Fixed.

They're also talking about High Elf wizards leading, a boycott of Imperial goods.

Maybe we'll need those forts after all.

Indeed, but ridding the forts of creatures, ghosts, bandits, marauders, and necromancers would be a difficult task in itself.
Oh, and lets not forget all the traps that would have to be disarmed.

Forts indeed, most are not even defendable. None but one has a mess hall, but wait... these are dungeons! Their sole purpose is to provide the player a romping ground to kill, have fun with rag dolls, and get [censored] loot! Of course!

Realy, only the significant forts such as Pale Pass, Sancre Tor, Cloudruler, etc actually exist at all. The others will be trashed, turned into new city locations for the next map, or become legion/county army forts; we have no way of knowing which ones, or even if that much is true.

Some forts should have definitely been maintained. The one right outside of the IC near Weye comes to mind, its at a critical junction of several major roads and watches over the only major land entrance to the imperial city. The rather large fort at that massive bridge just south of the imperial city (fortress of St. Alessia I think) also looks like it should have been maintained. There is also a large one right outside Bravil that obviously should have been maintained.

Most of the forts have doorways, so lets assume that at one time (when the fort was functional) you'd have to have a key, or have it be opened from the inside. Those fort doors would be really hard to breach, and on top of that there would probably be archers on the top of the fort if it were in high alert. So you're talking about archers and a really hard door to open, even if you can manage to get it open there would probably be 75% of the guards posted at that fort waiting for you when you got it opened. And if you could get past past all of them then the Legion has a big advantage. They could set up booby-traps and all kinds of things waiting for the intruder. I think that having a group of people using stealth would be able to get in. But they would still have all of the guards to deal with. And they probably closed the doors at night so having to use daylight would also be a big disadvantage to the intruders. And at night, the guards on their post have Shadowbanish Wine so they'd be able to see. But that was a long time ago, so they would probably use both night-eye and detect-life. Taking a fort would be hard, even for a small army.

I meant terrain and general location. Yes, I know they would have keys and such.

Well that also depends on the forts location, but I see your meaning.
Some forts would be better defendable than others.

Forts exist solely for the benefit of you, the adventurer. And as far as I'm concerned, adventurers do not exist. They are not an accepted profession. In real life you would be either a homeless bum living under a bridge or part of a violent band of thugs that calls styles itself as a militia. The thing is, you're special, the PC, so you can do whatever you want without looking like you belong in a soup kitchen or the Hague.

Just trying to find a lore-type reason.

And it's all good fun, but when the answer isn't a joint effort between you and Bethesda, don't look for evidence. When there is no actual conclusion that makes sense based on observation, use evidence as inspiration instead and just make something up.

Well it could've been the reason, I'm just throwing things out there.

And the cleaning would take forever. All the dirt, cobwebs, bricks laying everywhere, and the tree roots.

Team smart ass wins by 100 point margin! :trophy:

It is cool that you try. Usually we don't try to explain gameplay elements with lore because that is just impossible. It's a bit of a tricky area though because while the abundance of forts and ruins and their circular layout is gameplay related, they still used to have a purpose for their existence.

My Guess is that war just naturally became a far away-thing in Cyrodiil, and legionairres were just sent to Town Castles instead, as Crime became a greater Concern then War.

I did miss forts out of towns though, in Oblivion. They were very cool to run into in Morrowind, even though they were just a stone's throw away.

it's not only the forts wich don't make sense, also lots of goblin infested mines, in morrowind many of the mines where still operative ...

But couldn't they put one functioning fort out of all the forts in Cyrodiil?

But you have to keep in mind that mining is a extremely major industry in Morrowind. I've never heard any mention of mining being as valuable as it is in Morrowind in Cyrodiil.

Also, the way I see the Imperials expanding, I see a donut. They harvested all possible from Cyrodiil, so moved on. As we do see in Morrowind.. There is a huge gap of resources in the home continent, so they are dependent on resources from other Provinces.

Still, there are some supplies of silver, and in some cases gold in Oblivion, but I think it's a safe guess that Cyrodiil has been mined and picked clean, and that is why they are mining Ebony on Solstheim and other areas outside of Cyrodiil.

And that is probably why they are taking over Morrowind.

It is an interesting concept, the 'donut effect,' and it could be used to set up a fall of Cyrodiil and the Legion in TESV.

They should have, but they didn't (except Battlehorn but that is a DLC, and even that fort was being invaded by Mauraders), it's pretty much a shame they didn't, I believe there were modding plans for the not quest related forts, to make them liveable again, ofcourse I understand a couple of forts (specially the far away), can be ruins, but the forts along the roads and towns shouldn't been ruins at all ...

The seem counts for Mines, it's so far unlogical that all mines are infested by goblins, bandits, mauraders, undeads, vampires, trolls, will'o'wisps, and whatever else there is ...

But the majority of players probaly don't care about that ...

On other rate I might been thinkin' there is a kind of sense in here, In the Netherlands many of the forts who where used during the sixteen/seventeen/eighteen/nineteen/ and early twenty century, are unused (but not over runned with mobs), many of them are now-a-days or just ruins, or they are museaums ... Maybe a handfull are still in use ...

Forgive me bad Ingrish I'm to lame to check my spelling

Hmm..

It would make sense for some forts/mines to be over-run by marauders and vampires respectively, but as you said every single one doesn't make sense. But then again, Oblivion is not the best game Lore-Keeping-Wise, and they probably just wanted to add a bunch of dungeons.

One Empty one [Fort] now and then would add great atmosphere, or maybe one filled only with about two Nonrespawning wraiths and undoccumented quests about who the wraiths are and why they are there.. but clearly Bethesda just wanted to make Oblivion more action-based then anything else, and sadly, it brings up questions like this.

Personally, I don't know how forts inhabited by wolves and the like have traps set up with no way over them but to activate them, or carefully (humanly) be aware of it and step over it, with creatures behind them. I guess it's one of those things overlooked that disappoints us lorewise.. ohh well.

Looking around in Cyrodiil: Fort Irony and a couple other forts on the panther would make great ports.

Cyrodiil will go through another overhaul, in the next game we will get a map of Tamriel, and there will be dozens of new cities at these very locations. At least they got the sparsely populated part of the lore down for Oblivion.

they fell into disrepair when the legion stoped using them. they are a bit like roman forts they got abandoned and fell into disrepair

Please read into a topic before posting a reply. We ALL know that. We're trying to find out WHY they were abandoned.

Something to put in the http://www.gamesas.com/bgsforums/index.php?showtopic=883183&st=160&#entry12980867 I guess.