Here's the thing: you can perceive a sound as 'loud', even at low volume.

https://ccrma.stanford.edu/CCRMA/Courses/151/

Our perception of volume, number and size doesn't depend solely on amplitude. There are additional cues your mammal brain analyzes: is it ten things or one thing? Big or small? Near or far? Besides that, amplitude and frequency don't map linearly onto perception. It gets a bit weird.

One way make things bigger, is to consider what makes a crowd sound large. Is it the one voice track at +20 dB? No. You need a variety of voices, reverb, etc. It's not just pulling up the gain fader.

So before getting too hung up on compression and limiting, first play around with techniques that add volume. Overdubbing and chorusing can increase perceived volume without any increase in RMS. Adding distance (reverb) can increase apparent size (volume), as can spreading out the image. Other spectral distortion (like soft clipping) sounds like overdrive to our brain, so we interpret that things are heating up. EQ can punch things up, increase power. Finally, some sounds can be made to sound 'bigger' by time stretching or downward pitch-shifting.

My 2¢.