Difficult to predict exactly where the line is drawn, i.e. what needed to not happen to make a difference. I'm merely making a very rough assessment of the potential outcome with none of these things, comparing it with what happened with all of them. Exactly what would be the result of something in between I think is very difficult to predict, it requires more complex models. In short however, there is a quite strong correlation between increased unprovoked atrocities and bad end results for the one who does that.
The main idea is that atrocities strengthens the fighting spirit of the opponents and makes neutrals more tempted to join the opponent's side. More often than not, with the end result that the one who committed the atrocity is overwhelmed by superior force. This obviously fails in the cases where the one who is guilty of the atrocity has extremely superior forces before this occurs, to the point that no alliances can be formed against the aggressor in the nearest future (i.e. Native Americans and some colonialism examples). That doesn't exclude the possibility of a counter-atrocity occuring one or a few centuries afterwards, especially if the problem and reppression still remains by that time.
This is common sense. Say one group contains 10K people, and it wages war with 10 groups with each 10K people. It slaughters and genocides many of these groups, say kills 1K people in each. In each conflict it suffers 300 casualties (such casualty ratios are uncommonly good compared to historical examples). In total the reppressive group suffers 3K casualties over the period, compared to 1K per the same amount of people in the other groups. Basically you need to have excessive, impossible, unrealistic kill-loss ratios to lose less than your opponents if you have many opponents. You can do this calculation more exactly by looking at population sizes and calculate their respective casualties compared to the roman ones.Originally Posted by Lemur
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