But so would a Tau Empire if it was about 20x it's current size.
Eeh, I dunno, without a better ways of travel it'd be a huge problem for them. The larger the empire, the more things that can attack it at the same time from different angles, and without a quick way to redeploy forces... Yeah.
Yes, but the Tau are also continuously developing new technology, and what with Merchants able to move at about a third of Imperial average Warp speeds, reliably, consistently, and safely...and from what I can tell, at least, the Kor'Or'Vesh is even faster, as their hulls are actually shaped for diving into the Warp like they do. Slower, yeah, but when you can count on them getting there when they say they're gonna get there almost all the time? It helps. A lot.
The non FTL travel in the latest codex is bullshit for so many reasons.
Also,Andres, the Golden Throne is failing. If the Emperor dies, and he doesn't become a true God, the Astronomicon(aka that thing you use to navigate in the Warp) goes out. So even if all that happened, they'd still lose. But it doesn't matter because it would depend on GW advancing the setting, which is ridiuculously unlikely.
I heard that the Tyranids are running from something.
Also, I'd like to think that the whole 'all space marines are men' thing was done before the great PC war - so I wanna give it a shot at not being tarred with the misogyny brush just yet.
From what I know, they're coming because of the Astronomican; it's like a big beautiful genestealer beacon, but without the genesetealers.
Oh, and don't get me wrong, I know GW didn't do it to try and be exclusionary or anything on purpose; it was from the eighties, and space marines are built on a rigid foundation of sheer machismo. But the fluff explanation is bullshit, as it implies that the Space Marine has their testes used for part of the process, and that you need massive amounts of testosterone and androgen in order for the geneseed to grow properly, which doesn't make a great deal of sense if you stop and think about it. But it's always one of the few things they've actually been consistent on in the setting.
As for the Horus Heresy, remember two things; one, that yeah it was definitely at least partially the Emperor's fault, but also keep in mind that those novels present it from the traitor legions viewpoints, most of the time. So of course it will depict them in a better light. He still made bad decisions, but the Emperor wasn't a complete moron.
And finally, Andres, during the Great Crusade, the Imperium took basically all of the million worlds it has now, plus some to account for the many that have been lost. Roboute Guilliman accounted for at least 3-5% of those worlds(counting the Titan Legions, Imperial Army, and other Space Marine Legions), probably more since Logistics was his specialty and he was pretty well organized. That's at least somewhere around 50,000 or so. So no, Macharius was not better than the Mary Sue Primarch.