Again i'm refering to the Remen war and they accepted the invaders "offering accomodations while the Redoran wanted to fight them head on. House Dres and Indoril prefered to fight the invaders within Morrowind and the Telvanni could not be bothered. So it was Redoran alone." I'm paraphrasing here.

Paraphrasing from what? I would be surprised if the Houses acted independently during the war, as the Tribunal were at the height of their power and Vivec was their field general.

Paraphrasing from a source I read on TIL. I'm not sure how to find it but it said the Redoran were the only ones who wanted to fight the empire head on while dres and indoril wanted to fight on their own ground. Basically what I just said above.

http://www.imperial-library.info/mwbooks/on_morrowind.shtml.

There we go. IT seems I was refering to the 2nd go around. I just didn't know it.

At any rate, the document proves your anolysis false. It lists Hlaalu as advocating accommodation, not as unilaterally accommodating in the middle of a declared war. You can just as easily fault Indoril and Dres for refusing to help the defense of the western front. It was a disagreement as to methods, with Vivec ultimately deciding, by himself, in a secret meeting, what the response should be.

Sun Tzu had much to say about knowing when to fight, and when not to fight... and the importance of this decision with regard to the preservation of the state. Tiber Septim had all the advantages: a better disciplined military with a clearer chain of command, strong forces at the height of their momentum, field commanders experienced from previous campaigns, a proven track record of personal military genius, and, most importantly, he might be described as having had what Sun Tzu referred to as "The Tao;" that is, his "mythic identity" ensured him victory, as Vivec was uniquely positioned to understand. There is neither wisdom nor honor in sacrificing the people and destroying the land for the sake of a lost cause... or even a Pyhrric victory, if a lasting deal can be cut. Hlaalu, as a mercantile house, would have understood this well. Redoran, being primarily a provider of mercenaries, would have had something to gain from war outside of the actual aims of the war.

Greatest tactical mind "not a stubborn meathead" shocker. News at 7.

..?

It was Redoran who was ready to fight a conventional war. Indoril, Dres, and the Temple were ready for a hopeless war. Had it come to blows, Hlaalu would have followed their god or been crushed, weak house that they were. Least likely to participate were the Telvanni, your natural targets for a speculative scapegoat hunt.

The Armistice did not occur during wartime. 'Accomodation =/= Armistice, but negotiations and appeasemant. And any plan put forth by Hlaalue would have been nowhere near as subservient and shocking as the deal Vivec unilaterally cut with the Empire. If members of his own clergy refused to respect the decision of their own god, what would they have said if mortals had proposed the same?

It provided a platform of influence to which the empire could exploit. Dres and Indoril proposed a smarter way to combat a slower force. We've seen time and time again the ability of a smaller force to hold off a larger force with the right situation. When Emperor Traian fought with King Decebalus he brought 13 full Legions against a much smaller force and at first was turned back. It was only until betrayel from within that Decebalus finally lost. In the end it was Vivec that decided himself but i'm sure he did it considering the disunity of the Houses. In any case Vivec is a self loving ego centric child.



When to fight and when not to fight suggest that eventually there will be a time to fight. I personally think ordering all of the Houses to fight a war on the interior would have been much better. Basarab fought with 10,000 men, mostly shepherds and farmers and won and killed almost all 40,000 Hungarians many of which were armor clad knights and professional mercenaries. At Cosmin forest Saint Stefan the Great with around 30,000 men, mostly light cavalry routed a force of 90,000 Poles using scorched earth tactics. Against Hadan Suleiman Pasha, Stefan at Vaslui defeated him with almost 50,000 men against Suleiman Pasha's men of over 110,000 by simply using better terrain and drawing out the Turks. Stefan at one point when his line began routing involved himself in the thick of it all rallying his soldiers back to fight. Vlad III Draculea ambushed Mehmed II, Fatih and conquoror of Constantinople with 30,000 men against Mehmed II's force of about half a million and drove him back. Some sources say Mehmed II had trouble sleeping so great the terror was even when he went back to Constantinople.

Vivec was fully capable to repel the invading force. It just doesn't seem like he had the tactical ability, which is sad because Tiber Septim didn't really show tactical prowess all that often either. Perhaps Vivec should have just gone to sleep with his buddies and let Almalexia handle the army. If worse came to worse, they could have become vassals and bided their term. Send agents to Hammerfell or anywhere where there would be rebellion, and when the armies were away, and during the harvest, Morrowind could have invaded the Nibenay stole/destroyed as many of the crops they could, driven the people into the cities. Cyrodiil gets most of its food from the Nibenay. If they imported it from elsewhere the populace in those areas wouldn't have been happy so it is a lose lose situation for the Empire. Vivec could then simply pull his armies on the interior or even just wait at the Velothian mountains. Then Tiber would have to march through desolate terrain with little or no supplies. If they carried their own from the west they would be even slower moving. They could be ambushed and demoralized the whole way there.

So again it isn't that Vivec couldn't have fought off Septim, he seemed to not have known how to. I don't know if the lore was done this way for the sake of telling a story or people writing it were tactically and logistically inept. In any case, story wise, Vivec proved to be a failure. He went "out of term" leaving his people in decline. He could have done so much more but did not.

Hlaalu understood nothing well except that they wanted the cards re shuffled. And that is what they managed and they got dealt a good hand.



I suppose "here you can own my house but i decide were the fancy china plates go" is some sort of tactic for someone...



Why would it had been a hopeless war?

Telvanni as a whole would not have worked together for any one single thing. I hardly consider them a House. In any case some of the Telvanni would have helped, others not. Regardless of what people assume that the Telvanni are are demi gods, I really doubt it. It is more probable that only a handful of them are really strong and their society seems to be centered only on propping up these handful.



Appeasemant, their will as Hlaalu was the straw that broke the camel's back. The Telvanni had much the same effect being more or less useless but at least they didn't aim to help the empire out. That is betrayel.

How do you know what the Hlaalu plan would have been? The current one seemed to work very much in their favor.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. We get it. You hate all Dunmer except for the Dres for are the only true Dunmer. A shame they sided with the Hlaalu, who are the Dunmer you hate the most. This is a wound that will not heal.


Your idea of tactical and logical aptitude is what other would call committing war crimes on a large scale. Of course it doesn't matter because it would have been fantasy people being slaughtered, so it's no big deal. Contrarily to having fantasy people getting their country annexed -- that is a really big deal.


Yeah, a house of scheming, opportunistic traders is going to be made of stupid people with poor intel. It's just sheer luck on their part; just like it's just sheer luck they somehow survived three millennia of antagonism from Morrowind's ruling House.


How do you know what the Hlaalu plan would have been?

I'm afraid I ducked out at about page 3 of this - but I do not understand the basis given in these RPs for a Dres-Helseth alliance - basically if you accept the arguments in here up to page 3 then Dres are not what they were always seen to be and even so it is clear that Helseth intends to destroy them so forget it.

If the Dres are the sinister slaving house of their reputation then Dres are going to see - oops no Emperor, Empire gutted, Nords invading Redoran territory, who is going to stop us if we take out Hlaalu before they and Helseth take us out - then tis back to slaving as usual. Wars have been fought over less and with less advantage.

Someone said earlier that the theorising here is based on a fanon - well I guess devs are human and like to play around with ideas too then - but what I have seen here does not yet seem really 'serious' to me.

The higher political theorising does not match the base economics and so forth - and it does not really take a look at what the Argonians and Black Marshes are truly about.

No one can say that there would not be anomolous actions in the Argonian-Dres warring and so forth but mainly Argonia repels invaders after taking the brunt of things.

If you want the independant vote then produce a better overview of Argonia reaching into the present (long overdue) and something more basic and powerful to explain the Dres position - like maybe manoeuvering to stab Hlaalu in the back.

Otherwise go visit the Argonian Mission in Ebonheart ... there is a sense of deep sophistication there ... and it goes beyond the local colour or the Empire's influence.

Except that isn't what i said. Please stick to what I said, and leave your strawman out of this.



War crimes? Some say war is a crime. Whatever you want to call it, I call it winning a war. Who said having fantasy people being annexed is a big deal?



Who said that Hlaalu was stupid?



Where did I say I knew what their plan was?

Two questions. Do you think Hlaalu wanted something like the Armistice before Vivec came out and signed it? Do you think Hlaalu would have proposed a plan similar to the Armistice if Vivec had not signed it?

Then why do you hammer "betrayal, betrayal, betrayal!" with such fervor?


Never heard of rules of engagement, have you? Well, when the Sload committed something that was deemed a war crime, everybody else happily ganged up against them to slaughter them to the last (that they could find). Rauaging the whole Nibenay Basin so that the Cyrodiil army would starve would count. It might stall the invasion for several years, but it wouldn't prevent it; all it would do is make sure the next war isn't one of conquest but of revenge.


The way you insist that Vivec's decision was the worst thing ever. You're quite passionate about it.


You said they understood nothing well. Isn't it stupidity?


When you said House Hlaalu wanted to help the Empire invade Morrowind, just like Maine.

The fish on the Grand Banks belong to us and the Nova Scotians. So GTFO and trawl Boston harbor.

I think Hlaalu would have proposed something so that they would have been ontop from the get go.



Accomodating enemies is betrayel.

What you are discribing as "just going with the flow and adapting" is actually more what Dres did. What the Hlaalu did was push for this change and were at the forefront of it throughout the centuries.



Please won't you give me a lesson on the rules of engagement? I must be rusty and it seems you know them quite well.

Who is everybody? And what did the Sload do?

No it really wouldn't be considered out of the ordinary. The setting TES is based in, this type of war fare would be the norm.

Stall it? I think stop it. Troops cost money, standing around doing nothing is the worst thing troops can do. So say the Nibenay, the breadbasket of the empire was destroyed, what would they do? Send garrisons there? And then who is garrisoning Hammerfell? Or say a rebellion happens in Skyrim who solves that problem? And those troops garrisoning the Nibenay, how do they get fed?



I'm a Latin, and more so an Oltenian. We're passionate about everything, even little quasy historical, shallow (compared to real life) video game stories. I just don't put so much weight in it.



You said "they understood the times were changing" or something of that sort. I refered to that they did NOT know the times were changing and what they DID know is that this was their chance to flip their role by svcking up. They are like House Phanar, or the Bosniaks (Muslim Serbs) or the Albanians in the Balkans who converted and pledged their loyalty to the Ottoman Turks. It wasn't that "they knew the times were changing" they were simply small minded rulers who wanted to be with the rising tide. The Ottoman Empire could have been beaten if they were more united. The Danubian Principalities proved this enough times.



Well what would you count "accomodations" as? "We'll rub your backs on your way into battle."? No it was more like "Indoril's weakness is this, and the Dres that and the Redoran this.

He made fun of me and made me cry.

teehee

They used a biological weapon of mass destruction - http://www.uesp.net/wiki/Lore:Sload. Supposedly the Plague killed half of Tamriel's population.

Immortal Blood, I find it strange that you think Hlaalu had a sacrosanct obligation to uphold a status quo and balance of power that had threatened its prosperity and its very existence for a thousand years. Bottom line, nothing they did significantly harmed Morrowind's effort to remain independent. Maybe they would have been a liability if it had come to blows, but given your absolute determination to be right, I'm not touching that speculation with a ten foot pole. I'm not sure what the smallest, weakest, non-martial house was supposed to do, but it sounds like you would demand self-flagellation.

No. The Hlaalu would have proposed something that could have had a chance of being accepted by the other houses. Sure, it would have been in their interests -- do you expect them to act contrary to their interests? -- but what would have the smallest and weakest house done, really?


You're interpreting "accomodation" in a particular way which doesn't correspond with what the source says.

I quote again:
"Contrived border incidents in Black Marsh ended inconclusively, but the swampy terrain did not favor legion and navy coordination. Against the legions massed west of Silgrad Tower and Kragenmoor, and the legions west of Blacklight and Cormaris View, Morrowind had pitifully small militias stiffened by small companies of Redoran mercenaries and elite units of house nobles and Temple Ordinators and Armigers. Further complicating matters was the refusal of Indoril, Dres, Hlaalu, and Telvanni to garrison the western borders; Indoril and Dres proposed, rather than defend the western border, instead to withdraw to the interior and fight a guerilla war. With Hlaalu advocating accommodation, and Telvanni remaining neutral, Redoran therefore faced the prospect of standing alone against the Empire."
"Accommodation" was what House Hlaalu was suggesting as the course of action. They wouldn't suggest betrayal as it would be extremely stupid.


No, they were the smallest and weakest house. They weren't on the forefront of changes, they just strove to survive. Change came from the outside, and they seized their chance; since they were at the very bottom they hadn't much to lose but a lot to win.

Or are you arguing that Tiber Septim was controlled by House Hlaalu?


Before the concepts of total war and genocide were developed, the principle was that you avoided killing too many civilians and certainly not tried to induce famine. Killing thousands of enemy warriors made you a hero, killing thousands of non-combatants made you a monster.


Nope. Warfare was constant at times, enough for Tamriel to be nicknamed "the Arena". Total warfare based on inducing famine and destroying infrastructure would simply have extinguished all civilisation on Tamriel.


You induce famine, killing thousands and provoking an exodus of refugees. The next thing that happens is that you gather the Redguard and Nord troops, along the refugees who can fight, and send the counter attack in order to punish the monstrous elves who are waging a genocidal war against all humanity.


Again:
Immortal Blood's vision of the Great Council. The leaders of all Five Great Houses are gathered to discuss how to deal with the Cyrodiilic threat. The Grandmaster of House Hlaalu speaks up and exposes his plan: "We should tell the Empire what the weaknesses of Great Houses Indoril, Telvanni, Redoran and Dres are."

Yeah, it makes sense I suppose. :rolleyes:

That's not what accommodation meant. What the Hlaalu wanted was negotiation, compromise, appeasemant. Maybe trade privileges and some border territory in exchange for a pact of non-aggression; Morrowind would stay independent and a war would be avoided, provided the Empire accepts the bone that it is thrown.

Vivec's treaty was far more radical than anything the Hlaalu could have proposed.
No. The Hlaalu would have proposed something that could have had a chance of being accepted by the other houses. Sure, it would have been in their interests -- do you expect them to act contrary to their interests? -- but what would have the smallest and weakest house done, really?


You're interpreting "accommodation" in a particular way which doesn't correspond with what the source says.

I quote again:

"Contrived border incidents in Black Marsh ended inconclusively, but the swampy terrain did not favor legion and navy coordination. Against the legions massed west of Silgrad Tower and Kragenmoor, and the legions west of Blacklight and Cormaris View, Morrowind had pitifully small militias stiffened by small companies of Redoran mercenaries and elite units of house nobles and Temple Ordinators and Armigers. Further complicating matters was the refusal of Indoril, Dres, Hlaalu, and Telvanni to garrison the western borders; Indoril and Dres proposed, rather than defend the western border, instead to withdraw to the interior and fight a guerilla war. With Hlaalu advocating accommodation, and Telvanni remaining neutral, Redoran therefore faced the prospect of standing alone against the Empire."
"Accommodation" was what House Hlaalu was suggesting as the course of action. They wouldn't suggest betrayal as it would be extremely stupid.

Immortal Blood's vision of the Great Council. The leaders of all Five Great Houses are gathered to discuss how to deal with the Cyrodiilic threat. The Grandmaster of House Hlaalu speaks up and exposes his plan: "We should tell the Empire what the weaknesses of Great Houses Indoril, Telvanni, Redoran and Dres are."

Yeah, it makes sense I suppose. :rolleyes:

That's not what accommodation meant. What the Hlaalu wanted was negotiation, compromise, appeasemant. Maybe trade privileges and some border territory in exchange for a pact of non-aggression; Morrowind would stay independent and a war would be avoided, provided the Empire accepts the bone that it is thrown.

Vivec's treaty was far more radical than anything the Hlaalu could have proposed.

No, they were the smallest and weakest house. They weren't on the forefront of changes, they just strove to survive. Change came from the outside, and they seized their chance; since they were at the very bottom they hadn't much to lose but a lot to win.

Or are you arguing that Tiber Septim was controlled by House Hlaalu?

Why in Heck is there a limit to the number of quote blocks?


Before the concepts of total war and genocide were developed, the principle was that you avoided killing too many civilians and certainly not tried to induce famine. Killing thousands of enemy warriors made you a hero, killing thousands of non-combatants made you a monster.


Nope. Warfare was constant at times, enough for Tamriel to be nicknamed "the Arena". Total warfare based on inducing famine and destroying infrastructure would simply have extinguished all civilisation on Tamriel.


You induce famine, killing thousands and provoking an exodus of refugees. The next thing that happens is that you gather the Redguard and Nord troops, along the refugees who can fight, and send the counter attack in order to punish the monstrous elves who are waging a genocidal war against all humanity.

gez, your 1st post repeats itself 2 times. what was posted in the 2nd post is also already found in the 1st

That means he can win the argument twice, in places.

I'm not even going to try to quote that cluster [censored]. I'll just reply to it in this manner.


And in which treaty were the rules of engagement in Tamriel signed?

Wrecking the crops of the Nibenay would not extinguish life on Tamriel. It would have placed Morrowind it a better spot to defend itself or negotiate. The next thing that happens is hopefully Tiber Septim isn't so stupid to trek along terrain up hill with no supplies.

How do you know Hlaalu would have "just wanted to be accepted." How would it go on about doing that.

Hlaalu was weak but their will provided Vivec with a scenario that would have ended in disaster if they fought the war. Hlaalu would have been a weakness in the armor and Tiber would have exploited it.

I didn't say Hlaalu was in control if Septim. I'm saying is that Hlaalu rode front and center with the upswing of the Empire.

Whatever Hlaalu would have provided it would have hurt the integrity of Morrowind.

Indeed. Don't forget that he also had the Numidium at his side. Add to that that Tiber was still having trouble in Hammerfel and the Aldmeri Dominion and Vivec would have quite easily defeated the Imperial Legions.

The important question, therefore, would be: Why didn't he?