>>96889104
Of the playable factions they are among the weakest but people get too hung up on that.
40k has a "cycles of history" sort of thing going on with its "civilized" factions. A species appears, they rise to power and become a major faction, they encounter some crisis which they fail to manage properly and then they fall into a degraded state and maybe go extinct altogether
The Necrons appeared, rose to power, couldn't deal with their mortality, went to war, lost, sold their souls to the C'tan and are now sad senile robots.
The Eldar appeared, inherited the galaxy after the War in Heaven, became the dominant species in the galaxy, failed to properly manage their "darker nature", misused their warp powers, caused Slaanesh and now exists as a dying species.
Humans appeared, rose as a major power in the Dark Age of Technology, fucked up AI and the rise of psykers and fell apart. The Emperor steps in and tries to fix it, fails, and now the Imperium is a fucked up house of horrors.
Logically then, if you push the timeline forward, the Tau should increase in power until they're a major power. Then some crisis should hit them in the "weak spot" of their society which is followed by falling as a society and being transformed into some degraded state. Then a new upstart species appears and the cycle begins anew.
The only complication for the Tau is that the galaxy itself is way more fucked up now than before. Older species had time and room to develop. They didn't have to deal with Tyranids, the Great Rift and that sort of stuff....
