Doesn't Make Sense ....

[Hjorlwulf]

Just coming back to Oblivion after many moons - actually, I still prefer Morrowind but my grandson wants to play Oblivion! So as for the question:

 

Supposedly this is a very large, thriving Empire, with legions of regulars and elite troops such as the Blades to boot. Morrowind has such a military - you can even join the faction and work your way up. Lots of thriving forts, personnel, the whole shooting match based loosely on the Roman Empire. So I come to the heart of this empire and find ....

 

EVERY Fort in a ring around the capital of the empire is abandoned and infested with monsters, necromancers and other evil types. Not a single working fort, no garrisons with duties to keep this area clear and safe - in fact, more like the end of Rome with the barbarians all over the place. Merely single guards roaming the roads - and for that matter WHERE are they based? It makes no sense at all. Anyone have any issue with this, or a good lore reason for it?

 

Edit: meds kicking in - that should have been "ruins in the middle of a thriving Empire" in the sub-title....

[ub3rman123]

Those forts were built a long time ago, during when the Empire was fighting with the Ayleids for freedom. Once the empire was established and Cyrodiil was civilized, they weren't necessary anymore. And so they were abandoned.

[Sudian]

well I don't exactly have a problem with it or a good lore reason per se. However what I do know from the game and this site is that the empire no longer has any enemies that they know of and there military presence is actually very low in general not just on the roads(although I have a mod that has pairs of guards on patrol, I think it is AlienSlof's extra horses but I could be mistaken as you will see from the post I just made I have over 300 mods and am not sure which mod does what exactly anymore) but anyway there isn't really any threat to the empire so the old king who gets assasinated in the beginning I guess he sort of neglected to watch his empire's borders properly or something I don't know. I do agree with you though that at least a few of those forts that are all over the place should be functional, maybe it is a mod already and if it is not then maybe I will consider making it one at some point in time or if not me then someone else.

 

This is a good point and although I have not played through Morrowind once yet when I do play through it I will keep an eye out for the military that you mentioned and the functional forts.

[Hjorlwulf]

Any decent military, especially one with a large and functioning task in the outer areas (at least Morrowind - four Legions there) would either use the existing infrastructure or raze it to the ground - NOT let it become a sanctuary for the types in them now. I would love a mod that allowed you to rebuild the Legions, and either repair or remove the old forts. It just jars on me - in case it ain't obvious, I am ex-military myself, and an amateur historian on things military since I was ten and discovered De Re Militarii by Vegetius - in 1960!

[ub3rman123]

Well, the empire was at peace for a while, and most of their resources are being used in holding the other provinces. That's why Morrowind has operating forts; it's still a frontier for the empire, as well as Skyrim and Hammerfell. They didn't have good methods to destroy the forts, anyways. Those things were solid. I guess the bandits didn't pose that much of a problem to them.

[DrunkenGamer]

Well, being a military brat myself, I see where you're coming from.

 

But consider: If you listen to the conversation of many NPC's in the game, you can gather that the Empire is having some trouble with other provinces already. Combine that with the fact that there's an Oblivion invasion going on, guards needed in cities and on patrol, and various other reasons, and you have a pretty legitimate reason for the neglect the forts receive. I agree, a couple of them should be fuctioning, but if you think about how widespread the Imperial influence is, and how much military support it needs, it's not so surprising to see this happening. The Roman Legion numbered in thousands and thousands and thousands. Think of Tamriel as the same; They have those thousands and thousands of men working, but they're everywhere BUT Cyrodiil.

 

Then, there's the suspension of disbelief thing you have to use. If you count up every single guard in Cyrodiil in-game, you'd probably come up with MAYBE 50. This is all the guards, the city guards in the IC, and the random spawns in places (like Kvatch, Oblivion Gates, etc). They're there and you know there's a military presence in Tamriel, they're just not very visible.

 

But I would like to see a mod that allows you to take up commissions to clear out forts for military use. Would be fun and would make fort-crawling more worthwhile.

[Megatarius]

I think the abandoned forts were all meant to be out in the boonies, but the game's technical requirement made the whole world smaller. Some of them are pretty close, and of course it would have been way better to have a few working ones.

 

This game in general is basically a dumb hack and slash in the guise of an intelligent role playing adventure. The beautiful graphics and staunch realism of the artistic style further pushes it toward the appearance of being way more intelligent than it is. It is, in fact, one of the least intelligent games I've ever played. It tries to do way too much, so none of it comes off very well. You know they rushed it for the release date of the XBOX 360, right? That's probably what killed a lot of the game, but I'm pretty sure they had the brainless model in place pretty early on.

 

A mod that adds real garrisons in each county, as well as the ability to join the faction, would rule. Even with no quests, it would provide a reason to hunt mauraders and bandits and goblins. You could bring in their weapons for bounty money or something.

[ub3rman123]

Actually, from someone who uses the CS, the exact guard count for all cities and legionnaires is 328. I only counted those with Guard-related factions, so I likely missed a few and got some false positives, but that's a good estimate. You just don't see all of them all of the time. About half are asleep in their beds, about 1/8 are quest related, and about 1/20 are dead.

[bben46]

Any decent military, especially one with a large and functioning task in the outer areas (at least Morrowind - four Legions there) would either use the existing infrastructure or raze it to the ground - NOT let it become a sanctuary for the types in them now. I would love a mod that allowed you to rebuild the Legions, and either repair or remove the old forts. It just jars on me - in case it ain't obvious, I am ex-military myself, and an amateur historian on things military since I was ten and discovered De Re Militarii by Vegetius - in 1960!

 

 

If you look around the US, USSR, Germany, England, France, Pacific Islands and many other parts of the world you will find quite a few abandoned military installations. Some with various equipment still in place - As a kid I played in abandoned WWII coastal defense artillery fortifications in California. And in my Internet wandering I recently saw a site where a group of Russians had found a cold war command center, (lots of pictures) with quite a bit of abandoned but useless equipment - broken down trucks, a radar set, bunks and furniture, and even a non functional tank that had its gun removed. When these places were no longer needed, they were generally just locked up and left - Just in case they might be needed again, and eventually forgotten. They are actually not often destroyed but just left to decay.

[DrunkenGamer]

They however were probably not infested by bandits, treasure hunters, ghosts, animals, and undead in general.