Ok that i ve realised is that the basic reason that the empire captured distant places such as morrowind is the fact that cyrodiil lacks of usefull mine materials.While we can see that there are lot of gold and silver mines(With whom the empire can maintain its armies), there is complete lack of materials such as ebony or glass.
And why would you conquer an entire contitent, just for some materials that have no real use, except decorating things (diamonds, rubies) or make weapons and armor (ebony, glass) ?