I've been trying to play out the Chinese Revolution with the rebels, but each time I tried, it left me with only 5-ish armies out of the pre-revolt 55-ish I had. I tried reloading and moving troops around, and that didn't seem to help. So I figured whatever I'd done wrong was irreversible at this point (not getting democracy support up I figured), but I reloaded and sided with the Qing so I didn't have to scrap the game entirely. But then the revolutionaries had 16+ armies in their side, and my forces were reduced.

Can someone explain to me how staring armies are determined for the different sides of the revolt and maybe what I should be doing to get as many as the AI had. I'd appreciate any help, thank you.