Quote:
Originally Posted by Astromancer
The Imperium would need to control trade and opportunity to lure these cultures into treaties and entanglements. Venice wasn't beated by conquest. The redirection of Europe's trade with Asia from the Mediterranean to the Atlantic slowly ground both Venice and the Ottoman State to dust.
The 3I would need to gain control of the trade networks and use that control to bleed independent states to death. Wars of conquest would still need to be fought. But, like Napoleon taking Venice, the real defeat came centuries earlier.
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I think you are missing my point. It is not conquest that is a threat to planets that have learned to thrive in the Long Night, it is peace. If they can compete at all survivability is their big sell. In a time of order, it is capacity.
Oh and technically, Venice was beaten by a number of factors including the centralization of territorial states. Speaking of which, it was beaten by conquest-in 1848.