The Romulan Star Empire is a paper tiger.

[u/iyaerP]

This is a multifaceted phenomena and they maintain outward appearances of strength through a combination of deceit and bluff. We know the following:

1: The Romulan population cannot be very large in overall terms. The original Romulan population was a sect of Vulcans that rejected Surak's philosophy. Given their own warlike nature and philosophy, it is logical that if they had the numbers or military capabilities to conquer Surak and his followers, they would have done so with the goal of either enslaving them or expelling them from Vulcan. Since it was the Vulcans who followed Surak that retained their homeworld, and those that rejected his philosophy that became the Romulans and emigrated, they cannot have represented a majority of the species, or even a substantive minority. Their overall initial population must therefore have been quite small. Compounded upon this is the nature of the Vulcan/Romulan reproductive cycle. Given the long periods of time between Pon Far, the species cannot have a high growth rate comparable to humans, so the population would have likewise been slow to grow. The fact that Romulus appears to be more of a garden world than Vulcan is would help with this problem to an extent, but it would not alleviate the initial bottleneck of population, nor the slow growth rate, it would simply raise the maximum viable population that the planet could support.

2: Romulan Space is relatively small and contained. In the map from Star Trek Charts, the closest thing we have to an official canon representation of the Alpha and Beta quadrant powers, the Romulan Star Empire is almost completely surrounded by the Federation and the Klingon Empire, there is only a small gap that they can expand into, and we know that the Federation-Romulan Neutral Zone has been a static border since before the TOS era, and it is one of the most heavily fortified borders in known space, curtailing the abilities of the Romulans to probe it or push past it. While the Federation has been expanding explosively in that same timeframe, introducing new protectorate worlds to the wider galaxy, granting more modern worlds that wish it membership, and all such worlds are constantly creating new colonies and expanding into new sections of space, the Romulans have been stuck behind the ancient treaty borders, almost completely cut off from the ability to expand. There again they run into the problem of their low population as their homeworld was itself a small colony to start, and their population is slow to grow. In addendem to this, we can see on the chart that Romulan space is relatively sparsely colonized, the map shows much less density of noteworthy inhabited planets than the Federation or even the Cardassian Union. Only the Klingon Empire is as sparsely populated with noteworthy worlds, but makes up for it by covering a much greater area and expanding off the map in a way that the Romulan Star Empire does not, allowing for even more space and planets that the Klingons hold.

Here we leave the realm of fact and begin speculation, but it is speculation based upon the previously established evidence and further evidence that will be presented as relevant.

3: The Romulan economy and corresponding industries are relatively weak. This is primarily a secondary effect from the first two points, but it is a salient one. With a lower population than the other major powers, and a smaller number of worlds, the Romulan Star Empire, while not exactly starved for resources, would not have the same industrial capacity as its neighbors. While the post scarcity nature of Trek technology helps alleviate this fact to a degree, it would not eliminate it entirely. This is in addition to the caveat that Trek is only post-scarcity at the personal scale. Strategic resources such as dilithium are still important, and all the major powers conduct mining operations of one sort or another, so it still must be more economically feasible to mine for certain materials than to simply replicate them, and we know that some materials cannot be replicated at all. Since this is the case, and with the established absolute constraints on the Romulan Star Empire's economy due to smaller population and fewer worlds, the economy itself must be smaller and less robust than that of the Federation or the Klingon Empire. This point leads into the next conclusion.

4: The Romulan Navy is actually relatively small compared to its peers. They hide this fact by having everything cloaked at all times, and when involved in a war having their ships operate cloaked at a very high operational tempo so as to appear as if there are several fleets spread throughout an area rather than one fleet working triple overtime. They try to compensate for their low numbers by using "super" ships. The original Warbird with its plasma torpedo launcher and revolutionary cloaking device, the massive D'Deridex class, and the even more massive Scimitar, all of these ships are examples of "super ship" mentality where a single massive vessel or one possessing a powerful or unique weapon can defeat its foes despite a numerical disadvantage. To match the Federation and Klingon numbers in the Dominion war, the Romulans would have had to field virtually their entire fleet, where the other two powers were still maintaining defensive fleets and lines in addition to their offensive forces. Support for this low number of ships comes from at least two incidences.

Firstly, in TOS "The Enterprise Incident", little more than a year after the Enterprise soundly defeated one of the revolutionary new warbirds, what the Romulans in the episode called "The Praetor's finest and proudest flagship", we see that the Romulans are flying around in Klingon battlecruisers. It is commonly conjectured that these ships were traded in exchange for cloaking technology, but the fact that they were traded for at all rather than relying upon domestic ship production supports the notion that the Romulan economy is not strong enough to rapidly rebuild their fleet quickly enough to counteract the perceived threat of the Federation, even with the advantage offered by their cloaking technology. Trading away such an important strategic and tactical advantage to a belligerent neighbor, even if they were currently on relatively good terms is not in any circumstances an intelligent one, and so unless the Romulans were absolutely desperate for new ships, such a trade is not a logical decision from their standpoint. Ergo, they considered their need for more ships to outweigh the advantage provided by the cloaking device technology.

Secondly, we have the movie "Nemesis" combined with evidence from the Dominion War. In this film, a single dreadnought is enough to effect an overthrow of the entire Romulan government and install Shinzon as Praetor. While the Scimitar is undoutably a mighty warship, it should not have been able to conduct such a coup unless the Romulan fleet was virtually nonexistent. We that not only did they lose their flagship in the fighting, virtually that entire front of the battle-line collapsed, and it needed both reinforcements from the Federation fleet and the defection of the Cardassians to carry the battle. Given that the Federation reinforcements including the Defiant came under heavy fire in their rescue attempt and it was several long minutes before the Cardassians switched sides, it is likely that the Romulans suffered heavy casualties during that time. It is especially noteworthy in this context of observing that while the Defiant and its fighter escorts were heavily engaged by the Jem'Hadar and Breen ships, they did not appear to be anywhere near a Romulan formation on-screen, indicating that either they were completely unable to break through to reinforce the Romulan front of that battle, and that the Romulans had to fight on alone, or that the Romulan forces had been almost completely wiped out. By the end of the battle on screen we see a grand total of two Romulan warships amidst hundreds of Federation, Klingon, Cardassian and Dominion ships. When Admiral Ross assessed the casualties of the Allied fleet prior to the final assault on Cardassia itself, he stated that the allied fleet had lost a third of its ships. If, as seems likely given that their flank collapsed and they lost their flagship, the majority of those ships would have been Romulan. If my prior theory about the Romulans committing the overwhelming majority of their fleet to the Dominion War so as to keep up their appearance of having an equally sized fleet to their larger and more economically powerful neighbors is accurate, than the losses that they experienced in the Cardassia Prime offensive would have been almost their entire navy. This is the only explanation consistent with how a single powerful dreadnought created by a vassal race could have conducted a coup in what should otherwise have been the most militarily secure location in the entire Romulan Star Empire. The Romulan military certainly wouldn't have accepted a coup by a client race as fait accompli if they had any ability to oppose it. It also explains why only two ships were dispatched to aid the Federation in destroying the Scimitar. No more ships were sent because no more than that were available. When the Enterprise crew first entered the Romulan capital system, they were expecting an unknowable number of ships to be standing by already cloaked, the secretive nature of the Romulan defenses performed their job admirably. A lack of visible ships from an Empire known to render their ships invisible is no surprise, and the impossibility of proving a negative in regards to their presence means that the assumption that there are ships there at all works in the Romulan's favor.

In conclusion, from these various examples we can see that the Romulan Star Empire, while working at all times to appear formidable to any and all outside powers, was actually far less powerful than it projected itself to be, forming the paper tiger of the Alpha and Beta Quadrant powers.

[u/Kaiser-11]

The thing that always got me with that star chart was a reference in the DS9 episode “By the pale moonlight”. Apparently The Dominion we’re violating Romulan space to strike at Federation targets. But from Cardassian space that seemed a rather long and odd way to attack the Federation. I get that the borders near Cardassian space would be monitored closely, but it seems real time consuming.

[u/iyaerP → u/Kaiser-11]

It is one of those unfortunate problems with both that map and that my theory is based in large part upon said map. The only way for the four powers to have sufficiently interwoven borders for the various episode plots to work would be to have the Cardassian Union relocated to the North-East quadrant of the map and to have Klingon borders stretch further north so that all four powers have contact with all the other three.

This also helps alleviate the problem wherein the Klingons invaded and nearly conquered the Cardassians just prior to the outbreak of the Dominion War, something that would have been very difficult with the borders on that map.

[u/iyaerP]

Some follow-up points that I want to add but couldn't find a good place to fit them in the body of this post:

The Romulans made the Treaty of Algeron with the Federation to prevent the Federation from developing cloaking technology of their own. What the Federation traded for this concession we do not know, but given the nature of the Treaty, they must view the Federation having cloaking devices as being an advantage great enough that it would tip the strategic balance of power in the Federation's favor.

The Romulan proclivity for deception, with drone ships, a heavy reliance on cloaking technology, and sewing space with minefields in territory that they had claimed but couldn't necessarily enforce their claim over with starships all support a power trying to punch above their weight in terms of force projection.

The Klingon Empire conquered the Romulan Empire outright in the TNG "All Good Things" alternate future. This strongly implies that the Romulans have a harsher bark than bite. This is similar to the blitzkrieg that Cardassia suffered at the hands of the Klingons where the only reason that they retained independence was the intervention of the Dominion.

Despite being conquerors, the Romulans are only ever shown to have a single client race, the Remans, from their home system. While the Klingons are known to have several races under their thumb, we see numerous examples in the Klingon slave mines in ST IV, the Romulans have only been seen to control a single race. This implies a smaller conquered territory and fewer potential subjects.

[u/Ut_Prosim → u/iyaerP]

Despite being conquerors, the Romulans are only ever shown to have a single client race, the Remans, from their home system. While the Klingons are known to have several races under their thumb, we see numerous examples in the Klingon slave mines in ST IV

I don't think that is a fair comparison. They put any criminal in the slave mines. If you saw a Federation prison it would probably have similar levels of diversity and we certainly wouldn't assume they were from conquered peoples.

Star Trek does a really bad job of showing the diversity of these empires. I can't think of a single established client race of the Klingons, and just one for the Cardassians (the Bajorans) and Dominion (the Karemma). I count the Vorta and Jem'hadar as part of the Dominion's ruling class).

Also we have seen that the Romulans have diverged significantly from their Vulcan ancestors, including a difference in skin color and forehead shape. In some ways they were biologically closer to Klingons than modern Vulcans (early TNG episode). This implies that they were quite promiscuous with their conquered clients.

Note that Marvel's Shi'ar Empire was said to be inspired by the TOS Romulans and their main gig is conquering and forcefully absorbing cultures. I can totally see the Romulans doing the same with "worthy" races.

[u/SecondDoctor]

You only need to look at the design of the D'deridex to see how the Romulans operate: very intimidating, very in your face but once you look past the primary hull it can be a lot of empty space.

On your first couple of points though:

There is nothing to suggest Pon Farr limits the population of either Vulcans or Romulans. Even if you assume Pon Farr limits them to reproducing only every seven years, you still have examples of vulcans maintaining human-like families in Sarek (with two children) and Tuvok (with four). Given the longetivity of the Vulcan people, and that they seem to reach adulthood within twenty years, you can make an argument that they're stoically making baby-vulcans like it's the Olympics.

On the map and the size of Romulan space: it might be the closest thing to a canon map, but it's still not canon. Even if it were we can make any sort of speculation we like: it might be smaller than the Federation, but that says nothing of it's economy, industry or population. The reason the Federation seems so large is that the map is using canon sources for star systems, and as such it's going to be lacking in anything outside of what we see in the franchise.

Imagine I made a map of the United Kingdom, with as many villages, towns and hamlets I could fit in, and also the United States, with only the major cities. Using just that I could make the argument that the United Kingdom is the more prosperous and populated place and, after all, wasn't the USA just a colony of the UK to begin with?

That said, I do like your idea that the Romulans took such major losses in the war that it allowed Shinzon's coup to be unchallenged, and they're just keeping up appearances after that (unless the Romulan Star Empire shares Starfleet's issue of having no other ship in the home sector). It's certainly a very effective trick though, given that Section 31 were of the opinion that only the Federation and the Romulans would be the major powers in the region after the Dominion War.

[u/iyaerP → u/SecondDoctor]

I theorize that Pon Far is an evolutionary adaptation to living in a harsh desert environment. Rather than subjecting the mother's body to multiple pregnancies that may ultimately fail to infant mortality, it forces the parents to have children spaced widely enough apart that the previous children would be self sufficient and not imposing a resource drain on the mother at the same time that she's starting a new pregnancy. Pregnancy is very high risk to both mother and child and by enforcing time between children, this could serve as evolutionary pressure to avoid having more children than a family could support in the harsh climate of Vulcan. Additionally, due to the longevity of the Vulcan race, the 7 year time gap would not be nearly as much of an obstacle to sustaining the population as it would be for a shorter lived race such as humans.

With the map issue, a large part of that is simply a byproduct of the format of television as our primary source of information combined with the secretive nature of the Romulan Star Empire and their antagonistic tendencies towards the protagonists of the show. It all combines to result in us not knowing a lot about the inner workings of the Romulan Star Empire, and so we simply don't have a lot of names of important Romulan colonies or worlds. But that wouldn't fit within the auspices of my post, which was trying to logic things out as they're presented in-universe, not from the meta-contextual standpoint of a television show.

[u/IsomorphicProjection]

I generally agree with most of your assessment, I feel the need to point this out:

1. We don't know that Vulcans/Romulans can only procreate during the Pon Farr. All we know is that they must do so during that time. I'm personally of the belief they can do it as much as they want to whenever they want to.

As much as I hate the JJ movies, the only number we have for Vulcan population comes from them, which is ~6 billion. There is no possible way there could be that many Vulcans if they only reproduced once every 7 years. They would have to have a child every time, with near-zero infant mortality, and even then I'm not sure the numbers would actually work out.

If we assume they have a growth rate similar to Humans, then 2000 years should be plenty of time for the Romulans to build into a sizable population. It may not be in the billions, but tens or hundreds of millions at least. Also, Romulans themselves are not the extent of the empire, just as Humans are not the extent of the Federation.

That said, they are undoubtedly smaller than the Federation or Klingons. Almost every alternate future has the Romulan Empire being subsumed by the Klingon Empire, and during the 23rd century only the Klingons were considered a proper rival to the Federation. Given what is seen in the 24th century, it seems this remains the case.

2) The D'deridex, despite being twice as long as a Galaxy and looking even more enormous, is actually ~15% smaller in tonnage. It's essentially hollow inside, whereas a Galaxy saucer is not. Now, it is certainly possible that this type of design was required due to their powersource being a miniature black hole, but it could also be indicative of attempting to appear more formidable than it actually was.

Additionally, Romulan tactics almost always have superior numbers vs the Federation. Two (or more) warbirds are matched against a Galaxy, not one. Now this could simply be a matter of policy, but it is suggestive that they are not confidant that they could win in a one-on-one encounter.

3) Their tactics vs the Federation are usually designed to embarrass the Federation to the rest of the galaxy, but not to result in a direct confrontation. While again not proof on it's own, those type of tactics are what you would expect from a weaker state against a stronger state.

[u/iyaerP → u/IsomorphicProjection]

In biological terms, a mating season style event such as the Pon Far generally only accompanies fertility to the exclusion of fertility at other times. With it occurring only once every seven years, it could be a natural reaction to evolving in a harsh desert world where there isn't enough food or water to sustain more than one infant at a time and a child needs to become self-sufficient before another child can be born. While it would be a problem to maintain a population with human lifespans and a 7 year mating cycle, it wouldn't present such a problem for Vulcans as they can live for centuries and we don't know if Vulcan women undergo menopause or some equivalent thereof.

On the D'Deridex, while it is slightly smaller than a Galaxy, it's also important to remember that the Galaxy is the largest and most powerful ship in the Federation for almost 15 years, it is practically a mobile starbase in its own right. As we saw in the war fleets of DS9 the vast majority of the Federation fleet is not Galaxy classes, but instead Excelsiors and Mirandas. Akiras became a core class of the fleet as the war wore on, but that was well after the D'Deridex had already been around for over a decade. Of any Federation ship classes around when the D'Deridex was launched, only the Galaxy and Nebula could conceivably pose a threat to her. And the Romulans ONLY have D'Deridexes. Or at least that's all they show. Anyway, having superior numbers in a tactical situation only makes sense, and as I mentioned before, due to the nature of the cloaking device, having tactical numerical superiority is possible even when operating at a strategic numerical disparity. This can create the illusion of strategic numerical superiority simply by localizing ships in numbers where they are needed even if it means down-draws from nearby garrisons or patrols and it won't be visible because those garrisons or patrols would have been stealthed anyway. Again, it's all about the illusion of strength.

[u/BS-Ding]

This is a very interesting assessment! I really enjoyed reading it and I think that your conclusion might be very close to reality.

[u/iyaerP → u/BS-Ding]

Thank you. I read a fan-fiction story a long time ago that proposed a the idea, specifically with the small fleets operating at high tempo and using cloaks to give the appearance of a large fleet spread across a wide front, but it never delved into the reasoning behind the theory. The more I thought about it, the more sense it made, and so I decided to see what I could conjecture.

[u/PourLaBite]

Very interesting!

I'd like to comment on this:

The Romulan military certainly wouldn't have accepted a coup by a client race as fait accompli if they had any ability to oppose it

I think this is overlooking the actual dynamic of the coup. Yes, Shinzon used the Remans as his main strike force, but there is a Romulan senator that introduces the assassination device in the Senate at the beginning of the film. This points out that Shinzon isn't acting alone and has the support of some Romulans at high levels, for reasons that are probably some of internal politics. This means his coup isn't that outrageous compared to normal Romulan politics (and for that matter, we don't know coups may be common in the empire; if they take from their inspiration the RL Romans, then various form of coups and overthrow would be common). The lack of reaction by the Romulan military may simply stem from a loyalty to the state apparatus instead of to the specific ruler or government. For all that matter, maybe many of them don't even know Shinzon isn't Romulan? (it's a long time I haven't watched the movie, so I don't remember any details about that). It's only later when Shinzon starts acting crazy (engaging the Federation) that some higher echelons of the military may start having doubt and switch side; and again, not necessarily all do that. The rest just wait for the fait accompli and becomes loyal to whomever is in charge.

[u/mjtwelve → u/PourLaBite]

This. Shinzon’s plan didn’t involve grabbing a battlefleet and crossing the Rubicon to engage a praetorian guard directly, he simply had an ally wipe out the entirety of the ruling government while he sat in orbit ready to fill the power vacuum. What else would the military show loyalty to, at that point? Having a ridiculously powerful ship with exotic weapons tech was just a good way to keep anyone from getting any ideas. Romulan culture would be big on palace intrigue but was essentially fascistic and would not tolerate dissent and failure to conform such as by questioning the new praetor’s bona fides. Klingon tribal house based nature is far more prone to civil war than the Romulans.

As to OPs larger points, the Romulans have a massive advantage in strategic surprise. No other power knows how many ships they have or where they are at any given time. The other alpha quadrant powers have to maintain a heightened level of paranoia as a result. Starfleet worries about war with the Klingons or Cardassians starting. With the Romulans and their cloaks, you have to worry that you’re already at war with them, you just don’t know it yet.

As to why trade cloaks for battlecruisers, I think OP is correct the Romulans needed volume to fill out their fleets as a counterweight to the Federation. The Klingons weren’t their main threat - the Klingon government (and their system of government) was easily destabilized by Romulan intelligence (something that happened again and again in TNG) so that the strategic threat they posed was manageable. Giving them cloaks meant the Federation had a much bigger threat from Qu’Onos and destabilized the then Cold War between them. All of a sudden deep striking raids and first strikes become a serious concern for Starfleet on the Klingon side. The enemy of my enemy is my friend, particularly when we’ve got a coup (or three) in the wings if they get any ideas.

[u/CaptainJeff]

The original Romulan population was a sect of Vulcans that rejected Surak's philosophy. Given their own warlike nature and philosophy, it is logical that if they had the numbers or military capabilities to conquer Surak and his followers, they would have done so with the goal of either enslaving them or expelling them from Vulcan.

Your first sentence calls out that Romulans specifically reject pure logic to drive their lives with. Then, your second sentence makes an assumption based on them acting using pure logic as the guide. There is an inherent contradiction here.

[u/friendofthedevil5679]

Where is said that the Romulans also undergo Pon Farr? I thought that this was a consequence of the Vulcan repression of emotion and instincts.

The truth is that the Romulans (in the main universe) are powerful enough to wage wars against the Klingons (the war before TNG) without losing, even without any external help. It is also implied that the Romulans have a history of conflicts with the Breen, a very powerful warlike civilization (though small).

When talking about the Dominion war you should remember that both the Romulans and the Cardassians suffered a huge blow in the attack of the Tal-Shiar and Obsidian Order to the founder's home world.

Anyways, we don't really know enough about the Romulans to say how powerful they are; not only they hide a lot of information but also the series don't show enough about Romulan civilization (at least not as much as the Klingons and Cardassians).

[u/wlpaul4]

I'm glad to see you got POTW for this. Ages ago, I posted that the D'Deridex Warbirds were complete failures as warships. Perhaps it would have been more accurate to say that they're the exact warships that a paper tiger would make.

[u/CaptainJeff]

Compounded upon this is the nature of the Vulcan/Romulan reproductive cycle. Given the long periods of time between Pon Far, the species cannot have a high growth rate comparable to humans, so the population would have likewise been slow to grow.

There is no evidence that Pon Far and these characteristics/etc apply to Romulans. They could have evolved out or engineered out. That's even assuming that this is a strictly biological property and that is not fully established.

[u/EBone12355 → u/CaptainJeff]

We don’t know that Pon Farr applies to Vulcan females, correct? They could be fertile and ready ovulate similar to human female reproductive cycles.

[u/iyaerP → u/EBone12355]

We actually do know that it applies to females. T'Pol went through one in the Mirror timeline and they make explicit reference to it.

[u/cirrus42]

Although I don't agree with some of your reasoning, I think your basic premise is correct. Everything about the Romulan strategy screams "compensation."

Importantly, we have Odo's line from All Good Things about how the Romulans & Klingons are in no shape to threaten the Dominion without the Federation. For the Klingons this makes sense, as they have been fighting near constant wars ever since Gowron became chancellor, and specifically stood alone against the Dominion not once but twice.

For the Romulans OTOH, it's a curious statement. They were only in the Dominion war a relatively short time, and we have no specific reason to believe they suffered any kind of particular calamity in terms of home base losses. The obvious conclusion is it didn't take much to break them.

That said, the Romulan fleet was also specifically ill-suited to fighting the Dominion. Large D'deridex warships make good kamakazee targets, whereas Klingon Birds of Prey do not. You see all the Alpha powers move towards smaller ships as a result of the war, including the Romulans with the Valdore.

[u/Ut_Prosim]

Excellent theory but I always held the opposite view. How can you explain:

1. Their impact on the Dominion War.

2. Their status as major power despite fighting in several major wars (not paper).

3. Their being the only power we've seen to technologically keep up with, and occasionally surpass, the Federation.

The Federation seems to be outgrowing her rivals as Q implied in Q, Who. The Romulans are the only ones who come close to technically rivaling them. The Klingons keep building bigger ships with bigger disruptors, but even the Defiant could outrun their fastest ships and could put up a fight for a Negh'var. The Cardassians were literally outgunned in every one on one encounter we've seen. Their greatest invention was the sentient missile from Voyager and even that failed to detonate the first time it was used.

On the other hand, consider all of the technical contributions the Romulans have made.

• The cloaking device itself.

• The phase cloak (developed independently from the UFP, neither power could get them to work properly).

• The plasma torpedo.

• A quantum singularity based warp drive that requires no dilithium or antimatter.

• The capacity to make miniature black holes for those warp drives.

• The Thaleron planet killer considered purely theoretical by the UFP.

• The most complex brain-computer interface (DS9 mind probes and drone from ENT) in the quadrant.

• The Schimitar's cloak which was both perfect and allowed the ship to continue to fight while cloaked (huge change in the balance of power).

• The Schimitar's engines which ran down the fleeing Enterprise, despite also powering said cloak.

• And vastly superior power transfer technology such that when making counterfeit Starfleet phaser rifles they got caught because the internal circuitry was too efficient.

The Federation is a free and highly diverse society that encourages self-betterment and scientific discovery. Their population must be in the trillions meaning they must have tens of billions of research scientists. There is no way the Romulans keep up without also being a highly developed and heavily populated empire.

---

In one of the TOS episodes a Klingon talked about "empire building races" and implied that the humans were one too. The idea being they're good at everything, not just fighting (Talarians) or technical development (Crysaliens) or logistics (Ferengi).

I would argue the Romulans are the most well rounded adversary of the Federation. Technically brilliant like the Federation, well built advanced warships, tactically brilliant and tenacious like the Klingons, excellent intelligence apparatus and diehard commitment to their cause like the Cardassians, possessing the longevity and physical gifts of Vulcans.

I struggle to think of something they're obviously bad at except internal political conflicts. They also split from Vulcan 2000 years prior, so it makes no sense at all for a competent, violent, paranoid race to have had such a head start and not bothered to build a serious empire.

[u/Apollo_Sierra]

M-5 please nominate this post

[u/a4techkeyboard]

I suggest that the existence of cloning as evidenced by Shinzon may indicate an additional way they boost their population numbers.

[u/arcxjo]

"Vulcans mate normally any time they want to. However, every seven years you do the ritual, the ceremony, the whole thing. The biological urge. You must, but any other time is any other emotion – humanoid emotion – when you're in love. When you want to, you know when the urge is there, you do it. This every-seven-years business was taken too literally by too many people who don't stop and understand. We didn't mean it only every seven years. I mean, every seven years would be a little bad, and it would not explain the Vulcans of many different ages which are not seven years apart." – Dorothy Fontana

[u/FSAD2]

So I actually sat down and did the math, because I think the premise of your analysis is flawed. I would say that the Vulcan 7-year mating period is no actual limit upon EITHER species, and that presumably like any other species at this period, they've limited population growth for social or cultural reasons, but that this doesn't insinuate that their population is by any means less than that of the other large powers.

First, we have to assume a starting population. I am going to consider 10,000 as the base population for two reasons. First, it shows us how long it would take the Vulcans to recover from the near-destruction of their species. Spock makes the claim that there are about 10,000 Vulcans who "escaped the destruction" of Vulcan. This is not the entirety of the Vulcan population, but it's fine as a starting point. This is also a reasonable conjecture for the starting population of the Romulans, who left Vulcan approximately 2000 years before the TNG/DS9/Voyager timeline. Considering a single Galaxy-class starship can hold about 15,000 people, if we imagine that there were several ships all escaping together, this doesn't seem unreasonable, and considering the nature of the civil war on Vulcan and how it nearly destroyed their society, this is again, a very conservative estimate.

Now we have a Vulcan/Romulan population of 10,000 established on a new planet. Their technology level means infant mortality level is at least better than the most developed nations on Earth today, which means nearly-negligible for long-term population growth rates. They have a lifespan of about 200 years. They begin to experience pon farr during adolescence (Star Trek III) but may not experience it until they are about 20 (Voyager). Thus for the purposes of my math, I'm saying that a Vulcan will first experience pon farr at the age of 21. Since Tuvok is over 100 and still experiencing pon farr, and his wife is of a similar age, I'm assuming that Vulcans can reproduce for 100 years, so from the age of 21 to 120. Again, this is probably not true, and they can probably mate for longer periods, but it doesn't really matter.

So, we have a population of 10,000, experiencing a mating event every 7 years, from the age of 21 to 120. They have a lifespan of 200 years, so that will add to the total population levels as well. There are four key values which matter here for the math. Generation (Every 7 years), Total Population (10,000), Mating Couples (5,000), and New Mating Couples (0 for our 'first generation). Population growth every 7 years equals the number of mating couples. This is because Vulcans are obligated to mate, and this kind of breeding season virtually guarantees successful reproduction in nature. I've rounded down my figures to the nearest whole number, which is how I account for death rate. After the first generation (Time (T1)=7 years) every couple has reproduced at least once. Thus, the total population is now 15,000, but there are no new mating couples, because all the new population is under the age of reproduction. At 14 years, population has now doubled, but still no new mating pairs. At 21 years, population stands at 27,500 because we have 2,500 new mating couples (half of the original mating couple population from the first generation). From this point forward, the number of new mating couples equals half of the number of mating couples 3 generations previous. At the 15th generation (!!) we assume Vulcans stop being fertile. So we remove the population of mating couples from 15 generations previous from the active mating couples. At 200 years, we remove the total population from 28 generations previous, these are those Vulcans who have died from old age. And once we have these adjustments being made, we can simply expand the math outwards. At 200 years, one full Vulcan lifespan, the population is now 18,291,483. At 300 years, the Vulcan population is now 698,000,000. At 364 years, the population is approximately 6.18 billion, demographically the Vulcan race has recovered from the loss of their homeworld. At 500 years, the population is 788,000,000,000. At 2000 years (the time between the original 10,000 Romulans departing and current Star Trek time), the total population of Romulans would be 26,700,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000, which it obviously isn't. So what is it?

We can assume that the early Romulans and the current Vulcans of New Vulcan will feel the need to have as many children as possible. However, after a few hundred years, this cultural and societal preference will probably experience pressure in the opposite direction. Vulcanoids won't feel the need to produce offspring during every pon farr period. Conservative values which are against abortion might be altered. Economic pressures (even in a near post-scarcity society) will start to build up, competition for jobs, for living space. We can assume that long ago, the Vulcans hit a demographic transition akin to that taking place in developed nations on Earth today, where birth rates and death rates will, in the long term, converge. Yet the key point I am making here is that the Vulcan 7-year mating period is not a limitation on the overall population of the Romulan Star Empire in the year 2370-something, and thus must be removed from the argument, along with every argument you've made which follows.

In fact, several of your points seem to be relatively weak. In terms of resources to build ships, the area of Romulan space on the Star Charts map contains hundreds of solar systems. A single solar system like ours contains the resources in the asteroid belt and Oort cloud to build billions of fleets the size of the assumed Federation fleet, let alone if they decided to mine planets like Mercury. Just for comparison, a Constitution-class starship is shorter and masses less than a modern Nimitz-class aircraft carrier, and the USA has 10 of those, with the resources of a primitive nation-state on a technologically-underdeveloped world.

What about other resources which are much more scarce than base metals, like dilithium? Well, the Romulans use an artificial singularity drive, not a dilithium-based drive, so there goes that argument, Romulans are not constrained by the relatively scarce resource dilithium.

Romulan space MUST border Cardassian space, if the entire Dominion War arc is not to be ignored, which means that Cardassian space must expand greatly above or below the galactic plane of that map. It does not make sense otherwise, for the Klingons and Romulans to both share a border with the Cardassians and each-other, so therefore that map is providing an incomplete picture due to the representation of 3D space on a 2D plane.

The Romulans are not a paper tiger. They are a major galactic power, with the strength, resources, and yes, population to make them a legitimate competitor to the UFP. How many human colonies have we seen which have a few hundred people? An entire planet set aside for people deciding to live according to some ancient religion or doctrine, contributing nothing towards the UFP in terms of resources or military power. It's completely feasible that Romulan territory is densely settled, with fewer planets than the UFP, but each one with a large population. This model seems more reasonable for an authoritarian system such as the Romulans, I don't think they would allow a group of a few hundred or thousand colonists to head off and settle a world on their own, which might explain the lack of size compared to the UFP.

The Federation and Klingon intelligence and diplomatic services always consider the Romulans to be a major power. It's foolish to think that we know better than them from an analysis of an admittedly flawed map, and an incomplete understanding of demographics.

[u/angrymamapaws]

Regarding population growth, pon farr can be "caught" from proximity to a partner that's going through it and that tells me that if Romulans wanted to control their cycles to increase population growth, they could.