I have been using Blender to create low poly models and animations for Tempest Citadel. Blender can export a human readable FBX file that describes the model and it's animation completely. With only a little head-scratching I got FBX importing into my hand-crafted game engine, ready to animate soldiers and monsters alike.
This is the basic model and skeleton import - half the time this comes in scrambled and stretched like some kind of alien, that is until I get the matrices and transforms sorted out.
With the basic animation working I do a stress test to see how expensive it is to render lots of guys. Turns out I could have 100s animating without slowdown... however this is reduced when you add AI and pathfinding to each soldier. I am aiming at squad combat rather than armies, so about 20 units per side should be fine.
Some soldiers go exploring a field of grass. This is a left-over from another game I was working on - the world of Tempest Citadel has a much more damaged/scarred surface and grass and pretty flowers will have been ripped/burnt/electrocuted to dust long ago.
This is a really early/rough view of combat. Apart from the Barbarians I expect everything in this image will change dramatically as Tempest Citadel develops - the land, the AI, the combat effects... well you've got to start somewhere!