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These are OOC musings on the ongoing expansion of the Tau (or T'au if you prefer but I prefer one less apostrophe) and their plans for a Sixth Sphere Expansion may be a sign of a deeper problem. Namely their own success may sow the seeds of their own downfall or at least major setback. I am approaching this from a socioeconomic and logistics perspective.

We know the Tau have successfully incorporated human auxiliaries, the gue'vesa, into their society and that this has been happening since the end of the Damocles Crusade. We know from stories set in more recent times like Broken Sword by Guy Haley in the Damocles anthology, but which is set in the conquest of Agrellan, that about the life of these as that story is told from the perspective of one such gue'vesa who even rises to gue'vesa'vre and ends up having vocal cord surgery to better pronounce the Tau language. Basically, a number of them are resettled in a settlement with fresh food, water, clean air, good housing, and education for their children. This extends even to widow benefits as the character describes how the widow of a slain gue'vesa comrade is well treated and her son wishes to join the gue'vesa auxiliaries too when he grows up. The character describes how those brought from the hive world of Agrellan felt like they had entered paradise. The Water Caste member this character sort of befriends admits that the main focus is not so much the first generation of humans (i.e. those that are captured or defect) but the 2nd generation and beyond of humans that grow up with the Greater Good.

This sounds all good for the Tau but the problem is one of scale. We know Water caste diplomats help foment unrest in the Imperium in various ways, among them promising better material conditions to oppressed working classes. The problem is when it comes time to fulfil these promises. We know that for relatively small population worlds like Taros, the Tau did successfully do so, and the human protectorate there fought willingly and fiercely against the Imperial reconquest as they had enjoyed an objectively better standard of life under Tau rule. However the problem is when it comes to worlds like hive worlds. Primary commodity worlds like agri-worlds and mining worlds produce goods that are relatively unprocessed but that can be fed directly into the Tau industrial supply chains, and are usually low population, making it easier to fulfil promises to them. The problem is vastly different for hive worlds. Their huge population is dependent on food imports as local food production/recycling is nowhere near sufficient to maintain the population. Their production meanwhile is of STC compatible human technology by a largely unskilled or semi-skilled population, with vital utilities controlling water, air, power possibly being under the control of monopolistic guilds like on Necromunda. Thus from an economic perspective these hive worlds are actually less useful to the Tau industrial complex than a world that deals in primary commodities.

In again Broken Sword, there is a description of the original Tau plan for Agrellan which was to reduce the population through resettling them and to attempt rehabilitation of the environment, as demonstrated by an air purifier installation. If the Tau seize a hive world, it is unknown to what extent they also seize the mercantile shipping that supply that world. Perhaps some Chartist captains or Navigator crewed ships defect to the Tau, but even if they do, the worlds that supply a hive world would also need to be taken by the Tau in order to maintain a steady supply of the basic necessities to prevent a hive world from collapsing into starvation. What is the size of Tau mercantile shipping? Unknown, but the Tau seem to use transport ships comparable in size to Imperial transports (see BFG rules), which means they may need approximately the same number of ships as the Imperium did in the beginning. Resettlement poses the problems of cargo capacity and where to move this displaced population? They have no useful skills as they were trained (if that) on hive world machinery, so they would either need to be resettled onto agri-worlds, mining worlds, or civilized worlds with capacity to absorb them. There would be the psychological factor of these people who have never seen the sky, so maybe mining worlds might be all they are suited for. Can the Tau move enough of them fast enough to relieve the pressure of suddenly constrained food shipments? Unknown. Rehabilitation of a hive world's blasted environment would take ages, and even if the Tau attempted speed rehabilitation they would face resistance from the guilds or other entrenched interests that maintained their power by controlling access to such vital things like breathable air or potable water.

The greater danger to the Tau is the disillusionment that may ensue if they fail to fulfil their promises, or fail to do so in a timely enough manner. While shipping a few thousand or even a few tens of thousand people off to a wonderful pre-planned settlement may make those lucky few ecstatic and singing the praises of the Greater Good, they are less than a drop in the bucket compared to the hundred of billion or more of a typical Imperial hive world. Meanwhile that hive world is a black hole of unproductive humans (from the economic perspective of the Tau empire) unless the Tau can repurpose their production to feed the needs of other conquered Imperial worlds as they would have the same tech base. Redirecting the Tau mercantile shipping to feed the hive world or gradually relocate its people would be a massive ball and chain dragging down the Tau empire, and would disrupt Tau shipping elsewhere. Meeting the various needs of retooling industrial lines to Tau standards or providing the civilian goods and installations (like air purifiers) would be a drag on Earth Caste production for the Tau war effort. Yet what choice do they have? If they fail to fulfil their promises, the disillusionment might explode into revolt.

Yet the Tau seem hellbent on going for yet another Sphere of Expansion? My theory is that they have found themselves perhaps inadvertently in a galactic Ponzi scheme. Maybe only the Ethereals and the highest Water Caste members realize it. In order to fulfil their promises to those they have conquered in sufficient numbers, they are forced to expand in order to exploit the resources of the newly conquered to quell at least somewhat the needs of those already conquered. Conquer an agri-world? Farm it into soil depletion and shove the harvests into the hungry mouths of that conquered hive world, saying you have increased their rations by 1% compared to the Imperium, just enough to keep the grumbling to a tolerable level until the next conquest. The best strategy for the Imperium might be to let the Tau take more hive worlds and cathedral worlds, though that would be unthinkable from an ideological perspective.

But will GW ever produce any detailed writing on Water Caste supply chain logistics, labor workforce planning, civil administration, or Earth Caste production timetables or priorities? No. More bolter porn, but I wish for more military and economic treatises and writing like Imperial Armor 1

An interesting take on the topic. A long while ago I also mused a bit about something similar basically asking if any in game-Tau source ever thought about the very real possibility of the Tau (species) becoming a minority in the Tau Empire (political body). Technically that might already have happened with the integration of Aggrellan, otherwise it will likely be the case when they conquer a second hive world.

Regarding the food problem I imagine (without a source, so this is only my opinion) that the water caste is competent enough that they conquered a sufficient number of human Agriworlds BEFORE they considered taking Agrellan.

Apart from that, one ugly, yet working short term solution regarding the "unskilled laborforce" and "incompatible industrial output" problems would be to use up those ressources for the expansion itself. While Agrellan for example might not be able to switch into producing Tau-industry compatible stuff in a whim, it might very well be able to raise some 100 million soldiers and equip them with IG-like weaponry and vehicles in a relatively short term. Those can then be used to overrun imperial Agri- and Mining worlds and the like to still the hunger of the hive world and give it time to transform. Sure those fast raised regiments won't be as combat effective as longer trained Guard regiments nor es modern equiped as Tau forces, but they don't have to to overan worlds that have a fraction of the population. The surviving soldiers can immediatly be left there as kind of a "resettling effort".

I think one challenge the Imperium faces will be that the Tau, if they are smart about it, should go for "supply world" first before going for the hive worlds. Which in turn means the imperial hive worlds will experience a drop in "live style" under imperial rule first (when the Agriworlds are sieged and possibly conquered by the Tau) before it gets better under Tau rule.

Turning that around: if the Imperium starts to follow this logic they would be well advised to fiercely defend and reconquer Agriworlds while they might consider loosing their grip on a hive world for some years if this means the Tau will seriously deplete their economy just to keep the Hivers lives on the same level let alone improve living conditions.

So far my two cents on the topic

TBF the T'au can be utterly ruthless if they want and they have been in the past. There's nothing to suggest they wouldn't let a Hive World starve if it refused the Greater Good. Strife would breed dissent and dissent would give the Water Caste an "in" with certain parts of the population, for example, helping the downtrodden outer settlements by delivering medical aid or food drops.
Life is still better under the T'au but getting there isn't necessarily going to be an easy road.
Also, I do agree that eventually, the T'au would have to settle for partial dominion over the galaxy with either the remains of the Imperium keeping the rest or multiple buffer states being set up between the T'au and Imperium that would be lesser than the Empire but still better than the Imperium. That way the T'au could still do damage to the Imperium but not be directly involved.

The issue is not what if a hive world refuses the Greater Good, but rather what happens when it accepts?

We know from past works that the Tau do make an attempt at fulfilling promises, either because they genuinely believe in the Greater Good or more cynically because failing to do so would render further such promise tactics ineffective for other worlds if word gets out. Word always gets out sooner or later. Not even the Imperium is airtight in terms of information leakage.

"Eat the rich"? Literally? That is only a temporary solution though it might reduce the hives' population by a few billion.

Piecemeal limited aid drops is basically equivalent to taking a few offworld to resettle in that a few might become fervent converts but the risk is you have the rest of all those many billions starving and angry enough to stampede and revolt for the sake of food and water. Humans are resentful creatures and seeing one settlement get aid while they miss out will lead to resentment and anger. With one hive world alone supposedly having a human population outnumbering the Tau population (at least as around the time of the Damocles Crusade), the Tau really wouldn't want a revolt soon after conquering a hive world.

Pyroalchi's solution is one I thought of too: equip those humans with simple STC weapons like lasguns and send them offworld to fight. However their loyalty might be suspect since they haven't received any goodies from the Tau. There is still the issue of equipping, feeding, and ferrying these to whatever new warzone awaits.

Conversely those worlds - given they are meant to be hyper productive and fuel the Imperial war machine - could be like India was to the British Empire. It provided the money, troops, muscle, heft, etc etc that allowed the establishment of the rest of the empire.

The_Real_Chris wrote:
Conversely those worlds - given they are meant to be hyper productive and fuel the Imperial war machine - could be like India was to the British Empire. It provided the money, troops, muscle, heft, etc etc that allowed the establishment of the rest of the empire.

I addressed this in my original post. The productivity of hive worlds is dependent on a stream of resources and food in, as well as a stream of ships out taking the produced goods and personnel. The Tau would need to preserve or re-establish equivalent supply chains to maintain the productivity of a hive world, and that would just be producing its existing STC based human tech. If the Tau want to convert it over to Tau tech, that would require retooling and re-education (or importing a workforce that is trained in Tau tech), and during this time the world would be a massive drain in resources, trained personnel, and transport shipping.

I think again the Empire can be ruthless about it. Stoking the fires of dissent between the various gangs, political groups, religious cults, and such to get the locals to reduce the population.
The Fire Caste is also still super aggressive and it could easily suit the Ethereals to loose them or a particularly violent Xenos ally *cough*Kroot*cough* on a world, then play it off as an "accident". They could then still gain the benefit of taking a world but also removing huge portions of a population that would likely be a huge pain to integrate. They can then play up the "We're soooo sorry :(" act to the remaining locals and begin indoctrination.

Part of that input was tithes and part was whatever market system exists in that region. Throw in the superior Tau tech that is shown to be far more productive and the reserves all worlds have to account for warp based supply delays and that you do have a window before Hive worlds fall to food rioting anarchy to re-establish supply lines. If you do you will have perhaps supercharged your empire, not created a ponzi scheme. Indeed going back to the British the mistake they then made with all that extra capability was conquer unproductive areas any empire would normally have left as not worth it.

Also regarding what I mentioned: let's say for the same of the argument that each hive World needs one dedicated Agriworld to not starve. Let's also assume that the Tau were sensible enough to take Agrellan AFTER they already conquered an Agri world or two.

Now fresh of the batch they could at least match the food supply of the Imperium (die some years), but contrary to them they don't have to get "the bigger picture". So they can basically say "Dear Agrellans, look over there, in the next system is another Agriworld. If you take that, no Agrellan Child will ever have to go hungry again. Even better, now that the evil Imperium doesn't limit you to only one Agriworld, the workers there won't have to work 20 hour shifts any more. What was that? This Agriworld I'm talking about is needed to support an imperial hiveworld a sector away? Sounds like an Imperial problem to me, right?"


Als basically bis much worse can it get? Agrellan is quite likely already on the "Bad things to happen" list of the imperium anyway so it won't her worse if they use their freedom to improve their situation.
Meanwhile the Imperium would face the very real problem to replace the influx of that Agriworld

The question is whether you would get enough ready people to sign up for this without having to provide some material support first. The entrenched xenophobia is strong within the Imperium.

The gue'vesa for example have already undergone some indoctrination or at the very least seen the materially better life on offer, and even then the character in Broken Sword keeps half expecting something bad is about to happen since he thinks it is too good to be true. Nothing ever does, at least not in the material fashion he was expecting. He also still feels guilty about shooting back at Guardsmen and feels like he's been blasphemous at fighting against a Space Marine (and playing a part in his death).

A freshly conquered hive world civilian inhabitant might not immediately launch themselves in a frothing rage to attack the alien Tau, but bearing arms against the Imperium so soon after conquest might be a high psychological bar to clear.

Now of course there could be something like a "Service guarantees citizenship" scheme where those that actively collaborate with the Tau get themselves and their family first in line for aid supplies, but then you come back to the original problem of then you may get a massive flood of volunteers (whose true loyalty is still uncertain), and the need to then be able to fulfil this promise at least to these collaborators.

The biggest bottleneck I think is not the individual production of worlds but the limits of interstellar shipping. We don't know the true numbers of Tau merchant shipping, but unless the Tau capture a significant number of Imperial transports (along with the crew to operate them), I would imagine it would tie up a lot of Tau transports as the Tau have no worlds that seem to be as economically unbalanced and dependent on imports like Imperial hive worlds and the Tau have less ships overall than the Imperium.

Sidenote: The Tau avoided the whole issue on Agrellan due to the Imperium conducting Exterminatus on the world. Agrellan was renamed by the Tau to Mu'gulath Bay, and only one hive city survived. Not sure whether the Tau have canonically taken another hive world.

As someone who works in Logistics, I can attest that most logistical issues can be handled with enough planning and forethought, something the Tau are very good at.

When they take a system either by peaceful of military means, they have already planned for the majority of that systems needs. Remember that since Tau don't use the warp, it takes them far longer to get from place to place. On the one hand, that does actually make their logistical issues worse as it slows down the global supply chains of the worlds they conquer, but on the other, it necessitates that when they go into a new system, they need to have everything on standby to provide for it.

As for the life of the hive citizens, it doesn't have to be brought up to Tau standard, or even Gue'Vesa standard on other worlds, it just has to be made noticeably better. With Tau technology improving automation and safety for the workers of the hive, that's plenty to win hearts and minds. Imagine if your new boss cut your hours by half and drastically improved your safety standards while maintaining your current pay. Even if you still lived in a shithole, you would be over the moon by this development.

Pyro also made a great point about taking over the worlds that supply these hives too, not only to lower the standard in the hive while under imperial rule, but to be able to supply them once they are under Tau rule. Tau tech could also drastically improve the output of these agri worlds, and resettle a small number from the hives to those world to help with increased production.

While I'm sure it would be a logistical gong show, I certainly don't see it as impossible. If there is any race that's up to the task, it would be the Tau and their many allies.

The biggest problem the Tau will have with integrating humans is that humanity is a psychic race, the Tau are not, and the Tau are completely un-equipped to handle that on their own. Now they could obtain the cooperation of former Imperial Authorities. However the Tau would likely under estimate traditional human methods of control as barbaric. (Wait, kill unsanctioned psychic people on sight ? We're not doing that).

If we think about this logically, the appearance of rogue psykers and chaos cults will be a serious challenge. Combine that with the levels of warp energy coming out of the great rift, and I anticipate a serious security crisis within that empire.

Now after the Tau Empire deals with its first major chaos invasion/uprising and the inevitable corruption of parts of its human population how the TAU decide to deal with that will be VERY interesting. Could be a good subject for Black Library and source books.

The Tau will be divided between those who wish to continue pursuing integration despite the risks, and those that want to either exterminate or exile humanity beyond the empires' borders.

Also what about the other alien races of the empire? What if they don't want humanity to be in it, but the Tau masters themselves want that?

Could that trigger the growth of a fanatical anti-human coalition of auxiliary races rebelling or engaging in terrorism against human communities? (IE. Something similar to Halo's Covenant?)

TBF we've already seen this with the 4th Sphere forces. Its not just humanity with a link to the Warp but most Auxiliary species and when they may have accidentally made a Greater Good Warp being, the 4th Sphere T'au started getting their Auxiliaires massacred.

One other issue to bring up.

Humanity couldn't really take off as a truly galactic interstellar empire until a mutation called the navigator gene arose. The Tau do not have that. As a result, Tau ships are really slow. That is going to place a hard cap on how far they can realistically expand. (Though they have exploited some warp rifts that have allowed them to go to different parts of the galaxy. However once those warp currents change, those Tau will be cut off from eachother).

An obvious solution would be to get human navigators working for them. That would probably be the one thing humanity could "gift" to the Tau Empire.

Maybe some super smart Ethereal will figure all this out and decide to kill all the occupied humans and just keep the navigators.

All very interesting material because it goes back to what some of the Eldar figured out a long time ago. The biggest problem with the galaxy is humanity.

Every alien can joyfully come together in the "Star Wars bar" but the human should be left out. Invite the human into that bar at your own peril! [Ok I'm referring to alien races that can reason with each other. Orks and Tyranids in a star wars bar would not end well!]

 Gert wrote:
TBF we've already seen this with the 4th Sphere forces. Its not just humanity with a link to the Warp but most Auxiliary species and when they may have accidentally made a Greater Good Warp being, the 4th Sphere T'au started getting their Auxiliaires massacred.

The Damocles Gulf Crusade was circa 745.M41, so roughly 254 years before the last given date by GW before the Rift split the galaxy. So for over 2.5 centuries, the Tau have been dealing with human populations effectively enough. Whatever they do with the human psykers, they clearly have had neither a full blown daemonic incursion (as otherwise the 4th Sphere Expasnion fleet would not have been so surprised) nor any breakthroughs into really understanding human psykers.

Though the Tau of the 4th Sphere may have viewed the Greater Good warp being with disgust and horror, that being was also the only reason the 4th Sphere Expansion made it out alive from being stranded in the warp as it opened a rift back into realspace and cleared a path for the 4th Sphere fleet to safely exit.

IIRC the Greater Good has a sort of "dampening" effect on the human Psychic abilities. Not in the way that it removes them but more a case of "Life isn't awful so my brain isn't going to blow up" sort of deal.

One thing no one has mentioned before is the Tau simply don't understand how BIG the IoM is, it seems logical that a real hive world, or worse yet, a cluster of them, could be a problem imsply because suddenly with a handful of conquests the population of the Tau empire has doubled.

 Gert wrote:
TBF the T'au can be utterly ruthless if they want and they have been in the past. There's nothing to suggest they wouldn't let a Hive World starve if it refused the Greater Good.

It would be a hard choice for them, though, and they wouldn't do it unless there was a *massive* benefit to be had, unlike, say, the Adepta Sororitas who would sacrifice much just so that a bunch of alien civilians would die painfully.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

BrianDavion wrote:
One thing no one has mentioned before is the Tau simply don't understand how BIG the IoM is, it seems logical that a real hive world, or worse yet, a cluster of them, could be a problem imsply because suddenly with a handful of conquests the population of the Tau empire has doubled.

They definitely understand it at this point. They're not idiots (unlike the Imperium), they were just working on very limited knowledge before.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Dekskull wrote:
The biggest problem the Tau will have with integrating humans is that humanity is a psychic race, the Tau are not, and the Tau are completely un-equipped to handle that on their own. Now they could obtain the cooperation of former Imperial Authorities. However the Tau would likely under estimate traditional human methods of control as barbaric. (Wait, kill unsanctioned psychic people on sight ? We're not doing that).

The Tau wouldn't, and shouldn't, because in the end the wholesale slaughter and oppression the Imperium engages in actually makes Chaos stronger.

The Kroot are a psychic race, the Tau could use them as a sort of different cultural approach to the question of psyker powers.

BrianDavion wrote:
One thing no one has mentioned before is the Tau simply don't understand how BIG the IoM is, it seems logical that a real hive world, or worse yet, a cluster of them, could be a problem imsply because suddenly with a handful of conquests the population of the Tau empire has doubled.

That is actually what happened when the T'au first encountered humanity. Some far-off colonies were found during the Second Sphere of Expansion and the T'au assumed they had just found another small species to assimilate into the Greater Good. It wasn't until they pushed further into the Damocles Gulf that they encountered Imperial resistance and realised the human worlds they had already annexed were the very edge of Imperial space. Now they know how vast the Imperium is.

Hecaton wrote:
It would be a hard choice for them, though, and they wouldn't do it unless there was a *massive* benefit to be had, unlike, say, the Adepta Sororitas who would sacrifice much just so that a bunch of alien civilians would die painfully.

It's definitely not something the Ethereals would sanction lightly but there's nothing to say that an overzealous Fire Caste leader would overstep and just raze the Hive.
In truth, I think the T'au are hoping for immense casualties to the Imperium by other means. If the Imperium has to fight off a butt load of Hive Fleets, Chaos invasions, and Ork Waaaggh!!'s, the Imperium will win in the end but the casualties will be insane. All the T'au have to do is step in and take whatever they need, leaving the rest to burn.

 Gert wrote:

It's definitely not something the Ethereals would sanction lightly but there's nothing to say that an overzealous Fire Caste leader would overstep and just raze the Hive.
In truth, I think the T'au are hoping for immense casualties to the Imperium by other means. If the Imperium has to fight off a butt load of Hive Fleets, Chaos invasions, and Ork Waaaggh!!'s, the Imperium will win in the end but the casualties will be insane. All the T'au have to do is step in and take whatever they need, leaving the rest to burn.

If it's their only option, they'll take it.

Except they have not and they are documented in BL novels as trying to win hearts and minds, which is why the Imperium sees them as a threat. Sure they may not be as altruistic as they claim but clearly there has been no mass genocide of human civilian populations among the areas the Tau have conquered, and the 4th Sphere Expansion Tau were chastised for their attempts to kill off their auxiliaries and non-Tau civilians. Doing so is bad PR and spoils their image, making new worlds harder to take, whereas every world that is successfully integrated with the soft approach is another asset in their propaganda brochures to tempt other Imperial worlds.

The gue'vesa character in Broken Sword admitted he kept waiting for the other shoe to drop, thinking this was too good to be true despite years of being a gue'vesa and just half waiting/expecting something horrible to happen to him and the other gue'vesa humans. Nothing of the sort happens. Though the plot of the story does involve some agent/double agent manipulation by the Ethereals and the Imperium, nothing like genocide or other bad things like sterilization happen. The character in the end stays loyal to the Tau because he reasons that what the Imperium did was worse and that the Tau are far preferable to that.

The question of whether the Tau can resettle a hive world depends on the Tau transports available. They are in terms of BFG rules comparable to Imperial transport ships which have been depicted in Imperial Armor as carrying a few thousand Guardsmen. Moving a few thousand humans per transport every trip (which may take who knows how long but from weeks or months perhaps given slow Tau interstellar travel) is not even a rounding error when it comes to hive populations. The problem is hive worlds are supposed to have such unmanageable populations that the ruling classes give up all attempt at actual census or control of the population except vaguely through feudal intermediaries. Can the Tau move enough humans to other worlds before the hive world breeds more of them?

It is definitely logistically solvable for the Tau, and capturing feeder worlds before going for the hive world is a logical approach. However, it remains a very dangerous option.

One of the big risks for the Tau is if the Imperium retakes the agriworlds supplying the hive. The Imperium is not bereft of competent strategic military leaders, and a similar campaign targetting the peripheral agri worlds as the Tau used to capture a hive could massively stretch Tau resources and ability to support the hives. The Imperium may not even need to retake the agriworlds, especially if the Tau have increased material living standards. Privateering, naval blockades, even damaging the agriworlds through bombardments may be enough to cripple supply lines.

Taking a hive world is committing to defending an entire associated ecosystem of supporting worlds, and I think this is the real risk for the Tau empire in assimilating hives. With their numbers, they may also struggle to pacify any hives that do revolt due to squeezed resources.

In all honesty, it would make more sense for the Tau to avoid hive worlds as long as possible, until they are isolated well within their borders and quite secure (and hopefully thoroughly starved). An issue with that is that the way warp travel works- it may make it difficult for the Tau to properly blockade such planets without a military fleet in system, at which point they are obvious propaganda targets for the Imperial authorities. Tau ships don't use the warp, so they will struggle to identify and interdict the unpredictable* warp lanes supplying a world. Defecting merchants could alleviate this by supplying star charts.

*Unpredictable in the sense that stable warp routes don't necessarily connect adjacent systems, but can instead skip whole regions of the galaxy to connect disparates worlds. A subsector can be over a huge swathe of space containing alien enpires, yet still conveniently connected for warp travel. Most warp lanes must remain predictably present, or the Imperium would collapse.

Iracundus wrote:

 Gert wrote:
TBF we've already seen this with the 4th Sphere forces. Its not just humanity with a link to the Warp but most Auxiliary species and when they may have accidentally made a Greater Good Warp being, the 4th Sphere T'au started getting their Auxiliaires massacred.

The Damocles Gulf Crusade was circa 745.M41, so roughly 254 years before the last given date by GW before the Rift split the galaxy. So for over 2.5 centuries, the Tau have been dealing with human populations effectively enough. Whatever they do with the human psykers, they clearly have had neither a full blown daemonic incursion (as otherwise the 4th Sphere Expasnion fleet would not have been so surprised) nor any breakthroughs into really understanding human psykers.

Though the Tau of the 4th Sphere may have viewed the Greater Good warp being with disgust and horror, that being was also the only reason the 4th Sphere Expansion made it out alive from being stranded in the warp as it opened a rift back into realspace and cleared a path for the 4th Sphere fleet to safely exit.

Interesting observation. So maybe the Greater Good makes it easier to manage the human population on a psychic level, but it also would curb the manifestation of beneficial psychic mutation traits like the birth of navigators, effectively keeping their civilization at status quo levels). That makes sense!

I still think the potential for human chaos corruption in the Tau Empire has some tremendous narrative potential though. All that material progress might be a conduit for Slaneesh, which could also attract the Eldar's attention...and on and on it goes. (Like I said, there is a lot of potential narrative to harvest if GW or some ambitious narrative gamers choose).

BTW: I'm not worried about their ability to manage humans on a physical level, Tau are good at that. Musings about the Earth Caste's limits are probably not going to bear out. Remember, Tau are almost a militarized United Federation of Planets. They'll just drop off a few 40K version of the Star Trek replicator and starving human problem solved). There would likely be challenges related to the Imperial Religion and they may have to deal with fanatical terrorist groups related to that, but overall, human suffering would be quickly and easily alleviated.

I believe this was somewhat answered in the original post, based on the non-direct quote about Broken Sword? It's not about the first generation, it's about the second generation of humans that are the most important. Thus, resettlement of populace is a key part of the short term. Under Roman rule, native populations were actively broken up and resettled in different parts of the empire, particularly within the Auxiliary fighting units prior to the Severan citizenship reforms. This meant that a sufficient body of the fighting age people were moved to fight the Empire's foes and couldn't foment problems in their own province. It also served to ease supply issues for a newly conquered territory.

We know that the Tau caste system is heavily imposed and intermingling of bits and bobs within the different castes isn't really allowed. From that we can surely gather that a rather regimented birth rate control is in effect within the Tau enclaves. I would suspect this would be a given for the human populace. If it is the same for the Kroot, then all the auxiliaries would be the same.

Plus as readily available Tau technology is implemented, there will be a natural drop in population as they move to a less labour intensive workforce. When there's too many folk there's always a war that the Gue'vesa can be churned in to. Tau are certainly a better choice for the average citizen than under Imperial rule, but that doesn't mean much. A kick up the arse is better than a bolt pistol round through the cranium.