Darth Ruinus wrote: How did he get legal control of the land in his territory? Wouldn't the armies of Earth, which are already there, be able to claim land for their countries? The countries that won the war would have the bigger say in how the land is divided wouldn't they? Or did they not divide up Hell amongst themselves?
The actual path of ownership is that the land in question (essentially the Elysian Fields) were once part of the domains of Asmodeus. When he was killed, Satan awarded them to Belial as a reward for destroying Sheffield and Detroit and for his attempts to rescue Satan when the Satanic Palace was bombed. When Tartarus came under siege, Euryale betrayed Belial, tried to kill him then convinced teh armies moving in that she and her cohorts were as much victims of Belial as anybody else and he had usurped her estates. She lost Tartarus (its mineral resources were too great to leave in daemonic hands) but she kept the rest. While everybody else was working out what to do, Caesar struck a deal with her by which she ceded the land to him for his new state in exchange for sanctuary plus a share of the revenues he could generate from it. When countries or lands are occupied, the occupying armies (these days) do not carve the territory up and reassign it from ground zero. Most people retain the land they always had.
Also, remember, Caesar was not a passive participant in the Curb Stomp War. He fought actively on the human side (arguably for much longer than any other human) and on at least one occasion narrowly averted a major human defeat. He's got a lot of credits with the HEA he can cash in.
He's got no machinery, so construction of houses and buildings would probably be slow, and I'm sure many of his citizens might not even know how to build a house. While he no doubt has some construction crews on his side, how could he possibly be able to keep up construction in on his lands? What does he pay people with?
Are you kidding? With enough labor, stone houses can be built very fast and doesn't require much skilled labor. Stone masons are needed, certainly but assembling the dressed stone isn't hard. Also, New Rome is a mix of daemons and humans (note the old abusive nickname "Baldrick" is dropping out of use as the fighting recedes into the past) and daemons are much stronger than humans and can do a lot of work humans can't. The old-time Romans could build stone structures remarkably quickly. With his workforce, Caesar can do the same. What does he pay people with? The income gained from selling people land of course. At this point New Rome is a Ponzi Scheme but then most national economies are.
Also, about his army, he himself admitted that he doesn't have alot of equipment, and probably no means to support any mechanized or sophisticated armies, so who would pick his army over the American, Russian etc armies for defense?
Because the human armies can't be everywhere all the time. They're stretched very, very thin trying to secure the land area of Hell - which is huge. Think twice the land area of Earth, all in one continent and all habitable. They also have the war with Heaven to deal with plus other commitments. Sure, a human army outguns Caesar's but Caesar's Army is there, on the scene. It's not a small army, more thn 70,000 daemons, an increasing proportion of whom are armed with human weapons and around 30,000 humans, all armed with mdoern weapons. And its got GJC in command.
And as you mention that he is working up on laws, rules and systems that make people comfortable, wouldn't it simply be easier for people to say "Well, I know the American legal system, so I'll stick with that in Hell?" Why can't America just automatically transfer over its laws to Hell-America?
Because the United States isn't the only force in hell and the overwhelming number of people in Hell aren't Americans. Caesar has, as growth seed, more than two and a half million Second Life humans he rescued from torment and who owe him absolute loyalty. Almost none of them are Americans. And, as I keep saying, he's moving fast. He's doing things while other people are still trying to decide what to do. As Her Grace points out, it doesn't matter if he makes mistakes, he's moving fast enough and is bright enough to spot and correct them before they become critical. Read The Gallic Wars and The Civil War by one Gaius Julius Caesar and you can see how this worked. It's hilariously funny how people like Boyd and Rummy were going on about "a revolution in military affairs" and "transformation" as if they were something new when all they were doing was implementing lessons that GJC had laid out in those books two thousand years earlier.
He has none of the comforts people are used to (I think?) like computers, TVs, electricity, etc etc. Why would people go to a place like that?
Because they are going to give them up anyway. Hell is a frontier. Nobody except the military has electrical power, computers or most other things. You can bet that when they do start to arrive, New Rome is right at the front in building them. But, think on this. A lot of people will look on a frontier as a challenge "We can start from scratch and build our country just the way we want it. Let's get to it." People with that mentality are exactly the people GJC wants.
As I said, this is mainly due to my lack of knowledge in legal matters, how nations are set up, and probably because I missed plot points in the story, but I'm just trying to make sense of this.
All the seeds here were laid in the first book, especially the epilogue. Buy The Salvation War: Armageddon???? when it comes out. (The printed version is coming soon).
