Board Thread:Lore Discussion/@comment-1600847-20161103125247/@comment-26801133-20161109151828

YinyangElementofduality wrote: This is really going nowhere...

You guys want to compare who is better as in who can do better managing Skyrim against the Aldmeri Dominion.

Even though I will never choose either side to join in heart.

I use statistics to give an unbiased judgement already.

An Unprepared Empire lost to the Aldmeri Dominion during the Great War. Unprepared Empire includes, High Rock, Hammerfell, SKYRIM and Cyrodiil.

Prepared Empire wanted to keep what they have; High Rock, Skyrim and Cyrodiil to fight the Aldmeri Dominion.

In terms of size alone, the Empire is still much larger than the Aldmeri Dominion. It is basically a 2.5X bigger version of the present Aldmeri Dominion and has growth potential to greatly over take Aldmeri Dominion. A simple gauge shows in 3 generations or 60 years after the Great War.

With that, Empire has size, numbers and resources advantage. Empire is better than Stormcloaks.

Next, the most important thing in war. Tactics. Ulfric and Galmar has proven to be inferior tactician to Tullius due to Ulfric losing and getting caught by an ambush setup by Tullius. Without Dragonborn's interference, Tullius was not known to be able to replicate the same feat again. Hence it is not a huge gap, the Empire having a General of such capabilities puts its tactics at an advantage.

With that, Empire has slight tactical advantage over Stormcloaks. Empire is better than Stormcloaks.

Two primary attributes, the Empire beats the Stormcloaks hands down. In theory, I would agree with you. That a united Empire working together to bring down the Aldmeri Dominion would be better. Question is; can the Empire be trusted? The Empire has a history of abandoning their provinces when they are in a desperate situation (Morrowind and Black Marsch.) Lets say in the second Great War, the Thalmor decides to attack and focus solely on Cyrodiil. If the Legion soldiers cannot push them back, they will be forced to pull troops from the other provinces like High Rock and Skyrim to support their own armies. That would mean those provinces will be completely defenseless and left to the fate of either Thalmor, Vampires, Dragons, Bandits and other criminal groups. For an Empire to rule a province, they need to have enough manpower and resources to manage those provinces on their own. Now it is the complete opposite, where the Empire is dependent of manpower and resources from the provinces instead to compensate for the damages during the Great War.

In terms of size, the numbers of soldiers will still be the same. The Stormcloak army is more or less equal to the Legion stationed in Skyrim. All Imperial soldiers will disappear and be replaced by equally strong Stormcloak soldiers instead. Only difference between those two will be that one army answers to the Emperor himself and the other answers to a local High King of the province. And even though the Stormcloaks refuse to allow the Empire to rule over them, it is not out of the question that they might fight with them against their common enemy. Despite that High Rock still answers to the Emperor, Ulfric was still willing to work with them. And in turn, High Rock has not given a straight answer. They didn't say yes. But they also didn't say no, either. So it is a possibility.

As for Tullius so-called "tactical genius", I wouldn't give him too much credit for capturing Ulfric, especially because he only accomplished this once and never again. The only way he managed to capture Ulfric was because he was outside of the protection of his city, making him vulnerable for an ambush. Tullius had spies watching Ulfric's movements and waited for the right opportunity. This type of strategy could have been pulled off by anyone, even Ulfric if he wished so. After that one incident, Tullius never succeeds in getting to Ulfric ever again. It was more a fluke that Ulfric left his city rather than an actual well formed strategy. In the rest of the Civil War, we see that Ulfric and Tullius are equal tacticians(in fact, their strategies are the exact same: prison breaks, blackmailing stewards, raiding caravans and forging documents).