What strategic assets (geographical, political, resources, etc.) could justify a tiny nation with a minuscule fraction of the size and population of any of its neighbors nevertheless being considered a major political player?
What strategic assets (geographical, political, resources, etc...
John Reyes
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Dominic Bennett
money
Jaxson Roberts
being the only nation of loli catgirls.
or money
John Murphy
Where would the money come from? I'm looking for more concrete stuff than that (e.g. they have rich silver mines, they're sitting on a major trade route, they produce silk, whatever)
Logan Lee
Well you just came up with three justifications, good job
Also they are in between countries which are always at war and by staying neutral, manage to help and provide all of them with weapons. AKA Switzerland.
Nolan Ortiz
I'm bringing those up for discussion since obviously, coming up with ideas is easy, but I need more in-depth brainstorming type thinking about the implications and consequences and nuances of it all. Like, if they have silver mines, why won't the bigger countries around them just conquer them? (actually that applies to all three of those suggestions)
Brody Reyes
Well, like before, just look at Switzerland. They've been neutral for a loooong ass time now and one reason is, they're always ready for war. Hitler tried to hit that once and he got jolly well kicked back into his sausage-based shithole pretty swiftly. They're also ultra cautious, bordering on paranoia (each and every citizen is guaranteed a spot in a bunker should the apocalypse come. They're all trained by the army and have weapons in their home, also must take classes now and then to make sure they still can use them, but the bullets are kept by the government only to be used in the event of an attack. Their roads are made so, if heavy war vehicles are driven on them they collapse, trapping them under it. Their Air Force is top notch since they train in very small areas so they have to learn to manoeuvre in tight environments, which most Air Forces don't do so much. And I'm not even mentionning the billions they hold for powerful people which will prevent any attack on them.
tl;dr they use their richness to make sure nobody will try and take their land
Jaxon Garcia
why can't you answer that yourself? we don't know your world.
say they dont because dragons, idfk
Juan Reed
superior natural defenses, think of Troy. Island-city that could only be accessed from a beach that granted no cover to enemies and Trojans could easily defend it.
Or think more magical, a nation surrounded by mountains with cliffs and shit, completely impassable to attempt to climb them, and the passages that grant access to the nation are covered by a neverending stream of lightings falling from the always cloudy sky around the area, so foreigners can't pass, but people from the nation know there is a pattern to this, and they have it memorized so they can come and go as they please.
A dam, whenever someone tries to attack them they wait for the right moment and unleash a stream of water that kills every opposing army.
Lava.
A powerful beast that the people from the nation know how to lure to force the invaders to fight it alongside the militia of the tiny nation
Contacts, the tiny nation's king-president-ruler is a distant cousin of a more powerful nation and thus its protected
Religion, like the catholic church in Rome. This tiny nation represents the chosen people of X god. The neighbor nations can respect them for it. Or you can make the god a real tangible thing and make the neighbors fear the tiny nation for it.
I don't know what else, more natural defenses, dangerous marshes, oil fields that can easily be burned and turned into hell itself, extreme temperates and weather, superior technology, or magic, strong rivers, anomalies like the endless thunderstorm I mentioned earlier or a ghost army like the one in Lord of The Rings that attacks anyone that gets close. A mix of all of these, or just all of these at the same time but in different locations.
Just my cup of cent.
Brody Murphy
Would you consider Switzerland a major political player?
Would you consider Belgium a major political player?
Would you consider Singapore a major political player?
Austin Sanders
Oh, and finally: would you consider Vatican a major political player?
Andrew Jones
Singapore essentially got its geopolitical position through being a neutral go-between for international players who still needed to deal with each other but couldn't do so directly.
Venice got it through dosh, which they got through being the major connection from eastern Europe to western Europe
Denmark recently sat on NATO secretary, several key EU posts, and controlled most of the North Sea fishing through generally just being too inoffensive to say no to.
Jayden Martinez
The Vatican doesn't even have citizens. You can only get a tanporary passport if you are assigned there but they don't actually have 'vaticans'.
Jayden Gutierrez
Israel.
Nathaniel Morris
temporary jesus fucking christ I can't write properly today
John Johnson
bulwark propped up by unkle sam
Benjamin Stewart
Having weak enemies has something to do with that. Arabs can't into war. Not in a racial sense, but in an institutional sense.
Gavin Watson
Sea domination. They control sea trading and travelling routes
Matthew Moore
Religion.
Jayden Smith
Study the following countries.
Vatican See, Luxembourg, Lichtenstein, Malta, San Marino, Monaco, Andorra, and Brunei.
Michael Young
Depends on the political climate.
If they have particularly high wealth as a nation they'd be extremely high value traders. They could also achieve this status by having control over a rare, high demand resource or by having a particular craft product in demand that other countries haven't figured out how to reproduce.
In a more hostile environment they could possibly be a religious power (like the Vatican City) or hold a key position that is extremely well defended, such as the only passage through a mountain range dividing the larger region.
The latter example could also be leveraged for trade.
If nothing else it could be history or tradition that keeps them relevant.
Perhaps they only got a seat at the political playing table because they used to be very relevant for one reason or another and some change in the climate like a new technology invalidated their worth but they have extremely intelligent politicians that manage to keep them in the game.
Chase Garcia
Despite the disadvantages in size, wealth, and military strength, the country's royal family is remarkably well connected. Through a combination of savvy dealing, favors and marriages, and a strange knack for backing the right horse during any wide reaching conflict, the royalty has ended up one of the major players of the world.
Daniel Anderson
Do nukes exist in the setting?
Nolan Brooks
Perhaps the royalty is ancient and directly or indirectly related to most of the regional royal houses.
Carson Thompson
Adventurers.
Mason Davis
A combination of strong, natural defenses combined with a very strategic location. An example would be this crude regional map of a city-state I made in paint. The city is surrounded by mountains and defended by a river on one side. The brown lines are supposed to be roads leading to the nearby cities of other major powers. All of this means that the city is easy to defend and hard to take, but this also means that it's at a crossroads making it very important for trade. By levying tolls and tariffs to secure safe passage, the rulers of this city could make themselves very powerful. Of course they could use this money to better equip their citizen militia or, in a pinch, hire mercenaries which only compounds their ability to defend themselves. Of course the other powers also benefit from this city-state's neutrality: as long as nobody else conquers it, it means everybody can trade through it. If a foreign power controls it, they control all the trade in the region. This means that if the city-state is attacked, it's very likely to find (temporary) allies.
If this city-state were the setting of a campaign, it could also create quite some space for intrigue. Especially if the succession of its leadership is non-dynastic, perhaps regular elections and the like. In such a case, everyone and their mother would want to get their guy in power so the city-state pursues policies favorable to them. Imagine for example an agricultural power West of the mountains facing fierce competition from an agricultural power East of the mountains that outproduces them by a significant margin. The guys West of the mountains would want a consul in the city-state that increases tariffs significantly, while the guys East of the mountains would support a candidate that plans to lower tariffs.
Dominic Carter
Nukes.
Jace Cooper
Evan Hill
I'm envisioning a dwarfhold in a mountain central to several kingdoms. The hold is healthy and near impregnable, so always remains neutral ground as these nations war with each other constantly. The dwarfs make money off selling them all weapons and so secretly, subtlety keep them at odds with each other. A decade of peace between these two kingdoms to let them recover before a new war, nudging two weaker kingdoms to gang up on a stronger one.
The long lived and far sighted dwarfs just keep nudging the short sighted human pawns around the board to keep money coming in and any from becoming a threat.
Maybe one day the humans figure it out and unite to take down the dwarfs, maybe just by chance a strong ruler unites the humans and discovers the dwarf machinations, maybe the dwarfs just strangely vanish, maybe the dwarfs have been doing this to prepare them all for a great evil coming from over the sea...
Juan Jones
Knowledge and innovation.
Knowledge and innovation.
Yeah that too. But historically nations can succeed with surprisingly little in the way of natural resources or strategic geography. Japan has neither but has always punched well above its weight.
Israel is a great example not just for their military (they were trouncing the Arabs even when the US wasn't supporting them and the Soviets were bankrolling the Arabs).
No the operative fact about the Israelis is knowledge and innovation. Biomedical and pharma, semiconductor fabrication, drip agriculture, robotics and AI, materials science, software and signals processing, and more. The Israelis are at the bleeding edge of nearly everything knowledge-based. Six Nobel Prizes in chemistry and two in economics. (Vs zero for the sciences in the Arab world; and I'm not even counting Jews in general, just Israelis). I'd imagine that broad experience in adopting the best of dozens of cultures helps, like Americans, Israelis are able to do that without taking it as a threat to their identity.
If you've ever worked with Israelis, they're smart as hell, arrogant as fuck, and willing to call anybody out if they think they are right. That's just purely a matter of culture and values: education, innovation, hard work, family first, respect for rule of law. (China has some of that, too, and look who went from starving backwater to global powerhouse in less than a generation.)
It's a matter of culture and values. Countries that have them do very very well even with not that much. Countries without them end up basket cases despite having on paper all the advantages.
If you want another example, look at Venezuela. They went from prosperous to shithole in less than 20 years, starving despite lots of some of the most fertile land in the world, and bankrupt despite huge proven oil reserves. Same exact people, new system, new values, wildly different result.
Elijah Roberts
HEY
HEY
YOU SHOULD SACK CONSTANTINOPLE
Evan Brooks
Why not have the dwarves seal off the mountain passes that separate the countries, and then strangle all the trade by directing it through the mountains? Most mountains are in long straight ranges, so the kingdoms on either side might not even be aware of one another except as rumor. Hence they can't ally even if they wanted to.
Gavin Anderson
Sadly thats pretty much how it worked.
Michael Edwards
DO IT FAGGOT. YOU KNOW YOU WANT TO. WHAT DID CONSTANTINOPLE EVER DO FOR YOU?
Noah Moore
D&D Forgotten Realms setting: Thay is minuscule and obviously cartoonish evil slaver nation in all goddamn Faerun, and nobody can do shit about it, because of the Red Wizards of Thay, a ridiculosuly overpowered lich-ridden organization of wizards.
The example I gave you is magic. But you can have a superior type of soldier, necromancers, banking, some sort of neutrality, a holy place, might be the country where a literal god lives in, some kind of treaty that somehow they got the upper hand on, superior technology, they are the only ones capable of doing X... the motives are too much to numerate, user.
Hunter Ortiz
The papacy is pretty tiny and they were pretty important politically iirc.