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Again, we no nothing about population. A conservative estimate for tau would put them in the 1-2 trillion range (or, to put it another way, 20 populated planets). And there is very little indicatio on the actualy numbers in craftwrolds. They could certainly have more, but it's not definite at all.

 raiden wrote:



Assume no other faction interference, just tau and what are left of eldar craftworlds (no dark eldar) which faction would come out on top?

OP, I would like some clarification on this.

Does "no other faction interference" are we supposed to assume that the Dark Eldar have stopped using the webways and that the chaos daemons throughout them have just magically disappeared? Or does it assume that there is no direct interference, and the chaos daemons keep eating what they come across and the DE keep pillaging the places they tend to pillage?

Currently, using the webways is a dangerous prospect for Eldar. It seems a little off for the Craftworlders to unexpectantly get access to a resource that is incredibly dangerous for them without the danger.

 EmpNortonII wrote:

 raiden wrote:



Assume no other faction interference, just tau and what are left of eldar craftworlds (no dark eldar) which faction would come out on top?

OP, I would like some clarification on this.

Does "no other faction interference" are we supposed to assume that the Dark Eldar have stopped using the webways and that the chaos daemons throughout them have just magically disappeared? Or does it assume that there is no direct interference, and the chaos daemons keep eating what they come across and the DE keep pillaging the places they tend to pillage?

Currently, using the webways is a dangerous prospect for Eldar. It seems a little off for the Craftworlders to unexpectantly get access to a resource that is incredibly dangerous for them without the danger.

Just to clarify: Dark Eldar and Craftworld Eldar do not see each as such. They are not different factions, they simply see each other as Eldar. It would not matter whether an Eldar encounters another Eldar in the Webway, unless they were at odds with that specific Craftworld/Kabal. The Kabals also do not raid the Webway, they raid realspace.

And there aren't very many daemons in the Webway to be eating Eldar souls. Thats kinda the entire reason the Eldar made the Webway, so they wouldn't have to use the Warp to travel.

Sure, they see each other as Eldar, but that doesn't mean they don't make distinctions. The Craftworld Eldar will very much go out of their way to seal off sections of the webway from the Dark Eldar and other such things, while the Dark Eldar have no compunctions about killing Craftworld Eldar, and in fact, Incubi must slay Craftworld Eldar as part of their training. They are not pals or allies or anything of the sort, the Dark Eldar are the Old Eldar, the Eldar that caused the fall, the people that the Craftworld Eldar intentionally cut themselves off from. They may not typically actively war against one-another, but randomly encountering each other within the webway would not simply be like passing a normal person on the street, violence would be a very real possibility.

They may sometimes fight a common foe, but the two groups don't see each other as being identical to themselves. Even when the Dark Eldar came to the aid of Iyanden, it was not something the Craftworlders expected, hope for, or asked for, rather, a single Cabal had joined the fray because they found Iyanden's plight of having to stoop so low as having to mass-conscript their dead for the fight as being "entertaining".

There's even a physiological difference, the Dark Eldar require the pain and suffering of others as a form of sustenance, the Craftworld Eldar don't get anything from that.

 EmpNortonII wrote:


Currently, using the webways is a dangerous prospect for Eldar. It seems a little off for the Craftworlders to unexpectantly get access to a resource that is incredibly dangerous for them without the danger.

I've never see that reference except for occasionally shut off areas. The Eldar use Webway portals all the time and rarely seem to have problems with it. The Necrons were said to struggle but that's because the Webway itself reacts against them not due to any threat inside. Whilst the Dark Eldar do use it I doubt any Kabals would be up for a fight against the whole of the Craftworld Eldar. Daemons generally don't get access to the Webway either.

Vaktathi wrote:They are not pals or allies or anything of the sort, the Dark Eldar are the Old Eldar, the Eldar that caused the fall, the people that the Craftworld Eldar intentionally cut themselves off from. They may not typically actively war against one-another, but randomly encountering each other within the webway would not simply be like passing a normal person on the street, violence would be a very real possibility.

While this is true the difference between the two groups would be staggering. A Dark Eldar expedition would either beat a very hasty retreat or be destroyed quite quickly against the might of the Craftworld Eldar. Since they're still divided like normal, they'd have a massive disadvantage.

As far as I know we have no precise figures on population or 'territory' of either the Eldar or Tau. we can only make guesses.

For the Eldar we can turn to the Craftworld Iyanden supplement:

In their pride, the Eldar of Iyanden underestimated the threat. They believed that their might could weather even this storm, that their armies and fleets could vanquish the Great Devourer. Alas, they were terribly wrong. In an eye blink, as the Eldar reckon existence, Iyanden Craftworld was reduced to ruin. The craftworld's armies and fleets were all but gone, destroyed by the relentless Tyranid advance. Countless billions were slain, whole families and bloodlines lost forever; the living were outnumbered many times over by the dead.

We also know from past fluff and later int he same book

Fourt-fifths of the population lay dead or dying in the battle-scarred halls - a terrible blow to the declining Eldar race.

So basically 80% of Iyanden's dead constituted 'billions' slain. It also means the otehr 20% represents some 500 million at least. The state of Post-Kraken Iyanden is described as being a ruin, tattred remnants, a shadow of its glory (where it was once one of the most populous worlds) and in earlier codexes (4th) being on the brink of extinction despite still having hundreds of millions of Eldar. That argues many if not most other Craftworlds would be more populous than that. That is reinforced by the more recent codex Craftworlds:

Iyanden was once among the most populous of the craftworlds – its wraithbone spires and crystal domes echoed to the voices of billions of Eldar as they went about their lives, believing themselves equal to any threat the universe might have in store. But such arrogance always leads to tragedy. Eventually, the craftworld drifted into the path of a tendril of Hive Fleet Kraken. Unprepared for the ferocity of the Tyranids, Iyanden suffered greatly, countless Eldar devoured to feed the fathomless hunger of the hive fleet. Only the return of the exiled Prince Yriel and his Corsair fleet saved the craftworld from being completely annihilated. Even so, the damage had been done. Where there had once been a teeming world-scape in space, there now drifted a ghost ship.

We dont know how many Craftworlds there exactly are, but we know a lower limit due to the same codex:

Since then, the most morbid of Asurmen’s pupils have founded shrines across a hundred craftworlds, Maugan Ra’s Dark Reaper disciples valuing the spectacular long-ranged kill above all else.

Given half a billion Eldar as a lower limit, with 100 craftworlds that means there are perhaps at least 50 billion Craftworld Eldar as an estimate (accurate maybe to within an order of magnitude or so, perhaps? Moreso if there are far more Craftworlds than I estimated, which may be the case. The FFG stuff implied that there were 1000 Avatars of Khaine, which might imply at least 10x as many Craftworlds.)

As far as the Tau go, we don't have concrete idea of their sizes currenlty (as of Third Sphere) but we did know from the 4th (I believe) Tau codex the following:

Though not extensive, it encompasses a region of space some three hundred light years in diameter, with the Tau homeworld at its centre, and just over a hundred settled worlds. A number of these worlds are home to alien races which are either subservient to the Tau or whose services are bought.

As I said I think that was prior to Third sphere, but as far as I know they haven't conquered many times that number of worlds in that by any source I am aware, at most maybe twice that. We also don't have any concrete numbers on population (I know one source hinted somewhere they had at least one world with billions, but I can't find it) but we do know they consider Hive worlds like Agrellan overpopulated:

Damocles wrote:As such, guaranteeing their security was nigh on impossible. The cities were vast. No matter how quickly the armed forces capitulated or were routed, the hives were occupied by fractious populations. Not everyone was going to see the tau as a liberating power. The hives would take days to fully pacify, the spaceports and landing pads would be prime targets for every fanatic with a bomb and a death wish. The tau couldn’t risk their constructor groups or administrators coming under attack. Bu had also told me that the earth caste was amazed – in a very bad way – at the hive cities. Some ambitious plans were mooted to convert them, but as Bu said, it’d take a long time to make them fit for the Greater Good, and in any case the population of the world was going to be greatly reduced as the earth caste calculated Agrellan was well over its optimum population loading.

Agrellan is rather tiny as Hive worlds go, a mere 16.7 billion and at this point quite possibly even less than that, given that earlier in the book Shadowsun had at least wiped out 7 billion due to that 'cunning' lunar death ray of doom terror tactic, so they probably don't have much above the current population of Earth per world (if even that, the Tau are all about planning and maximizing efficient use of resources and sustainability if they can.. tis why they micromanage every little facet of people's lives up to and including reproduction.) Lets say roughly half that, nearly 5 billion, averaged amongst 100 worlds, there would be ~500 billion Tau.

Now that does seem to favor the Tau in an attirtional sense, but there's alot of qualifiers even apart from the fact I'm extrapolating from alot of disparate sources. For one thing, I was lowballing alot of the Eldar stuff deliberately (lower limits on population estimates, craftworld, etc.) whereas I was also deliberately being more liberal with the Tau ones as far as the information I have goes (I'm estimating downwards from Agrellan.) Moreover it doesn't factor in breakdown of forces - the primarily military troops will be concentrated in fire warriors, air caste, and auxilia, whereas in principle you can mobilze EVERY Eldar as a warrior, even if just a Guardian. It also doesn't factor in any contributions from Ghost Warriors or similar.)

There is also the territorial issues. The tau as noted are across some 300 LY. They have warp routes and Ether drive (actually have both as I recall from the more recent online WD stuff:

White Dwarf issue 7 wrote:Now the Tau Empire is driving hard into Imperial space, determined to capture the area to the galactic west of the Damocles Gulf, which hems the Tau Empire into the extreme eastern fringe of the galaxy. The gulf is exceedingly perilous to travel through, especially for the Tau, who lack the capacity to travel through the Warp. They have now learned the few safe routes through it, and intend to use them as a highway into the heart of the Imperium.

White Dwarf Issue 35 wrote:The Tau are virtually psychic nulls, their souls barely a glimmer in the Warp. No Tau has ever shown even a sprinkling of psychic talent, though the Ethereal caste do seem to wield unnatural power over their subjects. With no psykers, the Tau also have no way of using Warp travel effectively. Unlike Imperial ships, which can dive into the Warp guided by a Navigator, the Tau have to settle for skimming between realspace and the Warp – a much slower process.

They also have FTL communications (4th edition codex and the Shadowsun story from awhile back) so they are well situated there defensively. Offensively, however, they have very limited ways of striking directly at the Craftworlds unless they all happen to conveniently converge on the Tau Empire and sit within striking range - the Eldar have no reason to do this due to the Webway (And indeed, probably no real way to do it given that most Craftworlds AFAIK are strictly sublight affairs) and they also have warp drive (albeit the short range 4-5 LY per hop variety, apart from the dangers of the warp they face in doing so.) but this generally seems to favor the Eldar unless for some reason there are absolutely no webway gates into or near Tau space or we totally deprive them of warp drive (and if that is done, someone could just make a similar case for depriving the Tau, so that literally goes nowhere.) So the Tau have very little way of directly striking at the Eldar, whilst the same cannot be said of the Eldar. Even if no webway gates lead directly onto any Tau worlds, they can deploy ships through them nearby and then deploy from orbit (they have considerable orbitla superiority, and as the Path of the Eldar novels demonstrate, they can create temporary webway portals over short distances - such as the surfaces of planets from ships.)

This means the Tau basically have to find some way to invade and access the Craftworlds via webway gates. This is not beyond possibility, since humans have done so on more than one occasion (although I'd say far from simple) and even then it would be a double edged sword. On one hand, it gives them a means of (At least on foot) striking directly at the Eldar even over vast distances. On the other hand, they have to map out and navigate the webway, and this also creates predictable avenues of attack from which they can be struck at (and if it wasn't for the contrived nature of the debate you can bet there would be other threats they would contest with in the webway, including probably the webway itself. If the webway frowns on Necrons inside it, it may frown on the Tau themselves.)

Troop quality can be argued over or disputed, but I would point out the Eldar quite probably have certain advantages when it comes to vehicles. For one thing, most eldar Grav craft are effectively part aircraft - Tau grav vehicles can pull some 70-100 kph (or up to 150 kph per White Dwarf I've heard.. the ones I mention are strictly IA sources of various times) but the Eldar pull at least that fast if not faster (800-850 kph for Falcons and Wave Serpents, at least at higher altitudes) which gives them much more battlefield mobility and flexibility on top of being able to deploy from Orbit. even if everything else (firepower, etc.) held equal and they had an edge in numbers and durability (which they might have), the Eldar can concentrate and deploy much more rapidly (creating a situation for the Tau not unlike what the Imperium at times faces against the Tau.) Air craft are an issue there of course, but its likely the Eldar at least have parity if not advantage in aeronautica/aerospace craft (apart from maybe the Manta, but the Eldar have plenty of superheavy/Titan grade vehicles of their own, and they also have starfighters)

And whilst Psychic stuff or superweapon stuff seem rather irrelevant (if it came down to that superweapons matter less than orbital and naval superiority.. which if the Eldar have that, they can pretty much do whatever the feth they want and wipe out worlds at their leisure with conventional weapons, nevermind wanky stuff.) But psychic stuff can be beneficial in minor ways - command and control and intel functions mainly, as well as some probability manipulation. It doesn't have to be a HUGE impact to be decisive (and it doesn't have to be game winning in and of itself.. it probably isn't) but it will play a huge role in things since Seers and Farseers can use the warp to help predict and plan attacks (which is pretty much part of their MO) against the Tau far better than the Tau are likely to predict.

It isn't any one thing, and this isn't to say the Tau are going to go down without inflicting any losses (or neccesarily even significant losses), but even if things like population favor the Tau, the operational and strategic realities of the situation tend to favor the Eldar barring any of the 'ifs' I specified above. The Tau can try and invade and conquer/destroy Craftworlds (and may even successed, as again the Imperium can sometimes pull this off) but its not going to be easy. Remember Iyanden was all but wiped out by a major branch of hive fleet Kraken, but still managed to win with last minute aid, whereas the Tau could barely stand up to Gorgon without help.

Incidentally I did run across this looking through the Iyanden stuff, which I think sort of reinforces the above assessment:

The maiden world of Lilarsus is destroyed by expansionist Tau forces. This provokes a bloody response from Iyanden, and the Ke'lshan sept colony of Ka'mais is reduced to rubble during the reprisals. The Tau counter-attack, though slow to mobilise, is determined and well-coordinated, and the aliens recover the wreckage of several Wraithguard as the Eldar withdraw. Earth caste scientists are fascinated by the prizes, thinking them to be more sophisticated versions of their own battlesuits. However, the secrets of psycho-conductive wraithbone prove to lie far beyond the Tau's clumsy grasp, and the wreckage is soon recovered when the Eldar return in force.

That might help with context, although this was I believe pre-Kraken Iyanden.

Actually, tau efficiency would mean more dense, not less. At this point on earth, overpopulation does not exist. Uneven rescorse spread is the problem. We could support, I think the estimate was, 15 times our current population. So I average tau population at 10 billion per world (a mere 3 billion more than out current population). At 200 worlds, give or take, that's about 2 trillion. That seems like a lot, but on a galactic scale it's infinitesimal. The human population is probably in the sectillions.

 Co'tor Shas wrote:
Actually, tau efficiency would mean more dense, not less. At this point on earth, overpopulation does not exist. Uneven rescorse spread is the problem. We could support, I think the estimate was, 15 times our current population. So I average tau population at 10 billion per world (a mere 3 billion more than out current population).

The problem is resource consumption and not space. IRL, if you wanted to give everyone a nice and satisfying lifestyle (First World standard), you would need something like four Earths - and only to sustain the population, extra resources for growth and development are still out of question here.

 AtoMaki wrote:

 Co'tor Shas wrote:
Actually, tau efficiency would mean more dense, not less. At this point on earth, overpopulation does not exist. Uneven rescorse spread is the problem. We could support, I think the estimate was, 15 times our current population. So I average tau population at 10 billion per world (a mere 3 billion more than out current population).

The problem is resource consumption and not space. IRL, if you wanted to give everyone a nice and satisfying lifestyle (First World standard), you would need something like four Earths - and only to sustain the population, extra resources for growth and development are still out of question here.

That's what I was talking about. And with tau, you would have stuff like underground farms, crops genetically engineered to be as efficient as possible, all sorts of stuff. 10 billion would be easily obtainable by them.

Connor MacLeod wrote:

Spoiler:

As far as I know we have no precise figures on population or 'territory' of either the Eldar or Tau. we can only make guesses.

For the Eldar we can turn to the Craftworld Iyanden supplement:

In their pride, the Eldar of Iyanden underestimated the threat. They believed that their might could weather even this storm, that their armies and fleets could vanquish the Great Devourer. Alas, they were terribly wrong. In an eye blink, as the Eldar reckon existence, Iyanden Craftworld was reduced to ruin. The craftworld's armies and fleets were all but gone, destroyed by the relentless Tyranid advance. Countless billions were slain, whole families and bloodlines lost forever; the living were outnumbered many times over by the dead.

We also know from past fluff and later int he same book

Fourt-fifths of the population lay dead or dying in the battle-scarred halls - a terrible blow to the declining Eldar race.

So basically 80% of Iyanden's dead constituted 'billions' slain. It also means the otehr 20% represents some 500 million at least. The state of Post-Kraken Iyanden is described as being a ruin, tattred remnants, a shadow of its glory (where it was once one of the most populous worlds) and in earlier codexes (4th) being on the brink of extinction despite still having hundreds of millions of Eldar. That argues many if not most other Craftworlds would be more populous than that. That is reinforced by the more recent codex Craftworlds:

Iyanden was once among the most populous of the craftworlds – its wraithbone spires and crystal domes echoed to the voices of billions of Eldar as they went about their lives, believing themselves equal to any threat the universe might have in store. But such arrogance always leads to tragedy. Eventually, the craftworld drifted into the path of a tendril of Hive Fleet Kraken. Unprepared for the ferocity of the Tyranids, Iyanden suffered greatly, countless Eldar devoured to feed the fathomless hunger of the hive fleet. Only the return of the exiled Prince Yriel and his Corsair fleet saved the craftworld from being completely annihilated. Even so, the damage had been done. Where there had once been a teeming world-scape in space, there now drifted a ghost ship.

We dont know how many Craftworlds there exactly are, but we know a lower limit due to the same codex:

Since then, the most morbid of Asurmen’s pupils have founded shrines across a hundred craftworlds, Maugan Ra’s Dark Reaper disciples valuing the spectacular long-ranged kill above all else.

Given half a billion Eldar as a lower limit, with 100 craftworlds that means there are perhaps at least 50 billion Craftworld Eldar as an estimate (accurate maybe to within an order of magnitude or so, perhaps? Moreso if there are far more Craftworlds than I estimated, which may be the case. The FFG stuff implied that there were 1000 Avatars of Khaine, which might imply at least 10x as many Craftworlds.)

As far as the Tau go, we don't have concrete idea of their sizes currenlty (as of Third Sphere) but we did know from the 4th (I believe) Tau codex the following:

Though not extensive, it encompasses a region of space some three hundred light years in diameter, with the Tau homeworld at its centre, and just over a hundred settled worlds. A number of these worlds are home to alien races which are either subservient to the Tau or whose services are bought.

As I said I think that was prior to Third sphere, but as far as I know they haven't conquered many times that number of worlds in that by any source I am aware, at most maybe twice that. We also don't have any concrete numbers on population (I know one source hinted somewhere they had at least one world with billions, but I can't find it) but we do know they consider Hive worlds like Agrellan overpopulated:

Damocles wrote:As such, guaranteeing their security was nigh on impossible. The cities were vast. No matter how quickly the armed forces capitulated or were routed, the hives were occupied by fractious populations. Not everyone was going to see the tau as a liberating power. The hives would take days to fully pacify, the spaceports and landing pads would be prime targets for every fanatic with a bomb and a death wish. The tau couldn’t risk their constructor groups or administrators coming under attack. Bu had also told me that the earth caste was amazed – in a very bad way – at the hive cities. Some ambitious plans were mooted to convert them, but as Bu said, it’d take a long time to make them fit for the Greater Good, and in any case the population of the world was going to be greatly reduced as the earth caste calculated Agrellan was well over its optimum population loading.

Agrellan is rather tiny as Hive worlds go, a mere 16.7 billion and at this point quite possibly even less than that, given that earlier in the book Shadowsun had at least wiped out 7 billion due to that 'cunning' lunar death ray of doom terror tactic, so they probably don't have much above the current population of Earth per world (if even that, the Tau are all about planning and maximizing efficient use of resources and sustainability if they can.. tis why they micromanage every little facet of people's lives up to and including reproduction.) Lets say roughly half that, nearly 5 billion, averaged amongst 100 worlds, there would be ~500 billion Tau.

Now that does seem to favor the Tau in an attirtional sense, but there's alot of qualifiers even apart from the fact I'm extrapolating from alot of disparate sources. For one thing, I was lowballing alot of the Eldar stuff deliberately (lower limits on population estimates, craftworld, etc.) whereas I was also deliberately being more liberal with the Tau ones as far as the information I have goes (I'm estimating downwards from Agrellan.) Moreover it doesn't factor in breakdown of forces - the primarily military troops will be concentrated in fire warriors, air caste, and auxilia, whereas in principle you can mobilze EVERY Eldar as a warrior, even if just a Guardian. It also doesn't factor in any contributions from Ghost Warriors or similar.)

There is also the territorial issues. The tau as noted are across some 300 LY. They have warp routes and Ether drive (actually have both as I recall from the more recent online WD stuff:

White Dwarf issue 7 wrote:Now the Tau Empire is driving hard into Imperial space, determined to capture the area to the galactic west of the Damocles Gulf, which hems the Tau Empire into the extreme eastern fringe of the galaxy. The gulf is exceedingly perilous to travel through, especially for the Tau, who lack the capacity to travel through the Warp. They have now learned the few safe routes through it, and intend to use them as a highway into the heart of the Imperium.

White Dwarf Issue 35 wrote:The Tau are virtually psychic nulls, their souls barely a glimmer in the Warp. No Tau has ever shown even a sprinkling of psychic talent, though the Ethereal caste do seem to wield unnatural power over their subjects. With no psykers, the Tau also have no way of using Warp travel effectively. Unlike Imperial ships, which can dive into the Warp guided by a Navigator, the Tau have to settle for skimming between realspace and the Warp – a much slower process.

They also have FTL communications (4th edition codex and the Shadowsun story from awhile back) so they are well situated there defensively. Offensively, however, they have very limited ways of striking directly at the Craftworlds unless they all happen to conveniently converge on the Tau Empire and sit within striking range - the Eldar have no reason to do this due to the Webway (And indeed, probably no real way to do it given that most Craftworlds AFAIK are strictly sublight affairs) and they also have warp drive (albeit the short range 4-5 LY per hop variety, apart from the dangers of the warp they face in doing so.) but this generally seems to favor the Eldar unless for some reason there are absolutely no webway gates into or near Tau space or we totally deprive them of warp drive (and if that is done, someone could just make a similar case for depriving the Tau, so that literally goes nowhere.) So the Tau have very little way of directly striking at the Eldar, whilst the same cannot be said of the Eldar. Even if no webway gates lead directly onto any Tau worlds, they can deploy ships through them nearby and then deploy from orbit (they have considerable orbitla superiority, and as the Path of the Eldar novels demonstrate, they can create temporary webway portals over short distances - such as the surfaces of planets from ships.)

This means the Tau basically have to find some way to invade and access the Craftworlds via webway gates. This is not beyond possibility, since humans have done so on more than one occasion (although I'd say far from simple) and even then it would be a double edged sword. On one hand, it gives them a means of (At least on foot) striking directly at the Eldar even over vast distances. On the other hand, they have to map out and navigate the webway, and this also creates predictable avenues of attack from which they can be struck at (and if it wasn't for the contrived nature of the debate you can bet there would be other threats they would contest with in the webway, including probably the webway itself. If the webway frowns on Necrons inside it, it may frown on the Tau themselves.)

Troop quality can be argued over or disputed, but I would point out the Eldar quite probably have certain advantages when it comes to vehicles. For one thing, most eldar Grav craft are effectively part aircraft - Tau grav vehicles can pull some 70-100 kph (or up to 150 kph per White Dwarf I've heard.. the ones I mention are strictly IA sources of various times) but the Eldar pull at least that fast if not faster (800-850 kph for Falcons and Wave Serpents, at least at higher altitudes) which gives them much more battlefield mobility and flexibility on top of being able to deploy from Orbit. even if everything else (firepower, etc.) held equal and they had an edge in numbers and durability (which they might have), the Eldar can concentrate and deploy much more rapidly (creating a situation for the Tau not unlike what the Imperium at times faces against the Tau.) Air craft are an issue there of course, but its likely the Eldar at least have parity if not advantage in aeronautica/aerospace craft (apart from maybe the Manta, but the Eldar have plenty of superheavy/Titan grade vehicles of their own, and they also have starfighters)

And whilst Psychic stuff or superweapon stuff seem rather irrelevant (if it came down to that superweapons matter less than orbital and naval superiority.. which if the Eldar have that, they can pretty much do whatever the feth they want and wipe out worlds at their leisure with conventional weapons, nevermind wanky stuff.) But psychic stuff can be beneficial in minor ways - command and control and intel functions mainly, as well as some probability manipulation. It doesn't have to be a HUGE impact to be decisive (and it doesn't have to be game winning in and of itself.. it probably isn't) but it will play a huge role in things since Seers and Farseers can use the warp to help predict and plan attacks (which is pretty much part of their MO) against the Tau far better than the Tau are likely to predict.

It isn't any one thing, and this isn't to say the Tau are going to go down without inflicting any losses (or neccesarily even significant losses), but even if things like population favor the Tau, the operational and strategic realities of the situation tend to favor the Eldar barring any of the 'ifs' I specified above. The Tau can try and invade and conquer/destroy Craftworlds (and may even successed, as again the Imperium can sometimes pull this off) but its not going to be easy. Remember Iyanden was all but wiped out by a major branch of hive fleet Kraken, but still managed to win with last minute aid, whereas the Tau could barely stand up to Gorgon without help.

Incidentally I did run across this looking through the Iyanden stuff, which I think sort of reinforces the above assessment:

The maiden world of Lilarsus is destroyed by expansionist Tau forces. This provokes a bloody response from Iyanden, and the Ke'lshan sept colony of Ka'mais is reduced to rubble during the reprisals. The Tau counter-attack, though slow to mobilise, is determined and well-coordinated, and the aliens recover the wreckage of several Wraithguard as the Eldar withdraw. Earth caste scientists are fascinated by the prizes, thinking them to be more sophisticated versions of their own battlesuits. However, the secrets of psycho-conductive wraithbone prove to lie far beyond the Tau's clumsy grasp, and the wreckage is soon recovered when the Eldar return in force.

That might help with context, although this was I believe pre-Kraken Iyanden.

 EngulfedObject wrote:

 Co'tor Shas wrote:
Actually, tau efficiency would mean more dense, not less. At this point on earth, overpopulation does not exist. Uneven rescorse spread is the problem. We could support, I think the estimate was, 15 times our current population.

That's opinion, not fact. Obviously it exists within animal populations, so why not with humans? That debate is outside the scope of this discussion though, not to mention it doesn't factor in climate change, environmental degradation, different levels of development, and so on.

 Co'tor Shas wrote:

So I average tau population at 10 billion per world (a mere 3 billion more than out current population). At 200 worlds, give or take, that's about 2 trillion. That seems like a lot, but on a galactic scale it's infinitesimal. The human population is probably in the sectillions.

What about the Tau reaction to Agrellan's population? That's from a fluff source after all.

1. It's not opinion, I didn't just make it up on the spot. It's based on researcher's findings. Although it may be a little outdated (it was from something I read years ago).The earth can support an incredibly large amount of human life. It just needs to be managed properly. Of course it would damage the ecosystem beyond repair (as it would mean reshaping the world to meet your demands, but, somehow, I think the tau would make that sacrifse for the greater good. And it proebely would not be as bad as you think. Tau can build cites on th bottoms of oceans, why not farms and factories? And I don't think climate change would be such a concern of the tau, as all of their stuff seems to run off of green energy (fission, fusion, solar) or things we don't actually know, but probably don't produce greenhouse emissions (plasma darkmatter).

2. It's a hive world, they have gigantic populations crammed into small spaces. Crammed tighter than the dirtiest of ghettos. Cramped, wet, with a permanent gloom. Never seeing real sun, never feeling wind, never breather clean air. Anybody who has lived at a relatively decent standard would be disgusted by it. And I'm unsure of where the 13.7 billion comes from (aren't they supposed to be likes 100s of billions each)?

Now, certainly, tau could tend to be more in the 7.5billion range, we don't really know, we can only extrapolate.

And even if the tau ad more population than the eldar, they're still boned. It would just take a bit longer.

 Co'tor Shas wrote:
1. It's not opinion, I didn't just make it up on the spot. It's based on researcher's findings. Although it may be a little outdated (it was from something I read years ago).

And there are many studies that claim otherwise. Besides, most of these "overpopulation is a myth" studies come from neoclassical economists, who believe we can carry on as before, regardless of population growth, and who tend to ignore environmental/other factors that disrupt their perfect supply/demand chain. But again, a real life discussion for another forum.

 Co'tor Shas wrote:

The earth can support an incredibly large amount of human life. It just needs to be managed properly. Of course it would damage the ecosystem beyond repair (as it would mean reshaping the world to meet your demands, but, somehow, I think the tau would make that sacrifse for the greater good. And it proebely would not be as bad as you think. Tau can build cites on th bottoms of oceans, why not farms and factories? And I don't think climate change would be such a concern of the tau, as all of their stuff seems to run off of green energy (fission, fusion, solar) or things we don't actually know, but probably don't produce greenhouse emissions (plasma darkmatter).
And I don't think climate change would be such a concern of the tau, as all of their stuff seems to run off of green energy (fission, fusion, solar) or things we don't actually know, but probably don't produce greenhouse emissions (plasma darkmatter).

That's true, the Tau can probably get more out of their planets than they're given credit for. Agrellan's population does seem pathethically low for a Hive world, plus it's from one of those supplements that have hundreds of pages of extremely detailed fluff that just scream "future retcon" (that includes the Iyanden supplement).

The climate change + other factors thing was about overpopulation in our world, not the 40k universe.

Meh, my knowledge on the subject is pretty passing, so I could definitely be wrong.
It is a very interesting topic to think about, especially when you bring stuff like orbitals, and moon-bases into the matter.

 Vaktathi wrote:
Sure, they see each other as Eldar, but that doesn't mean they don't make distinctions. The Craftworld Eldar will very much go out of their way to seal off sections of the webway from the Dark Eldar and other such things, while the Dark Eldar have no compunctions about killing Craftworld Eldar, and in fact, Incubi must slay Craftworld Eldar as part of their training. They are not pals or allies or anything of the sort, the Dark Eldar are the Old Eldar, the Eldar that caused the fall, the people that the Craftworld Eldar intentionally cut themselves off from. They may not typically actively war against one-another, but randomly encountering each other within the webway would not simply be like passing a normal person on the street, violence would be a very real possibility.

They may sometimes fight a common foe, but the two groups don't see each other as being identical to themselves. Even when the Dark Eldar came to the aid of Iyanden, it was not something the Craftworlders expected, hope for, or asked for, rather, a single Cabal had joined the fray because they found Iyanden's plight of having to stoop so low as having to mass-conscript their dead for the fight as being "entertaining".

There's even a physiological difference, the Dark Eldar require the pain and suffering of others as a form of sustenance, the Craftworld Eldar don't get anything from that.

That is not true. The little fluff that has them interacting, has them interacting quite normally. There is plenty of trade of goods and persons between the Craftworlds and Commorragh. It is not uncommon for craftworlders to travel to Commorragh or even join one of the Kabals. At the same time, Dark Eldar can travel to and join a craftworld. The only difference is in lifestyle. A Dark Eldar who decides to follow one of the Paths, gets a soulstone and trains his psychic abilities is indistinguisable from a Craftworld Eldar, just as a Craftworld Eldar who decides to let his desires and emotions run free is indistinguisable from a Dark Eldar. Then there is also the Eldar Corsairs, who are basically Dark Eldar who do not live in the Webway, or Craftworld Eldar who reject the Paths. Eldar is a race, dark or craftworld are lifestyles. Just like one human can join a criminal gang, and the other an ascetic religious group but still encounter each other on the street.

Sealing off the Webway to the Dark Eldar is also impossible, because the Dark Eldar live inside of the Webway, Commorragh is a central hub, and sealing it off would also mean the Craftworlds themselves would lose access.

 Co'tor Shas wrote:
Actually, tau efficiency would mean more dense, not less. At this point on earth, overpopulation does not exist. Uneven rescorse spread is the problem. We could support, I think the estimate was, 15 times our current population. So I average tau population at 10 billion per world (a mere 3 billion more than out current population). At 200 worlds, give or take, that's about 2 trillion. That seems like a lot, but on a galactic scale it's infinitesimal. The human population is probably in the sectillions.

Unfortunately the fluff would disagree with this, apart from what I already posted:

Savage Scars wrote:The city was small by human standards. In the Imperium it was often convenient to pack the multitudes in as tightly as possible, as near to their workplaces as could be achieved, in order to control the means of production with brutal but vital efficiency. The ultimate expression of this harsh reality was the hive cities of such worlds as Armageddon, Ichar IV and Gehenna Prime, each of which could equal the industrial output of any other planet in the Imperium short of a forge world of the Adeptus Mechanicus. Instead of packing their population into a relatively small number of massive cities, the tau evidently preferred to establish thousands of smaller settlements across an entire planet, and Gel’bryn was the largest of those on Dal’yth Prime. Lucian suspected that each city was relatively self-sufficient too, if the surrounding farmland was anything to go by. The use of advanced technology, forbidden or simply lost in the Imperium, for such simple tasks as farming was beyond anything he had seen in his decades of contact with all manner of xenos species. It suggested a highly ordered society in which individuals were free of the drudgery that was the reality of everyday life in the human Imperium.

Kill Team wrote:"I come from a city that stretches three kilometres into the skies of Olympas," I tell the tau, trying to make it sound as impressive as I can. There's no point letting them think they're the only ones who can build a fancy city. "The lower levels are delved a similar distance into the rock. A billion humans live in that one city, and there are thirteen such cities on my world."

"That cannot be," argues Shas'elan. "That is more humans on one world than there are tau in this sept!"

"We call them hive worlds, from the busy nests of insects," explains Quidlon. "There are many hive worlds in the Imperium, and other kinds of worlds too."

"Many worlds with this many humans?" Shas'elan looks shocked and glares accusingly at Coldwind, muttering something in Tau.

This was Gav Thorpe's work, and although I think he doesn't particularly care for the Tau, it does reinforce what was in Damocles.

Deathwatch Core Rules wrote:Imperial religion is prohibited and the Tau Water Caste run education (and re-education) programs that instil an understanding and love of the Greater Good into the sometimes reluctant gue’la minds. Populations are regularly sterilised to prevent population growth outstretching Tau methods of control. Human transgressors against the Greater Good are not publicly executed, as is the Imperial way, for the Tau see no need to publicise the fates of those who oppose them. Instead, such gue’la simply disappear, and it is the way of the Greater Good to convince oneself that they never existed at all.

And just before we get into the 'HA HA TAU ARE EVIL' gimmick quotes like this invariably provoke, let's note that the Tau, if we take the evidence in totality, have very good reasons from their point of view for doing this. Let us revisit Damocles again:

Damocles wrote:Bu had also told me that the earth caste was amazed – in a very bad way – at the hive cities. Some ambitious plans were mooted to convert them, but as Bu said, it’d take a long time to make them fit for the Greater Good, and in any case the population of the world was going to be greatly reduced as the earth caste calculated Agrellan was well over its optimum population loading.

The Tau are all about control, maximization of efficiency and effectiveness of everything (Geared towards the Greater Good), minimizing waste and loss, and generally managing every aspect of their society towards their goals (Again the Greater Good.) These manifest in (to a human, and often western) point of view as 'evil', but it neglects the fact that there are societies (historically and otherwise) that trade freedom and individuality for stability, security, and sustainability. The tau are going to be all about sustainability which is in direct contrast to the Imperium. For the most part, they don't deplete worlds callously of their resources (at least not without good reason), they don't breed uncontrollably to the point the world can no longer support itself and needs to be supported externally, they do not expand and consume recklessly - those are human traits. The Tau are more logical and methodical than that, and they have very much of an eye towards the long term.

Now, as it does turn out there are Population limits on a world if you want it to remain self sufficient and sustainable, and they are far below what a Hive World can achieve. Note the key words 'self sufficient and sustainable.' You can use technology to circumvent this in various ways (efficient resource usage, to a point) but this only puts off the inevitable, not negating it - eventually you reach a point where various factors (not just food, or living space, or even oxygen, but the human impact on the environment, thermodynamics issues from that many people living in proximity, nevermind the pollution and thermal output of a high technology society) mean you literally cannot sustain yourself without outside support or anything like that.

The tau could probably achieve that (they can make colonies in space after all), but this would not be sustainable. They would be fething up the worlds the same way humans do, and the Tau quite bluntly do not do that. The sterilization thing is part of that as well, since genetics and gak can be unpredictable and often the genetic lottery can be harmful to people - breeding, like other things, needs to be controlled in order to not only optimize it, but to limit the negative impact on others and society as a whole. That sounds horrible in some ways, but it's not in others (because to be honest, I'm not sure OUR society treats those people as well as we should.) It is cold, and pragmatic, but hardly evil.

Another point to consider is one of scale. Not all those worlds are going to be densely populated, many are going to be colonies and other such, so they are likely to run more into the millions at best, rather than billions. Even if they HAD some that could run up to like, 7-10 billion, most aren't, so it will still balance out, unless we're to believe that every world (even newly conquered ones) suddnely become hyper-industrilalized and densely populated major worlds overnight (rather unlikely - if all worlds were like that, why would the Tau care about places like Taros, which are, by Imperial standards trivial backwaters? Taros was a BIG DEAL for the Tau Empire, remember.)

That said, as I said, the Tau do have some worlds with at least 'several billion' population, and I found the source:

Planetstrike wrote:During the War of Dakka, Warlord Grog takes battle to the Tau-held world of Atari Vo in the most direct manner he can devise - by propelling a titanic dagger-shaped metoer he uses as his base through the atmosphere and plunging it burning tip straight into the Tau capital city. Several billion of ATari Vo's Tau populace die before Grog and his Dakka Elite step out of the meteor's shieldcore chambers..

This isn't even a sept world insofar as I am aware (although its hardly a minor world likely, they seem to have settled it for some time) so it seems to fit in between those two.

 Co'tor Shas wrote:
2. It's a hive world, they have gigantic populations crammed into small spaces. Crammed tighter than the dirtiest of ghettos. Cramped, wet, with a permanent gloom. Never seeing real sun, never feeling wind, never breather clean air. Anybody who has lived at a relatively decent standard would be disgusted by it. And I'm unsure of where the 13.7 billion comes from (aren't they supposed to be likes 100s of billions each)?

Hive Worlds aren't a homogenous thing, any more than most things in the Imperium are. There is no formal way they are constructed - rather, they represent the human tendency towards greed and short-sighted thinking - they breed and expand and consume to the point the world becomes untenable and then have to scrabble to survive somehow - bartering their huge populations and industrial might in the hope they can get the things they need (resources and food). They are a testament to human fallibility, rather than a deliberate design choice.

That also means you can have different grades and qualities of hive world. Not every place is a Necromunda or Armageddon (where the majority, if not totality of the world is an irradiated, polluted craphole that only mutants and the hardiest can survive exposure to for any length of time). Some may only be very badly polluted but you can still technically live outside (Thracian Primaris from the Eisenhorn novels, which is 'only' a population of 22 billion), and some are smaller and may not even be totally crapholes (a bit bigger and more polluted than Earth, starting towards the 'Thracian Primaris' stage of things. I believe they call them Proto-Hives.) But they don't just cram people into Hives just for no good reason - people live in hives like that because the outside environment is not only incapable of sustaining them, but actively inimical to human or any other live. Just as humans can't live in a void, you can't really 'live' on a hive world outside the hives.

Now, certainly, tau could tend to be more in the 7.5billion range, we don't really know, we can only extrapolate.

Sure, I admitted as much. but what we do know tends to argue the opposite of what you are suggesting. If you want to believe that that's fine, because 40K allows for people to 'forge their own narrative' so to speak, but the evidence still speaks for itself.

Now all that said you did mention the spaceborne population, and I admit my numbers don't include that (orbitals, asteroid colonies, mining settlements, stuff like that.) which could add a non-trivial portion to it, but it is rather unlikely that the majority of the Tau come from the void (I'm pretty sure in fact that is largely the province of the air caste, since they are the aerospace forces for the Tau) and would only have some Earth Caste (for engineering and maintenance task) and Fire Caste (for security and defense) purposes.

From the savage scars quote that doesn't really tell us anything, just that tau prefer to be more spread out. I'm not sure why you posted that one?

Honestly, if tau septs are all less than 13 billion a piece, than tau are, individually, far more formidable than we think. I mean, there's only 20 of them (give or take, depending on who's doing the writing), so that would put their combined population at a upper cap of ~250 billion, which is stupidly small. Or we could just say that GW writers have no sense of scale. Because that has pretty much always been the case. Like how entire planets are fought over by combined armies, totally less than the causalities in WWII.

Agrellan is a hive world, so it probably is over it's population cap. Because it's a hive world. My guess was well below hive world standards. I mean, you wouldn't say that we are a hive world, but that's not too much more.

And, yes, population limits are a thing, but I already discussed that. 10 billion is not planet-destroying levels of population if managed correctly, something the tau can most defiantly do.Tau have the ability to build both underwater and floating cites, as well as deep underground laboratories, industrial plants, farms, ect They can genetically engineer plants and animals to be extremely space efficient, or breed some sort of algae to convert CO2 to O2. Their power sources seem to have no emissions (besides some sort of necualr waste most probely, but they can just fire that into the sun ), and tau of all races would be skilled in alternative, "free", energies (tidal, geothermal, ect). And as far as breeding is concern, sterilization in itself appears to not be a thing, but we do know that tau do not form couples like humans, nor even race the children themselves. They are selected for breeding, orders to do their thing, and the baby is then taken care of by professionals, raised in the life-to-death training system the defines the tau.

As far as caring about Taros, just because it doesn't have population doesn't mean that it doesn't also have recorces and area to develop. And the tau aren't going to not claim planets when they can, expansion is huge for them. Their end goal is to rule the galaxy, every backwater planet, and lifeless asteroid belt.

About the spacebourne, certainly it's not the majority, but (and your mentioning it made me remember), they existence of orbital cities and the new fortress stations (with the population of the largest ones comparable to "a continent sized city") will definitely contribute.


You do bring up a good point though, how developed are each world? Certainly the ones in the fully fledged septs themselves are going to be pretty devolved, but I think the quote was "hundreds of worlds". That quite a bit more than what's contained in the septs. If we go by 3-4 full worlds per sept, (tau are masters of terraforming, as well as living on worlds unlivable by human standards) that gets us only about fully developed worlds 60-40 worlds. That means far less. If we go by my original estimate (10bil for developed world) and maybe and aveage of 3/8ths that much for "undeveloped" worlds. At the low end of "hundreds" (200) that would get us somewhere between 1 and 1.125 trillion in population. so quite a bit lower than my original guess (by half in fact). Still infinitesable on a galactic scale. And the CE still defintly have the capacity to have more.

Eldar.

The Eldar have numerous advantages:
- Psyker mastery
- Warp technology
- Phantom-class Titans (Tau have no equivalent)
- more living soldiers
- Ghost Warriors to augment forces

The Tau are simply outclassed.

OTOH, give it another 10,000 years, and the Tau might advance to surpass the Eldar, simply due to the speed with which they are growing.

Eldar:


I personally believe that a single craftworld bent on the destruction of the Tau could diplomancer their way into a Tau alliance in bad faith and turn all Tau allies against their masters. "Greater good, so long aas your leaders wear these nice helmets" indeed.




And the Tau's rapid advancement technologically doesn't make them special. The Eldar, Necron and human empires went through that phase too. The only thing they have going for them is diplomacy and I think the Eldar are better at it. See the "Cultural exchange" between Tau and DE.


That and lacking a significant warp presence, which is as much a liability as an advantage.

Connor MacLeod wrote:

Spoiler:

 Co'tor Shas wrote:
Actually, tau efficiency would mean more dense, not less. At this point on earth, overpopulation does not exist. Uneven rescorse spread is the problem. We could support, I think the estimate was, 15 times our current population. So I average tau population at 10 billion per world (a mere 3 billion more than out current population). At 200 worlds, give or take, that's about 2 trillion. That seems like a lot, but on a galactic scale it's infinitesimal. The human population is probably in the sectillions.

Unfortunately the fluff would disagree with this, apart from what I already posted:

Savage Scars wrote:The city was small by human standards. In the Imperium it was often convenient to pack the multitudes in as tightly as possible, as near to their workplaces as could be achieved, in order to control the means of production with brutal but vital efficiency. The ultimate expression of this harsh reality was the hive cities of such worlds as Armageddon, Ichar IV and Gehenna Prime, each of which could equal the industrial output of any other planet in the Imperium short of a forge world of the Adeptus Mechanicus. Instead of packing their population into a relatively small number of massive cities, the tau evidently preferred to establish thousands of smaller settlements across an entire planet, and Gel’bryn was the largest of those on Dal’yth Prime. Lucian suspected that each city was relatively self-sufficient too, if the surrounding farmland was anything to go by. The use of advanced technology, forbidden or simply lost in the Imperium, for such simple tasks as farming was beyond anything he had seen in his decades of contact with all manner of xenos species. It suggested a highly ordered society in which individuals were free of the drudgery that was the reality of everyday life in the human Imperium.

Kill Team wrote:"I come from a city that stretches three kilometres into the skies of Olympas," I tell the tau, trying to make it sound as impressive as I can. There's no point letting them think they're the only ones who can build a fancy city. "The lower levels are delved a similar distance into the rock. A billion humans live in that one city, and there are thirteen such cities on my world."

"That cannot be," argues Shas'elan. "That is more humans on one world than there are tau in this sept!"

"We call them hive worlds, from the busy nests of insects," explains Quidlon. "There are many hive worlds in the Imperium, and other kinds of worlds too."

"Many worlds with this many humans?" Shas'elan looks shocked and glares accusingly at Coldwind, muttering something in Tau.

This was Gav Thorpe's work, and although I think he doesn't particularly care for the Tau, it does reinforce what was in Damocles.

Deathwatch Core Rules wrote:Imperial religion is prohibited and the Tau Water Caste run education (and re-education) programs that instil an understanding and love of the Greater Good into the sometimes reluctant gue’la minds. Populations are regularly sterilised to prevent population growth outstretching Tau methods of control. Human transgressors against the Greater Good are not publicly executed, as is the Imperial way, for the Tau see no need to publicise the fates of those who oppose them. Instead, such gue’la simply disappear, and it is the way of the Greater Good to convince oneself that they never existed at all.

And just before we get into the 'HA HA TAU ARE EVIL' gimmick quotes like this invariably provoke, let's note that the Tau, if we take the evidence in totality, have very good reasons from their point of view for doing this. Let us revisit Damocles again:

Damocles wrote:Bu had also told me that the earth caste was amazed – in a very bad way – at the hive cities. Some ambitious plans were mooted to convert them, but as Bu said, it’d take a long time to make them fit for the Greater Good, and in any case the population of the world was going to be greatly reduced as the earth caste calculated Agrellan was well over its optimum population loading.

The Tau are all about control, maximization of efficiency and effectiveness of everything (Geared towards the Greater Good), minimizing waste and loss, and generally managing every aspect of their society towards their goals (Again the Greater Good.) These manifest in (to a human, and often western) point of view as 'evil', but it neglects the fact that there are societies (historically and otherwise) that trade freedom and individuality for stability, security, and sustainability. The tau are going to be all about sustainability which is in direct contrast to the Imperium. For the most part, they don't deplete worlds callously of their resources (at least not without good reason), they don't breed uncontrollably to the point the world can no longer support itself and needs to be supported externally, they do not expand and consume recklessly - those are human traits. The Tau are more logical and methodical than that, and they have very much of an eye towards the long term.

Now, as it does turn out there are Population limits on a world if you want it to remain self sufficient and sustainable, and they are far below what a Hive World can achieve. Note the key words 'self sufficient and sustainable.' You can use technology to circumvent this in various ways (efficient resource usage, to a point) but this only puts off the inevitable, not negating it - eventually you reach a point where various factors (not just food, or living space, or even oxygen, but the human impact on the environment, thermodynamics issues from that many people living in proximity, nevermind the pollution and thermal output of a high technology society) mean you literally cannot sustain yourself without outside support or anything like that.

The tau could probably achieve that (they can make colonies in space after all), but this would not be sustainable. They would be fething up the worlds the same way humans do, and the Tau quite bluntly do not do that. The sterilization thing is part of that as well, since genetics and gak can be unpredictable and often the genetic lottery can be harmful to people - breeding, like other things, needs to be controlled in order to not only optimize it, but to limit the negative impact on others and society as a whole. That sounds horrible in some ways, but it's not in others (because to be honest, I'm not sure OUR society treats those people as well as we should.) It is cold, and pragmatic, but hardly evil.

Another point to consider is one of scale. Not all those worlds are going to be densely populated, many are going to be colonies and other such, so they are likely to run more into the millions at best, rather than billions. Even if they HAD some that could run up to like, 7-10 billion, most aren't, so it will still balance out, unless we're to believe that every world (even newly conquered ones) suddnely become hyper-industrilalized and densely populated major worlds overnight (rather unlikely - if all worlds were like that, why would the Tau care about places like Taros, which are, by Imperial standards trivial backwaters? Taros was a BIG DEAL for the Tau Empire, remember.)

That said, as I said, the Tau do have some worlds with at least 'several billion' population, and I found the source:

Planetstrike wrote:During the War of Dakka, Warlord Grog takes battle to the Tau-held world of Atari Vo in the most direct manner he can devise - by propelling a titanic dagger-shaped metoer he uses as his base through the atmosphere and plunging it burning tip straight into the Tau capital city. Several billion of ATari Vo's Tau populace die before Grog and his Dakka Elite step out of the meteor's shieldcore chambers..

This isn't even a sept world insofar as I am aware (although its hardly a minor world likely, they seem to have settled it for some time) so it seems to fit in between those two.

 Co'tor Shas wrote:
2. It's a hive world, they have gigantic populations crammed into small spaces. Crammed tighter than the dirtiest of ghettos. Cramped, wet, with a permanent gloom. Never seeing real sun, never feeling wind, never breather clean air. Anybody who has lived at a relatively decent standard would be disgusted by it. And I'm unsure of where the 13.7 billion comes from (aren't they supposed to be likes 100s of billions each)?

Hive Worlds aren't a homogenous thing, any more than most things in the Imperium are. There is no formal way they are constructed - rather, they represent the human tendency towards greed and short-sighted thinking - they breed and expand and consume to the point the world becomes untenable and then have to scrabble to survive somehow - bartering their huge populations and industrial might in the hope they can get the things they need (resources and food). They are a testament to human fallibility, rather than a deliberate design choice.

That also means you can have different grades and qualities of hive world. Not every place is a Necromunda or Armageddon (where the majority, if not totality of the world is an irradiated, polluted craphole that only mutants and the hardiest can survive exposure to for any length of time). Some may only be very badly polluted but you can still technically live outside (Thracian Primaris from the Eisenhorn novels, which is 'only' a population of 22 billion), and some are smaller and may not even be totally crapholes (a bit bigger and more polluted than Earth, starting towards the 'Thracian Primaris' stage of things. I believe they call them Proto-Hives.) But they don't just cram people into Hives just for no good reason - people live in hives like that because the outside environment is not only incapable of sustaining them, but actively inimical to human or any other live. Just as humans can't live in a void, you can't really 'live' on a hive world outside the hives.

Now, certainly, tau could tend to be more in the 7.5billion range, we don't really know, we can only extrapolate.

Sure, I admitted as much. but what we do know tends to argue the opposite of what you are suggesting. If you want to believe that that's fine, because 40K allows for people to 'forge their own narrative' so to speak, but the evidence still speaks for itself.

Now all that said you did mention the spaceborne population, and I admit my numbers don't include that (orbitals, asteroid colonies, mining settlements, stuff like that.) which could add a non-trivial portion to it, but it is rather unlikely that the majority of the Tau come from the void (I'm pretty sure in fact that is largely the province of the air caste, since they are the aerospace forces for the Tau) and would only have some Earth Caste (for engineering and maintenance task) and Fire Caste (for security and defense) purposes.

Because, that's pretty tiny. Especially for an empire consisting of "hundreds of worlds". Them keeping that together, with only 2 billions or so per world, would be very impressive. Point 25b is stupidly small. And god damn space marine numbers always annoy me. Why, why are they so small, it just isn't sustainable.

 Co'tor Shas wrote:
Because, that's pretty tiny. Especially for an empire consisting of "hundreds of worlds". Them keeping that together, with only 2 billions or so per world, would be very impressive. Point 25b is stupidly small. And god damn space marine numbers always annoy me. Why, why are they so small, it just isn't sustainable.

Hm, I'm not sure having billions more per world would make the Empire easier to run. If anything, sufficient but small and easy to manage numbers would make it easier to keep control, no? The Tau Empire works well because it's so compact.

Perhaps, but spreading too thin could be far worse. As well as not being able to take advantage of those resources, you can't effectively respond to aggression. With a denser population, it means that the local army can hold out longer until reinforcements arrive.

 Co'tor Shas wrote:
Perhaps, but spreading too thin could be far worse. As well as not being able to take advantage of those resources, you can't effectively respond to aggression. With a denser population, it means that the local army can hold out longer until reinforcements arrive.

But that's exactly what the Tau fluff is about, with the "spheres of expansion" and waiting between the phases. Also, the Farsight Enclaves going rogue because they ventured out to far and their Ethereals couldn't be replaced. And also the setbacks with first contact with the Imperium and Orks. It's all part of the Tau "up and coming, but not quite ready" and "don't provoke the beast (Imperium)" themes.

Well, yes, but I don't think it's that extreme. They wait until they are fully developed before starting the next sphere. They aren't going to spread themselves quite that thin, at that point, claiming more land is more of a liability than it's worth.

 Co'tor Shas wrote:
Well, yes, but I don't think it's that extreme. They wait until they are fully developed before starting the next sphere. They aren't going to spread themselves quite that thin, at that point, claiming more land is more of a liability than it's worth.

Yea but that's why they have the spheres of expansion. The Ethereals decide when it's okay to expand. Apparently now is a good time. And who says 2 billion per world is that extreme? The population is probably concentrated on more important worlds, with some having very low (newly colonized worlds for example) and others having larger populations.

Here's the thing, the population would already be low before the the sphere, they third sphere didn't quadruple the size of the empire or something, so there is very little reason for the spread to be that low.

The issue with spherical expansion is a surface / volume problem.

Consider a line, you can expand indefinitely as your exposed front and rear never increase, while your resource base grows. This is the perfect scenario, where you never need to increase your military.

Then move to a plane, and the recourse base grows twice as fast as the perimeter. Still sustainable, as your resource base grows faster than your defense perimeter.

Now, move to space, and your exposed area grows continues to grow twice as fast as the enclosed volume. However, at stellar scales, the density is not good. Most of that volume is actually non-productive emptiness, while the perimeter continues to increase.

Expand the concept to warp space, and the ability for your opponents to jump a warfleet into any of that empty space means that there is only marginal advantage to growth.

Finally expand further to webway, where there is near-instantaneous access to many of those empty spaces or interior points, and it becomes clear that Tau basically have no defense. The sub-warp speed Tau cannot possibly react fast enough to a warp- (and web-)capable force possessing anti-planetary weaponry to defend planets. And warp weaponry cares nothing for how big or tough the target is.

The only question for the Eldar is whether they risk opening another Chaos Gate in the heart of what used to be the Tau homeworld.

Particularly as the Tau now mingle with ever increasing numbers of warp-aware, Chaos-susceptible races.

If this really is a war of extermination, that might actually be a viable, but extreme solution.

The Silent King uniting all necron dynasties would kick Eldar Craftworlds and Tau Septs AT THE SAME TIME!!! Because Necrons have reanimation protocols.... :-)

 Co'tor Shas wrote:
From the savage scars quote that doesn't really tell us anything, just that tau prefer to be more spread out. I'm not sure why you posted that one?

It was the specific contrast between the Imperium's expansionist (and somewhat self-destructive) means of uncontrolled expansion vs the Tau's more methodical and structured approach. They don't favor exploitative methods that are inherently destructive to the environment. You won't see Tau making the equivalent of Forge Worlds or Hive Worlds, because that wouldn't be logical, nor sustainable or self sufficient, which is in line with all the other passages I mentioned. You seem to be intent on trying to create the impression that the Tau would not only create hive worlds, but better and would somehow totally ignore all the problems inherent in that.

Honestly, if tau septs are all less than 13 billion a piece, than tau are, individually, far more formidable than we think. I mean, there's only 20 of them (give or take, depending on who's doing the writing), so that would put their combined population at a upper cap of ~250 billion, which is stupidly small. Or we could just say that GW writers have no sense of scale. Because that has pretty much always been the case. Like how entire planets are fought over by combined armies, totally less than the causalities in WWII.

We don't actually know how many worlds for sure they hold for various reasons. 100 worlds could also mean systems (and even if its planets, it doesn't include whether its habitable planets or includes stuff like moons, large asteorids, etc.) It doesn't include recent acquisitions as far as I am aware (third sphere) either. But no, it probably won't lead to numbers competitive with the rest of 40K, but thats the problem inherent with the way the Tau are written vs how they are promoted, and there's no neat way to fix that without either rewriting the whole of 40K to suit the Tau, or changing the tau in some way to break that problem (or just continuing authorial fiats that actually serve no purpose or make them seem as effective as claimed and feed the resentment of others who don't like the tau.)

Agrellan is a hive world, so it probably is over it's population cap. Because it's a hive world. My guess was well below hive world standards. I mean, you wouldn't say that we are a hive world, but that's not too much more.

Not a fully developed hive world, no, but as I said there is no clear boundary for such as noted in Battlezone Cityfight:

Virtually every human community has within it the potential to become a hive city.

...

Hive cities are not constructed with any overall vision, instead they grow as their population grows and can be as diverse as the planets on which they are situated.

As I said, Hive Worlds come in all sorts, degrees, and classifications. Not all are an Armageddon or Necromunda, but those are the most extreme examples. It might be better to look at Hive Cities not as a discrete or static class, but as an evolutionary life cycle as a world moves past its population boundaries and sustainability, and requires ever-more extreme artificial means to support itself and eventually reaches a point where it cannot survive without external aid.. and even then may eventually die off because it either cannot get the support it needs in a timely manner, or implodes because of some other factor. Thus, some place like Agrellan could be viewed as the 'start' of the cycle, whereas Necromunda represent sthe 'end'.

I'll also note that Agrellan is closer to the proto-hive concept of Arcologies mentioned int eh Horus Heresy, whereas Hive Worlds true are arcologies that got out of hand over time.

And, yes, population limits are a thing, but I already discussed that. 10 billion is not planet-destroying levels of population if managed correctly, something the tau can most defiantly do.Tau have the ability to build both underwater and floating cites, as well as deep underground laboratories, industrial plants, farms, ect They can genetically engineer plants and animals to be extremely space efficient, or breed some sort of algae to convert CO2 to O2. Their power sources seem to have no emissions (besides some sort of necualr waste most probely, but they can just fire that into the sun ), and tau of all races would be skilled in alternative, "free", energies (tidal, geothermal, ect). And as far as breeding is concern, sterilization in itself appears to not be a thing, but we do know that tau do not form couples like humans, nor even race the children themselves. They are selected for breeding, orders to do their thing, and the baby is then taken care of by professionals, raised in the life-to-death training system the defines the tau.

Again I do not disagree that it is POSSIBLE for them to do it, it is just not something they clearly would do by choice, or would fit in with their plans. Rampant and uncontrolled genetic reproduction is a human thing (and has all sorts of drawbacks even apart from overcrowding and sustainability issues), nevermind the way we consume resources indiscriminately and without concern for the environment (including energy.) Even if they have means to stretch those boundaries it still is threatening the sustainability of the environment, as well as its self-sufficiency, because your'e taking away any safety margin the planet might have to survive if those mechanisms aren't in place. The Tau are great believers in redundant and extensive planning, you may recall.. does it sound like they would gamble on an entire planet's existence failing if the technology fails (our own society is not nearly as robust technologically as we believe, after all.) Technology helps, but even in 40K its not a magic wand that makes all problems go away (and it only makes physics go away a little bit if you are an Ork or Chaos Daemon.)

As far as caring about Taros, just because it doesn't have population doesn't mean that it doesn't also have recorces and area to develop. And the tau aren't going to not claim planets when they can, expansion is huge for them. Their end goal is to rule the galaxy, every backwater planet, and lifeless asteroid belt.

True, but the scale of the conflict and the benefits acquired for that event are still telling about the perception of the faction in question. Taros being a significant acquistiion for the Tau when its a drop in the bucket for the Imperium doesn't say much for the Tau empire as a whole, and is in more line with the view I've presented than I think it is for yours. The fact they have an unshakable faith in their manifest destiny, to the point of being naive at times, does not really alter this.

About the spacebourne, certainly it's not the majority, but (and your mentioning it made me remember), they existence of orbital cities and the new fortress stations (with the population of the largest ones comparable to "a continent sized city") will definitely contribute.

You do bring up a good point though, how developed are each world? Certainly the ones in the fully fledged septs themselves are going to be pretty devolved, but I think the quote was "hundreds of worlds". That quite a bit more than what's contained in the septs. If we go by 3-4 full worlds per sept, (tau are masters of terraforming, as well as living on worlds unlivable by human standards) that gets us only about fully developed worlds 60-40 worlds. That means far less. If we go by my original estimate (10bil for developed world) and maybe and aveage of 3/8ths that much for "undeveloped" worlds. At the low end of "hundreds" (200) that would get us somewhere between 1 and 1.125 trillion in population. so quite a bit lower than my original guess (by half in fact). Still infinitesable on a galactic scale. And the CE still defintly have the capacity to have more.

yes, it could, but again its the air caste that dominates those matters more than other factions, so it would impact them. And we dont know how many such cities they have either (and they are hardly the only ones that have stuff like that. The Imperium got those planet sized space stations later on, after all.) You could just as easily argue the Tau managed to take a buttload of worlds during Third sphere and are expanding rapidly, or they have spread out to densely colonize all systems - just because one world is taken doesn't mean that other heavenly bodies in the system can't be inhabited.) But these in absolute terms would be minor fudges. Even if we grant the Tau something like 20 billion per world and assume EVERY known world had that, you're still only getting something like 2 trillion. This isn't even an order of magnitude beyond what I estimated, and its not going to put them in the big leagues compared to other factions. as I said I can be lowballing the Eldar quite a bit as well both in terms of population size AND number of Craftworlds, and the others - orks, Necrons, Tyranids and Imperium - certainly have many many orders of magnitude more population than the tau even on the lowest end estimate. They're quite simply written too small relative to the other settings to fudge properly like that.

Again if the Tau are going to be a major player like the other factions they need more of a rewrite to redefine that scope somehow, at least a little . But this is going ot involve major changes to the setting (not that they haven't shown a willingness to do that with other factions, and haven't even rewritten the Tau a bit with 6th) but people don't always react well to that. A Tau Empire with several thousand worlds under its belt is a more serious player than on ethat maybe has a hundred or so worlds.