Board Thread:Lore Discussion/@comment-97.81.240.58-20130603234626/@comment-24590102-20140331144452

StealthBlade98 wrote: Smoking.Chimp wrote:                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                         War is not a numbers game. Factors like supply, terrain, morale, officer competence, etc are of far greater importance. Unsupplied soldiers will not march, demoralised soldiers will not fight (demoralised emperors will not negotiate for their people) and soldiers led by incompetent officers are dead men already. I recommend Sun Tzu's Art of War. While the technology and technology-based tactics may have changed over the centuries, the basic principles of warfare have not. I'm sure that plays a part too much like money but what i'm saying about a fantasy game has merit though. Also could you please stop making comparison to IRL situations this is a game. I only made one reference to countries because you didn't seem to understand my point on all the provinces / races joining forces to remove the AD threat. AD cannot win a war against everyone in the world against them they simple do not have enough man power to match it. Regardless of how much magick they may posses. In fact if they managed to get some conjurers into the mix to fight against the AD and raise the dead bodies to fight think of how much of an advantage this could be as well. AD are simple weak but they manage to stay affective by manipulating parties. Hammerfell has little problems beating these clowns so i see no reason to assume they're some massive powerhouse. [...]

Firstly, the best games are based on real life mechanics - especially fantasy. Even the magic exhibits the expected fundamentals of projectile and dissipation behaviour. There are effective zones of control (which are important aspects of skirmishing and infiltration techniques). The Dragonborn can be killed by a fall, by drowning or by a passing plague of skeevers (or perhaps by skeevers passing plague - who is to know such things for sure?) - never mind being killed by someone who is hunting the Dragonborn with this very purpose in mind. And, if you play a Dragonborn with a life (i.e. a Dragonborn who does something other than being the Dragonborn) s/he skills up more slowly in key adversarial skills than the NPCs and, consequently, dies many times with many reloads from many savegames - which means the odds of death are, realistically, higher than the odds of life for the Dragonborn. So the "IRL situations", which all seem to be coming home to roost here, are thereby highly relevant to the game.

Secondly, the point is that there is a harsh reality right there in the fantasy world of the game. This harsh reality is that all the provinces can't unite against the Aldmeri Dominion because the White-Gold concordat does alienate them from oneanother in accordance with Thalmor strategem and that, not thu'um, nor magic, nor sharpness of sword, nor durability of armour nor strength of numbers but, instead, that strategem is what makes the Thalmor strong and, judging by the player dialogue and negotiation options, it is what makes the Dragonborn weak.

Thirdly, I think that what you're saying about Titus Mede II is on the money. Titus Mede II is a traitor for failing to negotiate the White-Gold Concordat and a coward for... (how can I say this gently?)   ...not expiating his failure.

Finally, Hammerfell did not whip the Thalmor alone. They had some aid from a number of discharged "invalids" who had an axe or several to grind (not to mention the likely odd assortment of daggers, swords, hammers, maces, etc.). The whole military campaign is very messy and full of unexpected and inconvenient outcomes - just like the real thing, funnily enough, with no clean victories, no clear triumph and people behaving much like, well, people.