Board Thread:Lore Discussion/@comment-25343239-20150319182007/@comment-260563-20180409063003

It isn't that the Empire is always right, nor is it that the Empire has unlimited resources. If it did, it wouldn't have agreed to the Concordat in the first place, and the Stormcloak Rebellion wouldn't exist.

However, the Empire is less reliant on deceit and smaller armies of elite magical warriors than the Thalmor are. The Empire can recover faster, with its healthier economy and faster birth rate, while the Thalmor, whose Third Aldmeri Dominion is built upon lies and strong-arming, isn't really doing anything to develop the economies of its other two provinces, while its main province lost a staggering amount of soldiers in the last war, to the point where they can't even hold a desert shithole against a bunch of yahoo rebels.

True, Thalmor soldiers are superior to the Empire counterparts on a pound-for-pound basis, but they were never as numerous as the humans to begin with, and their biggest gamble in the last war, their conquest of Cyrodiil, ended with them losing a majority of their armies. And while the Empire's damaged state forced it to sign a disadvantageous treaty, the fact that the Empire still has a wealthy and healthy trade network, coupled with the faster human birth rate that Elder Scrolls Lore tells us is a real thing, means that the Empire will be able to recover from the war provided that it remains unmolested by the Dominion.

The Dominion, on the other hand, isn't doing so well. As I said, it lost most of its army in the last war, and in terms of combat, can't even hold a weakened Hammerfell against the Redguards. Valenwood hasn't developed jack shit, and all we see from them in the Fourth era is that some Wood Elves have become Thalmor servants, others have been culled by Thalmor purges. Dominion-controlled Elsweyr, on the other hand, is so poor that people would rather leave on caravans to trade with foreigners who hate them. We didn't see that back in Oblivion, when Elsweyr, along with the rest of Tamriel, was under healthy Imperial rule. So, we have a Dominion that has one province with an exhausted army, another province whose people are getting enslaved/culled, and a third province that's falling into poverty and disrepair to the point where people there are migrating into other places where they're hated just to get a shot at making coin. Those Khajiit caravans aren't like the East Empire Company, after all, so these traders from Dominion territory aren't necessarily making money.

And of course, deception will eventually come to light. As the old saying goes, "You can fool all the people some of the time, and some of the people all the time, but you cannot fool all the people all the time." There are already books written by Altmer talking about the deception of the Thalmor. Eventually, the deception of the Thalmor will come to light, either by some disgruntled Thalmor who has second thoughts, or by Imperial agents investigating the matter. And imagine what will happen if both the Altmer and the Khajiit figure that they've been lied to about who ended the Oblivion Crisis and who "saved the moons" for the cat-folk. That would lead to a rebellion that would make the Stormcloak Rebellion seem like a fart in the wind.

Granted, the Dominion will be able to defeat the Stormcloaks if those idiots took Skyrim, but even that's a pipe dream, considering that the wealthier half of Skyrim is on the Imperial side, and Ulfric even attacks neutral Whiterun, another wealthy hold. Which means that the civil war the Thalmor started will end with Ulfric's head on a pike, because all the wealthy parts of Skyrim are fighting against his half of Skyrim, and it's three wealthy holds (Solitude, Whiterun, and Markarth) against Ulfric's Windhelm. The rest of the holds are villages with little to no economic value, which means in a war, they're usually near-worthless aside from positioning. So this Skyrim Civil War that the Dominion sacrificed so much to make, to the point where they'd go to peace with the Empire despite losing lots of men, won't last long. Unless the Dragonborn comes in to aid the Stormcloaks, the Stormcloaks are screwed. Which means the Empire won't have to worry about that mess.

Again, logistics matter. They matter a lot when it comes to warfare. Because if it's all just gods and demons and magic, then the Nords would have won, because A) they fight for the divine Talos and B) they're the dragons' slaves, and no proper slave master would let his slaves get killed by uppity elves. So all the Nords need to do, in a world where logistics don't matter, is worship Talos and the dragons, and these two factors would earn them the support of the nine as well as the dragon gods, which will give them superiority in land and air. No amount of magic elves can counter fucking deities.

So to recap: in a world where logistics matter, the Empire will win both the Skyrim Civil War and the Second Great War with the Dominion, because it has a healthier economy than the Stormcloaks and the Dominion, and its populace has a faster birth rate than the elves, and the last war was two decades ago.

In a world where logistics don't matter, and all that matters is dragons, gods, and magic, then all the Nords need to do is keep worshiping Talos to get his aid, as well as worship dragons, so that dragons and the Nine come to aid the Nords and nullify the magic advantages of the Thalmor. A bunch of lying, scheming elves are no match for angry gods and dragons going all Old Testament on Alinor.