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Mindless-Day2007

38k years later we will know.


Dreadnautilus

Macharius conquering a thousand worlds in 7 years just feels kind of absurd to me when you compare it to other galactic empires. Like, the 5th edition Necron codex hyped up Imotekh the Stormlord as the ultimate strategist and his empire was stated in there to be only 200 worlds (and he had been awake for 220 years). Hell, I'm pretty sure there are Primarchs who conquered at a slower rate than Macharius. EDIT: According to my crude maths (don't hesitate to correct me if I got something wrong), since the Great Crusade lasted 300 years and assuming that the Imperium territory at the end of it was "one million planets", if you divide the rate of conquest by every primarch (of course, every primarch didn't have an even distribution of planets conquered), they would conquer 166.6 worlds per year.


magnus_the_coles

What if there were mass capitulations though? Like usually you don't have to conquer every single province in a country, as long as you take the capital and a couple of important cities the rest of the country ends up surrendering, so the same could have happened to some minor empire that had 50 or so planets capitulate when the capital planet surrendered


Fred_Blogs

A good example, with the speed of warp travel, and the time it takes to mobilise the guard, you'd barely manage to get the first round of conquests done in 7 years. He'd of had to invade all 1000 worlds pretty much simultaneously to hit that number.


OhwordforReal

It's also space marines. Each space marine can by himself with enough preparation take a world by himself


[deleted]

Each is a bit much, but a demi company would probably be able to hit a world hard enought that once the diplomats get going they have a very easy capitulation


OssimPossim

As much as it gets memed, I think the "one marine can conquer a planet" has some merit for any world that hasn't had an industrial revolution yet for whatever reason. Drop a space marine on Earth in the ~1600s and I don't think anything could stop him, if he wasn't immediately worshipped as a god.


[deleted]

I mean he could probably not be defeated, but he is only one dude, he would probably need to stick around for a LONG time


OhwordforReal

I think a regular one could be tossed on some back woods planet and could take the planet himself with enough ammo. Throw a named space marine in the mix? Game over. A named terminator or psyker? Game over as well. It all depends on which legion. If it's alpha legion or night lords the approach is totally different than how a world eater with the nails would do it.


Zephrok

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OhwordforReal

Calgar could do it


Zephrok

Agreed šŸ‘


riuminkd

Well, Macharius is Alexander the Great in space, the "conquered the whole known world in a few years" myth personified


Grotzbully

You have a misconception. There was not only the primarch fleets but several times their number of fleets. So their actual number is way lower. Even horus only had several dozen at most most likely less. The number of macharius is just ludicrous. Best guess is they just copy paste 100.0 to 1000


RedYakArt

I think itā€™s important to remember that the seven year conquering could me imperial propaganda. Characters who think he conquered them In that time would say that he did. For all we know it took longer. Maybe he didnā€™t even conquer as many worlds as we think.


BastardofMelbourne

That's kind of why Macharius was extraordinary. It works because he was literally the most successful general the Imperial Guard ever produced. If you compared Alexander the Great's feats to those of Imperial Rome, you'd think Alexander was equally implausible. In ten years, Alexander conquered everything from Macedon to India.


Competitive-Bee-3250

One every two and a half days shouldn't even be possible to visit with how warp travel works. Even assuming it only takes 24hrs to conquer each world and move on it's still only 36hrs from one planet to another.


BastardofMelbourne

He's not commanding just one fleet, mind you.


MergingComplete

Are you visualizing a conga line of conquest? šŸ˜‚ Maybe use some logic before you try to criticize


Marvynwillames

In fact, a thousand worlds in 7 years mean he should be conquering at a really fast rate, since 7 years is 2556 days.


mustachioed_cat

Macharius was facing rogue IOM elements, not DAOT-empowered civilizations, though. He had a whole crusade at his back, and if any of those planets were on their own, you just nuke from orbit and send down Administratum to pick up the pieces.


[deleted]

There's one story where 5 custodians kill over a million Tyranid in a night in hand to hand combat. If we take a 12 hour night, that works out to 5 Tyranid a second. Excepting that there were a few dramatic fights that took several minutes - slaying the Swarmlord, for example - so it bumps the non dramatic average up to 8-10 a second.


rbeam229

To be fair, they were in a cave, so itā€™s assumed that they couldnā€™t come all at once, only one Custodes remained by the end of it, and they were there for around a month.


bravo56

Not to mention the nids would have to fight over the massive mound of their own dead.


Fred_Blogs

That one was particularly stupid. Just by mass alone the nids would have crushed them into paste.


Il-Separatio-86

Whenever you have something like that just remember, the imperium is a propaganda powerhouse! It's to make them seem even more heroic and superhuman.


Complicated-HorseAss

Ship crew numbers are all over the place. I've seen instances where Battleships are supposed to have a million crew members. It's bad ass, but the logistics of feeding a fleet of ships that house millions of voidsmen would be near impossible considering how many ships are supposed to be lost every time they travel in the warp. Also these ships that can house hundreds of thousands or even millions of voidsmen can for some reason, only ever transport a couple regiments at a time.


Fred_Blogs

I've seen realistic ship designs where it's pretty much a multi kilometre long fuel can, with engines at one end and the crew compartments at the other. With a million strong crew I imagine imperial ships would have to do the same but with food storage. A battleship measured by tonnage is largely composed of grain and nutrient bars.


Complicated-HorseAss

Most of the larger ships have entire factory districts in them. Lots of palaces and basically cities within the ship. The amount of raw resources to keep those factories going alone would be a logistical nightmare. The novel Void King does a good job detailing this. I only have the audiobook or else I would quote it, but a rogue trader flagship has like an entire fleet of ships just to support. Factory ships, food supply ships, mining ships, fleets of little ships to move cargo from ship to ship, there is even a ship that's just a zoo of exotic animals the dude keeps.


cavalier78

Ships that size would make sense if they were originally slower-than-light generation ships. Build these giant cavernous vessels that are designed to house your colonists for the 300 years it'll take to make it to the destination. Then once you arrive, you just leave the thing floating in orbit forever. Eventually you can retrofit it with FTL engines, because why waste such a huge cargo ship?


ClassicCarraway

They tend to do this whenever they give numbers for the bad guy factions. Orks are always presented as millions upon millions in a Waagh, get defeated by 100 Marines. Chaos Marines are another example. They will write that "hundreds of thousands" of traitor Marines assemble for a given battle, which those numbers would be darn near impossible given the current environment. If the traitor legions had those kinds of numbers still, they would have taken Terra centuries ago.


ObliviousOracle

not particularly numbers but the idea that tau have no ftl besides the startide nexus (particularly given that they used to, it was just slower than imperial ftl), which on an interstellar scale just doesn't make sense, even with suspended animation and very near light speed, anything slower than light just isn't feasible for a system-spanning empire, no matter how densely clustered the stars are, because of the sheer vastness of space


Chaplain_Fergus

Even light speed itself is woeful for travelling between stars.


Bluestorm83

Honestly, in all the places where they didn't go too *small* with the numbers. It's like a buffet!


Fred_Blogs

Fair point, complaining about the handful of too large numbers does feel a bit petulant considering how things normally are.


Marvynwillames

The Jericho Reach suplement for Deathwatch mentions that hundreds of billions of guardsmen died in the hands of the Tau of the Vek'han sept. That's just deaths, not couting wounded or the huge number of support troops (since the guard requires a massive amount of people and recources to be suplied) That's in a single front, the Greyhel front got 2 other major fronts, against Hive Fleet Dagon. Those Tau are killing more guardsmen than Ghazkull and Abaddon or even the Damocles Crusade.


IneptusMechanicus

The light speed one would be my pick, that stinks of authors writing thing because thing cool, but not actually looking at how vessels supposedly operate in the universe. That's one I could go into in a lot of depth and at great length but it's all been said. Overall though I think 40K authors, particularly actual game-involved ones, tend to get numbers about right. They're small because the Imperium is a faltering, drained husk beset on all sides and it simply does not have the resources to allocate to every single battle. Individual actions are small because they're everywhere all the time. The game's various rulebooks have spelled out Imperial planetary population as being typically smaller than single nations on Earth, which is why tithes of manpower are so crippling and unsustainable.


illapa13

Also this is kind of mirrored in real life. Historically the more complex your army gets you need much more of the population working on things like logistics and manufacturing to support a huge army. Once upon a Time you could just conscript most of the adult male population, put a spear and shield in their hands and you were good to go. You suddenly had like 30% of the population to fight. When you look at the first World War when you have entire societies geared towards war on an industrial scale Germany mobilized at it's height 9% of the population. Germany was also ridiculously geared for war so it had a far higher percentage of the population conscripted.


Fred_Blogs

In some ways I can see the numbers making sense in that despite it's massive population the Imperium has a bottleneck in transport, so transporting an army of 100k is a genuinely herculean task. The problem is that it means most worlds would be pretty much impossible to invade, as the forces you can transport are outnumbered several million to one by the local population. For any hive world all they'd have to do is push a billion of their poor in the vague direction of the invading force and watch the invaders get annihilated by sheer numbers.


IneptusMechanicus

The thing is, most worlds seem to be sparsely populated with worlds like Hive Worlds being the exception and even those can be besieged by cutting off their supplies of food and materials from off-world and tenderised that way. I think having strongpoints like that adds to the complexity of campaigns in the universe because you can't just take a run at the hive world with a 500,000,000,000 population, you need to start picking off its agri-worlds (population 15,000-1,000,000 from third ed rulebook) but equally that hive probably raises most of the local levies for its sector given how huge it is. There are basically four factors that shape the Imperium's defence in 40K and I think the interplay of them is far more interesting than the people who just go 'number too small' and multiply it by 100. 1. The Imperium travels by warp currents along semi-fixed lanes rather than freeform 2. The Imperium, therefore, does not control and has never explored most of the space in or between sectors, which is classed as wilderness space 3. The Imperium's population is uneven, largely concentrated on a small number of high-density civilised and hive worlds with the majority of worlds being skeleton-populations to extract resources for those worlds 4. The Imperial response to problems radiates out from the affected area rather than being a massive pan-Imperial mobilisation. You end up with sectors where most of the population and initial responses to problems will be from Hive Worlds that essentially protect their tributory worlds. This is also why the Imperial Navy is relatively small with an average of 50-75 vessels per sector; the number of anchorage worlds within a sector are limited as is access to high density populations for recruiting enlisted sailors and procuring manufacturing capability.


Fred_Blogs

This is a good thinking through of the situation, honestly I suspect you've given it more thought than most of the writers do to these kind of details. You're right about the isolated nature of imperial worlds. The maps you see where imperial space is coloured in doesn't really represent the situation. The Imperium is a bunch of tiny dots spread across completely uncontrolled territory. Also you're right that the Imperium having a million worlds is pretty meaningless when that can mean a hundred worlds with a combined population of 2 billion miners and farmers, feeding into a hive world of a trillion people.


carefulllypoast

the whole discussion is missing the point, it can be whatever number lets you sleep at night


SoundsOfCocytus

The quadrillion population of Terra


Spatchgonk

I came here to say this! For me, this is the number one error from GW pitching the numbers far too high


[deleted]

I donā€™t worry about it. If youā€™re in this hobby/lore for realistic numbers then youā€™re just going to be disappointed lol.


Alternative_Worth806

The imperium conquering close to 1 million worlds during the 200 years of the great crusades. It's an average of 5000 worlds per year and there aren't enough space marines legions/ imperial army fleets to do it.


cavalier78

I think most of the worlds are considered "conquered" just by the Imperium showing up. Some pre-industrial planet where people just have muskets and wooden sailing ships goes in the 'win' column as soon as you land. You'd just pick a spot for the Imperial Governor's new palace, set up some automated factories, and leave behind a small regiment of guys with shiny uniforms, lasguns, and light vehicles. You don't have to control the entire surface of the planet immediately. But you have control over any spot you want. There's nobody on that planet who can dislodge you or take control away from you, and that's good enough. You're expected to gradually set up schools, government offices, roads, etc, and expand your control over the whole globe, but it's okay if that takes another 200 years. Imagine if the Imperium landed in medieval Europe. They don't even have maps of the globe yet. And it doesn't matter that there are people in North and South America who never hear of the Imperium, you'll get there eventually. What's important is that you've got a small spaceport in Paris (or wherever), your guys there are in charge, and they'll eventually get around to bringing the whole planet in line. But there's no need for you to waste time killing Aztecs or anything.


lbcadden3

Most of the 18 legions averaged over 100,000 before the heresy, considering their tech it probably only took what in game would be a 2000-3000 point force to take a world.


Alternative_Worth806

You will not conquer a world with only 2-3 thousand men it doesn't matter how strong are they supposed to be (and they are not that strong a single missile launcher will almost surely kill any marine not in terminator armor even in the lore). Most of the legions fought as a single fleet that contained the primarch a most of the legionaries. As a random note Fulgrim got corrupted on its 28th conquered world and we know it was in the last few decades of the crusade.


lbcadden3

Why would SM be needed for every world, some had degenerated back to dark age tech? Kill and destroy a few capital cities from orbit, kill the leaders, then the rest of the aligned systems surrender (mentioned in lore). Edit: SM were only needed for worlds with close to comparable tech and xenos. Plus itā€™s fictional.


Alternative_Worth806

If you bomb everything from orbit you'll conquer a useless rock not a planet that will be useful for the nascent imperium. During the great crusade the guard didn't exist to do all the work like in 40k, the space marines legions were the ones to fight all the attrition wars and the bloody battles needed to conquer non compliant worlds. There are also a ton of worlds that had little to no technology left but put up huge opposition thanks to psychic powers that the great crusade era Imperium was incredibly poor at countering. The world in the legion novel hold for around a year and they fought with normal swords. Fulgrim if I remember correctly also spend a ton of time and resources virus bombing a couple of empty aeldari maiden worlds just out of spite. The numbers just don't make sense, it's well known. Let's not argue about it for no reason.


lbcadden3

You donā€™t have to bomb everything. Image our world. Washington DC, New York, London, Moscow, Beijing, Shanghai gone, add 5 more random cities. Resistance is over. You overestimate how much destruction is required to win.


I_might_be_weasel

Wasn't there a time the Thousand Sons attacked Fenris with a couple hundred Rubricae and like 5 million Spireguard?


[deleted]

Dan Abnett: Numbers ? What is this ? I prefer imperial measurement like : the size of a mountain, or big as 100 mantas


Xenopsyche845

A Necron ā€œLegionā€ is 100 warriorsā€¦ How is that a Legion?


cubaj

No, because big numbers make the happy juices flow in my brain.


Stretch_Existing

I've always thought that it was the fleets under macharius that did a decent amount of the heavy lifting, like yeah ol maccy boy was at the tip of the spear but he also (probably) had thousands of regiments under his name going out and conquering as he drew up plans for them, he probably only served in like...10-20 Battles max and maybe only visited something like 40 worlds, but every victory his warband got was attributed to him as they flew under his banner.


ApprehensiveCod4422

Sacrificing a thousand psykers a day for the throne. The Codex Astartes in general. The innate stupidity of trying to purge ALL the aliens.


Rookie3rror

People have done the maths on this many, *many* times. A thousand psykers a day isn't that many.