Board Thread:Lore Discussion/@comment-72.74.78.209-20141019230536/@comment-24902649-20141207210804

Pelinal Whitestrake wrote: Honestly, unless we could somehow get exact data on how many soldiers both sides have, what kind of weapons they employ (i.e their technological advancement), and so on, we have no way of being sure who is the more powerful/stronger one. Until then, we can only assume things.

So, I run Civil War Overhaul (fantastic mod if your rig can handle all the scripts), and some of the cut content the dev brought back is very interesting. Did you know that originally the Stormcloaks were supposed to have tamed Giants, and the Imperials would have Thalmor battlemages as endgame elite units?

I mean, I realize this is completely non-canon, but I think some of it's really interesting. It leads me to think that, while the Imperials have higher numbers of mostly-untrained conscripts balanced against extremely powerful wizards, the Stormcloaks have overall better-trained, better-equipped troops (since many seem to have grown up as hunters and sellswords in Skyrim) who know more about the region they're fighting for than the Imperials do.

But again, that's all opinion and conjecture, based on cut content and loose application of my knowledge of TES. So take it with a grain.