So... I just got to the battle of Bruma in Oblivion and so far its pretty epic, im loving it. But I was thinking realistically would there have been hundreds imperial soldiers and thousands of deadra pouring out of the gates, or is the fact that there is just a handful of soldiers from each city, and just a handful of deadra coming out of each gate a game mechanic to make sure that the battle is not to taxing on your compuer/console?

Anyways thanks again for those who helped me with my question on the provinces any help on this one would also be appreciated

Yep, large battles aren't possible with Oblivion's engine.

Freakin' Gamebryo. Bethesda could do better, but since they have pretty much made it their own engine, it's reasonable that they have stuck with it for so long.

I see, so you think it would have been slightly larger than it really is in the game, or something along the lines of - Bruma battle on console = roughly 15 soldiers, Bruma battle in lore = 15 soldiers (to the power of 10)?

its a [censored] engine when it comes to lots of people on screen. *shrugs*
shouldnt have had that battle ingame at all if they couldnt do it right.

I'm sure that if Bethesda could have made the battle bigger, they would have. After all, all of the cities in Cyrodiil sent part of their armies to go aid Bruma. Yet the combined total was maybe 15-20 people. And the Daedra came out in waves of 3 or 4 to reduce strain on the engine. I'm positive that if Bethesda could have, they would have had dozens of people fighting with dozens of Daedra.

Like others have said, the battle was so small due to simple technological constraints. I imagine the battle to be at least a few hundred soldiers versus a similar number of daedra. It's not just this battle that had to be scaled down however. Look at the cities. A handful of people constitute an entire city? They surely would have had thousands of people in "reality."

Thanks for the answers guys, maybe it will be possible in the future with that new unlimited 3D technology stuff whatever that is?

*cough*CRYENGINE, BETHESDA*cough* Haha...

I think Bethesda states that the number of NPCs in Oblivion was chosen to enhance gameplay rather than realism

The average persons PC cannot handle more than something like 15 NPCs/creatures all within close range at once. Even the consles struggle with that

Given the game at the time this is all the devs could do.

Maybe not that large. Definitely not to the power of 10 at all. More like 200 from each city maybe not even that much as the cities are quite small not much more than towns. And with the Imperial City not supplying troops at all I'd say with 100-150 soldiers from each city: 800-1200(max).

I think it's actually a little more realistic. The majority of real world medieval battles were not fought between massive thousand man armies, but small battle groups of 50-200 men. The soldiers outside Bruma may number less, but this still makes the battle far more realistic than thousands of guys running at each other.

Good point Chrono. But then, who wouldn't love to fight in a simulated battle of thousands of men? But then, that's not very TES-ish...Ah the paradoxes.

So thanks for replying, but your post has given me the opurtunity to state something that goes for all fantasy games, fantasy games may have concepts based medieval europe but they are their own universe and therefore are NOT restricted by the boundaries of OUR historie's events, that's not to say I don't agree with you because you make a very good point.