How could a strong empire disintegrate? My empire is by far the strongest nation on the continent...

internal destability, loss of civil peace, permanent unrest, bad harvests, decline of middle class, loss of productivity, large pandemics devastating the population, high taxes resulting in loss of tax base, too much centralization and the central body losing ability to rule due to incompetent leadership, or too much decentralization resulting in local governors/military commanders declaring independence...

basically you just take a long look at all the hundred or so reasons behind the decline and fall of Roman Empire

What's its strength? Military? How does it afford soldiers?

projectrho.com/public_html/rocket/stellarempire.php#id--Other_Thoughts--On_Hydraulic_States

projectrho.com/public_html/rocket/stellarempire.php#id--Other_Thoughts--On_Empires

How fast can it put down a rebellion or secession? Or two at once? How does it maintains its communication and supply lines?

How likely are the rest of the continent to unite agaisnt you?

How difficult is to pull out a Hun/Jurchen/Mongol/Manchu horde from outside the continent?

How about a Plague or Ten?

projectrho.com/public_html/rocket/futurehistory.php#id--Cyclical_History

critical-hits.com/blog/2015/08/10/murder-hobos-and-empire/

Mass wealth inequality leading to endemic corruption. As the population loses all faith and respect for the governing classes the elite crack down with excessive force, leading to widespread civil unrest and an inability to deal with either foreign or domestic threats. Attempts by a series of rulers to stem the decline fail as the elite are too entrenched due to their network of cronies, so the ruler willingly splits up the empire to save what he can and hopefully reform the rest later down the line.

In short, exactly what happened to Rome.

Due to the great slave run estates gobbling up all farmable land in the empire the desperate and poverty-stricken ex-peasants flock to the cities, creating vast slums rife with criminality. In an attempt to cease the ever-increasing numbers of dregs from rioting and/or dying in the streets large expenditures are made from the public coffers to feed the people incapable of feeding themselves. As a result the capital, and possible other dominant cities in the realm, become dependent on a particularly fertile province for grain. If that province were to fall or for some reason becoming incapable of exporting its grain it would spell disaster for the whole empire as it would basically mean the destruction of the capital and other central hubs as the population would run rampart in the hope of staving away a mass famine.

Have a seemingly benign foreign cult spread across the empire for a decade or two, before a dozen simultaneous !Not!Jihads spring up in isolated portions of the empire, dividing the empire's forces into a few, easily defeated groups, while those that aren't crushed in their infancy steadily conquer their way toward the capital, explosively building momentum as they go via fanatic evangelism and forced conversion, until it rivals and eventually surpasses the emperor's army itself. Once the capital falls and the bulk of the emperor's dynasty is slain, every general, nobleman, thug, and court jester with twenty men to their name begin carving out their own fiefdoms.

Skip forward a few decades/centuries, add a few reactionary !Not!Crusades, foreign invasions, and hellish disasters/plagues to taste and, voila, balkanization.

Oh and while you're at it you could make the condition for being allowed to serve in the military be that you have to own land. Suddenly your empire is facing both a potentially disastrous mass-migration from the country side to the urban centers and a drastic decrease in people availible for military service.
One solution to the latter problem would be to hire foreign mercenaries. If the state then would suddenly find itself incapable of paying these mercenaries, who might consists of whole tribes of peoples, or if the mercenaries decided for one reason or the other that they they would rather rule than serve the empire would find itself in some trouble. However the state chooses to respond to this new threat it's certain that all it neighbors will take note and try to take advantage of the situation.

Plague and famine are good causes. They exacerbate or create tensions in an empire that usually force it to dissolve later.

>How could a strong empire disintegrate?
>emperor who inherited the throne at the age of 12 rules for 80 years straight
>has a bunch of legitimate children from different mothers and even more bastards whom he decided to legitimate out of guilt
>they all have children and bastards of their own
>levels of plotting and corruption inside the court are over 9000
>one of emperor's grand-granddaughters desperate not to end up with nothing to inherit decides to use her womanly charms on the emperor
>under her influence the emperor proclaimes that gavelkind succession will be the way to go now
>sadly he has a heart attack and dies after his lover and her maids decided to show him alternative meaning to the ride of the valkyries
>everyone is obviously very sad and the most sad are 132 people claiming to be the only legitimate heirs to the throne
>welcome to the Spring and Autumn period in your empire's history

>invasion by stronger empire
>emperor dies, suddenly civil war
>god
>drought, trade problems, famine

Jesus fuck just use your imagination you cuck

>How could a strong empire disintegrate?
Poor leadership.

Generals having too much power, and constant civil wars and smaller kingdoms constantly attacking it

>A dickass Wizard "Accidentally" merges the Crown Princess with her loyal hound, making a horrific chimera that has to be put down
>the Emperor commits suicide in grief
>Magic is banned in the following council session
>Wizards guild is pissed, threatens to support rival factions if the ban isn't lifted
>Regency council takes offense, orders Wizards to be hunted
>Wizards drop fireballs and locate city nukes
>kingdom systematically purges all arcane magic users slowly but surely over the course of several years
>Country is devastated
>all because some dickass wizard couldn't keep it in his spellbook

This might sound a bit weird but depending on the time scale...inflation would be a decent killer. If the empire couldn't gain any more gold or silver, but continued printing coins by diluting the existing ones, eventually the country would go broke, and then begin to splinter as the whole government chain begins to break down under the inability to pay anyone anything worth being paid in.

If the empire is built on the conquest of other nations for wealth and prestige for the rulers, running out of 'easy' foes to conquer will ensure not much new wealth can enter the economy. Taxes will have to be raised, military spending cut and the empire slowly weakened.
Combine this with civil wars/wars of succession, plagues and foreigners seeking to settle within the empires borders with all the political/economic problems that brings and you have a recipe for a rapidly dissolving empire.
You can also throw in climate change making famines more common or if you are in a magical setting some kind of fantasy disaster like a plague of undead/beasts or wizards messing with forces beyond their power to control.

What's the setting? If magic is present, cause a sort of localized post-apocalypse scenario. Have plague ravage the food sources, break down the society from the lowest rungs. Peasants won't work if they don't get paid enough to survive because of their poor crop yields, soldiers won't fight without a decent meal every now and then, your barons won't be loyal to the king if they don't get enough guards to protect their lands, and then shit starts going haywire. People leaving the empire to hold on to what they have left, people start playing the blame game and who easier to blame than the king? Suddenly whoever is left is going to believe the king responsible and try and overthrow him. Your coup might fail and inspire more infighting, or it may succeed and your empire, if surviving, may not exist the same way it did before. It gets weaker over time and foreign tribes, nations, and barbarians whittle away at the remains until nothings left.

Bullshit. Food, safety and prosperity do not translate into weakness; starvation, danger and disease do.

No empire is homogenous, ethnogeography comes into play, people turn towards their local lords for protection more-so than the Emperor, especially when the local lord can harp on some long ago grievance or some idea that their group has been forgotten or is overlooked

Politicking

This, of course, requires a weak Emperor, like a alcoholic third son who was never supposed to get the post anyways, but had it forced on him after a tragic accident, or a plague took out the other family members higher up the food chain. That, or a regency for a child emperor where the regent secretly hates the empire and works against it (there is an example of this early Chinese history, a eunuch was regent and many suspect he intentially weakend the empire. Maybe it was the Quin dynasty?). Also, eunuchs were drawn for the sons of defeated enemies and made court officials as a means of dominance, hence the hate

Here's a few possibilities (some can work in tandem):
>Succession crisis leading to civil war between various pretenders
>The old emperor was a kind man who gave many concessions to the conquered peoples. He's succeeded by an ironfisted ruler, against whom the subjugated peoples rise up with high frequency. Though these uprisings are unsuccesful most of the time, they do succeed in stretching the resources and manpower of the empire very thin
>The empire has become the target of a coalition of pretty much every other military power in the known world
>The empire has just emerged victorious out of a prolonged and bloody conflict, but so many lives were lost and the coffers so drained that the empire now has to extend great autonomy to many of its territories because it simply cannot afford to keep them under military control. Eventually some of the more autonomous regions led by the more ambitious administrators break off, with the empire powerless to stop them
>Alternatively the empire disintegrates into these autonomous regions, with the emperor acting as a figurehead
>A grand plague hits (the capital of) the empire particularly hard, destroying its once prosperous economy and culling its once powerful army
>The established (hereditary?) bureaucracy has become increasingly corrupt, to the point where a significant portion of the empire's income is embezzled by the bureaucratic upper class. As a result, less and less money remains to actually maintain the empire with
>The emperor dies, the empire is split between his many children (bonus points if all of them want the whole cake rather than a slice and endless warfare erupts)
>After a very long period of peace, the military only functions as a glorified police force with high ranks being given away as political favors. When a real threat emerges, the on paper most powerful military in the world is now full of unfit and cowardly soldiers led by inexperienced and incompetent commanders

rotten from the inside.

You could have a prolonged sequence of bad to horrible emperors.
You could look to the julio-claudian dynasty of the Roman Empire for inspiration.
Something akin to a great leader followed by a competent but unwilling and increasingly decadent and distant ruler who leaves the actual day to day ruling of the empire to his favorites.
After him you get a promising and seemingly bright and noble young man, who is also the child of the deceased hero of the people whom the former emperor had killed out of jealousy, on the throne who, after a brief sickness, turns into a literal Caligula who plunges the empire into financial ruin and forcefully annexes the territory of faithful allies when he is not busy larping as a god.
After the madmen get assassinated you are left with his imbecile uncle who spends his daytime in the justice system deciding cases on whimsical grounds and his evenings falling into early sleep as a result of too much wine and food.
His successor, the former emperor's adopted son, is a fat, neckbearded manchild with a creepy relationship with his own mother. His only interests are to be the best musician in the world and having the love of the people. Nothing else matters to him, besides his mother ofcourse. He ends up murdering her however. Eventually the provincional governors have had enough of his shenanigans and rise up in various rebellions. The most promising of the bunch is an general of great renown and reputation who manages to seize control for a short while after the manchild committed suicide. For some reason however he acts more like a conquering master than a domestic ruler and is prudently assassinated by someone loyal to the the former best friend of the dead manchild. This new fella rules for like a month untill he is defeated in battle and replaced by hedonismbot.
Tired of the merry-go-round of emperors the governor of the rich eastern provinces decides to make his own grab for the throne. (1/2)

The governor manages to wrest control of the empire without fighting a battle as his opponent freaks the fuck out. What follows is a reasonably lengthy period of competent albeit miserly rule.
When the governor dies his eldest son becomes the emperor. He rules well for a brief period of time before succumbing to a sudden illness.
His successor is his younger son who completely reworks the imperial office into that of Lord over subjects instead of first amongst equals. After a decade or so the nobles have had enough and murder the emperor.

>Every emperor after Caesar and Augustus sucks
>Nobody thinks about reviving the republic after them when it worked quite well for centuries

This. Add in any combination of plagues, raids or invasions by outside forces, particularly overwhelming ones that might annex or lay waste to areas of the empire, financial and economic upheavals, undead and/or monster resurgence, slave rebellions, civil insurrections, etc. These may be causes or symptoms of the civil war, and regardless the conflict will severely degrade any attempt to solve them.

In terms of the civil war itself, the longest and bloodiest wars happen between many competing factions, the strongest of which are roughly equal. Ideally they're divided along racial, species, and ethnic lines, or religious ones, preferably both. This will make the conflict more intractable and may result in attempts at ethnic cleansing and genocide, which will quickly fragment and Balkanize the empire as it splits into warring states.

famine, plague, civil war, incompetent rulers, nepotism, religious strife, corrupt bureaucracy, economic and political power becoming increasingly concentrated in the hands of a few warring families, decadence and a declining interest in serving the public good, barbarian raids in the borderlands, an increasing military reliance on unreliable mercenaries, trade routes becoming increasingly dangerous, death cults, constant succession crises, overexpansion, expensive wars with distant empires, an increasingly centralised economy that leaves the majority of the populace working as impoverished day labourers or leeching off the dole, &c.

Fine, user. I'll do it. But only because you asked so nicely.

The republic didn't work at all at the end though. In fact, that was the whole point of creating the imperial "office". Before the coming of Augustus the roman republic had been engaged in a cycle of extremely harsh political violence for about a century which resulted in a serious of civil wars more devastating to the state than any war that had come before. People welcomed the stability that monarchy gave them as it excluded the prestige-hungry politicians of Rome from raising armies that they could then use to blackmail the people and senate of Rome.
Add to that that Augustus' rule was extraordinary long and well-managed which meant that there were not many people left who remembered the time before it and if they did they'd probably remembered it with dread as it was a time of chaos and slaughter.

Also:
>Caesar was an emperor.

>Caesar was an emperor
His name was literally used for the title though (and stil is in Dutch, German and Russian).

In a strong empire, threats and opportunities from looking outward aren't very enticing, and won't lead to advancement.

So what happens is that most people start directing their energy towards the other kind of social mobility: taking control of what has already been built by someone else. Eventually these struggles atrophy the society as a whole.

You need to read some history of China and Egypt and Rome. There are reasons hegemons become decadent and disintegrate. You may be overly invested personally in how awesome your empire is, and subconsciously be resisting letting the inevitable happen.

>His name was literally used for the title though (and stil is in Dutch, German and Russian).
Caesar was the lower of the two imperial ranks. Augustus was the one used by the emperor (or the senior emperor when more than one was around) while the "crown-prince" (or the junior emperor) held the title of Caesar.

If you're counting Julius Caesar as an emperor then why aren't you also counting Sulla and Marius?

Julius Caesar was the last of the strongmen that laid the groundwork for the imperial "office". Julius Caesar might have kickstarted it, or even were the one who made it possible, but Augustus was the one who calcified and maintained it into something akin to a proper office and a necessary and natural part of the state.

Look at real life examples user
History has plenty to offer when it comes to empires destroying themselves

Introduce communism.

>>Every emperor after Caesar and Augustus sucks
>Implying Claudius and Hadrian weren't the best emperors

A few rounds of civil war inside the core areas of the empire. Make it were the legitimacy of the government takes a hit as the would be leaders kill each other and name call. Make were those who living thru run off to the better developed corners of the Empire to regroup and keep fighting.

Fast fortword like 30 years. The first generations of Imperial claimants are mostly dead, replaced by their heirs. The the lands around the Imperial capital are in ruins and the real task of governing falls to what were providential capitals.

Basically the way in which Chinese dynasties fell apart.

Hard times create strong men.
Strong men create good times.
Good times create weak men.
Weak men create hard times.

Succession wars.

Logically we are then in the hard times and the previous generation were the failures.

>Logically we are then in the hard times
Demographically, yes. Give it another century or so before the achievements of our ancestors peeter out.

>and the previous generation were the failures
You mean the generation that idly sat by as Hitler went about his genocidal Europtrip until it was too late, even though he could've been stopped as early as 1936 if Europe wasn't run by cowards?

have two popular people with clashing views on politics, get them to know the emperor, assasinate the emperor before successor is named, marinate over the course of a year, you have ripped your empire into atleast two pieces successfully, potentially even more.

>No way in hell the British Empire could have marched an army into Beijing as if to conquer China by force.
but...they actually did march an army into Beijing, like twice
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second_Opium_War#Burning_of_the_Summer_Palaces
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Peking_(1900)
The only reason China wasn't an english colony is that the other major powers would have teamed up to clock England in the face

Plus, it wasn't worth the effort. The controlled the ports and reaped all the benefits they needed while allowing China a modicum of self rule at Chinese expense.

That'll end any empire.

That's part of what happened to Rome.
I think what also happened was an economic downturn and because of the staggering wealth inequality the ruling/decision making class were protected from this downturn and kept acting as they had before, making the same decisions to continue driving the economy downwards.

The possibility of a "collapse" or "fall" only becomes apparent to the ruling class when the economy gets to such a sad state that their currency is devalued, which leads to a collapse of the tax system, which leads to a collapse in law and order, which leads to a further collapse in economic output.

>How could a strong empire disintegrate?

I'd go with disease.
You get enough smelly FOREIGNERS in close proximity to one another and you'll get some strange and hideous diseases brewing up in no time, better yet: you ignore your cities plumbing and it'll get it even WORSE and FASTER.

Introduce a banking system that loans out money with interest
The bank loans out more money than it physically has
Get banks to proliferate and issue fiat currency that the bank has the ability to print at will
Create debt from thin air, ensuring that every (not!)dollar loaned out creates more debt to motivate said empire
Eventually debt grows until the existing supply of labor and goods cannot keep up with it
Businesses crumble, food rots on the field, the government has been living three generations spending a seemingly infinite supply of cash with the attitude of "I can always borrow more" thinking that because there is currency that there is goods to back it up.

The empire crumbles from the bottom up with those in charge completely oblivious to the problem until everything runs dry.

OP, what is the moral lesson or theme of your campaign?
You should pick an insidious, rube goldberg-style threat that will support that theme.

Time.
give something enough time, and it will die.

Individual provinces seceding from the empire as it's ability to project force from it's capital province dwindles with lack of war and the dissolution of a standard army. Cultural tensions arise, the emperor dies and there is a succession crisis, competition and border disputes between far-flung provinces escalate into full blown wars which galvanise the surrounding provinces further.

A lot of reasons. Most of it relies on the people at the heart of the empire growing soft with time, though. If there is always a strong military and political mind who doesn't give in to hedonism on the throne, a strong empire will stay strong.

Death by a Thousand cuts.

Constant rebellions in different provinces. Neighboring states growing in power. A weak, inbred monarchy which squabbles over succession. An aristocracy unwilling to adapt to changing times. A lack of scientific or industrial innovation. A church which often has more power than the state. Superstition and Mysticism grows in the country side. An army so ethnically diverse it cannot form a cohesive unit. Inflation and poor harvests. Climate Change. Mass human migration.

Basically the same ways every other power has collapsed.

Except for the fact that the Senate functioned as a political entity all the way into the Byzantine period. Pretty much every Emperor up until Diocletian at least paid lip service to their power. But the Republic in any of its ideals was dead by the time of the Gracchi. Marius and Sulla were just the ones to bury it, and the Triumvirs simply pissed on its grave.

Besides, it's becoming more and more accepted that most of the "bad" Emperors were not nearly the savage and decadent fellows history tells us they are. Most historians from the Imperial-era came from the Senate class, and generally if an Emperor didn't play ball with the Senate they had their name trashed in history, and if an Emperor was with the Senate they are saintly.

Hell, Tacitus makes Octavian and Caesar seem like the worst thing to happen to Rome, while you have Seneca ranting about how terrible Claudius was. Even Marcus Aurelius got to enjoy a round of Damnatio Memoriae.

Copy the Bronze Age collapse.

> Empire with centralised authority dictates crop harvests and surplus grain storage
> Empire reliant on trade for manufactured goods
> Empire needs the above two to support its expensive military

Now add in improper land management leading to succesive bad harvests, eliminating grain surpluses, which causes starvation, which causes revolts, which further disrupts trade and harvests, which leads to the collapse of trade, which leads to an inability to pay for an expensive warrior caste, which leads to the neighbours invading, and then at last, the death of the empire.

>a disease spreads amongst the nobility, maybe an unusually virulent strain of the flue, chicken pox (lethal to adults) or a really nasty STD like syphilis
>some guerilla assholes want a cultural revolution and start assassinating anyone they don't like, up to and including entire small villages, which leads to eventual chaos
>rival neighbor nations get jealous and either stop trading, or assholes deliberately trade in goods they know will sabotage their neighbor, such as wheat contaminated with ergot, or stem cuttings of fruit trees/grape vines they know are infected with a blight that will spread and destroy entire orchards

A nobleman wants to be the top dog. He thinks he can achieve this through a few discreet murders. While the murders were successful, he got found out, and a huge opposition faction formed against him. So the guy had to call in all his old favours and friends, and form his own faction. This led to a civil war, during which both he and the leader of the opposition were killed. With no clear leaders, both factions disintegrated, and the empire descended into anarchy.

It's not the citizens who become lazy and decadent - it's the upper-classes. With no need to cooperate with the rest of the aristocracy for wealth and power, they become increasingly insular and disconnected from the needs of the empire. Eventually some crisis strikes, that threatens to topple the institutions that keep the empire functioning. But the nobility don't care - they already got what they needed from the imperial apparatus long ago. All the empire is doing now is sapping their wealth through taxes. The fact that many, many commoners will suffer and die if the empire collapses is irrelevant to them - they let it burn, all the better to concentrate power in their own hands.

Aristocrats don't give a shit about lofty ideals, unless they stand to gain from them. So it was, so it will always be.

I dislike how so many of the opinions here basically boil down to rebellion, civil war, and nobles. Not that they're bad ideas, but it's being repeated. And anyway, people don't rebel if they're cozy. Lets try and think of something more creative.

> Realizing that most members of the empire don't want to be a part of it, a referendum is called to see which parts of the empire actually want to stay, mostly as a loyalty test.

> Unsurprisingly, most every state wants to leave.

> Surprisingly, none of the generals want to do anything about it. They believe the split will actually help the empire as a whole, by decreasing the borders that needed patrolling, and infrastructure that needed maintaining.

> The split is peaceful and prosperous for all. The Empire sees much less tax, but since almost all of it was going to maintaining the empire anyway, they now have more available money than they ever did.

The major empire in one of my settings was crushed after a pc tried to become a lunch, failed, and caused hell to existent in the mortal plane for an hour. All kingdoms and nations suffered greatly but the emperor and most of his family line died leaving the entire empire leaderless. This has meant that smaller groups have an actual chance to grab land from the major empire during the chaos.

Caligula is actually a really sad tale once you've done your research.

>little boy's father dies
>grows up as a "guest" in a pedos house were the sick fuck throws children off of a cliff for the fun of it
>boy grows up fucking traumatized after being raped and tortured while all the old fat politicians watch and laugh
>oh wow, I'm suddenly Emperor of Rome
>WHOSE LAUGHING NOW YOU SICK TWISTED OLD FUCKS?!
>tries to clean out all of the pedos and corrupt politicians
>army fucking loves him
He once tried to conquer northern europe, but once they got to the ocean his soldiers panicked and refused to build boats to cross because they honestly believed it was the edge of the world and they would all fall off. Normally the punishment for mutiny was to execute a certain percentage of the soldiers that mutinied as an example. Problem was, Caligula had so many soldiers that to follow this rule would mean slaughtering over TEN THOUSAND of his own soldiers. So instead he decided their punishment would be public humiliation. Basically, if you're going to act like little girls then you'll be treated like little girls. So he had them walk along the shore and collect sea shells in their tunics and helmets. This, of course, went down in history as Caligula declaring war on the ocean itself.
>eventually the few corrupt pedo politicians successfully manage to bribe some dudes into assassinating him and his innocent defenseless young daughter
>to cover up their crimes against the people of Rome and all the baby rape they did the corrupt pedo politicians rewrite history and forever demonize Caligula's name

Repeated military humiliation and hundreds of years of slow decline as everyone else outgrows them. Worked for the Holy Roman Empire.

Natural disaster decapitates it; plagues, floods, meteor strike, volcano suddently erupting. Take your pick.

Are there any good sources on the early republic I should know about? Almost everything I can find deals with Caesar and Pompey's period.

>HRE
>Slow decline

The HRE was wealthy and well off before the TYW. It was not and never was unified by any real stretch of the imagination. The whole thing was basically one enormous clusterfuck and everyone knew it. None of that changes the fact that once the thirty years war hit the place tanked and tanked hard but not before dragging literally everyone in Europe kicking and screaming into its mess.

The HRE is like an even more decentralized EU and the EU can't even call itself a state.

That doesn't sound like a collapse at all. The Empire just transitioned into a hedgemony.

>even though he could've been stopped as early as 1936 if Europe wasn't run by cowards?

You're talking about a generation that had just lived through the pointless waste of WW1, and did not want another massive war on its hands.

It's easy to call people in the 1930s cowardly with the benefit of hindsight. They had no idea Hitler was going to cause as much trouble as he did. Hell, a lot of people at the time admired Hitler and his goals. For everyone else, he was just another imperialist conqueror, in an age full of imperialist conquerors.

Fuck your revisionism, and fuck your cyclical history bullshit.

Anything on the Carthaginian wars would be a start, there's plenty on that.

Exhausting itself in a couple of massive wars, then a rising and wealthy allied power that basically ignored the wars but lent them a lot of money threatens the empire with both military action and with calling in their debts if they don't break up

There is a theory out there that Caligula appointing a horse as consul was not some action taken under madness, but rather a gigantic fuck you to the senate.

Once again, bullshit.

Wars, dictatorships and plagues don't create strong men. They create corpses, lepers, PTSD-addled nutjobs and cripples.

There is this anecdote of some guy going to the borders of South and North Korea and seeing how the best and strongest men of the Northern army were a head shorter than the Southern ones. A true display of the results of hard times.

And people who create states like these - people like the Kims or Stalin or Pol Pot or anyone you might want to name - are most certainly not weak men. These are strong men, and they do not seem to create "good times" by virtue of their strength.

All in all, a bullshit adage used to bullshit gullible shits.

>all these ideas for empire collapse suck
>listen to my idea that isn't actually a collapse at all

Good job.

To play the devil's advocate, you're putting up a strawman version of that simple rhyme.

>They create corpses, lepers, PTSD-addled nutjobs and cripples.
Ignoring the corpses, lepers and cripples, they do create men who are more used to hardship, more used to dealing with them and who value the fruits of their labor.

>There is this anecdote of some guy going to the borders of South and North Korea and seeing how the best and strongest men of the Northern army were a head shorter than the Southern ones.
No shit, nobody questions better hygiene and nutrition leads to taller and healthier people.

>And people who create states like these - people like the Kims or Stalin or Pol Pot or anyone you might want to name - are most certainly not weak men
Of course they aren't, they're the archetypical strongmen. Now ask yourself what kind of men let these men lord over them with an iron fist. That's right, weak men who've lost track of what they were defending in the first place (or who were so desperate they just handed it over). It would be better to say that an overwhelmingly weak, cowardly and docile population is easily exploited by strongmen, yet a society of strong men will often result in a more restrained government that allows everyone to fabricate their own pursuit of happiness.

>M-Muh North Korea though
North Koreans think everyone else on the planet has it as bad as they do. Can you even begin to imagine if 30% or so of the North Korean population had seen central Seoul? The guillotine would sing before you could say "not real communism".

The wealth-having classes were only protected by corruption and abandonment of their civic duties. When Rome needed them in the late WRE imperial period they fled to their country estates where they worked towards being selfsufficent which gradually formed the groundwork for the feudal system.

In Stalin's case, at least when he was creating his power, I don't know you could call the population weak - if anything they were being strong, but the need for organisation let that strength be manipulated.
Then the purges happened.

Actually, that's a point, for OP, purges either going As Planned, but making the army and other state organs useless out of fear and incompetence, or purges going Not As Planned and leading to rebellions

As people have already pointed out, you suggestion isn't a collapse.
Also your suggestion is extremely implausible as it would only work if there were no pride in the state or 'nationalism' to speak of, which we all know is practically impossible when humans are involved. Atleast one, and likely many, influential figures would find the means to raise an army in defense of a united empire. It's also highly unlikely that an emperor would want to be known to history as 'that-guy-who-dismantled-his-own-realm'.
Thirdly why the fuck would the people gaining from a united empire allow the referendum to have any legal weight or even take place? You're basically saying that a bunch of powerhungry political creatures would be totally fine with decreasing their own status, wealth and power.
Last but not least, these successor states would instantly start feuding amongst themselves about what territory belongs to whom while also getting paranoid about the number of potential fifth colonnist-movements inside their own territory.

The podcast History of Rome is brilliant and I very much recommend it. The first couple of episodes are a bit meh but it really gets going around the time of Pyrrhus. It's hands down the best podcast I've ever listened to.

Thank you based user

TRY CRACKING OPEN ANY FUCKING HISTORY BOOK AND READING ON HOW THIS HAPPENED TO ALL OF THEM FOREVER IN THE HISTORY OF EVERYTHING

I MEAN JESUS CHRIST, HOW DO EMPIRES *NOT* DISINTEGRATE? ONCE PEOPLE GET OUT OF ARMS REACH OF SLAPPING THEIR FUCKING STUPID FAT MOUTHS, IT'S LIKE HERDING CATS WITH HARSH WORDS AND GLARES

Either a leader dying and creating a power vacuum, or generally all the fuckery of lesser men are two ways an otherwise strong empire could shit itself.

Did he ever do more besides that lame revolutions one?

Ugh I HATE that

Rome was so fucking cool before Caesar

Caesar was the culmination of centuries of development and change, but everyone wants to jump right to fucking caesar

At the very least start with the Republican era after the end of the fall of the last king of Rome

The guy had a really messed up childhood and I like your take on his imperial rule.

> Ignoring the corpses, lepers and cripples, they do create men who are more used to hardship, more used to dealing with them and who value the fruits of their labor.

Sure, but only if you're ignoring a large part of the population.

> No shit, nobody questions better hygiene and nutrition leads to taller and healthier people.

So the men who are having good times turn out stronger, which directly contradicts the adage.

> Now ask yourself what kind of men let these men lord over them with an iron fist. That's right, weak men who've lost track of what they were defending in the first place (or who were so desperate they just handed it over).

Alright, I'll give you this one.

> North Koreans think everyone else on the planet has it as bad as they do. Can you even begin to imagine if 30% or so of the North Korean population had seen central Seoul? The guillotine would sing before you could say "not real communism".

I'm not sure what you're trying to disprove here.

>Now ask yourself what kind of men let these men lord over them with an iron fist. That's right, weak men who've lost track of what they were defending in the first place (or who were so desperate they just handed it over). It would be better to say that an overwhelmingly weak, cowardly and docile population is easily exploited by strongmen, yet a society of strong men will often result in a more restrained government that allows everyone to fabricate their own pursuit of happiness.

Mongols and Timurids confirmed as weak men.

Is this accurate?

Well, considering how fast their empire collapsed...

IIRC he has done like four different Revolutions.
I was also a bit disappointed in him choosing to do them but after giving it a chance I can say that I really appreciated them. I stopped listening a couple of episodes into the one about Bolivar though.
If you want more History of Rome I'd recommend History of Byzantium. It follows where the History of Rome left off and is imo really good aswell. I especially like the episodes he does after finishing an century in which he goes through the changes in military style, neighboring threats and civil life etc.

I saw a British documentary on Caligula that mentioned that. I've never been able to find it again.

>his innocent defenseless young daughter
I had an idea for a campaign where Julia Drusilla survived the assassination attempt by being spirited out of the place before it all went down. The aforementioned documentary made mention of Caligula wanting to move the capital of the Roman empire to Alexandria because something to do with ancient Egyptian magic and being worshiped as a god like the Pharaohs. Change it to there being legit Ancient Egyptian Magic, and his reason for moving the capital to Alexandria actually being to become a god, and have JD attempt to fulfill her father's ambitions and also take revenge on Rome. You know, classic plot stuff.

How the fuck is that a sign of weak men?
It's a marvel that they managed to conquer the territories they did.

and then they immediately lost it, whereas the Romans kept theirs for centuries

They also left the middle east a shithole ripe for the Muslims to take over and we know how that went

Mana shortage, all the magitech stops working reliably and powerful spells can no longer be cast. Once your Mage population gets too high it's impossible to get them all to stop casting spells so the mana flow can't recover.

What do you mean "balkanize" it?

Except the Mid east had been under control of various Caliphates since the 7th century. If anyone is to "blame" for Islams conquests its the Romans and Sassanids literally grinding each other into dust, treating locals like shit, and making most of their armies in the region Arab mercenaries.

Besides, if anything, the Mongols are responsible for turning the Mid East into the backward shithole it is now when they destroyed all the irrigation and learning centers.

>ripe for the Muslims to take over
It was muslim when they invaded, they just fucked up the existing caliphates, wrecked one of the most important libraries of history and sowed a shitton of chaos that went a way to making it the shithole it is today

The only sources to his life is written by members of the senatorial class who hated him. That being said, the user has basically done a reinterpretation of the stories told about Caligula in a way that shines positive light on him.

This isn't really falsifiable, though, is it? Not if it's expressed in that form.

The simplest contrary case would be "when bad times hit, they continue being bad forever, whereas when good times hit, they continue being good forever." This is obviously horseshit, although the second case is surprisingly close to true in terms of gross domestic product following the Industrial Revolution (i.e., over the last two and a half centuries or thereabouts).

The next-simplest contrary case would be "Shit happens": the strength of men is not correlated with the hardness or goodness of times. We don't have any good independent measure of the strength of men, so it's already hard to rule out this null hypothesis— and that says an awful lot about our ability to test the "men create times" hypothesis.

Some sort or cyclical relationship could exist, but you'd never know it if you accepted such vague terms and ideas. As notes, what we know about human biology strongly suggests an inverted relationship between times and men: people born into prosperity should be stronger and smarter than people born into deprivation and hardship.