Hello everypony,
If any of you have been paying attention to "Spellbound" lately, which is largely submitted on FIMFICTION,
http://www.fimfiction.net/story/68365/spellbound
clicky linky for http://www.fimfiction.net/story/68365/spellbound

I have been slowly working on the takeover of the crystal empire by King Sombra, and his unicorn allies.

Anyway, it has come the time that I need to work on the more industrially-focused parts of my fanfic. Anyways, my vision for the future is that there is going to be a war between the crystal empire and Equestria proper.

Lets continue:
From the episodes currently, one can ascertain that ponies have some form of Electricity (as seen in the hospital)
Steelmaking,
Gas Engines (as seen in the Parade featuring BabSeed)
and Steam locomotives.

My explanation for the above is that while over the years Equestria has developed said technology, it has been largely restricted by actions of the Princesses in order to protect the Environment, and that ponykind are generally satisfied with their lives of candles, and wood-burning fires for heat. However, the technology does exist and permeates equestria as it is.

Anyways, now that the crystal empire has been taken over by more ambitious sorts, such excessive regulation has gone by the wayside, and as such industrialization has started at a rapid pace.

What I am looking for here is thus: what amount of industrial technology and warmaking technology would you think is reasonable for the crystal empire to begin producing on a large scale within realistic limits,
And if celestia was made aware of such developments, would she continue to hold her own country beind the restrictions of old, or would she step up Equestrian industrialization as well.

Additionally, rando ideas about pony warmaking technology, and pony industrial technology are more than welcome.

Thanks
-Kam-

Depending on the amount of time has passed it shouldn't increase to much. I would say WW1 level tech would be fine. As for Celestia I figure she might step up her industry but more then likely at a slower pace.
Also reminding you that this thread must be taken down after a week.

Hooboy. One of my favorite topics.

Arright, so lets get a few things out of the way.

First off, Technology is only part one of the equation. A society consisting of say, a hundred thousand individuals could know everything there is to know about rocket ship construction. But they would also have absolutely no way of providing the vast number of specialists and engineers to produce such a device.

Population is a major part of how industry works. The bigger your population - both in terms of pure manpower and in terms of Specialists - the more industrial potential you have. But Potential only gets you so far.

The third corner on this triangle is Resources- That means natural resources like raw iron, coal, nickle, chromium, timber reserves, oil, things like that - and produced resources like Sulfuric Acid, potassium nitrate, mercury, various other chemical compounds, gunpowder and so on - that are required to drive a truly industrial economy.

Resources also includes facilities - Factories, chemical labs, production facilities, work shops, blacksmiths, whatever - needed to take your raw resources and turn them into useful materiel.

So first, that's your big questions -
1.) What population does the Crystal Empire / Equestria have access to? Of that population, how many of them will fit into the required technical specialties? (Chemists, Metallurgists, Engineers and Construction specialists are the ones you really need to be aware of.)
2.) What sort of resources do they have that are relevant to military expansionism? (This will primarily include things like raw metals, the facilities to make those metals useful, and the facilities to turn them into weapons and armor. This will also include food production.)
3.) What do you consider to be the height of military technology, and how does this apply to the previous two questions? (For example: A Military who intends to use Pike, Swords and Shields and the like, requires a far lower number of specialists. Than a military who also makes use of black powder musketsor Cannon which ALSO requires a far lower number of specialists than one which makes use of Rifling technology and prepared Cartridges - you get the idea.)

Once you've settled these three big questions, now we can start figuring out what they can do with all of it.

This brings us to your next big decisive question - Mass Production.

Although Mass Production has been going on since the Warring States period in China (Meaning a long effin time ago) deciding on weather or nor Ponies have uncovered the process or are making efficient use of it makes a big difference in the answer to your question.

These are all vital questions you need to ask yourself if you really want a realistic answer to these questions. However, in the interests of actually giving you an answer - I've prepared the following scenario for you.

~~~~~
Crystal Empire Industrial Potential Report-

Crystal Empire presumed population - Although we lack anything resembling an accurate map, I'm going to go out on a limb here and say the Empire at the height of its power posessed a population around 40 million ponies, Total.

The reason for this is primarily advanced medical technology and magic focused on medicine. With the ability to control plague and disease through magical intervention, that means that the Pony kingdoms have bypassed the major population bottlenecks that Europe encountered during the 11th-16th centuries. With a region that has existed mostly in peace, I therefore use populations more in touch with 1800's era Europe/America. This is also important as without a large population of this nature, any serious amount of industry would be very limited.

Of these 40 million ponies, I apply my standard "Racial separation index" Which is a set of percentages I use based on my own presumptions about pony genealogy, aging and culture, in order to determine how much of that population is "Earth Pony" "Pegasus" and "Unicorn." - Which I separate into 50 - 30 - 20 percentages.

Therefore, there are approximately 20 million Earth ponies, Approximately 12 million Pegasi, and 8 million Unicorns in the Crystal Empire.

Of these ponies, I would presume that around 10% of them are already inclined towards technical fields and expertise, Providing you with around 4 million technical workers. Luckily, this is more than enough to deal with the demands of rapid industrialization.

Natural Resources - The Crystal Empire exists primarily in a mountainous area. This means metals and fossil fuels (assuming they exist in Equestria) are going to be in abundance. Furthermore, the nature of the Crystal Empire means that naturally occurring crystal materials can serve as replacements for any number of military resources such as building materiel.

The big problem is going to be in food production. This is going to be entirely up to you as to where and how they get their food from.

Produced Resources - This is a tough one. It all depends on just how fast they're modernizing and industrializing. For this scenario, I will presume that the means exist to locally produce weapons and armor, and other military supplies, but mass production is still going to take time to ramp up to.

Industrial Resources - Meaning factories and the like. Once again, I'm going to be under the presumption that considerable effort will need to be made to ramp up the availability of production facilities. This will be less difficult due to the ability to create buildings out of solid crystal, but the machines will still take time to produce.

Development Report - This is the stuff you asked about

Industrial Development - Presuming that Sombra is prepared to sacrifice worker safety in order to get his war machine grinding as fast as he can. (Im presuming he IS by the way) Going from strictly local industry to a nationwide war machine will likely require at least a full year of dedicated build up. This would have to be the primary concern of the entire government. Analogous to the U.S Buildup during WW2. However, once that year is over the Crystal Empire will possess unparalleled production potential. Easily more than enough to support a concentrated war effort on his neighbors.

Warmaking Technology - I've gone over the series with a fine toothed comb on this one, and have come up with the following answer.

It is unlikely that any military of this age is familiar with the use of or deployment of gunpowder weaponry. This would not likely last forever, but the start of any conflict would be fought with pikes, armor, shields, swords, bows and crossbows and the like.

In addition, there may or may not be technology which enhances the natural abilities of pegasi and unicorns in combat. You should not dismiss the importance of these two things, as pegasi can literally use the weather as a weapon - and Unicorns, especially those of significant magical power, will turn the tide of a battle all on their own.

For the immediate future, Presume that the only weapons that will be produced with any ease will be hand-to-hand combat weapons and simple ranged weapons using bolts and arrows. The number of these you can produce once again depends entirely on how far along his industrial build up has gotten. At it's peak, I would suggest it would not be impossible to arm between 5-10 thousand new troops every single day.

Technological Development Note - THIS IS VERY IMPORTANT - We have absolutely no in-series evidence that Gunpowder or a similar substance exists anywhere in Equestria or beyond. All fireworks or the like can be explained through unicorn magic or pegasus magic. However, if you wish to take your series in this direction, keep in mind the differences in pony anatomy and physiology before introducing weapons which require distinct fingers to operate.

~~~~
Equestrian Response Report -

Population - Equestria is a much, much larger nation in size than the Crystal Empire. But it also has a large number of forests which are likely uninhabited except for those dedicated to cutting down trees for needed lumber.

With this in mind, I have estimated Equestria to possess a population between 75-80 million ponies. Once again, I apply my usual Racial Separation Index - Giving you 40 million Earth Ponies, 25 million Pegasi and 15 million Unicorns.

Response - Celestia undoubtedly is a canny leader, someone who would vastly prefer the use of diplomacy to any other response. This does not mean she is foolish. If it becomes clear that the Empire is industrializing specifically for the purpose of making war, I do not doubt Celestia would immediately leverage her much larger population and available land mass to her advantage in addition to diplomatic action.

Trade sanctions would undoubtedly be brought to bear, and the mobilization of the Equestrian military quietly taken underway. Industrialization would occur, but would be much slower. This is because Celestia would likely insist upon safe working conditions, and would not be willing to accept the same price in deaths and injuries as Sombra would.

At the point of an actual attack, all bets are off as to how she would respond. Presuming that the Elements of Harmony are in their possession, I do not doubt Celestia and Luna would personally take to the field along with every conceivable resource in an effort to bring the war to an immediate and decisive conclusion.

Given Equestria's much larger population and the assets of the School for Gifted Unicorns and the Canterlot Library, It would likely not be a good day for the Crystal Empire.

Those are my thoughts. If you have more questions, feel free to PM me!

849913 Thanks for the heads up on the one week thing.

Interestingly, it seems that the Crystal Empire+ Unicorns are going to focus more development on weapons of steel, chemicals, and otherwise
Whilst Celestia's forces are going to be more focused on magic, and cleaner tech. Also, there is a debate in my mind wether celestia might have superforms, or superponies, or otherwise use magical creatures.

Tech that I feel will be used currently
Crystal Empire only:
Railroad based artillery
Larger Artillery
Changelings
Chemical warfare and Biocides (crop destruction especially)
crude rifles and rockets
attacks upon civillian areas of cities

Both
Cannon (limited on Equestria side)
Handheld magical casting devices (blasters) (C.E. Limited)
Firebombing
Large scale magic (C.E. Limited)
Swords, Steel armor
attacks upon industrial areas of cities
trench warfare

Celestia only
Superponies
Dragons
Griffons (possibly)
Siege engines
Discord

849975
Holy cow,
we have to talk.

849975

... Your population estimates are rather outrageous. Every indication we have says that Equestria is a very small nation. The Ponyville pegasi can scan the entirety of Equestria "from Fillydelphia to Las Pegasus" for potential threats, in at most, a few hours. Twilight Sparkle can run to the gates of Tartarus in a day and back. Twilight, Rarity, and Spike can follow Spike beyond the borders of Equestria to the land of the dragons without carrying any supplies with them. In the IDW comics, the Mane 6 can leave the borders Equestria in a 3 days travel. Furthermore, Equestria's population density appears to be extremely low, as the vast majority of the terrain we've is unpopulated wilderness. The largest population center we've seen (Manehattan) can hardly have more than a million or two in total population.

If the population were truly in the 80 million range, we would expect vast, vast areas of highly industrialized farms like the American Midwest, yet we see nothing of the sort. Furthermore, pony farming techniques have not advanced beyond the plow and hoe, severely limiting their potential food production. Your assumption that effective control of disease would allow for rampant population growth is false; food is the primary limiting factor in any pre-industrial society. The Roman Empire at its height had a population of around 50 million, and pony farming techniques do not appear substantially more advanced than ancient Roman ones. Using such pre-industrial techniques severely limits the population, and thus urbanization and industrialization to occur.

Finally, ponies do not appear to have children at the rates pre-modern eras do either. AFAIK we have never seen a single family with more than two children, which is replacement-rate population growth at best.

Considering these facts, I would expect Equestria's land area not to be bigger than say, Belgium, with a far lower population density. Because of this, it would be very surprising if Equestria's total population is more than, say, 10 million.

The Crystal Empire, furthermore, does not appear to be any larger than the single city we see in the show. It's only livable because of magic, and is surrounded by a frozen and desolate wasteland of mountains. Any territory it has in its general vicinity would therefore be expected to have minimal population as all arable land has to be kept that way through perpetually applied magic.

850070

I'm unfamiliar with the comics, but I'd love to know where the rest of this information came from. I know there's information sources out there I haven't seen. Also - In terms of travel time, I presume that there's a great deal of Time Compression going on.

The problem with such a low population is it does not make any sense for the level of technology we've seen. A fully functioning railroad system would require a fully-fledged steel industry to not merely build but maintain. Manehatten Skyscrapers would require similarly massive amounts of Steel or other high-tensile strength materiel's in order just to build, never mind what it would require to assemble it. Electricity, Industrial Machinery, Refrigeration, high end speakers and musical equipment, The list goes on and on and on.

Even if you explain all of the power requirements away with "It's Magitech" 10 million individuals is far, far too small a population to produce THAT MUCH hardware on any kind of basis.

As to the Crystal Empire - Yes, that is what we see it as TODAY - If he's talking about a conflict from some two thousand years ago...well, there's a lot of places on our planet which look vastly different than they did 2 millenium ago.

The conflict is now, as in show time now, post season 3 that is
Twilight sparkle has been a princess for a number of weeks, well >sort of
as for >its magitech, I do have to agree with Mr. Heliostorm on this one, because we're kinda fighting unrealism on all sides.

Still, great discussion. I am sure to use and put into consideration all points given

Also, so that I am clear
Crystal Empire does win the war.

850115

Ponyville pegasi are able to cover the entirety of Equestria in a few hours in "It's About Time". Twilight again travels to Tartarus in "It's About Time". Spike leaves Equestria with Rarity, Twilight, and RD following him in "Dragon Quest".

I think you need to take another look at "Cutie Mark Chronicles". The majority of Manehattan's buildings are not skyscrapers, and are made of brick, not steel. It's also far, far smaller in area than New York. Similarly, we have little evidence for massive electrical use and no evidence for refrigeration at all.

The requirements to have a railroad are far, far below what you are implying. The UK had a fully functioning rail system in the early 1800s, at a time when it's population was in the 8-9 million range.

850150
The UK railway was also not built in a vacuum - France and Germany possessed populations of over 30 million in the 1840's. Russia had population in excess of 60 million. The whole of the UK was 16 million. None of these numbers include the Asian nations, or the United States which were trading with Europe in any number of innumerable ways.

Industrial efforts are not confined to a single nation. So who is Equestria trading with? Where are the vast nations of other intelligent creatures to provide them with the necessary raw materials? Who is processing those materials into useful form?

This is why I used the term "Schitzo Tech". Trying to apply logic to this is just ending in headaches. Any technical deficiency that has to be explained away by saying "Because Magic" is not interesting unless that's the entire basis for your technology. At which point, I'd have to completely rework my assumptions.

Also, will watch It's About Time again. I don't remember that stuff, but it's been a while since I've seen it.

Well there are the griffons

850229

Uh, all of which is completely irrelevant, because the UK didn't do much trading with regards to its steel production? The UK did not trade substantially with continental Europe because continental Europe was dominated by France, and the UK was on bad terms with France (Napoleon ring a bell?). The majority of UK's railroads were made from iron ore mined in the UK, refined in the UK, and laid down by the UK. In fact, the UK in that period was incredibly abundant with iron ore and coal ore, meaning its steel production was entirely self-contained, which is of course, one of the main reasons the industrial revolution started in the UK, and why the UK got its rail network up and running much sooner than any other nation. The UK didn't really start importing raw metals in large quantities until the modern era of globalization.

I'd also add that technology in Equestria appears incredibly stagnant. Consider the fact that the crystal ponies show no interest in such innovations as the railroad or the steam train that pulls into the Crystal Empire (CE for short). Princess Luna also has never been seen expressing any kind of surprise or interest in the technological innovations that should have been invented in her absence. This implies that the Equestria has had such technology for at least a thousand years, which is plenty of time to build all the aforementioned things even with a relatively small industrial base. Even if they haven't, we know for a fact that pony society is remarkably stable and long-lived, meaning that the products of their industrial base could well have been made over a much, much longer period than a human society would expect.

At the end of the day, what you're doing is looking at Equestrian society and then estimating how large a human society would have to be in order to be like that. But Equestrian society isn't human society, so the standards don't necessarily apply. If Equestria were so industrialized and populous, we should see more evidence of it, but we don't.

850140

That makes things horribly, horribly slanted against the CE. Equestria has an enormous strategic advantage over the CE. Not only does it have a larger population, more land, more resources, and presumably greater access to whatever magical and technological developments were made in the past 1000 years while the CE was gone, it also has access to unicorns and pegasi, while the CE only has hornless and wingless crystal ponies (that actually appear to be ordinary Earth ponies).

Consider the advantage that Celestia/Luna and pegasi alone would give Equestria. Even with modern technology, conducting combat operations at night is difficult. For a society like Equestria, it would be nearly impossible. The ability to control the day/night cycle thus translates into the ability to completely control the tempo of combat. Whenever they don't want the CE to attack, they make it night; whenever they want to attack themselves, they make it day. The CE forces have to maintain vigilance 24/7 because the night can turn to day at any point; they don't have the luxury of adhering to a normal sleep cycle.

On the tactical scale, pegasi present mobility and recon potential far in excess of anything the CE can match. Pegasi drawing chariots can easily transport Earth ponies or unicorns at flying speeds, whereas the CE is limited to railroads at best (and those can be destroyed). Pegasi can perform recon from altitudes too high to be effectively shot down. Their ability to control weather in conjunction with control of the day/night cycle further restricts CE operations. Many an offensive in RL has been delayed or called off due to inclement weather. Even a light rainstorm at night would reduce visibility to zero.

On the strategic scale, pegasi are essentially WMDs. Weather control presents an unsurmountable advantage. Storms and weather and cold can batter armies and cause massive casualties (just ask Napoleon, or the Nazis that invaded Russia). They can destroy crops and cause mass starvation and destruction. Indeed, Equestria could probably force the CE into surrender on the basis of its weather control alone.

If you want to have the CE win, you're going to have to come up with some incredible deus ex machina on the CE's part, or else portray the Equestrian military as horribly, horribly incompetent while making the CE's military extremely intelligent.

850284
It would seem that the country to look at in this situation is Japan, and their rapid industrialization period

Anyway, point being, I think 9 months or so is a reasonable time period.

On Equestria, the course of action I am going to take, is that celestia retains confidence in Magic, and superior numbers, and that after the initial shock of the empire being taken over, trade with them continues, however their rapid industrialization is seen as a folly
and magic is seen as a superior force to steel

additionally, Celestia is going to be confident in a number of secret weapons, some of which may backfire or fail.

850559

Japan is a bad example as it needs to import most of its raw materials. The UK, on the other hand, had an almost entirely self-sufficient steel industry. At the end of the day though, you don't need a massive population to sustain the relatively meagre levels of industrialization we see in the show, especially given that pony society are much more stagnant and stable than human societies.

The Crystal Empire simply wouldn't have the technology base to leapfrog Equestria industrially so quickly. Furthermore, their disadvantage in aerial forces and magic completely cripples them in terms of their capacity to wage war.

Also the CE doesn't have an army, so does King Sombra know how to train an army? The show indicates that he ruled the Crystal Empire alone (evidently a single unicorn was sufficient to overpower all the Earth ponies of the CE). The crystal ponies we've seen are universally meek and cowardly, so making them into an efficient and disciplined fighting force seems like a tall task. There's no way for King Sombra to guarantee their loyalty on the battlefield either; the fact that he had to keep them all up in chains tells us that without him physically stopping them, they'd desert in droves at the first opportunity.

850559>>851079
I have to concur with Heliostorm about Japan. Read the some of the history leading up to Pearl Harbor, one of the reasons Japan hit us was retaliation from cutting of the shipping of raw materials such as scrap iron. ANd one problem 6 months for the CE to become industrialized? Are you out of you mind? It takes time to build factories, to gather the raw materials, and simply get production going.

Also the Equestriani believing that magic is better than steel is ludicrous, they have built rail lines, skyscrapers. They know the power of steel, just because they have magic doesn't mean they aren't going to use technology. And remember the Equestriani have two demigoddesses as their leaders who took down Sombra the first time, and will be willing to do it again.

Also Helistorm this is for you, the problem with thinking that Equestria is small based off Canon is that canon is crap when it comes to physical shape and size of the country.

851197

An 80-million population Equestria just doesn't make sense in the context of the show. How, for example, was Chrysalis planning on conquering a Europe-sized Equestria with 80 million ponies with her paltry little force of a few tens of thousands of changelings, at the most? Where's the gargantuan government bureaucracy that should be handling the majority of tasks, as opposed to Celestia personally directing Granny Smith and her family to a location on which she can make her homestead? Where's the huge, industrialized farms that extend to the horizon and beyond? Where's the massive amounts of shipping that an industrial society would have--we've never seen so much as a single freight train or transport caravan. I'm sorry, but the evidence is just not there for Equestria being a huge country with tens of millions of urbanized and industrialized ponies. Such a society would look and feel substantially different from what we get.

851297
OK I'm going to go through your arguments one at a time, I will try to point out the issues and if you disagree then you disagree.
1) The Invasion: By taking out Canterlot she takes out the capital, including the Princesses. If Celestia has a tight of control over Equestria as you say then Chrysalis has effectively decapitated the Equestriani government.
2)Bureaucracy: Just because we don't see it doesn't mean it's not there, the series doesn't go into it for a good reason, it ain't the point of the show. With Granny Smith's family there is simple answer: The land is own by the Crown thus needing royal permission to settle there, knowing Celestia she would give it to them in person
3)Farms/Ports/Industry: We have only see a small amount of cities we have not seen the whole country. And here's the thing I've seen rural areas, you see no signs on freight trains or even heavy harvest equipment. Yeah that would change if we got out of the Ponyville and say to Manehatten. I will grant you that 80 million is high, the UK as of now just gotten higher than the population of the US in 1880.

851330

1) Taking out the capital would be meaningless. If Washington DC were nuked today by some army numbering in the few tens of thousands, and the President, Vice President, and the entire Congress, died, the US's ability to wage war would not be greatly diminished. There'd be a lot of confusion as the command structure moves to restore the chain of command, but the US military would still hit back, hard. Taking out the capital would only cripple a nation if the nation is very small.

Furthermore, if Equestria were large, Celestia can't have very tight control over the Equestrian government. It's not physically or mentally possible for a single person (or pony) to maintain direct control over such a vast population. Furthermore, the business of running such a huge nation should occupy virtually all of Celestia's time--she should no more have the time to personally teach Twilight Sparkle than Barack Obama has any time to teach a student in "How to be President 101". Teaching is a full-time job; just ask any teacher.

2) Why should we assume that there's a huge bureaucracy if we have no evidence of one? Furthermore, you're missing the point. If Equestria were huge, then Celestia can't possibly have the time to personally attend to the needs of a random family. Obama can't help every hobo he meets. On the other hand, if Equestria is very small, Celestia's actions make perfect sense.

This, of course, is a running theme in this debate. What we see in the show makes perfect sense if Equestria is small. But if Equestria is big, we have to contrive all these reasons for why things don't match up to our expectations.

3) We've been to Manehattan. It's not that impressive. And I don't know what rural areas you've been to, but the vast majority of the industrialized world's food supply comes from farms like this:

There's no way to avoid this. Any industrialized society will have to use their land in this fashion simply in order to feed such a large population. And yet we never see anything even close to this scale of farming done. Instead, what we get is this:

There's just flat-out no way that farming by individually bucking apples from trees, and having one pony plowing one field, can ever possibly grow enough food to sustain a large urban population. We haven't used farming techniques that primitive since the medieval era.

In addition, we see railroads all the time. There's at least one fairly major railroad running through Ponyville (the fact that it services Canterlot and the Crystal Empire implies that it's part of a pan-Equestrian route). If Equestria were heavily industrialized, we should see freight trains going through there all the time. We should see this:

Instead we get this:

At the end of the day, every attempt to make Equestria out to be a huge country with tens of millions of ponies has to speculate on things we don't see, contrive multiple reasons for why we don't see them, and obfuscate the details of the show to make less clear what is going on. This is the exact opposite of what analyzing the show should be. The most logical explanation for why we don't see evidence for Equestria being a huge nation is that it isn't a huge nation. That's the simplest, most logical, best explanation.

Ask yourself this: if you asked Lauren Faust (or any of the show's writers) if she intended Equestria to be a huge, industrialized, urbanized nation with a population in the several tens of millions, would she say yes?

Okay, okay... this forum discussion has gotten WAY WAY WAY WAY off topic.

But, after reasoning through the arguments posted above, I have made a decision that pertains to my story.

Ponyville appears to be population 3,000 TOPS
Appleoosa- 1,000 TOPS
Manehattan seems to be Equestria's largest city, but the skyscrapers are more a stylistic choice than for any other purpose. I am going to say, Population 10-15,000
Fillydelphia, smaller than manehattan
Canterlot, practically just a castle. Population, 8-10,000
adding all this, plus some fudge factor, and the equestrian population appears to be 100,000 ponies MAX

The crystal Empire, likewise appears to be canterlot sized, so 8-10 k there.

Now, The crystal empire will begin to use changeling labors to augment their workforce and army. Lets import 10k changelings and call it a day.

The history of the crystal empire I have seen in the show, I largely regard as falsehood, I view Sombra as an effective ruler, and the Crystal ponies as willing citizens. As for creating a disciplined army, I believe changelings + crystal ponies will be suitable.

So the debate is this:
Equestria at the moment is going to be willing to export Steel to C.E.
C.E. is also already capable of some steelmaking, coal mining, and exportation of crystals for profits.
If Equestria is incredibly short-sighted in this debate, it would not be difficult to leapfrog equestrian INDUSTRIAL production in a reasonably short timeframe, right?

Thoughts?

Having read through the various points made, I'll try to address the original question:

There's really no amount of modern military technology that makes sense for the CE to get a hold of quickly. They would be relying on magic and hand weapons; mostly magic as they'd have no soldier base. For perspective: old movies show Roman warships rowed by slaves. This never happened. You don't put a hundred potential enemies on a ship with twenty of your people.

Thye only way Sombra is a threat to to modern Equestria is some serious magic, not technology. Which means you have to know exactly how his magic works, and how Celestia's works. Use Sanderson's First Law, and the story could still work. But anyone who knows military history will flip their s*** if you try to have one broken city overthrow an entire semi-industrial nation. (the actual sizes don't matter, Equestria is the big, strong country, so they win unless CE is both very quick and very lucky. Also, you'd have to make Celestia an idiot, which will only generate more nasty comments.)

I'm sorry, but it looks like your original story idea won't work as is.

851591

First off, you're pitting one nation against another one 10 times its size. To achieve parity, every CE soldier has to kill 10 Equestrian soldiers before dying. To achieve such kill ratios, the difference between the CE and Equestria has to be along the lines of the US military vs a backwater third world country.

Doubling the population of the CE by importing workers would present an obscene strain on the CE's logistics. No nation, much less a city, can absorb such an increase in its population in the span of a few months. Where are they getting the water, the food, the housing?

If the crystal ponies were willing citizens, why were they so terrified of his appearance, and why were they so willing to use the Crystal Heart against him? Or is this some strange AU in which you've invalidated the basic concept of the CE episodes?

If the CE is reliant on steel and other raw materials from Equestria, then the moment they are at war they will no longer have access to the raw materials to keep their war machine running. That means, in effect, the moment the war starts, the CE will no longer have to capability to produce new arms or repair damaged ones.

I'm sorry, but this story idea is riddled with plot holes. The only way the CE has even a chance of winning is massive, massive stupidity on Equestria's part, and frankly, if you have to write characters as morons to get the plot you want, then your plot is not very good.

851455 Honestly, I think the fan belief in an Equestria on the scale of tens of millions was fed mostly by Fallout Equestria. Because Kkat was trying to insert the MLP world into the Fallout world, Equestria had to assume the same dimensions as far as size and capabilities as the United States. Because it's such a massive, well-known work, Kkat's adaptation of Equestria for her purposes got into the heads of quite a few fans and they began to automatically assume that Kkat's adapted version was the actual version. Your analysis, on the other hand, convincingly paints a picture of what Equestria is actually like: a low-population, low-density, pastoral society that includes industrial elements (like trains and associated infrastructure) only because Faust and others thought that a cute little train would be wonderful.

Now, if KamFiction was assuming the FOE Equestria for his purposes, then the arguments by Lapus-Lazuli and Celestias Paladin are probably more accurate than yours because FOE Equestria isn't canon Equestria, and you're discussing the characteristics of canon Equestria.

Step 1> C.E. begins massive importation of raw materials, coal, steel, iron under the premise of economic recovery/ modernization. Celestia supports this cause.

Step 1.5> Twilight sparkle throws the crushed remains of the element of magic into a vat of molten steel.
The element of magic is then cast into some components of a small steam locomotive. Soon thereafter, this locomotive brings the mane4 and big macintosh to the crystal empire to meet with twilight, who does not reveal where the element is.

Step 2> C.E. uses these initial materials to A- expand housing, B- begin constructing Railway equipment, C- Expand coal mining, D- Expand steelmaking industry, E- begin automating farms and bringing the populace into the city.

Step 3> C.E. begins to impliment the nazi polocy of "motherscrosses", encouraging foaling at an unprecidented rate. Additionally, changelings are imported at fast pace.
Additionally, C.E. begins importation of scientific minds, aggressive recruitment of university students and scholars, anypony with knowledge of engineering, science, mathematics, etc.

Step 4> Using the backbone of the now fledgeling industries bolstered by more imports, C.E. pushes their industrial might full force, to generate more industrial might. Overnight, the industrial district of the C.E. city is bulldozed out, and foundations are beginning to be laid.

Step 5> The equestria games are held. The C.E. puts on a grand performance, or tries to at least.

Step 6> Equestria and the crystal empire appear to be getting along. The C.E. is quickly becoming a somewhat polluted, but amicable "little brother" to Equestria, and despite their environmental policies going against Celestia's vision, she herself agrees that the empire is better off.

Step 7> This is the final ramp up of industrialization. The C.E.s population has 2.5x'd in size, including changelings. Anything that can be automated is automated as best as it possibly can. The factory districts are built up entirely, and begin production. C.E. begins to stockpile these goods, and food rations.

>Step 8> Celestia finally becomes aware that C.E. are producing Weapons of warfare. In response she threatens the C.E. with trade embargo, and makes plans to expand her own armies.

>Step 9> C.E. blatantly ignores these threats of trade sanction, the supply trains stop. By this point, C.E. is now self-sufficient, having the capability to mine all the coal, iron ore, and produce all the steel they need. For a moment in time, the C.E. is very short on steel, which causes the need for a massive scrap drive. After this lull in production for the mining industries to respond to the sharp demand increase, everything returns to normal.

Step 9.5> The little locomotive, now a beat up piece of junk, way overworked over its life of hauling steel from manehattan to C.E. is cut up for scrap and melted down. The Element of Harmony is now cast into the barrel of a rail-based cannon.

Step 10> Equestria makes the decision that an army of twice the strength in numbers and triplicate the strength in magic has no need for an industrial base of that magnitude. Instead, Celestia uses her sudden surplus of steel to assist farm automation, and begins to call forth an army.

>Step 11 The C.E. is now very very polluted. However, their army equipment stockpiles are growing and their manufacturing base is now solid.

> Step 12> Pearl harbor happens, that's what.

851455
In ancient mesopotamia, a city would be sized ranging from 10-20 K people
Assuming that equestria is no different, but because of magic they were able to gain such technology as analog electronics without population increase

Therefore: i declare that cannonically, Equestrian population is no larger than 100,000 ponies at present.

That's still good enough to wage a war.

852573

The CE is a city in the middle of a frozen wasteland with no significant arable land that's not already taken up by construction. Where is it getting the food to support such a population increase? The only place it could be getting it is imports from Equestria.

Furthermore, where is it getting this money? Trade cannot be just one way. The CE has to export something equally valuable as well. And no, exporting trinkets like crystals to a nation where highly-quality gems occur a foot below the surface would not be sufficient to pay for such a huge expansion. In this scenario, the only way the CE could possibly pay for all in the allotted time this is to print money, which would rapidly lead to hyperinflation.

Also, why in the world would Celestia be ok with the CE importing changelings, given that the changelings attacked Equestria? That should be an obvious and major tip-off to her that something's wrong.

Industrialization isn't nearly as simple as you seem to imagine. It leads to massive changes in the economy, class structure, politics, every single possible thing you can think of. You're tearing thousands of crystal ponies out of whatever used to be their jobs and putting them to work in a harsh, unforgiving, low-paying job almost certainly not related to their Cutie Mark.

Nations are not so simple, and it's utterly unrealistic for there to be universal support for changes like these occurring over so short a timespan. When Russia industrialized, its inflexible political structure (monarchy) found itself unable to cope with these changes, resulting in a series of revolutions that ultimately led to the USSR. The CE here should also be on the verge of political revolution simply by the force of all the ponies that don't like sharing their living space with changelings and hate their new jobs.

Your "Pearl Harbor" analogy is quite apt, because although Japan managed to secure a victory against the US, once of the US got pissed Japan got it's ass whupped back to the home islands. And that's exactly what would happen in this scenario, because Celestia's right. Primitive rifles and artillery are no match for weather control, mass-mind control, Star Wars style city shields, etc. etc. etc. Just imagine a pre-WWI army followed by the Russian Winter wherever it goes. They'd all freeze and starve to death before they get anything done. The only way Equestria can lose is if Celestia does nothing but stupidly send soldiers to charge at artillery and gunfire, WWI style, which goes right back into the whole "characters have to be morons to make this plot work."

Again: This plot is unworkable. It vastly misunderstands how industrialization and warfare actually works and needs Celestia to be retarded.

852056

That makes a lot of sense. Never read Fallout EQ myself, but I wouldn't be surprised if it's a contributing factor. The other part is probably just that people want to write about huge WWII battles with ponies, without actually putting much thought into what a pony version of WWII ought to be like.

852733
Actually my thinking about having a million+ population is not influenced by that series and is insteda influenced by the census numbers of the Late VIctorian era US. As for the discussion about industry and farming from earlier lets agree to disagree, neither one of us is going to budge on that.

852641
100,000? Thats even worse than 80million, that would be the population of England before the Romans came to the island!

Alright, you're right... and when you're right, you're right...
I either need to abandon industrialization entirely and wage a magical war

Or i need something other than equestria to support the C.E. Like griffons...

852924

There's nothing to budge, the evidence is entirely one-sided. You can speculate all you want, but ultimately there's nothing in the show that supports a huge Equestria. Speculation works fine for a fanfic in your own universe, but don't try to impose the vision of a fanfic onto the show itself.

853195
A magical war would make much more sense, given that Celestia and Luna clearly show fear for the CE's magic if fallen into the wrong hands.

I can't imagine the griffons ever supporting the CE over Equestria. Griffons are almost certainly on friendly terms with Equestria, given that they participate in Equestrian baking competitions and send their children to Equestrian flight schools. Why would they throw that all away from a nation that quite literally appeared out of nowhere?

So then, War first, rapid pace industrialization second?

Seems moar plausable I suppose.
Now I need some reason for the C.E. plus changelings to have some tactical advantage over Equestria as a whole?