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 Eetion wrote:
There are no economic issues that the Dark elves cannot solve with more raiding.

The north is frozen and we just did Brettonia, ok, let's try ind, cathy and araby.

Raiding is not seasonal, its constant, and permanent and nigh inexhaustable resource to harvest. Unlike farming which is entirely dependent on season and weather, and in Naggoroth the outlook is bleak. Raiding will likely be far more successful than agriculture.

No, but raiding is still a business, and with that comes a commitment in resources, a need to generate a certain rate of return to justify the action, and a declining marginal returns. And that last one is the major limiting factor - the Dark Elves could originally raid the most populous, worst defended towns, but once they've been taken but they need to commit more raiding to overcome their economic problems, then they have to move to either less populated towns, or to take their chances against better defences. And as they raid more, the target towns have an interest in investing in improved defences, or just abandoning the coast.

As such, raiding will always be a marginal activity, and not an answer for greater economic concerns.


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Hargus56 wrote:
All civilizations have a cycle and it has been as accurately as I can find best described by Alexander Fraser Tytler and this is known as the Tytler Cycle:
"The historical cycle seems to be: From bondage to spiritual faith; from spiritual faith to courage; from courage to liberty; from liberty to abundance; from abundance to selfishness; from selfishness to apathy; from apathy to dependency; and from dependency back to bondage once more."
Most Western Civilizations are ahead of most of the 3rd world on the scale are somewhere between an Apathy to Dependence stage. If you look at America's history the gold rushes of 1848 and of areas and terroitories like the Dakota Black Hills through the Industrial Age and even up through Prohibition and WW2 we were in the stages of abundance to selfishness, then through the 60 and 80s we moved quickly from Selfishness to Apathy and clearly we are in the Apathy to Dependency stage as almost 50% of Americans do not pay taxes and have no stake in the system other then to take and the Government needs to tell us what to eat, how much to work (looking at you France) and limits the size of our sodas which is rapidly moving us to dependancy. Whereas the Arab Springs we are seeing is somewhere between Spiritual Faith to Courage.

Therefore no civilization is economically viable and all civilizations are doomed to fail, all things good or bad must come to an end.

I think you should be careful in confusing hald baked political philosophy with grounded economic principles.

Oh, and just because I have to - 50% of Americans pay no income tax, they still pay sales tax. And not paying tax doesn't mean you have no stake - you still live there and draw your material wealth (or lack thereof) from the same system as a rich man. These are basic things you should know - you just went through an election campaign that lasted bloody forever, and the talking points you mentioned were raised over and over again and shot down by the points I made over and over again. If you were even half listening you should have known how empty those points were.

The old world is a big place.
And yes some advennturous lords may decideto target a more sturdy town,
Others will likely attack local shipping, isolated village, or troops. The larger Black Arks will likely strike several villages simultaneously.

The Old world is a big place, with many threats, the Elves won't stay put and who knows when they will move close to shore to repeat the cycle. May even just work a route down from norsca, Empire, brettonia, Estalia and Araby before heading back. Its perfectly feasable for the Elves to circumvent the hardest defended areas.

We have pieces of fluff such as a 'million slaves taken in a day' from Cathay. A bit OTT I grant you but still an example of how profitable it can be. (This is a half remembered piece of fluff and I can't cite a source so feel free to tell me otherwise)

And once again the Dark Elves raid out of necessity, naggoroth isn't particularly conductive to agriculture, farm animals will freeze with few surviving the winter. The Dark Elves are not a populous race, the ammount of slaves they acctually 'Need' is probably not as high as what you would expect.

Raiding is done is because of a lack of any other viable option for the Elves. After dragging someone from their homes in their sleep, traditional motivational tools such as a niceties are somewhat redundant. The slave in question will always fight you. Fear is the only true method of breaking them.

thelordcal wrote:
I think you're also placing economic standards on a society that doesn't care how well the current fiscal status of the nation is doing.

They're a nation built on one premiss, War, and war against the traitors of Ulthuan.

So? The greater the scale of a nation's economic output the greater it's ability to wage war.

Draven has Spoken

Depends on the definition of economic out put.

I'd say industrial output is the greater.

If you can have a 100 slaves mining Iron and 50 smelting and beating into armour and weapons under a lash, the weapons out put would be significantly higher through the slaves.

Economics and capacity to wage war is tied to Industrial output also.

As a general note, the current estimates on Roman slavery are at the largest around 25% - and thats still debated, as the majority of the Roman empire was freeman farmers, either natives who had been conquered and now paid taxes to the Empire, or legionaries who had been bestowed land grants. Massive slavery only entered the picture on agricultural estates, but despite the popular imaginings of these being everywhere (there were a bunch in Italy and North Africa - but you'll be hard pressed to find them too many other places in any large numbers), the majority of grain in the Roman world came from Egypt - which continued to use its own free labor system little different to that initially developed by the Pharaohs.

There were other uses for large scale slave labor of course - but the old stereotypes of trying to pin slave to freeman percentages based on classical Athens onto Rome are understood now to be mistaken.

 Eetion wrote:
The Old world is a big place, with many threats, the Elves won't stay put and who knows when they will move close to shore to repeat the cycle. May even just work a route down from norsca, Empire, brettonia, Estalia and Araby before heading back. Its perfectly feasable for the Elves to circumvent the hardest defended areas.

It's a big place, but it isn't a stupid place. The diminishing marginal returns on raiding are steep. They have to be, unless you assume a near infinite supply of small, over-populated towns that people will absolutely not defend or leave no matter how often they or their neighbouring towns are raided.

And once again the Dark Elves raid out of necessity, naggoroth isn't particularly conductive to agriculture, farm animals will freeze with few surviving the winter. The Dark Elves are not a populous race, the ammount of slaves they acctually 'Need' is probably not as high as what you would expect.

If there's little agriculture, then slaves won't fix that. Putting a slave on some half frozen grassland won't make it any more productive.

The slave in question will always fight you. Fear is the only true method of breaking them.

The slave will do enough to avoid punishment, and no more. And as we've seen in history, that amount is bugger all, and barely enough to justify the resources spent on guarding the slave.

Now, we all know that it doesn't work that way in a lot of literature, and that's okay. Books, especially genre fiction like the WHFB stuff, needs to evoke and excite, it doesn't need to be plausible. But if we ask the question 'is that actually plausible?' the answer has to be 'not even a little bit'.


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 Eetion wrote:
I'd say industrial output is the greater.

That would depend on the point in history. It was almost the only important measure in WWII, for instance. But now in the modern world combat is so technologically specialised and so immediate that the only useful measure is defence spending (it doesn't matter how many planes you could build by November or how many you could buy by June, because you don't have any today and that means the enemy can be in your capital in weeks).

But to get more on topic, before then what really before industry and conscription was the strength of the lord in being able to draw a lot people together. And from there, you add in the skill and discipline of commanding officers and the troops.

If you can have a 100 slaves mining Iron and 50 smelting and beating into armour and weapons under a lash, the weapons out put would be significantly higher through the slaves.

No, the opposite is true. A slave looking simply to avoid punishment will do just enough to avoid it, and this is going to be a lot less than a person looking to impress and gain increased privilege and more stuff.

Slavery died out for a lot more reasons than morality.

Why does the Dark Elf economy work as well as it does, in spite of plentiful historic evidence that it shouldn't? I can sum it up in 10 words or less.

Because the authors at GW said it does.

 sebster wrote:

Hargus56 wrote:
All civilizations have a cycle and it has been as accurately as I can find best described by Alexander Fraser Tytler and this is known as the Tytler Cycle:
"The historical cycle seems to be: From bondage to spiritual faith; from spiritual faith to courage; from courage to liberty; from liberty to abundance; from abundance to selfishness; from selfishness to apathy; from apathy to dependency; and from dependency back to bondage once more."
Most Western Civilizations are ahead of most of the 3rd world on the scale are somewhere between an Apathy to Dependence stage. If you look at America's history the gold rushes of 1848 and of areas and terroitories like the Dakota Black Hills through the Industrial Age and even up through Prohibition and WW2 we were in the stages of abundance to selfishness, then through the 60 and 80s we moved quickly from Selfishness to Apathy and clearly we are in the Apathy to Dependency stage as almost 50% of Americans do not pay taxes and have no stake in the system other then to take and the Government needs to tell us what to eat, how much to work (looking at you France) and limits the size of our sodas which is rapidly moving us to dependancy. Whereas the Arab Springs we are seeing is somewhere between Spiritual Faith to Courage.

Therefore no civilization is economically viable and all civilizations are doomed to fail, all things good or bad must come to an end.

I think you should be careful in confusing hald baked political philosophy with grounded economic principles.

Oh, and just because I have to - 50% of Americans pay no income tax, they still pay sales tax. And not paying tax doesn't mean you have no stake - you still live there and draw your material wealth (or lack thereof) from the same system as a rich man. These are basic things you should know - you just went through an election campaign that lasted bloody forever, and the talking points you mentioned were raised over and over again and shot down by the points I made over and over again. If you were even half listening you should have known how empty those points were.

Yeah you're right my bad but the life of a civilization is absolutely true. By the way I noticed you are from Australia, make the trip to California sometime look around and see the "We Accept EBT" Electronic Benefit Transfer replaced food stamps and checks, there are freaking everywhere... so a lot of people do not pay taxes at all since those same people don't pay income taxes. The US is screwed now that the populace has found they can grant themselves money from the treasury, School lunch programs advertise they offer free breakfast, lunch and soon to be dinner this also applies to summer vacation. It used to be shameful to be on these programs, and I'm not talking back in the 50s and 40s but back in the 80s and 90s when I was going to school. But you live in Australia and know more about my country then me. we as a culture have lost all pride to the point that we don't care about feeding our own kids. And this has a major correlation with the fact that now over 40% of kids are now born out of wedlock this was below 20% in the 80s, this is not a race issue, it's not an immigration issue, it's a culture issue, in America we are losing our pride and work ethic. Not working is working so well in Greece and France though!

Hargus56 wrote:

 sebster wrote:

Hargus56 wrote:
All civilizations have a cycle and it has been as accurately as I can find best described by Alexander Fraser Tytler and this is known as the Tytler Cycle:
"The historical cycle seems to be: From bondage to spiritual faith; from spiritual faith to courage; from courage to liberty; from liberty to abundance; from abundance to selfishness; from selfishness to apathy; from apathy to dependency; and from dependency back to bondage once more."
Most Western Civilizations are ahead of most of the 3rd world on the scale are somewhere between an Apathy to Dependence stage. If you look at America's history the gold rushes of 1848 and of areas and terroitories like the Dakota Black Hills through the Industrial Age and even up through Prohibition and WW2 we were in the stages of abundance to selfishness, then through the 60 and 80s we moved quickly from Selfishness to Apathy and clearly we are in the Apathy to Dependency stage as almost 50% of Americans do not pay taxes and have no stake in the system other then to take and the Government needs to tell us what to eat, how much to work (looking at you France) and limits the size of our sodas which is rapidly moving us to dependancy. Whereas the Arab Springs we are seeing is somewhere between Spiritual Faith to Courage.

Therefore no civilization is economically viable and all civilizations are doomed to fail, all things good or bad must come to an end.

I think you should be careful in confusing hald baked political philosophy with grounded economic principles.

Oh, and just because I have to - 50% of Americans pay no income tax, they still pay sales tax. And not paying tax doesn't mean you have no stake - you still live there and draw your material wealth (or lack thereof) from the same system as a rich man. These are basic things you should know - you just went through an election campaign that lasted bloody forever, and the talking points you mentioned were raised over and over again and shot down by the points I made over and over again. If you were even half listening you should have known how empty those points were.

Yeah you're right my bad but the life of a civilization is absolutely true. By the way I noticed you are from Australia, make the trip to California sometime look around and see the "We Accept EBT" Electronic Benefit Transfer replaced food stamps and checks, there are freaking everywhere... so a lot of people do not pay taxes at all since those same people don't pay income taxes. The US is screwed now that the populace has found they can grant themselves money from the treasury, School lunch programs advertise they offer free breakfast, lunch and soon to be dinner this also applies to summer vacation. It used to be shameful to be on these programs, and I'm not talking back in the 50s and 40s but back in the 80s and 90s when I was going to school. But you live in Australia and know more about my country then me. we as a culture have lost all pride to the point that we don't care about feeding our own kids. And this has a major correlation with the fact that now over 40% of kids are now born out of wedlock this was below 20% in the 80s, this is not a race issue, it's not an immigration issue, it's a culture issue, in America we are losing our pride and work ethic. Not working is working so well in Greece and France though!

Neither Greece's nor France's economic woes are due to any sort of welfare. You are laughably wrong about the US as well. Here's a reality check. Take it.

That sad, if you want to have horrible political beliefs, more power to you, but can you keep the garbage out of the plastic goblin game discussion?

Hargus56 wrote:
Yeah you're right my bad but the life of a civilization is absolutely true. By the way I noticed you are from Australia, make the trip to California sometime look around and see the "We Accept EBT" Electronic Benefit Transfer replaced food stamps and checks, there are freaking everywhere... so a lot of people do not pay taxes at all since those same people don't pay income taxes. The US is screwed now that the populace has found they can grant themselves money from the treasury, School lunch programs advertise they offer free breakfast, lunch and soon to be dinner this also applies to summer vacation. It used to be shameful to be on these programs, and I'm not talking back in the 50s and 40s but back in the 80s and 90s when I was going to school. But you live in Australia and know more about my country then me. we as a culture have lost all pride to the point that we don't care about feeding our own kids. And this has a major correlation with the fact that now over 40% of kids are now born out of wedlock this was below 20% in the 80s, this is not a race issue, it's not an immigration issue, it's a culture issue, in America we are losing our pride and work ethic. Not working is working so well in Greece and France though!

I've been to California, and across a bit of the US. It's a great place.

Look, in general, I'll just tell you I think you're wrong in most everything you say there, but as the color purple says this forum isn't the place. If you want to make your argument in Off Topic I'd be happy to go into detail on where I think you've gone wrong.

The Ancient Greek societies were built upon slavery, with easily more than half of the population as helots.

Helots were only a thing around Sparta, so that was a sweeping generalisation of half the ancient Mediterranean to start with. Secondly the helot structure isn't really comparable to this; the Spartans ruled them as a mix between a slave caste and a subjugated people whose civic structures remained somewhat in place. So, to use a modern example, closer to Nazi-occupied territories in WW2 than full chattel slavery. Of course, the Spartiate farms were run by slaves, and there was a huge discrepancy in numbers there, but I don't think that th farm slaves were born and raised there (though I could be wrong).

In addition, you're proving the OP right by this example. Sparta dominated Greece for centuries by means of its excessively militaristic society, which it could only maintain by means of a slave caste. But Sparta fell in the end, because it had too few Spartiates (full Spartan citizens) to keep its ambitions going - they began to fear battle, because a loss would cut down a sizeable fraction of the entire Spartiate population. And this is what happened; they were beaten at Leuctra, and instantly lost their dominance forever. They were also very weak in terms of having to permanently keep on their guard against a helot uprising, which diverted military resources.

In short: helot slavery was a bad system which, although it allowed a huge proportion of the population to act as soldiers, didn't help the Spartans against the woes of population decline. This is exactly the problem that the Dark Elves should have, especially when they raid so much and thus risk their troops on a regular basis.

 Charles Rampant wrote:
Helots were only a thing around Sparta, so that was a sweeping generalisation of half the ancient Mediterranean to start with. Secondly the helot structure isn't really comparable to this; the Spartans ruled them as a mix between a slave caste and a subjugated people whose civic structures remained somewhat in place. So, to use a modern example, closer to Nazi-occupied territories in WW2 than full chattel slavery. Of course, the Spartiate farms were run by slaves, and there was a huge discrepancy in numbers there, but I don't think that th farm slaves were born and raised there (though I could be wrong).

In addition, you're proving the OP right by this example. Sparta dominated Greece for centuries by means of its excessively militaristic society, which it could only maintain by means of a slave caste. But Sparta fell in the end, because it had too few Spartiates (full Spartan citizens) to keep its ambitions going - they began to fear battle, because a loss would cut down a sizeable fraction of the entire Spartiate population. And this is what happened; they were beaten at Leuctra, and instantly lost their dominance forever. They were also very weak in terms of having to permanently keep on their guard against a helot uprising, which diverted military resources.

In short: helot slavery was a bad system which, although it allowed a huge proportion of the population to act as soldiers, didn't help the Spartans against the woes of population decline. This is exactly the problem that the Dark Elves should have, especially when they raid so much and thus risk their troops on a regular basis.

Which in turn isn't comparable to the Dark Elf situation. As you quite rightly pointed out they are somewhere between a free people and a slave. They could have children, procreate, socialise and generally ate well. They just had masters. The Dark Elves however chain them, bind them, maim them a required. Hell it wouldn't surprise me if they castrate the males. They arnt 'Free' like the helots are free to rebel.

Although we now know the effects of excessive slave population on Sparta, and although the DE chain their slaves etc they are still at risk of the same problems. We now have the interesting possibility of Dark Elves cruelty and murderous nature actually being an asset at keeping the Slave population from ever getting too high. Could we consider this a rudimentry form of population management?

Slaves are still raided and simply replaces those who become unfit to work, and were not really sure on the dark Elf and Slave populations.

 Eetion wrote:
Although we now know the effects of excessive slave population on Sparta, and although the DE chain their slaves etc they are still at risk of the same problems. We now have the interesting possibility of Dark Elves cruelty and murderous nature actually being an asset at keeping the Slave population from ever getting too high. Could we consider this a rudimentry form of population management?

I'm not sure there's ever been a moment in history in which people were rebellious, and the authorities cracked down on them with greater brutality, and the people said 'ah well I guess we won't cause any more trouble'.

Slaves are still raided and simply replaces those who become unfit to work, and were not really sure on the dark Elf and Slave populations.

And every one of those raids costs the Dark Elves in soldiers. Such a grinding, attritional war is not a good strategy for a bunch of guys with T3.

 sebster wrote:

I'm not sure there's ever been a moment in history in which people were rebellious, and the authorities cracked down on them with greater brutality, and the people said 'ah well I guess we won't cause any more trouble'.

This was the Roman response to the Third Servile War, also known as the Spartacus War. It was the last major slave revolt, I believe. But I don't think that it is directly comparable to what Eetion is trying to argue; for Roman slaves were reasonably treated, better than Greek ones, and had some meagre opportunities for hope within their station. I also imagine that the failure of the revolt was more compelling in the mind of slaves than the crucifixion of those who participated in it.

 Charles Rampant wrote:
This was the Roman response to the Third Servile War, also known as the Spartacus War. It was the last major slave revolt, I believe. But I don't think that it is directly comparable to what Eetion is trying to argue; for Roman slaves were reasonably treated, better than Greek ones, and had some meagre opportunities for hope within their station. I also imagine that the failure of the revolt was more compelling in the mind of slaves than the crucifixion of those who participated in it.

Yeah, fair point, but as you say the slaves were treated fairly well beforehand, and some sources note that after the rebellion treatment of slaves actually improved. That seems a fairly practical system - treat them well if they do as they're told, and be utterly ruthless if they rebel (well about as practical as slavery ever is).

That's very different to the fantasy system of the Dark Elves, which promises awful treatment whether you obey or not. That seems a lot less stable, as there is basically little reason not to rebel.