There are still guards in the cities right.And camps.Anyone else think that in the civil war there were MAYBE 3 decent quests...and the rest(including taking over forts) were crap?

The civil war is half baked..blame the release date (11-11-11). I'm still amazed how the stormcloaks can take a hold like the reach only by gaining a puny fort. How much fun would be fighting on markarth, or in the imperial side, defending markarth aganist the stormcloaks.

@OP

Because time constraints

Noone asked for Skyrim so soon.

The civil war went through a hell of a lot of different iterations (there's a lovely message left by Bethesda explaining this within the script files), which means there's a lot of cut content and things seem a little bit short at times.

yeah like those above me said, they cut a lot of content due to idiotic time restraints... taking over a hold was originally supposed to be like taking Whiterun if you side with the Stormcloaks in addition to taking over the forts.