Board Thread:Lore Discussion/@comment-97.81.240.58-20130603234626/@comment-24590102-20140329124219

StealthBlade98 wrote:

Smoking.Chimp wrote:

The feudalists and the Greek Tyrants ruled in exactly this way. It starts with the coordinated simultaneous slaughter of any man capable of bearing arms who's not part of the in-group (usually under the white flag or in betrayal of a treaty or alliance which allows the tyrant's troops to intersperse themselves throughout the target population)...........etc No idea why you went off talking about greek tyrants, i don't see the parallels here between this and AD. The point i'm addressing is if every province joined together and fought against the thalmor: Bosmer, Khajiit, imperials, nords, wood elves......etc they'd be outnumbered by a crap ton and eventually overwhelmed and ultimately killed. My example would be akin to NA, Russia, Germany, Britain, Italy, Korea against Japan and China. That's a huge ratio difference and quite frankly they probably wouldn't stand a chance in a battle like that.

The reason for my digression was to demonstrate how big an 'if' we are talking about given that the Aldmeri Dominion will be looking to disrupt or otherwise cut communication between its enemies. Without communication, there can be no coordination of effort. Without coordination of effort, an enemy cannot be beaten no matter how much smaller they are. This was a key factor in overwhelming the Eureka Stockade in 19th century Australia. The Australians had foreign military support (courtesy of the U.S. if I recall) but the British waited until that support scouted far enough away for communications to be cut and then they hit - and then it was all over bar looting the prisoners. The strength of numbers hinges on open lines of communication and, the larger the scale, the more difficult it is to keep lines of communication open.