Re: Planet conquering

>A better idea, rather than outright warfare, is to contact a force
>opposed to the groundling empire's leader and set about assisting them
>with spelljammers. There may already be rebels on the planet and with a
>small fleet of spelljammers providing support the invaders could soon
>have a puppet goverment in place and get most of what they wanted
>anyway, for much less outlay of troops, ships, and money. For example,
>the US invasion in Afghanastan, where they used air bombardment and
>special forces to assist a small rebel army in overthrowing the larger
>government one.


Or provoke a war or rebellion between the targeted groundling empire
and some other groundling empire and make money and political power
shipping troops and supplies around.  Don't expose the ships to enemy
fire at all, but use them in the background.

Use them like railroads, to shift troops around on interior lines.

The key, in my opinion, is finances.

Rome conquered much of the world, not just because it had a good army,
good generals, and good siege technology, but because they had the
economic system and political will to keep their army in the field
as long as it took to win.

Athens survived under siege by Sparta for a long time, even as its fields
were ravaged, because its fleets and colonies supported it in terms of
food and money.

Venice, during the late Middle Ages and early Renaissance, was such a
powerhouse
because its income from trade gave it a great deal of staying power.  It could
mortgage state treasures as needed to provide the finances to maintain its
army in the field, and use its fleet to buy and ship the resources needed
to maintain itself.  You can have a lot more troops in the field if you can
afford to purchase and ship in food and other supplies for the duration of the
crisis.  Then you can pull the workers out of the field, and into the army, and
your nation is less vulnerable to raids on its agricultural areas as well.

Conquest, like 'fleets darken the skies, disgorging huge armies'
conquest, probably
isn't terribly practical.

Conquest, like using spelljammers to hijack the long distance trade
routes, generating
huge wealth which is poured into corrupting the leaders of some
nations and financing
the destruction or marginalization of others, almost inevitable.  But
much slower.

In the second case, if some wizard jumps aboard a ship and captures
it, that is just
piracy.  That city is then avoided for trading purposes, and another,
more hospitable
city gains the benefits from trade.  The city which is a base to
pirates undergoes
a slow economic decline relative to more friendly cities.

Maintaining a planet-wide policy of not allowing spelljammers to land
in ports, by force,
is a tremendous drain on the creative energies of those involved,
with very little
payoff.  You may have wizards who use their great powers to keep things just
the way things were when they were young, and they may live a long,
long time.  But
such a conservative policy would be bound to become unpopular with
those who the
wizard claims to be protecting by that policy.

Michael Sandy