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The Mercantile Guild

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Squidslinger Gilder:
Right.

Well if we look at the lands surrounding Yesha, there aren't a lot of resource rich areas. Yesha has all the goodies. Now if they took Anglea, they'd gain technology but I think a campaign against Anglea would be like Napoleon or Hitler's attempts at taking Russia. They'd likely expend more resources than they'd get back. So a economic take over might be better for them there.

Fjordlands is a bit far but in the middle you have the plains and a desert. Firnfeld after that. Yesha would have to take all these areas. That means not only expending resources on their own fleets but also on garrisoning troops and defending the conquered towns. For sure the Arashi would get involved as they'd see an opportunity to strike the Tiger in it's flanks, taking advantage of the situation. Unless of course the Guild picked up the slack for that.

Plus also take into account that everyone is armed in the GOIO world. Yesha would have to come in with overwhelming force to squash out any possible resistance which might not be very feasible. Big reason Japan ultimately decided an invasion of the US wouldn't be easy. That's a long supply chain and "behind every blade of grass would be a rifle." An armed population.

I considered this in Aero 3 for after the Coalition lost the war in Aero 2. Yesha in that situation was already war torn to begin with and so keeping a standing force in the Fjordlands or even absorbing and maintaining the peace would be difficult. Taking tributes and reparations would be feasible but spreading the weakened fleets with Arashi threats would be dangerous.

Helios.:
yeah nobody is going to invade anglea, i dont think there is a great amount of trade betweent eh MG and the angleans either, as id imagine the angleans would LIKE more metals and food, but would rather steal it than trade their hyper-awesome technological awesomness.
the yeshans are loaded with natural resources and while not a huge technological power, they definitely know how to make a ship, and 5 more after that... seriously they have ships for days...
unless the MG is going to be selling the services of their escort ships as mercenaries or shipyards for making auxiliary ships for one of two warring factions, which we know they do, i wouldn't imagine they would really be all that excited about actually BEING at war, too much chance someone would break their stuff...

Squidslinger Gilder:
I remember there being more of a arms for food trade deal between Anglea and Yesha or something like that but I honestly never could really figure it. To me Anglea would find riper targets striking Yesha than Firnfeld. Or at the very least, Yesha wouldn't put up with Anglea so long. If they wanted to expand without military force then loaning out defense forces to independent cities would make that happen much easier. Yesha defends the town and route, builds good will, gives them a reason to want to join the Empire. This would directly oppose Anglea who would raid them.

To me it always seemed like Yesha vs Anglea was the ultimate antagonist relationship. Anglea has the edge in technology while Yesha has the edge in resources and size. There would be almost no way Anglea could sustain a long enough conflict against Yesha to probably even make it to Chang-ning. Or if they could, they wouldn't be able to hold it unless they secured supply lines along the way which Yesha would likely burn or target immediately. 

Helios.:
i thin one of the most interesting aspects of the faction system is the reasons nobody can wipe out another of the factions. there is always a very good reason that the power centers of the various nations is perfectly safe from being sacked. the anglean cities are full of scary robots and buried underground. even though the yeshans have a huge natural resource supply and a disciplined and capable government and a massive airfleet, they arent going to be able to penetrate the anglean cities well enough to cripple them.
the one weird case is the MG. their stranglehold on trade means that they are largely immune from concerted attack except by from what im SURE they would call the 'outlaw states:'  the arashi league and the anglean republic. the arashi aren't populous enough, despite their individual resilience and skill, to deliver a hammer blow to the MG, despite the fact that i'm fairly sure the league has the edge in both the skill, dicipline, and toughness of their crews and technical savvy due to their intimate connection with the old world tech ruins they live around. the wars with the arashi i imagine must have been expensive, and except for the ruins of the old world in the arashi desert, theres not a lot of goods there worth having. not to mention the general disagreeable nature of the desert which keeps the arashi cities largely impregnable. nothing ruins a fleet of airships quite like a massive sand storm, and if reading Dune taught me anything about 'desert power' we can expect a lot of lightning fast ambushes with localized overwhelming force on soft targets like supply lines, or on isolated capital ships.
the MG have economic power enough to force, if not the surrender as you suggested, a sort of diplomatic immunity. nobody wants to risk an international incident which might threaten the flow of goods in and out of the nation, and so the guildsmen are allowed likely a fair amount of latitude in places that would be afraid to lose their commerce.
the arashi are too proud to accept an insult, however slight, even come Armageddon, so it wouldn't surprise me if this was the original cause of the conflict between the AL and the MG.
I'm sure the baronies are very welcoming to the guild traders, as are the yesha for the same reason: they need to buy and sell the goods from other nations to thrive.
the order of chaladon's historical isolation might mean that the MG were not AS welcome, as the chaledonians are more insulated by the lack of NEED for foreign goods. the guilds-men are likely to have to tread lightly there as well, but given the great natural wealth on the island of chaledon, its likely they would play nice. its the guildsmen who risk being shut out of the opportunities of chaledon, rather than the chaledonians being afraid of being shut out of the opportunities the guild can provide.

Squidslinger Gilder:
That might be part of it with Chaladon but something had to have happened with that technology. Imagine the Guild going through an epidemic. Knowing Chaladon likely has the cure next door but won't share it? Why? Simple isolationism doesn't compute to me. If it was so, they wouldn't be working with the Arashi.

The root cause I'm sure is deeper. Theory I have is that at one time Chaladon and Guild were a little more friendly. That friendliness was betrayed for profit. That or Chaladon saw the Guild's true colors. Imagine Chaladon had a cure but when they started to give it, they found the merchants and those higher in Guild society were hoarding it. Then charging a premium for the cure. Or maybe they discovered the plans for it and decided to not ship it. This isn't a plot line that is unfamiliar. It's been used in storytelling.

If Guild government is more family dependent like I theorize then it would make sense that it would change over time. Specially if one family does something stupid like that. Which would give rise to a demand for ethical dealings from the people. Course by the time the Guild established a formal code of ethics it was too late. Chaladon never quite forgot that offense. In turn they keep eyes on the Guild. Seeing their actions in other places causes only more wariness. Course through it something had to have happened to open up the relations with the Arashi. Maybe a major conflict between MG and Arashi ended with Chaladon mediating.

Course that would put the time line of events farther back. Question I ponder is, was there just one Blight or have there been many? If I look at the old map I see more than one major crater in Guild lands. Safe to assume in the old world, it was bombed pretty heavily. Ground down there could be toxic. So even if they did cure something once, that doesn't mean it wouldn't come back again. Or even perhaps a new disease or new strain comes out. Guild seems like a place of great wealth and with that comes great poverty too. Thus slums and breeding grounds for disease. Lot of pollution too. So another reason Chaladon wouldn't like them.

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