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Most of the time, their "invasion" is in response to another faction invading and conquering their planets.

Why are stories of the Imperium invading worlds they have no historical claim over so rare since the Great Crusade? Okay, we have the invasion of Dal'yth which is badass all things considered and there was that one poorly written piece of crap about Alaitoc. I have not heard of any incident where the Imperium come down kicking the door and wiping out worlds inhabited by Orks or Necrons.

Also, why do GW (and many people in the entertainment industry in general) keep drawing an equivalence between evil and stupidity? Why can't evil factions be competent? When the Imperium is the "good guys" in certain stories, everyone else acts like they have one brain cell. But the lore written by GW keeps portraying the Imperium as being run by a bunch of dumb people. Roboute Gulliman honestly should have gone Sulla all over once he took over and proscribed all the idiots who keep the Imperium down.

Resources, and routes.

Warp Travel isn’t exactly Go Wherever You Want. There are stable, largely predictable warp routes, which lead to the oddly centralised Imperium, despite its holdings being far flung.

To find a new planet? That’s where Rogue Traders come in. It’s their job to explore ever further, and bring new worlds into the fold.

And of those worlds? There’s not necessarily a requirement to conquer anyone or anything. First, there needs to be a sentient population. Then that needs to be one capable of putting up sufficient fight that a Rogue Trader can’t handle it on their own.

Due to orbital strikes, a Rogue Trader of even modest means likely wouldn’t have much work to do to pacify a world analogous to modern Earth. After all, how are we meant to tackle a battle fleet or squadron of even modest size.

The Imperium still invades and takes worlds; however its size is so vast that a lot of its problems just come from holding itself together.

It's honestly so vast its hard to comprehend just how huge the Imperium is. Furthermore because they own a lions-share of territory; GW can't write them doing too much conquest because it pushes other races so far into the fringe that it becomes really hard to justify them surviving at all.

So for the most part yes the Imperium is on the defensive rather than expansion. There just isn't much for them to expand into any more and they've a LOT of foes on every front fighting against them. Not to mention their own internal issues with managing and controlling such a vast territory.


It's not that the Imperium doesn't want more territory - indeed Rogue Traders are still very much a thing pushing out into new worlds and territories. It's just that the Imperium can't expand very easily right now because they have Tyranids trying to eat their way to Terra; Necrons waking up on multiple worlds trying to retake their empire; Eldar doing tricky things and sneaky things; Orks looking for a scrap and Chaos constantly trying to split the Imperium up and take it all for themselves.


If you wanted conquest and expansion that was the Great Crusade. That's over now and you've got the aftermath - what comes after all the insane rapid conquest and expansion. Coupled to decadence and more.




Also Roboute Gulliman can't just kill anyone he wants and take over the whole Imperium. The Imperium has power divisions setup to try and stop that happening after it crippled them before when the Warmaster took half the Empire of supersoldiers with him; and after the Men of Steel also rose up against them.

Division of power is how the Imperium has chosen to survive. Any one power group pushing for too much gets pushed back by the others. Furthermore even though he's a Primarch he's appeared into a universe where there are already power-players holding influence and military might. If he overplays his hand they would strike him down (he's corrupted; twisted by chaos; influenced by the warp; a conspiracy by horrible xenos!

 Overread wrote:

It's honestly so vast its hard to comprehend just how huge the Imperium is. Furthermore because they own a lions-share of territory; GW can't write them doing too much conquest because it pushes other races so far into the fringe that it becomes really hard to justify them surviving at all.

So for the most part yes the Imperium is on the defensive rather than expansion. There just isn't much for them to expand into any more

.

No, this is incorrect. As much as the Imperium is unconceivable big, the galaxy is unconceivable much bigger. Galaxies are big to the point they are beyond human understanding, trillions of worlds orbiting hundreds of billions of stars.
For every planet the IoM owns, there is a million more in the galaxy.

And this is something that is constantly repeated in each rulebook, with each Imperial world being a tiny island, and each subsector and sector are small archipelagos of tiny islands connected by thin warp routes, in massive expands of space that is mostly unexplored and populated by alien worlds.

This also why when you look at the galactic map for the major factions, there is a lot of overlapping "territories".

bibotot wrote:
Most of the time, their "invasion" is in response to another faction invading and conquering their planets.

Because the Imperium is in decline. Germany and Italy didn't suddenly stop being fascist in the mid-1940s because the Allies were taking territory from them.

Also, why do GW (and many people in the entertainment industry in general) keep drawing an equivalence between evil and stupidity? Why can't evil factions be competent?

Because authoritarian or fascist regimes are run by idiots, useful or otherwise. There will be some who are legitimately good at the role they perform but the whole idea behind these types of governments is that they promote conflict at every level to keep the person on top, on top.

The Powers That Be don't need to be worried about a political rival or ambitious general when they can stack the deck with their enemies to stifle any chance of losing any sort of power. Even the return of Guilliman is nothing but a band-aid on a bullet hole because the Imperium is not designed to have cooperation and unity but rather subservience to the powerful at any cost.

A perfect example is Warmaster Slaydo. A brilliant military commander who intends to retire and begin reforming the Astra Militarum to make it more effective and efficient (i.e. saving the lives of the troops). But he has a weakness in his piety so the High Lords (worried that Slaydo will obtain high political office) offer him the irresistible job of reconquering the Sabbat Worlds, the home cluster of his most beloved Saint.
Slaydo, pious as he is, cannot refuse this chance and then dies 11 years after being made Warmaster.
His plans are forgotten, his successor named, and the Imperium grinds on with useful idiots keeping reform beaten down.

The Imperium does a lot of its invading within itself: tithe collections that are invasions/plunder in all but name, random acts of "government replacement" for all sorts of reason, "compliance missions" and punitive expeditions against worlds that get too interested in dangerous ideas like trade with xenos, democracy or independence, and so the lists goes on.

Of course, most of that happens off-screen or off-page, because stories and media are still largely downstream from games and model lines, and sadly the Podunkorion League of Independent Systems does have neither. The major plots all involve at least two buyable factions, and because a lot of fiction is still centered on Marines, it's usually Marines vs. whatever, preferably non-imperial and/or non-human types of the latter. The day-to-day imperialism used to be fairly present in the wider background, mostly via blurbs in rulebooks and codizes, but that has taken a back seat as well since the lore gets more self-similar and clicheed with time, and probably also because a lot of the younger set just don't understand cold-war era dogwhistles like "compliance mission", "police action" or "peacekeeping effort" anymore, and, on the other hand, fluff writers have refused to adapt the metaphors to a post "Great War on Terror" era for the most part.

I think the Imperium has overextended itself and is well aware of it. But even an empire that is no longer expanding (or is even shrinking) is still, if only nominally, an empire. And an empire must defend its holdings before anything else, because if it doesn't, its enemies will smell the blood in the water.

Also, at this stage, control of the galaxy is a zero-sum game, meaning that any gains made by one party are to the detriment of another. Right now, I think only the T'au, the Tyranids and the Necrons are making meaningful gains, or at least setting the stage for future gains. Other factions are either losing ground (Eldar) or perpetually gaining some, losing some (Imperium, Chaos, Orks).

bibotot wrote:
Also, why do GW (and many people in the entertainment industry in general) keep drawing an equivalence between evil and stupidity? Why can't evil factions be competent? When the Imperium is the "good guys" in certain stories, everyone else acts like they have one brain cell. But the lore written by GW keeps portraying the Imperium as being run by a bunch of dumb people. Roboute Gulliman honestly should have gone Sulla all over once he took over and proscribed all the idiots who keep the Imperium down.

In a meta sense, part of it is simply the 40k universe being highly satirical.

Any real-life flaws you can find in any government, army, corporation or other large organization (nepotism, corruption, influence-peddling, political maneuvering, glory-seeking, crabs-in-a-bucket mentality, mistrust, lack of communication, petty grudges, blame game, unnecessary red tape, duplication, perverse incentives, ill-advised attempts at one-size-fits-all solutions, the Peter principle, institutional aversion to change, etc.) will be blown up.

In fact, under authoritarian regimes like the Imperium, such flaws and inefficiencies only tend to get worse, because the fear of being next on the chopping block breeds a dog-eat-dog culture where people are more focused on diverting blame than avoiding failure, and spend more time fabricating results than actually achieving them. The whole "Mussolini made trains run on time" thing is utter crap.

.

Part of it is the theme of a decaying empire - the end of the roman empire, the fall of the mongolian empire, Alexander etc.

They expand out in a big push, and then fall apart.

The imperium has stagnated, but that's partly due to the size and the exponential requirements to sustain themselves at that scale. sustainment AND expansion are very hard to do.

I wonder what the picture would be if you took the Tyranids out of the picture. If Orks take a planet, then you can probably come back a bit later when they are halfway through a major internal war and nick it back and the world will be pretty much as it was left. Might need a few rugs and screen doors. With tyranids it’s gone, never to return. The hive fleets are an initial massive threat that needs several sectors worth of resources to stem, and even then The splinter fleets stay a threat for ages afterwards.

Without them, would the Imperium be quite so much in the back foot? Do the tyranids keep other factions in check in the same way?

The nature of the setting is no matter what faction you add or remove - most factions will remain as they are. You might get some, like Eldar which could go from "dying race" to "recovering slowly"

However in general the Imperium isn't going to suddenly do better at large. Tyranids vanish but in their place Necrons start awakening en-mass across loads of dormant Tomb Worlds and unite behind the Silent King readily. Suddenly new threat!

Or Tyranids vanish and one massive Ork Waaargh starts to storm its way across the galaxy.

Or Chaos tears open a new rift into the Warp


etc....

Or the Tau... uh... um. Nevermind.

 Lathe Biosas wrote:
Or the Tau... uh... um. Nevermind.

Tau manage to birth their own Chaos God without realising which causes a huge increase in unity within the allied Tau forces of other races which are more psy sensitive. As a result the Tau Auxiliaries army is formed and released into the market as the various xenos races that have united behind the Tau; carry forward their own Grand Crusade against the Imperium that has crushed them all for so many generations. Leading to a massive expansion of Tau territories with the new God making them fast at absorbing new races with limited issues of indoctrinating and ruling over the newly conquered (freed) worlds.

IoM already did all the invading during the Great Crusade. Everything's been theirs since, so its more about recapturing what was lost, I'd think.

Except worlds are being added to the Imperium. See my comment about that being the job of Rogue Traders.

Remember that the Tau were first encountered by a survey fleet, and marked for xenocide. Sure the Imperium got distracted there, but it shows ongoing exploitation and expansion. Just nowhere near the pace or scale of the Heresy.

Same with Lord Solar Macharius, who added loads of worlds, only for them to be lost (probably because the pace was so rapid, when he pegged it the mutual support logistical network to said worlds wasn’t properly mature)

Other thoughts on the Heresy era? It was the perfect time for rapid expansion. Eldar had just done themselves the greatest mischief in the history of greatest mischiefs, and so the main player was gone.

Orks seemed to have been kept in check by the Eldar at that point, and being Orks didn’t have the central organisation to launch a rapid crusade of their own straight off the bat. (Ullanor showed they did get there in the end).

It was also seeking out existing human worlds. Some resisted, some signed up super willingly, being thrilled they were no longer alone. Some signed up seeing the writing on the wall. The size of Crusade Fleets being a pretty persuasive visual argument.

It also had the singular vision of The Emperor driving it. He may have been an awful father figure, but when it came to Empire building nobody can deny he was spectacularly successful.

Modern Imperium? The Galaxy is vastly different place. Multiple foes stand against The Imperium, and on so many fronts its forces are necessarily dispersed. And even with Guilliman (mmm, politics) it lacks the singular, truly unifying, vision that drove the Crusade.

But expansion and new worlds are far from unheard of.

GWs presentation works on 2 levels and the surface level is is designed to get the attention of new audiences aswell as appeal existing fans. So games like SM2 and videos for new launch sets will show brave humans and mighty space marines fighting off nids and necrons that have invaded their worlds.

Then you have the other level where you can learn about the reality of the imperium and how aweful they are. They never stopped invading planets, didn’t the first first imperial surveyor that found the TAU make them for eradication? Then they came back later to do it (2k years later) and found they have had a rapid technological advancement?

Others have said it, but it is all in the core statement about the 41st Millennium. The Empire of Man is a stagnate bloated empire, ruled over by a corpse, beset by adversities on all sides, internal and external. It is the later Roman Empire, constantly attempting to protect itself from invaders and internal dissent.

I mean, the 8th edition rulebook literally states

"Yet despite constant calamities, the Imperium did not
just endure, it grew. Each year, hundreds of new planets were added to the fold, even while others were lost.
Unstoppable in its momentum, the Imperium churned
on. Explorator fleets were launched like clockwork from
every forge world. Relentlessly, they sought former
colonies or new planetary systems to exploit. The end
result was a strange paradox. Even while crumbling
at the edges, losing planetary systems by the score to
sedition, xenos invasion, or galactic phenomena, the
Imperium continued. Colonies lost since the dawn of
space travel were still being discovered each year."

[---]

"the era from M37 to M41 became known as the Age of Redemption. Crusade after crusade was launched by Imperial forces, many of them penitent in nature and oath-sworn to reclaim those worlds lost to infighting, heretical overthrow or xenos invasion in prior centuries. The Imperium knew many victories during this era, yet the zealous fervour that drove Mankind’s armies onward had scant regard for the sustainability of the worlds it won. The Macharian Conquests were arguably the last and greatest of these crusades, for they saw a thousand worlds claimed for the Imperium in just seven years. Yet the subsequent collapse into rebellion and heresy of those same worlds was characteristic of the years that followed, a period known as the Waning in which the overextended and martially exhausted Imperium saw control begin to slip from its grasp. The rule of Imperial law became ever more draconian in response, and portents of doom were both incessant and relentless."

The Imperium still invades aplenty. How else do you think xenocides and new colonization by ark fleets happen?

Without constant new invasions and colonization efforts, the Imperium would shrink, and shrink fast. The fact that this stagnant empire has managed to tread water and keep its numbers of planets up is thanks in great part to many fresh invasions.

The Imperium is as aggressive as ever. It's just not the all-conquering beast that it was during its Great Crusade heyday under Him on Terra walking among his people in the flesh.

In Stellaris terms, it has exchanged its Militant trait for the Authoritarian one, and Materialist for Spiritualist, but kept its Xenophobic characteristic. The Imperium of the High Lords by M41 is not as strong as it once was, but it is one hell of an internal repression machine, and it still carries out many invasions.

I think some of this comes from misunderstanding the Imperium, and the nature of its stagnation and bureaucracy.

For an entity of its size, it’s massively inefficient. But that doesn’t mean it’s incompetent.

If there’s an out and out miracle reformation, with say, Guilliman pulling the mother of all rabbits out of hat and creating bureaucratic efficiency? We could well see far greater gains made.

For instance, you could wipe out the Tau. They’re expanding, yes. But still comparatively few in number. And the force required needn’t be comprised of local/regional forces necessarily.

A mind like Guiiliman’s, given absolute free reign, would be able to analyse the totality of forces, and assign reinforcements for such a push from all over the Galaxy, whilst ensuring there original location isn’t left short handed.

That may include pulling ships out of mothballs, and be the work of decades, if not centuries.

And it’s that long sighted view The Imperium currently seems to lack, having spent thousands of years just keeping itself in its current state. Internal politics and paranoia preventing anyone really being able to do what comes so naturally to Guilliman.

But…that involves overcoming and reforming the entrenched mindset and politics of The Imperium, which is a Work Of Hercules in its own right.

Had he returned in less pressing times? The opportunity might’ve presented. And again, it needn’t be immediate. The dude is functionally immortal, and so has time on his side to start making tiny, tiny changes, one or two at a time, each one incrementally improving overall efficiency.

Even if it took centuries, it could be done. But right now? He’s far larger fish to fry to prevent the whole thing collapsing from all sides.

Well, for a start I'm not sure why you think invading places is a prerequisite of fascism (over all the authoritarianism and other evil stuff) ... Spain was a fascist dictatorship for almost 40 years and they didn't invade anyone!

That said, the Imperium is definitely invading / reinvading plenty of places. I think folks have already captured it well, but if you want a good real world-ish frame of reference it’s worth remembering that the Imperium is really closer to a drawn out unending “Gotterdammerung” version of Nazi Germany in 1945 (who were still kind of 'invading' places even late in the day, if you think of offensive operations like Spring Awakening and the Bulge - okay that ones in Nov/Dec 44). If you want to imagine the Imperium something more like (say) 1936/1940 Germany, well that’s really just the Great Crusade era…

Piousservant wrote:

Well, for a start I'm not sure why you think invading places is a prerequisite of fascism (over all the authoritarianism and other evil stuff) ... Spain was a fascist dictatorship for almost 40 years and they didn't invade anyone!

Hell, even the Delian League invaded others and they were headed by a democratic athens