Originally posted by Major_Griff
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Consequently, bombarding a civilization from space was a big ordeal for much of the Goa'uld's history. It meant sending one or two of their very limited supply of ships on a multi-year, back and forth journey, which in turn meant that that ship (or ships) would effectively be out of play for a good chunk of time. This, of course, is problematic as the Goa'uld mainly needed ships to fend off or launch attacks against other System Lords.
Thus, the Goa'uld opted to ignore a lot of slave revolts because using ships to retake a planet that rose up against them was often not worth the effort when the alternative was to use the Stargate to set up a slave population on a new planet. They did, however, sometimes try dialing old addresses that went inactive and often did find it worthwhile to retake a planet if they could do so by sending Jaffa through the gate. For example, they kept sending scouts to Cimmeria to see if Thor's Hammer was still a problem and Sg-1 regularly had to tell formerly abandoned worlds that were facing current Goa'uld incursions to rebury the gate after they left.
In Earth's case, while it would have taken a good deal of effort for Apophis to send those two ships at an earlier point, it was relatively easily to send an army of Jaffa through the Stargate and, in fact, he did just that in the second episode. The problem was that it took Apophis awhile to realize that they weren't making it through, so he lost a lot of Jaffa to Earth's iris. After that, he largely left them alone (unless he encountered them on another planet) and only pointed his ships at Earth when those hyperdrive advancements made it quick and easy. We know of other advanced worlds that were wiped out from space in the past, so the Goa'uld weren't unwilling to take a ship out of play for years to deal with one, but the trouble a civilization caused likely had to outweigh having one less ship to use against other System Lords for a few years.
From my view, I think you're both right. After the iris went up, Apophis did need time to get around to dealing with Earth since he didn't have the technology to easily get there for much of season 1. However, he also seemed disinterested in bothering with Earth until he thought he could deal with it quickly and until it made itself a nuisance to him, personally. As TheVoidDragon noted, all he did when he found out that the Earth gate was accessible again was raid it for a potential host. If he thought they were a threat, it would have taken him little effort to use that opportunity to send a naquadah bomb through or use his Jaffa to try securing the gate like he ended up trying to do only after Teal'c helped Sg-1 escape.
He also could have devoted more resources to trying to overcome Earth's iris once he figured out that they hadn't simply buried the gate. Note that he spent time on such schemes in season 2 (sending Ray'c to Earth with a deadly virus hidden in his teeth and founding the SGC infiltration camp that Sg-1 came across in season 3). At that point he could no longer afford to send ships after Earth, but because Earth hurt him so badly, he was suddenly much more motivated to find a way to obliterate them than he was for that first year after "Children of the Gods."
Had Earth buried the gate instead of raiding Chulak twice and almost killing Apophis on the Nox homeworld, it's possible that he would have let them be, especially if that hyperdrive upgrade never came about. However, I'm not sure if Apophis knew that Earth was responsible for Ra's death prior to Sha're becoming a host. Maybe he did and dismissed it as a fluke, but he also could have only learned about it in or right after "Children of the Gods," and that very well have been cause enough to send ships to Earth (Hathor's death was the reason the System Lords viewed Earth as a threat worthy of their imminent attention). If Earth buried the gate, it may not have been a top priority for him, but letting a civilization advance technologically for decades or hundreds of years more after they proved capable of killing a System Lord would have been a bad idea, so it may have gone on his Todo list.
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