with smaller craftworlds being in the hundreds of thousands.

That's still a freaking ton of people. Imagine the commonly quoted situation where a Chapter of Marines assaults a Craftworld. That would be approx. 1000 fighting men (plus any machines they can even make landfall with) against an entirely combat capable population (any Eldar citizen is assumedly having the training to be drafted as a Guardian, at least) that could easily be 100-500 times their number (for my vision of a "small" craftworld). In home terrain, with a stable and full supply line right at hand. With tanks, titans and aircraft, as well.

Even if they somehow made a go at it with their "superior godlike abilities", I certainly hope that Bolters can internally regenerate their ammo.

GW writers just throw numbers around with no sense of scale. Hive worlds, which used to be a big deal when described as populations of 20-30 billion collected into many hives the size of New York across the surface (remember, most Hive Worlds do not have the use of their entire surface like Earth), are now being described as having a population of up to 70 times that of our current Earth?

Numbers to GW are just another Grimdark trope.

Actually its more of the opposite.


They throw around numbers like they are huge and amazing, yet they forget just how big the Galaxy is. GWs numbers need to be much larger then they actually are.

The whole Empire of a Million worlds thing is woefully outdated. A million planets in the Milky Way galaxy is nothing.

Its also why the 1000 chapters of 1000 marines each is a little silly too.




The more recent numbers of a single Hive Planet having billions and billions of people is fairly accurate.

If we were to assume a planet the size of Earth having a population density equal to Tokyo. Thats 6000 people per square kilometer.

Earth has a surface area of approximatly 510,072,000 square kilometers.

That gives us roughly 306,043,000,000 people


Of course a Hive structure can have a population density many many times more then what is achieved in Tokyo today.

So you can easily squeeze 306 billion people on an Earth sized planet and still have open surface area.

Naturally food will need to be imported, or simply have waste be recycled as is often stated as happening(the infamous Corpse Starch)

Keep in mind that we need to factor in not only how many Eldar there are on any given Craftworld, but the fact that there could be a lot of Craftworlds we never see or hear of, the fact that we have no clue how many Corsair fleets and space stations are floating around, the fact that we don't know how many Outcasts are wandering about not bothering to report in, and the fact that we have no idea how big Comorragh actually is...

So there are a lot more Eldar than people think there are, yes.

 Grey Templar wrote:
Actually its more of the opposite.


They throw around numbers like they are huge and amazing, yet they forget just how big the Galaxy is. GWs numbers need to be much larger then they actually are.

The whole Empire of a Million worlds thing is woefully outdated. A million planets in the Milky Way galaxy is nothing.

It's fine, as the vast majority of the Galaxy is unexplored and uncharted, nevermind conquered by the Imperium. There are probably large uncharted alien empires in Segmentum Solar. You don't think of the Imperium as a territorial entity, but rather a series of planets and systems connected by Warp travel and Astropaths. This is flatly stated in every rulebook since 3rd edition I believe.

Anyway yes the non-Dark Eldar population is in the billions if you include Exodites, lost Craftworlds, Maiden Worlds, Corsairs, Outcasts, Harlequins, and so on. But Craftworlds aren't going to be tens of billions in population is what I maintain. They're enormous ships, yes, but they're more or less massive city-state ships as opposed to planet ships. Moreover they're wide, open, and not densely populated. I think the larger Craftworlds are "only" going to have several million Eldar on them.

 KingDeath wrote:

Yet millions of Eldar in a single attack are simply not supported by any of the available fluff (at most we get "hundreds" or a few thousand or, much more often, no exact numbers at all ) just as tens of thousands of merchantships for a single sector/ subsector are not supported by any avaiable fluff. "Hundreds, perhaps thousands" of merchantships participated in the gothic war ( ships of the gothic war, the transport entry ) and not the tens of thousands we would need if the numbers actualy made sense.
We have the same problem with spessmuhreen fluff. Somehow the Iron Hands managed to defeat an entire rebellious subsector, the Ultramarines suceeded against many times their number in the Fail of Damnos, the Imperial Fists easily conquer an entire Fortressworld held by the Iron Warriors and many more examples of idiocy.
Hells almost all numbers we get from GW are downright stupid. A major military endavour like the Sabbat crusade is a billion strong? Realy? The first hiveworld they meet will be downright impossible to conquer ( unless they want to ruin it trough extensive orbital bombardment ) and they would still need between 10000 ( if each ship can transport on average 100000 people, which is unlikely given the numbers we have ) and 50000 ( for 20000 people per transport ) troop transports for it.
This doesn't even touch the idioticaly low numbers for imperial warships we get, which would somehow have to ensure the security of all these trade ships and troop transports.

Seriously, the best we can do with GW's numbers is to smile, nod and hope that we didn't get any dumber just from reading them.

As I said, this is a matter of writers having no sense of scale. Small Eldar populations make no sense given what they are shown as doing in Planetstrike. In a galaxy of literally thousands of trillions of humans, having a major Craftworld with populations in the thousands or millions makes no sense, especially given that the Imperium is shown to be xenophobic and therefore not likely to just fold up and surrender to the Eldar at the first Imperial setback or decapitation strike.

The only handwaving one can do with regards to Imperial crusades is to argue that that is the number of troops levied and then any more have to be levied from the actual campaign area, and that merchant ships make many supply and transport runs. In other words, take advantage of any remaining loyalist worlds or surrendered worlds, and draft their population and PDF for use. Standard transports are shown in Imperial Armour as transporting a regiment or so (sometimes just elements of one regiment), and Andy Chambers in:

http://www.wolfedengames.com/battlefleetgothic/crew.htm

said Imperial warships can transport 1/3 to 1/2 their crew size in ground troops. Using Andy Chambers' sizes of 1500-2000 crew per BFG hit point, that is 12000-16000 per cruiser, meaning 4000-8000 transported troops. That is about 1/2 to 1 regiment if we use the Cadian 8th (8000 strong), as an example of a representative regiment.

Well we know Commoragh is "vast beyond all imagining" according to the Dark Eldar codex. I would estimate hundreds of billions if not trillions of people living in Commoragh, including non-eldar slaves, bounty hunters, etc. I agree that the eldar population is likely around a billion per craftworld. A few hundred craftworlds plus various planets and rogues and we're talking eldar galactic population in the high hundreds of billions. Also, Commoragh is so impossibly huge that even if the Inquisition fired every torpedo they have into it they could never destroy the whole city. It has so many sections and subsections that even comprehending an attack on the city is insane. Not to mention, Vect has been known to activate "failsafes" that will completely and permanently seperate entire realms and sections of the city from the whole, so even if the dark eldar there were threatened they could simply lock the invading force into a closed area and let them starve.