Board Thread:Lore Discussion/@comment-3539474-20130910213054/@comment-14359537-20130922222845

Harold Burned-Mane wrote: ABosmerVampLord wrote:

Harold Burned-Mane wrote: Lol. these are pretty good points, actually.

Alright, we agreed on the fact that there is one mage type per 3 people in High Rock, so lets leave that be.

As far as I know, when the game says bretons are resistant to magic, they mean destruction magic, not illusions. I looked up the page on magic resistance to confirm this. Even if this proves true, remember; Altmer are especially skilled in Illusion as well. And they don't even have to cast it at the Bretons - why not the orcs?

The fact is, all provinces that are hostile to the AD have a land border to the AD, except Skyrim and High Rock. We've agreed that it's a REAAAAALY bad idea to invade skyrim, because of the dragons, dragonborn and blades, so the Thalmor may as well direct all their ships to high rock. Of course, they'll be stupid to send so many ships that Summerset Isles becomes vulnerable, but otherwise, it's fine.

Frigates and Ships of the Line aren't fast, true, but they can change directions quickly enough to dodge a rock. For example, lets say a rock is flung at a ship moving in a straight line. Logically, the rock will be aimed in front of a ship, because the ship is moving. When the sailors see the rock coming, they can simply slow down or turn. then, face the cannons at the enemy and open fire.

As I said, High Rock is pretty big. If the army split up into squadrons of about a dozen, and only meet up if necessary, they should have no problems hiding. And for the bigger towns, it's simple; prevent the caravans from supplying the city with food. I'm not familliar with Medieval strongholds, but for the particularly large cities, I'm quite sure they don't have their farms inside their city walls. Do correct me if I'm mistaken. Anyways, in skyrim, most of the farms are outside their hold walls, except for Riften, which has a fishery just outside. If we pillage the farms, and stop all the caravans from coming in, the bretons will take the Thalmor seriously. Once it goes over the bar, they will request assistance from the Imperials.

Also, keep this in mind: the defenders are always the ones that decide the location of the battle. If the Thalmor wants to fight in hills/forest, then all they have to do is sit there until the Bretons come. If they want to fight in open plains, they'll just sit there until the Bretons come. The attackers are in no position to choose the battlefield, and the Thalmor aren't so daft as to go into open plains knowing an army is out there (I hope).

Humanity will benefit without the Mede Empire, agreed. However, it will also benefit the elves, because if they don't have a mutual leader, they will have to make discussions with their allies, in addition to their generals, before making a single major move, in contrast to if you have an emperor that just goes 'do this, do that', without any concern for the individual provinces. This may or may not lead to arguments, disagreements, etc etc. Even if these don't happen, it'll be a lot quicker and decisive if we have someone like Tiber Septim leading the empire, who just gives orders without having to consult every major resident in the empire. So yes, the capture of Cyrodiil will make things extremely interesting, and perhaps is what Bethesda is planning. True they could use illusion on orcs to make them turn on the bretons, as altmer are expert illusion mages.

Im not sure what you meant by "all provinces that are hostile to the AD have a land border to the AD" only Cyrodill shares land borders with the AD, Morrowind/Black Marsh/Hammerfell/Skyrim/High Rock don't share land borders with the AD.

If they split into small squadrons they will function pretty much like bandits, very well organised/trained/equiped bandits but bandits nontheless. It will make them more vulnerable to attack. Say the next squadron was to far to help fend off the bretons, one down few more sqadron to go. See spiting your forces could go really badly for the AD as the bretons could attack one squadron at a time, uterly destroying them with superior numbers.

Sometimes the attacked can choose the battlefield, say the bretons come in superior number like i said above, they could push the AD  squadron further into the forest, and right into an orc ambush. Or the opposite can happen they could push the squadron into an open field and kill them there.

I too would be very interested in seeing what would happen without the Empire. Yes coordination would be harder/slower but the humans could come up with some very interesting battle stategies with troops that are so diferent from each other, not unified legions. Like you said above the Empire would only be beneficial if someone like Tiber Septim came along and lead them to glory once more.

I'm not sure about the whole take them down 1 by 1 part, because that takes longer than destroying the whole army at once. And as I said, the people defending caravans and towns won't be casting detect life 24/7 so they are still vulnerable, and the ones that are pursuing the thalmor can be ambushed.

For the orc ambush part... yeah, the altmers would probably warn them the orcs are there. As for the pushing to the plain lands... well, given the squadron's commander is competent, he'd realize he's gonna have a better chance to survive if he stands his ground on the forest (or at least take more guys down), so probably would refrain from being pushed into the forest.