Re: [GZG] Requesting a little help with a background (Revolt on Antares!)

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ther solution is political paralysis. Many great empires fall even
though
they have more than sufficient forces due to disintegration of its
policy-making institutions. It's a corollary to Pournelle's Iron Law of
Bureaucracy, writ large. In a declining empire, the people who decide
the
division of power gradually gain dominance over the people who acquire
and
defend the Empire's power.

There are any number of reasons why an empire might be stunned into
helplessness:

1) Religious/Ideological pacifist movement. This could either be literal
pacifism or just sympathy with the rebels' stated ideology.

2) Attempt to embarrass the reigning faction of the Empire. A faction
sitting in the benches might choose to lose on purpose by using their
power
to interfere with the war (their plan is to use an unpopular defeat as a
pretext to gain power themselves).

3) Distraction (there might be other, perhaps even less important, wars
going on simultaneously. These sap both the resources and the simple
attentiveness of the Empire.

4) An unpopular local leader might not be granted support out of simple
spite or because no one wants to stick their neck out to publicly
support
him. As in Chris's suggestion, the leader might even be trying to keep
the
whole thing a secret.

5) Another possibility is economic crisis. A distracted empire might
simply
be unwilling to foot the bill to send resources to a threatened
backwater.

6) Finally, a cynical and ruthless empire might intentionally allow its
garrison to be overthrown because it wants to wait for the
revolutionaries
to turn on one another and return to restore order. Doing so would wipe
out
the local power players.

On Sat, Mar 7, 2009 at 1:04 AM, Chris Slavensky
<sepplainer@gmail.com>wrote:

> As the Consul who is about to lose his phoney balony job when the
Terrain
> councel finds out I can't keep these yokes underthumb I would need a
pretty
> darn good reason to even mumble about "La Revolution" whilst
submitting my
> quarterly TPS reports.
>
> On Fri, Mar 6, 2009 at 8:18 PM, John Tailby
<john_tailby@xtra.co.nz>wrote:
>
>>  Isn't the simplest rational for limited reinforcements the timescale
of
>> the game.
>>
>>
>>
>> If the revolt takes place with one turn = one day then there is very
>> limited time to mobilise new units and get them to a planet miles
away. Look
>> at the recent international conflicts for a model. If it's a done
deal
>> before the next meeting of the general assembly of terra or whatever
then
>> they might vote not to invade and to deal with the new regime.
>>
>>
>>
>> If one turn is one year then it's a big noisy war. Again politics
might be
>> the limiting factor. Wars are expensive and so might not be popular
and some
>> politicians might vote for education for their citizens rather than
>> expensive military intervention.
>>
>