Glad you mates like her, thanks
But there really needs some clarification in the Romulan resource or lack there of resource "situation".
There never has been one.
maybe in SFB there was, but in Star Trek, there has never been shown, metioned, or even hinted at that the Romulans were resource poor.
to quote a friend, "resource-poor people don't send an attack ship into Fed space, vape a half dozen outposts, and not be prepared for a war". that speaks volumes.
The Romulans are at least as powerful as the Feds, as has been shown Canonically.
Lets give the Romulan Star Empire its due shall we 
-They have had FTL for a good amount of time including TOS.
-They didn't "need" the Klinks for anything.
-the D7's can be explained by many factors, not least of which is misdirection, and capture.
-A race that can create a cloaking device, and plasma weapon that can be fired, with guidance and can travel at FTL (as seen in BoT).
With all due respect, I strongly disagree. Wars are primarily fought over resources. +1 karma for an entertaining read though.
Here is another granted, non-canon, but very interesting read and one part of my reasoning for "resource poor."
Kt'Hyla over at
http://dhost.info/phoenix/phoenix.htm wrote this on his website since this can be hard to locate I'll post it here:
"History of the Romulan Fleet: The Nest of Fire Era
Romulan space, as is well known, is rather resource poor. By 2235 the Romulan Senate began to feel the effects of this shortage, in that the fleet would soon not have enough dilithium crystals to distribute between the ships. With their ability to generate warp power quickly evaporating, the Empire needed to expand into richer territories. However, the accomplishment of this would require large ammounts of warp resources to begin with.
The solution was to institute a carrier-style concept: Why build ten warp cores for ten ships, when one warp core transporting ten ships would be more economical? The fleet was largely rebuilt around this concept, producing massive 730 meter-long carriers, along with smaller cruisers and destroyers that were only powered by simpler fusion reactors that were designed to dock onto their lightly-armed carriers. Their newly developed countermeasures system, dubbed by their development teams as cloaking devices, aided this new system well. These carrier groups, aptly named "Nests of Fire", would deploy their lethal passengers under cloak, and withdraw to a safe distance while the attack was being carried out. If there was trouble, the smaller craft could cloak to escape, and rendezvous with the carrier once it was deemed safe. Patrols would be carried out under cloak as well, with cruisers conducting their tours in systems, and would be tended to by the Nests when refueling and crew rotation was needed. For a time this system was reasonably successful in their engagements against their old foe, the Klingon Empire.
However, the Praetor knew trying to invade Klingon space would be a difficult endeavor at best, and holding territory would be a constant struggle. He turned the Senate's eye toward their less warlike neighbor, the Earthers. Besides, there was an ancient score to settle with their round-eared nemesis...
The Romulans had virtually no contact with the Humans since their Great War a century earlier. A test of resolve was required: To see how this Starfleet would respond in the face of a minor invasion. A lone Bird of Prey destroyer was dropped off in the Neutral Zone under cloak, and stole into Federation space. The seasoned Commander that was assigned to this task quickly destroyed four enemy outposts with little resistance. Only a single cruiser, the USS Enterprise, a ship that would gain much notoriety within the Empire, challenged this attack. Unlike the Klingons, however, Starfleet's scanners proved to be more reliable, and the Enterprise was able to trail the Bird of Prey back to the Neutral Zone. Although the Commander was able to evade the Federation ship long enough to reach the Neutral Zone, the Enterprise risked entering the buffer, and destroyed their quarry.
In analyzing the failure of the mission, it was realized that the Bird of Prey would have escaped after destroying the outposts if it had been able to warp out of danger. Current tactics worked well against the Klingons, who's sensors could be fooled more easily, and who's crews preferred stand-up fights rather than chasing down invisible foes. However, the disastrous incursion into Federation space forced the Senate to rethink their fleet strategies. A protracted war against an enemy that you couldn't effectively evade was one they could not afford to fight.
Although it was apparent that all combat capable ships needed warp capabilities, the Empire still had the dilithium shortage problem. What was decided was to re-tool the carrier design to no longer carry smaller ships, but to re-outfit them as combat capable craft themselves. The Romulan fleet would have far fewer ships than other navies, but these individual craft would be able to balance this with massive firepower and resilience. The first of these refitted craft would enter service in the late 2270's, and would dictate the course of Romulan ship design for over a century. The lineage of the Nest of Fire can still be seen in the design of the mammoth D'Deridex Warbirds, still in service during the 2370's.
The retooling of their facilities, however, would take many years to implement, and the Romulans needed a way to bolster their fleet in the meantime. They grudgingly offered an exchange of technologies with the Klingons, of who of course required a great deal of convincing to enter the pact. The Romulans offered their older versions of the cloaking device, along with the now defunct S-11 scout hulls to use them in. The S-11 (renamed B'Rel by the Klingons) was to be used under the old carrier doctrine, but was now considered obsolete now that those tactics were being abandoned. As a result, this Romulan hull design would never be crewed by Romulans, but would be one greatly favored by Klingon crews for generations to come.
In return, the Klingons provided complete D-7 cruisers, of which the Romulans quickly put into service as they recalled the brunt of their fleet. In some cases the earlier D-7's were sent out before the Klingon markings were even removed, only taking time to install and tune the new generation of cloaking devices on them. Proper Romulan colors would eventually be added to them, and many would also be refit with the newer plasma torpedo. Otherwise, few of the other shipboard systems were changed on this class, so their crews could take advantage of the more robust Klingon components. These ships also allowed the Romulans ample study in more advanced warp engines, and allowed a redesign from the old Vulcan style ring nacelles to the more battle-efficient inline coil arrangement. The class was renamed the V-11 'Stormbird' by their crews, in part because of the storm of controversy that the use of alien ships caused. This class would only remain in use until the mid 2280's. By then, the newer, large-scale craft had been deployed in sufficient enough numbers to allow the dilithium hungry V-11s to be retired. "
"Placing their fleet’s strength into fewer but larger vessels was intended to relieve the depletion of their region’s scant dilithium supply: basically one larger ship with the firepower of seven ships would only use one-seventh of the dilithium that seven smaller ships would. Now that they were being forced to push back toward the more traditional smaller vessels they were caught in a tight situation: they would no longer have enough dilithium to expand into more lucrative territory. The D'Hatham’s were continually under a major amount of criticism from the other governments, since despite being scaled back from the Katar’s original design capabilities they still were in contravention of the Accord in many respects. Numerous demands were made to have the Warbirds dismantled from all the major powers, of which only served to generate a great deal more tension between the Romulans and their neighbours. This, amongst other issues, would eventually lead to the Romulans breaking their ties with the other governments, marked by the bloody Tomed Incident of 2311. "
Additionally he also writes: "History of the Romulan Fleet: The Warbird Development Project
From its inception in the late 2260’s, the Romulan Warbird Development Project was fraught with many problems. Although the council was initially behind the initiative, they still had many opponents to this new concept. Amongst them was the military, as they were reluctant to abandon the well-familiar starship/carrier format that had been used for many decades prior. Still, the Empire had to realize that with the impending exhaustion of their dilithium reserves by 2310, continued use of their older, smaller craft was simply out of the question. Although Romulan scientists were promising a revolutionary new power source based on a forced Artificial Quantum Singularity generator (AQS), this new technology wouldn’t be ready for practical use until 2330 at the earliest. The only option was to use fewer warp cores, as they had been doing for decades with their carrier-based fleet. However, the incursion of a lone Bird of Prey into Federation space to test the resolve of Starfleet proved that if the Romulans were going to compete with their other, more dilithium-rich neighbours, the majority of their fleet would require warp power.
From this was born the concept of the Warbird-class vessel. These behemoths were designed directly from the form of their Narvasam Ocalla CV predecessors, except now they themselves would carry the firepower that would normally be mounted on the ships they were ferrying. Since fewer ships would be needed to carry the same firepower and facilities, fewer warp cores would need to be employed, and thus less dilithium would need to be used. Although it was initially decided that these ships would be classified as battleships, it was discovered that their revolutionary role on the battlefield would be far and away different from their BB counterparts. A new designation, WB, was coined, based on the Project’s name.
Various situational performance simulations brought up the concern that this larger class of ship might have trouble defending itself against smaller, more maneuverable opponents. This would necessitate the inclusion of more support vessels of a smaller size to escort the Warbirds, of which would unfortunately defeat the purpose of the entire project, and require more dilithium usage. As well, there were many serious concerns that ships of that size wouldn’t be able to withstand the rigours of combat stress, as the earlier carriers that the Warbirds were based on were never required to go into combat themselves. Other political and scientific pressures began to erode the Project’s credibility, and by the late 2280’s the issue of scrapping the entire project and continuing the use of more traditional ships was discussed in the Senate quite extensively. Fortunately, a champion for the project revealed himself in late 2287.
Senator K’Shiak (rep. D’Sivas, Calanista, Dinalla) had only been in the Romulan Senate for a few short years by the time he came to be a recognizable backer for the Warbird Project. Almost single-handedly, he managed to convince the Senate and their military and scientific leaders of the importance of these new vessels to the Empire, and convinced the public to back the initiative as well. His political motives for this weren’t well known at the time: his father had commanded the fateful mission into Federation space that prompted the reformation of the Romulan fleet. Aside from keeping the legacy that his father had inadvertently brought about alive, he also had a darker agenda in mind for the class.
In 2289 he took the position of Praetor, winning by a majority vote. Shortly afterward, he passed a bill placing the Warbird Project under his direct supervision. To the Senate, this made sense at the time: the Warbirds had become K’Shiak’s passion, and if they were to be the key to the future growth of the Empire, whom would be more fitting than the Praetor to guide this process. Many changes to the class were made, including the addition of the new Sindari fighter craft as support vessels and the inclusion of experimental prototypes of the AQS generators.
K’Shiak dubbed the first vessel to be completed as the RSE Katar, named after a predator native to his home region. The Katar’s earlier performance trial against a Klingon invasion fleet was an astounding success, as were her incursions into Tholian and Gorn territories. Following this, K’Shiak put his plan for revenge against Starfleet into motion, and almost single-handedly cut a swath of destruction through the Federation. The Katar was stopped just short of her goal of eradicating the Federation Capital: a task force comprised of ships from a number of different governments had caught up to her, and finally destroyed her. Although Praetor K’Shiak had been killed in the final assault, the Romulan Senate no longer had any doubts about the effectiveness of the new Warbird classification of starship: they were extremely deadly. "
Yes, his material is non-canon but IMHO, this makes as much sense as anything else posted here.
Qapla!
KF
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