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No it would't be better. All of the gods can prosper in a peaceful environment just as easily as a wartorn one, perhaps more so (In fact Slannesh was born in a time of relative galactic peace). Other than Khorne but he has gotten by in the past. The reason Chaos is winning is because Horus set the galaxy on a military backfoot that it was never able to recover from and sent it into a period of such logistical hopelessness that a militant religion was able to consume the entire Imperium...

Beings that gain power from violence and death are definitely better off in a wartorn environment.

Chaos is winning because it corrupts and in the scale of the galaxy few people know of it.

Khorne is the only one that gains power from violence or death at all. The rest of them are better off without war. The one thing that they all thrive on is disorder which is synonymous with freedom and progressive thinking. It's almost like this setting is supposed to be grim and dark or something...

Actually i am fairly sure, that Khorne got depicted as not hatefull, but rather embracing war and bloodshed, aswell as Darwinism applied to society at first and then turned into Khaines sociopathic Chaos twin.
So basically old school khorne, whilest never turning down a fight was basically just the god of "honorable" face to face combat, whilest the newer depictions mainly show him and his followers merilly purging everything equally.

It might be worth to point out, but the more tactical aspects of Khorne easily can overwheigh, for exemple the Blood Pact shows mainly rational decisions and even maintaining infrastructure and .factories.
My theory is, that the worships and the outcomes depend on the state of mind of the worshipper.

A Marine veteran whilest certainly superhuman will also see everything under him as worthless and not worth regarding other than cannonfodder. Add to that the millenia of warfare and you get a sociopath.

On the other side you have normal humans, which mostly fear Psykers, so joinin Khorne to get the power to purge some of those is certainly not the worst idea. ( Mind you the imperial cult anyways is a easy excuse to worship everything but the emperor)

Add to that, that Khorne literally is not giving a gak about prayer, getting his worship instead via fighting with conventional means, so basically each conflict that ends violently is worship of him and that means in turn any warrior is atleast respected by him, aslong as you don't pull psychic shenanigans.

So to conclude, Khornes is an equal oppurtunity god for everyone and supplements any society and civilisation with warrior culture. If anything that makes him quite the "neutral" option, neutral in 40k however still means a sociopath that just kills equally.

 BigbyWolf wrote:
Khorne is the only one that gains power from violence or death at all. The rest of them are better off without war. The one thing that they all thrive on is disorder which is synonymous with freedom and progressive thinking. It's almost like this setting is supposed to be grim and dark or something...

Nurgle is about death and rot and disease. Khorne is bloodshed, violence and rage. Slaanesh is about desire and excess. Tzeentch is about change and ambition.

Nurgle and Khorne benefit greatly from war as that's more death and war and disease etc. The other two benefit in a more indirect manner because as while the Imperium spends its time ranging around exterminating everyone else they don't combat Chaos.

If the Emperor had bothered to make a more peaceful alliance oriented galaxy then you'd have all the various advances races watching out for Chaos and stopping it. Which is way worse for Chaos.

Rot and disease yes but not necessarily death, as a matter of fact Nurgle is the only Chaos god that actually cares about his followers and after all Rot is part of the circle of life. Nurgle gains power from social decay just as much as physical decay and in a peaceful society would thrive off of things like pollution, complacency and acceptance of mortality. Nurgle is fine with Khornes war's to an extent, but obviously making a planet unlivable would be a point of conflict between the two.

Also when it comes to Chaos, the more someone knows about it and how it works, the easier it is for that person to be corrupted by it, this is why the Grey Knights kill all non-marines that know about it (or have even seen a demon) every time they win a conflict against chaos. Even Commissars who must display fanatical loyalty as part of their training are only told the very basics of how it works out of fear of corruption. While Marines are far more capable of resisting, obviously even they aren't immune to it. While it should be noted that all playable Xenos have some sort of MacGuffin against the influence of chaos, all of them are just as unwilling too cooperate as The Imperium is.

The Grey Knights in no way kill everyone who knows about Chaos. Hence why people from Cadia exist. Well before Gathering Storm anyway. Plus the people who know about Chaos are routinely harder to corrupt than those who don't.

What pollution? The only races with significant pollution are the Imperium and Orks both of which would have much less of it in a decent galaxy.

I think the unwillingness to co-operate might be ever so slightly related to the massive genocidal campaigns the Imperiums built on.

Cadian guardsmen are told they are fighting "warp xenos" and even then I'm saying they are only purged after seeing them first hand. Google "40k the months of shame" to see I'm right about grey knights.

As for cooperation I mean the necrons and 99.99% of eldar see humans as monkeys. Orks and nids are a nope too and the tau would be willing to cooperate as long as mankind bowed down to them else be purged exactly like the imperium does...

They see the Warp made manifest in their sky. There's no two ways about it - Cadians know of Chaos. Not to the full extent of a Grey Knight but they know it. As does everyone else near a Warp Storm, every psyker and anyone with a myth about Chaos. If they were all killed then the GK wouldn't ever fight a demon.

I'm familiar with the months of shame.

I think you've misunderstood my point. The Imperium shouldn't try and go for peace at the current stage of the timeline it's way too late for that. My point was that the Emperor should have gone for a peaceful galaxy at the start instead of his genocide obsession. So you'd have alliances with things like Eldar and Interex and Diasporex. Races like Tau could be brought in at the beginning of their expansion and things like Orks would be much more easily handled.

The Imperium as it is is stuck on a single path with no way out bar jumping ship entirely.

Nurgle is a God of Death... His domains are death, decay, despair, and fear. He gets a lot out of warfare.