Rate Episode 4

If anyone would have had it, Tywin Lannister would have had it--anyone else in the Seven Kingdoms I would not have believed for an instant.

That said, yeah it's a few decades too soon for even the very beginnings of standing armies to come into play like they would for the 16th Century Renaissance.

Damn right! A pox on both their houses!

To be honest it's getting too much for the show to get into these things. These belong in the "what was Aragorn tax policy" domain. I'm sure Martin would like to answer a possible situation like this in the future books. He may just have Dany borrow money from the IB if she's winning the war and import grain and meat from Essos. Since winter is coming to Westeros faster than the rest of the planet, no amount of bullying will make the crops grow or animals get fatter with no feed available. Even the Reach will probably be affected by the long winter.

Cersei, I'm not sure she'd give a damn about the small folk. She is also completely unprepared to take on the Others as she doesn't seem to believe any stories from the Wall and it will be too late by the time she wakes up from her power trip.

Surely they have some means of crossing water, otherwise neither race could have met on the Isle of Faces; there's also the Ironborn, a pre-Andal culture who were already seafaring, so it's not as though traveling over water was unheard of. One might also note that Dragonstone could have been connected to the mainland before the Hammer of the Waters, depending on just how devastating the Hammer was.

Edit: Err, but I suppose the latter explanation wouldn't fit within the chronology of events.

In any case, the accessibility of the Isle of Faces, the Ironborn, and the Pirate Kings of the Three Sisters (already occupied before the coming of the Andals) and Skagos seem evidence enough that at least some of the First Men were building ships before the coming of the Andals.

Incidentally, the Skagosi are said to trade obsidian weaponry, and perform human sacrifice to the weirwood; at the least, this suggests that the FM had enough seafaring knowledge to reach Skagos and establish colonies, but the presence of weirwoods may also suggest that it was at one time (or even presently?) occupied by the CotF.

One of the better articles I read about this episode

mobile.nytimes.com/2017/08/08/arts/television/game-of-thrones-dragon-battle-was-inspired-by-apocalypse-now-and-saving-private-ryan.html?referer=https://www.google.com/

Sorry to hear about your troubles my friend.Hope it all will work out.