Poptart raises valid points about infeasibility of Marienburg blockading the Empire for very long, but honestly I am not entirely convinced. Sure, their wealth relies on Empire trade going through them, but they are explicitly said to have deeper coffers than the Empire does. If they are stubborn enough to keep up the blockade for any length of time, it could hurt the Empire and Karaz Ankor significantly, and the risk of some Elector Counts doing something dumb is fairly high.
Whereas against Barak Varr ironclads, as Poptart also pointed out, they have absolutely no chance without extremely powerful backup from Ulthuan, and there's no way Ulthuan will send Dragonships to fight Dwarfs over Marienburg where they don't even really have a treaty. Threatening to break the blockade, or even actually doing so, seems to me like a better option on average.
With more economic clarity it goes like this:
-Marienburg relies more on trade for income than the Empire does. A Blockade would hurt them more on a losses per day basis.
-Marienburg has less
compulsory expenses than tha Empire. They don't maintain a standing army, they hire mercenaries, they can instantly drawdown their military expenses to a far greater extent than an Empire which must maintain standing garrison forces.
-By being the ones threatening the Blockade, you can assume the top ten families on the council that decided this have already ensured they and their allies have the personal wealth to weather a potential blockade for a time. By contrast the Empire's ruling class would not be prepared for losing access to silks and spices and would tend to want to capitulate.
-Note that this does
not kill any
other trade.
--The Empire's riverine trade is thriving regardless, its large enough. What they really lose is on the exotic goods trade which is the most lucrative tax wise. For food and metal they have internal sources along river routes which are better than buying oceanic cargo...however, prices will rise because these items are as cheap as they are
because Marienburg provides competitive prices, in the absence of competition expect domestic traders to take a me-first mentality for price fixing.
--Marienburg continues trading with Bretonnia, Tilea, Estalia and Araby just fine, but they lose a lot of profitability, because they can't buy cheap imperial steel with Arabyan spices to flog to Bretonnia for cheap Bretonnian grain to flog to Tilea. Their other trade partners will swiftly shift to gouge them now that they can't exploit Imperial price differentials to bargain other parties down.
As for the ironclads, realistically the ironclads are mainly dealing with :
-Shore batteries. Even at human quality, you can put more and longer ranged artillery fire onto structures than ships.
-Wizards, both domestic(Azyr, possibly Ulgu if they learned from the Ulthuan sea mages tradition), expatriate(this is a literal roll of the dice whether theres actual high mages in residence willing and able to intervene) and mercenary(mercenary listings have Arabyan djinn summoners, rogue imperial Magisters, and IIRC theres some chaos sorcerors, self taught wizards, and necromancers on those listings, if you were willing to pay and didn't have the Imperial bias against unsanctioned magic). Yes, the dwarves aren't helpless against it, but when magic is in play assuming that your side is immune is...hubristic. Barak Varr does not have Kragg on board with his Anvil or Thorek's swarm of dispel dispensers.
-Bloody stubborn idiots. If they were rational, sensible people they'd fold when they see the ironclads show up. If they were rational people they'd fold when they see the ironclads sink their fleet.
--If they weren't, then just about anyone could take potshots at passing trade traffic out of spite. Would be unlikely, but assuming that nobody would be so stubborn would be missing the point of the setting.
Marienburg: "Ha! The Empire is in no condition to wage war against us now! And they'll capitulate for sure when their coffers start drying up!"
*faint grumbling in the distance*
Marienburg: "...does anyone hear that? It sounds like..."
*grumbling grows steadily louder*
Marienburg: "...dwarves? Why would dwarves get involved in an economic dispute between us and the Empir--wait. The canals...are being built by dwarves."
*grumbling reaches a deafening pitch as dreadnoughts are spotted on the horizon*
Marienburg: "...oh shit."
Naw, more practically they just don't believe in ironclads and their prowess until they take a cannon up the ass.
Think from the perspective of a renaissance/medieval person being told about ships made of steel and cannon that can hit a target from miles away.
Everyone knows steel doesn't float.
Everyone knows that you can't fit a cannon that powerful on a ship. Why it'd tear through the wooden brackets with the recoil if it didn't just explode.
Something I don't think anyone has mentioned, although I may have just missed it given how fast the thread's been moving lately, is that if Barak Varr destroys Marienburg's navy They won't have any ships left to protect their trade ships from pirates. This would mean either lost revenue from raided ships and merchants who refuse to risk their goods or having to pay for an entire fleet of mercenaries till their navy is rebuilt. Now this is Marienburg, they have enough money that I highly doubt there'll be any actual long-term damage from this but it is something to keep in mind.
It'd still take several years to rebuild the fleet. If it comes to that expect a decade or so of economic damage, ship timbers have some finicky seasoning requirements and simply cannot be accelerated once you exhaust the existing reserve supply(which is often already earmarked for specific constructions).
Honestly Ranald going legit could have knockon effects as a bad thing. His status as underground-but-not-proscribed means that Ranald cults are are often the first groups to have run-ins with cults of the Ruinous powers, or the non-chaos proscribed deities, and form an important part of combating those cults.
Uh...you know Ranald has big legit temples in Marienburg and also the criminals still worship him anyway right?
