Well the thing is that this again goes back to the nature of the universe, lack of free will, and intent in the cycles, etc... The idea is that at the time of the movies your dealing with the end of an era of good, the Jedi are supposed to be fairly weak and ineffective as their time has passed, there very little conflict or strife in the galaxy, and little actual need for the Jedi, they effectively operate as a very small group of agents and diplomats for the galactic senate. At this time in the universe the very thought of someone assembling a military and using it to blockade a planet was pretty much unheard of, and the Republic saw no need to maintain anything like a military force for purposes of intervention.Halyah said:Given the vast area covered by the republic, the amount of Jedi that would've existed would likely dwarf any modern organization by comparison. So to be honest it's an oddity that the old EU didn't have a lot more of them showing up given there'd be many who wasn't even in republic space at the time.Therumancer said:-Snipped-
Of course I doubt George Lucas really understood the sheer scales involved when dealing with things on a galactic level heh. Then again to be fair to the guy, most people don't. I won't claim to understand it properly either.
Likewise at this point in the cycle, you might find one force sensitive in a generation on a highly populated planet. Hence why they run around with their little "test" (as ridiculous as they define it, but The Force can appear and allow itself to be tested for any way it wants). Though arguably anyone The Force wants trained will be trained... it's important to note that what people think they are deciding or choosing to happen is an illusion even if they don't realize it.
Going back to things that were based on what Lucas wrote, to the era of the "Old Republic" and such, there were a lot more force users back then as the narrative The Force created was far different. The Jedi also weren't supposed to be quite the same way, remember these are the guys who committed multiple acts of species genocide, and literally wiped out The Sith to the point where as of the end of the next era nobody even knew for sure what a Sith was. To an extent The Exile and Revan mention what had to be done (again this is pretty much canon as it came from Lucas and his notes apparently) and in some ways the whole Jedi order of the time is a bunch of hypocrites because they are trying to erase their past and the magnitude of the things they had to do in order to bring about the peace. Your seeing them transform into the comparative joke that exists at the time of the movies, because after all, that is what The Force wants when it's time for another cycle.
The thing is that we just really can't conceive of the Utopia that The Republic was for a while, we mostly see it in decay. There was no need for any kind of large scale organizations, or so The Force dictated (and without true free will, it can make this happen). For a couple thousand years before the movies and things started to fall apart the whole galaxy might have literally been dancing around singing "This is the age of Aquarius".
That said, your pretty much correct that in a more "balanced" time like the battles taking place between the Sith Empire and Old Republic with swarms of force users on either side, something like "Order 66" wouldn't have worked, and one guy couldn't have pretty much brought down most of the order by wiping out one school. For example the main Jedi Temple in Corscant is destroyed at the beginning of "ToR: Online" and the Grandmaster of the Jedi dies, but all that does is piss the Jedi off and convince them it's time to get serious.... something which arguably The Force wanted and fit it's narrative because the whole point is to bring about the destruction of The Sith Empire. In that game while the player gets involved in certain key planets and operations, the whole galaxy is supposed to be going at it, treaties aside.