Board Thread:Lore Discussion/@comment-3539474-20130910213054/@comment-10207438-20130916212905

Nazul Rostello wrote:

Pink Slim wrote: Northwatch keep is not strong enough to defeat skyrim, no matter who wins the civil war, without backup; they are right next to solitude an extremely well geared point of interest, they can either ignore it and have Solitude attack them from the rear, or they can try to take them from the two entrances to the city, and without a doubt Solitude has more soldiers than northwatch, and Northwatch has no backup.

And that's even if they weren't massacred by the LDB during missing in action.

And if the Stormcloaks win, their is no doubt that they'd either tell the Thalmor in Northwatch to leave, or they'd just massacre them. Divide and conquer is a valid military strategy because divided resources and decentralized leadership is generally a bad thing in any war. The Thalmor doing that to you no matter which side you picked.

Skyrim is isolated from the Ad territories far up north. They have to go through the Imperials or Argons to get to them, and I doubt the Argons care for the Thalmor much. The AD couldn't go by sea effectively since they would have to go around Hammerfall and could easily provoke the Redguards and they don't want that due to Sentinel army's shore batteries/cannons. The thing about Divide and Conquer is that it works when it's one group against another group, the way it would be if Skyrim seceeds would make it at least one group(AD) against two(HF/SR & The Empire)

another thing is that as I stated many posts ago, to get to skyrim without having to tear apart Cyrodiil (which would take such a long time that Skyrim would be able to produce an army larger than whatever all AD forces had remaining) would be to go by sea, and they'd either have to pass west by two enemies, or east by two seperate entities that don't like the AD, one of which will annihalate the AD navy without any real threat to themselves if they see the AD as a threat to their safety.

Divide and Conquer works best when the enemy is focusing on a single point, like in the first great war, where the legion pulled most of their forces to destroy one army leaving Hammerfell mostly defenseless; or during the Oblivion Crisis, again Cyrodiil pulled most of their forces to defend the Imperial city, it left morrowind defenseless and after the threat was dealt with they were massacred by the Argonians. It's a good strategy, but when the forces don't have to pull together to defend themselves they can stand against a D&C threat.

This is why I believe the Empire is bad for tamriel at this time in the age of tamriel, they are focused almost entirely on the capital, they should have been focused on the people they were to defend, instead they left many places undefended to save a city that is so easily conquerable, even though it's in a pretty decent strategic military position.

If all provinces had to defend themselves and only themselves they'd be much more self dependant and they'd be able to defend themselves from the AD.

Look at the dunmer, after the empire left them to deal with the oblivion gates in cyrodiil, they had to defend themselves, with little military forces, against the invading Daedra, then after that the Argonians attacked them, the Dunmer had to rise up and defend themselves, and that is exactly what House Redoran did, they're not as strong as the legions that were in Morrowind before, but the Dunmer themselves have a much stronger army than they have had in a long time. Look at Hammerfell, they have much less forces than before the empire left, yet they were able to fend off the threat that so plagued the Empire, they had to adapt the style in which their forces fought, and they're stronger than the empire before them. Now look at Cyrodiil, they were so used to having backup from every other province that they have to destroy the forces in skyrim that want to seceed from the empire because they fear they will be left to fend for themselves, and why wouldn't they be, they're so used to pulling in everyone when they have a threat.