Lit Reading NJO...Again

I mean the Vong don't need to be that many to take over the galaxy. The Visigoths took over Spain, 30,000 of them ruled over 5 million people. So it's not like this is type of thing DIDN'T happen a lot in history.

 

The galactic population is 100 Quadrillion according to the essential atlas. (Though IU it’s post NJO and we know nothing about population growth in the GFFA).

Assuming a relatively constant population, I can accept the Vong population was in the hundreds of billions to low trillions. Maximum.

The advantage of the Vong they were a vertically organized and motivated polity that had a single goal that all members of said society were working towards. As opposed to a galactic civilization with many many governments, competing interests and no unified goal or purpose.

Which gets to my earlier point, the Vong were destined to lose if they could not destroy the galactic government entirely. Once the GA began to mobilize(both in industry and conscription) and it made the necessary alliances, the Vong would have lost even ignoring Alpha Red.

 

@Sinrebirth,
Then they may have planned something in this regard, but it never came to fruitation.

BTW: Did you know that Rodia is in the Savareen Sector, with the planet with the very same name which showed up in the SOLO movie?

 

Rodia is one of the few planets that got moved actually. Originally it was in the Doldur sector (Mid Rim) but after 2009, it got moved to the Savareen sector (Outer Rim).

 

And the power of the plot.

 

The question why all the Yuuzhan Vong can supposedly fit on Zonama Sekot?

Because Del Rey was eager to sweep the Vong under the rug and pretended the numbers make as much sense as the plot.

 

We had just gotten 19 books of them, taking them out of focus was not a bad idea.

I think organisational skill and speed could explain the Vong success. it worked for the Mongols after all.

 

The NR responded as well as it could. The main problem with it's war effort were spies.

Arms win battles. Intelligence wins wars.

And the issues Nom caused.

edit: I think also that the Vong are a totally unexpected threat. No one was in anyway prepared to deal with something so utterly alien.

It then moved so fast people panicked.

I think it is no accident that once the Vong run out of momentum (with the fall of Coruscant) they start to lose.

 

Yes, and all the infighting that was already there due to internal struggles (Jedi vs Politicians) that only got worse thanks to the Jedi's internal schism and the Vong's intervention to make the Jedi look bad at the eyes of the regular people.

There's also the fact that most of the Republic was already fighting itself thanks to all the efforts Nom Anor made after he facilitated the fall of the Empire, something he has worked on from 13 ABY in Crimson Empire III to the Rhommamool riot in 25 ABY in Vector Prime, imagine the ammount of worlds he had put against the NR by that point, which made the politicians desperate and the Republic unstable even before the Jedi situation reached it's worst stages.

In my opinion, the moment Tsavong's offer of "peace" was accepted by the NR and the general populace, it was evident all the work Anor put up in those years was worth it for the Yuuzhan Vong, and it was what guaranteed the conquest of Coruscant in the end.

 

yeah if a society that is so lost it turns on it's own best defenders you know your spies did their job well.

 

Nom Anor deserved a raise, dammit!

 

He got a raise and a promotion!

 

And tons of threats, insults, and an eventual exile to the depths of Yuuzhan'tar, not fair at all, Shimrra, it's not Anor's fault the Warriors messed it up.

 

Pretty much. The Vong weren't that good warriors despite how much focus they put on that.

 

They weren't good strategic warriors overall (with some exceptions like Czulkang or Nas Choka), but they were good commited warriors thanks to their Religious fanaticism, giving everything for their cause, but in the end, fanaticism is self-defeating.

And who paid for the warriors' failure? The executor who made their success possible in the first place

I totally understand Anor's frustration, honestly.

 

The warriors just can be as good as the commander who leads them. For they are like the clone soldiers raised to obey orders, when Tsavong Lah dumped them in his vast staff-intensive battles, they coudn't just do anything against. With Nas Choka as leader just from the start they would had made a far better job.

Did you ever notice that Nom Anor (beside the dead on Monor II) did not kill any infidel in the whole NJO series, just his own people. Maybe that's why he was called Nom - enemy in the Yuuzhan Vong language. I really regret, that in TUF we don't get any interaction of him with Nas Choka, who humiliated him so much on that escalation ceremony in Jedi Eclipse. It must have felt strange for the warmaster to see how Nom Anor, whom he contempted all the time, was vindicated by Shimrra and escalated to prefect rank as well. Some thoughts of Nom Anor about Nas Choka would had been insighting as well.

That would had been a great entry into Nas Choka's diary too (was there such diary or is that just my impression from a long forgotten fanfiction?) I was also surprised to read in TUF, that it was Nas Choka, who toppled Quoreal together with Shimrra. I always deemed Tsavong Lah to be his ally in this regard because it was after the defeat of Czulkang Lah, that Shimrra came to power. Just a move of James Luceno to make his character more shining in the last stand after he was clouded in the oblivion of Nal Hutta for such a long time?

 

Choka remarks at one point the Vong ought to have forged local alliances, instead of just attacking everyone they came across willy nilly. The Vong attacked the Mandalorians, the Ssi-Ruu, the Chiss, among others while still fighting the GA.

Making alliances with local powers, or at least non aggression pacts, would have served their strategic aims wonderfully.

To use another franchise-the Dominion in Star Trek DS9-they made non aggression pacts with some minor Alpha Quadrant powers, such as the Tholians, Miradorn, and Romulans. And of course make alliances with the Cardassians, and later the Breen. Instead of just wantonly attacking everyone in sight. This gives them a much better overall strategic position in the beginning of, and throughout the war.

Now the SW galaxy isn't near as multipolar as Star Trek, but the Vong maybe ought not to have attacked the Mandalorians, Imperials, Hutts, Ssi-Ruu, and all the other minor powers they did.

Part of the issue with the above is the Vong's whole ideology of conquest and religious exceptionalism makes doing diplomacy OOC for the most part for them.

That said, at the tactical level-the Vong had the tendency of throwing their warriors into meat grinders, and "achieving victory over the ramparts of their own dead". This fits Vong ideology and psychology as well-emphasis on direct combat, absolute contempt of cowardice, and so on. It just wasn't sustainable, and this "throw enough warriors to drown them in blood, theirs and ours" doctrine-just wasn't gonna work in the long run. The GFFA could win a war of attrition, the Yuuzhan Vong could not.

A willingness to say retreat, or flank, or offer surrender, or just blockade and starve out, would have saved the Vong a lot of their warrior caste.

 

@Darth Invictus
Keeping up with the Cardassians, that's the real true way.

 

Gul Dukat takes Miami. I hear its a hit show.

 

Would it really have been possible for any pact between any of the GFFA's factions to hold with the Yuuzhan Vong? It only takes one good look at the Yuuzhan Vong's culture and religion to realize that once they're done with the New Republic, they would be coming for everybody else next. In fact, the Mandalorians did figure this out immediately.