I'm very nooby in terms of the lore, seeing as I've only played Skyrim/Oblivion, and not read any of the books (Getting them for Xmas) and I hope to rectify this some day, but for now, I'll ask nooby questions.

How exactly did the Dominion defeat the Empire? I thought Mer reproduced far more slowly then Men, so they'd be less numerous.

What did the Dominion have over the Empire? Superior soldiers, numbers, mages?

Why didn't the Dominion simply defeat the Empire, when it knew it could? Instead of forcing the White Gold Concordat on the Emperor? If it was to ban Talos worship, they could have done that by killing his worshipers...

Thanks

That's a myth. Elves don't reproduce slower in TES.
The Dominion had killed all the Blades agents in the Dominion, brought the Empire an ultimatum of "do what we say or die", and then right after The Empire said no, the Dominion attacked. The Empire wasnt ready, or had any real idea, The Dominion would attack, and thus were unprepaired. The Dominion got a element of being prepaired over The Empire.

Not only that, but the Dominion did have an army equal to that of The Empire.
The Dominion didnt force it on the Empire, and the Dominion didnt beat the empire becuase they couldnt. After the battle of the red ring both sides were beaten pretty equally bad.

The dominion didn't win. The Empire managed to push em back and take back White-Gold. By that time the font of Aldmeri strength in Cyrodiil was effectively wiped out, and the legions were battered to hell. I also think due to that colossal embrassment, the Dominion lost a fair chunk of its warrior caste...still would be nice to know what their forces comprised of though.

The two sides had to sue for peace, and while the Concordant seems to be heavily in favor of the Dominion (Which it probably was, considering how it was practically the same as the first list of demands), we don't know what the Dominion had to give up in exchange.

They didn't. They were rather careful during the initial attacks, but when they found that they were meeting with less resistance than they had imagined, they decided to go straight for the throat. Didn't exactly end well for them. That, and wars are kinda costly. They probably knew thats where things were heading, but may as well try for something as cost effective as possible.

I don't think the Dominion would have a good time doing that when they can now operate in the open in the empire.

But I was told that the Dominion pretended not to have enough troops to take Cyrodiil so that the Empire would think that they were equally weak?

Who told you that?

Its not true.

Ah, right. So it was false information, then.

Well, thanks for the replies

Actually its thought that Mede accepted the White Gold Concordant only because he knew that the Dominion had more soldiers back home.....
As to how the Dominion pushed the empire so much is they are essentially better than men at magic and almost equally good at armed combat,Taking that with a large force the did hold an edge over the empire.

Ive seen more people specualte that Mede accepted it becuase he know the only way to beat the thalmor was to destroy them entirely, and knew that he couldnt do it then, and that fighting the war any longer wouldnt get him anywhere.