Ok so im playing a nuetral character atm and ive been avoiding all civil war issues but i have been reading alot of in game tomes and talking to alot of not so important npc's to see what was what before I made my decision.

I figured peoples beef with the stormcloaks was their

• Racism
  
• Ulfric being power hungry
  
• Not being as strong as the empire regards fighting the aldmeri

Stormcloak Racism

The stormcloaks seems to be very racist against the dark elves so i investigated windhelm , stormcloak HQ , so yeah they live in slums after they migrated their and they are treated like dirt but why ?

If you ask that drunk who accuses the dark elf of being an imperial spy and ask him why he hates them it's because they are not helping in the war which is what they were arguing about in the first place and if you play a dark elf and join the stormcloaks they have no problems with you joining and treat you the same as you are in that army as any other race , even altmer , the racism comes stems from suspicion mainly and if you talk to the dark elf merchant by the smithy in windhelm she says they gave her a hard time at first but she proved herself through hard work and they dont have a problem with her so it seems to be more of a cultural thing of proving yourself than a purely racist thing. Also some npc their , free winter i think is concerned for how they are treated but he isn't empire , we can't judge a whole nations views based on one or two people .

The kahjit on the other hand aren't allowed into the cities but those are both empire and stormcloak supporting cities and to be fair the only kahjit i seem to find in skyrim are bandits or caravaneers which if you do the theives guild questline which I learned , deal illegal narcotics such as moon sugar and skooma and will buy and sell stolen goods. People have need to be suspicious to be fair and even so its everyone that's like that , not just stormcloaks.

Ulfric
Not much to say really , he does come across that way but if you do side with him and win he doesnt declare himself high king even when prompted by galfar his righthand man , he still opts for the moot and he gets straight on to planning the defense against the aldmeri who he says will probably attack by shoreside which given skyrims mountainous terrain seems the logical choice becuase the stormcloaks know the land and with the mountains everywhere it would be easy to predict and cut off enemies and slaughter them in guerilla warfare so ulfric is no fool and misread in my opinion.

Who stands a better chance against the aldmeri

As i said before the aldmeri have a major disadvantage by land and must go by sea , either way they won't be difficult to predict and skyrims terrain and climate gives the stormcloaks a major advantage. But I should discuss why the empire is weak.

The dark brotherhood quest-line surprisingly gave me a wealth of information on the empires strength

1. obviously being the half assed , incredibly easy to kill security that was the emperors personal gaurds o.0

2. emporer knew he was going to die by the dark brotherhoods hand stating he "told them you cannot stop the brotherhood" and according to cicero's journals the skyrim sanctuary was the only one left in existence , the last one to fall was cheydinhal and that saw so little work that cicero was driven mad from boredom which led to his jester alter ego , how little faith must he have had in his own personal gaurd that he knew you were coming for him and he didn't even appoint a single bodygaurd in his office becuase he saw no point , some of the crew werent even armed

3. Cicero's journals state that cheydinhal is being torn apart by a turf war between two skooma dealers , cheydinhal ! a capital , one of the biggest cities in cyrodill being fought over by two drug dealers , bravil was also ransacked by lowlifes hence why they moved the nightmother and bandits just roam the city streets , the empire has fallen to pieces

Another few things I've noticed , you can side with hadvar who saves you at the start if you follow him yet he didn't bother debating sending you to the block seconds earlier because he didn't want to question a superior , the empire has lost it's spine , they are too afraid to stand yo to superiors like hadvar to that harlet at the beginning and the empire to the aldmeri ( during the truce negotiation they had to be present at it despite the fight being purely and empire vs stormcloak matter but only the stomrcloaks had the spine to say they had no right to be their and forced them to leave ) .

The last point leads to this one too , if the aldmeri have to be present in all empire affairs how are they going to plan an attack againt the aldmeri without them knowing before it gets too far ? I just don't think it would be possible

One last point on the empires weakness , look to it's supporters , see where their heart truly lies , wealth and power , the jarl of markarth , the battle-borns and erikur , thane of solitude , question all of them ,( Erikur at the aldmeri party in the main quest ) , they all are with the empire for money or power .

The last point overall is what the aldmeri want , read the dossiers at elenwens party , they dont want an empire victory or a stormcloak victory , they want to two forces to weaken each other to make it easier to take over , they are playing them against each other , yes they had ulfric captured and lied to him at a point to manipulate him and marked him as an asset but thats aldmeri arrogance , the same dossier states that he is uncooperative and wont speak to them , and as my earlier point above showed , he has no plans of helping them.

So that's all my stuff I'd love to hear your opinions , especially empire supporters in case their is anything i'm missing or overlooking

To be honest, this could have been put in the lore forum.

Anyways, the Thalmor are pitting the Empire against its own provinces (Hammerfell and Skyrim) to weaken all parties, so that the Aldmeri Dominion can take over all of Tamriel. This fits into their ultimate goal of unraveling the Mundus (the Aldmer, and the altmer by extension believe they are, and they are, the descendants of the aedra) to make things like they were before the creation of the Mundus.

Ulfric's main reason for rebelling is just to seize power for himself. That's not to say that he doesn't believe in preserving Skyrim's traditions and his other platforms, but that Ulfric is power hungry. The other Stormcloaks are behind him to preserve their way of life.

This is without mentioning the Rebel/King/Observer (look it up, it's interesting) in which Ulfric is the Rebel.

Ulfric or the PC have the highest chance of destroying the Thalmor. It falls to whoever is the Shezzarine (reincarnation of Shezzar/Lorkhan/Shor; and champion of men/pro-Mundus races). The Thalmor are very anti-Mundus, so it falls to the Shezzarine to destroy them all (this has happened repeatedly through history: Pelinal vs. the Ayleids is a good example). Well...sort of. All of this is just me fan-wanking.

Either that, or Alduin will just eat the world, killing everyone.

Hi. Just found your post. I had discussed many of these things when calling for an alternative ending for the Civil War quest, but you revealed a bit of info from the Dark Brotherhood that I lacked. Great stuff. I'll try to sum up what I've said elsewhere:

Unlike most of the races of Tamriel, which see themselves as a created part of the Mundus, the Altmer view themselves as the DESCENDANTS of the gods, above and better than the other races. Although all elven races believe this to some degree, the Thalmor (like modern radical fundamentalists) believe it as fact.

Thalmor was the name of the provisional government set up by the Bosmer and the Altmer during the First Aldmeri Dominion. Claiming the Summerset Isles for themselves, they renamed them Alinor in the Fourth Era. The Thalmor sought to unify the land, even before, along with parts of Hammerfell, to align it against seafaring threats that plagued the isles for centuries.However, they could not stand against the forces of Tiber Septim and the Numidium, which crushed the Dominion and finally brought the Summerset Isle into the Imperial fold in 2E 896. Then, in the War of the Isle of 3E 110, the Maormer were on the brink of finally taking Summerset, and the Altmer had to accept assistance from the Empire to survive. The Altmer remember these incidents with shame and horror, and they have likely contributed to recent social unrest amongst their youth. This sparked a deep-seated hatred for the Septim Dynasty and the man who apothesised into the deity, Talos.

Just prior to the beginning of the 4th era, during the Oblivion crisis, the Thalmor, by then a minor sect in the Summerset Isle, was able to use the Oblivion crisis to increase their power and seize control of Summerset Isle. Shortly thereafter Summerset Isle defected from the Empire to form the Second Aldmeri Dominion. They then began to pull away supporting provences from the Empire, either by political coup (Valenwood), magical trickery (Elswyre) or outright war (Hammerfell). The consistant overall goal was to take down the Empire. Directly attacking the Empire to the extent they did during the Great War was unintended and utimately served to slow down their overall plan. It started as a two pronged attack into both Cyrodiil and Hammerfell. Later observers would come to the conclusion that the original intent of attacking Cyrodill was to tie down Imperial forces while the Thalmore seized their true objective: Hammerfell. However, their initial incursions into Cyrodill were far more successful than expected, and the focused changed. That divided focus is what would eventually lead to their failure to completely take either objective, and the signing of the White-Gold Concordat.

Skyrim is the next target, but not in the way Ulfric thinks. Directly attacking Skyrim would be a difficult way of removing them from the Empire's sphere of influence. But stiring up cultural strife (banning Talos worship) and weakening them militaraly (via Civil War) could be achieved with little or no direct action. It might be noticed by an trained and experienced intelligence gathering force, which was why the Blades were destroyed.

The information you gathered from the Brotherhood questline about the internal state of the Empire shows how devestated the military was after the Battle of the Red Ring, and why the Emperor felt he had to sign the White-Gold Concordat. The Emperor knew he barely had enough troops to maintain order in Cyrodill, let alone continue a war against the Dominion. The Thalmor then further weakened Cyrodill (and allowed for the rise in crime there) by pulling so many Imperial troops into Skyrim to enforce the ban on Talos worship, and later deal with the Civil War.

The Emperor didn't lack for boldness on the battlefield, as he showed in the Battle of the Red Ring. It was his lack of biology knowledge that kept him from seeing that he could have continued the fight and beaten the Dominion. Remember that the Dominion suffered losses just as heavy as the Empire during the Great War. That's why neither side could continue fighting and agreed to a treaty. You don't agree to a treaty if you still think you can win now. But while both sides suffered the same losses, those losses affected the Dominion far worse than the Empire realized. All of the Mer races (High Elf, Bosmer, Dunmer) have very long life spans; hundreds of years. But in nature (and this is documented in Elder Scrolls lore) life forms with long life spans don't reproduce as often. A High Elf couple might produce 2-3 children over the course of 300-400 years. Humans, however, reproduce like rabbits (in fact this is probably what led the Snow Elves to attempt to wipe out the first Nord immigrants. They had gotten along quite well at first, but after 20 years it would have become obvious to them that the Nords would eventually breed them out of their own homeland). That's why the Dominion would go for long periods of not taking action; they had to train conscripts from acquired nations to take the place of High Elves who died on the battle field.

The Emperor blames himself for the current state of the Empire, and as you said left himself open to assassination by the Brotherhood. He made the decisions that he thought would buy him time to rebuild his armies. He wasn't weak, he was just wrong. Nevermind the Empire, Cyrodill, Skyrim, Hammerfell or High Rock. It's the control or destrucion of humanity that's the ultimate goal of the Dominion. Both of the choices given for the Civil War quest will both lead to ultimate defeat. To stand a chance of surviving Cyrodill would need to recall all troops from Skyrim to re-establish order there. But the only way for this to happen is for the Empire to make the transition from colonial power to nation state (like Britain did after WW II). Skyrim becoming independant and free would help them, but only if they remained loyal friends. Most of the Jarls would support this, but not Ulfric and his followers.

Perhaps an upcoming DLC will allow you as the Dragonborn to go to Cyrodill and claim the (now available) title of Emperor to bring this about.

Thoughts?

well hopefully you get to claim the emperors throne and bring in a law where its ok to shout beggars from one end of the street to another but yeah i was thinking that talos thing was just to incite war but i didn't have information to justify it as anything other than speculation , however I still believe Ulfric stands a pretty good chance , with the empire finally put down , galfar is a pretty good tactictian and knows his stuff and skyrim seems to have a good relation with hammerfell from what i've seen , married nord and redgaurds etc , only town they were refused from was pro empire , anyway , the almeri's main goal may be to take down the empire which is quite clear from talking to oldenomer , cant quite remember the name but he is at elenwens party , great place to get info 0.o he said the truce is just to suit them and when they are ready they will strike the empire down , not those exact words but more or less , but the dossiers marked esbern and whats her face , the other blade , cant remember her name as very high priority and were actively searching for them but anyway , i know they led the most crippling attacks against them at a time which musnt have been that long ago given they are human and delphine ( remembered her ) is only about say 40-50 ? but regardless of that they state full well that they knwo they are in hiding and don't contact any other blades member out of fear of safety , so they are virtually no threat , as you said they could point people to talos ban = war , that would wake people up and attack the aldmeri which i don't think they are ready for , 1. because the blunt guy oldenemer at elenwens pretty much said " were not ready , that's why there is a truce , when were ready bye bye empire" both dossiers stated they didn't want an empire or stormcloak victory which I now believe is because stormcloaks dont take no s*%^ and would attack the aldmeri and aren't afraid to do it which may trigger other nations to due so , as the akivr warriors said , the rebellion against the aldmeri is alive and well in hammerfell , so good that they dispatched about a dozen troops to search for one woman who sold them out to the aldmeri because they can spare that many men , they would also avoid an empire victory because if empire won they would have a strong stable foothold oncemore and right on the almeri's doorstep and could try rebuild the empire from there which would put the aldmeri back at square one , overall I think we give the aldmeri's strength too much credit , that last war they started against the empire , the in game books stated that it was a surprise attack the empire wasn't ready for , a cheap gambit so they moved to trickery and deceit to weaken the empire like all your examples of who they turned people against the empire just like karliah said in the theives guild , to defeat your enemy you must first undermine his allies . But the aldmeri have one very evident weakness , their arrogance , they will get so caught up in taking down the empire they will probably end the empire but they will create very angry independant nations who hate them and get on well together , if the aldmeri took cyrodill they would suffer a pincer attack duo to the geography of tamriel, redgaurds from the left and nords from the right , also ulfric has the power of the th'uum ( why don't they teach us the shout to rip people in half ? ) and if the aldmeri attack skyrim they also have dragons to contend with I think the aldmeri are being quite arrogant and overlooking alot of this , just talk to them about talos worship and you can nearly choke on their ego's and sense of entitlement . It's like reading the TESO forums heyoooo anyway yeah I think we have a distorted image of the aldmeri , they are powerful and crafty when really they are fools who don't exactly try hide the fact they aren't ready to tackle an empire that can't handle itself or take any other province by physical force , granted they are doing it in a clever way but spreading independence and pissing everyone off isn't gonna last long and again they stated they werent ready to attack despite the piss poor state of the empire who can't even stop two skooma dealers o.0

Wall of text hurts my eyes

I don't think the Emperor's guards in-game are a very good indicator of the Empire's strength. Skyrim is, first and foremost, not a story but a game. It has to be balanced. Realistically, an entire boat full of the Emperor's personal guards would kick the [censored] out of the player.

I read the OP, it was a good read.

Good job

Basically, the rundown is Cyrodiil royally screwed the pooch. Whichever side Skyrim chooses in the aftermath of the civil war (and 2nd Dragon war?) doesn't change the fact that they'll need 15-20 years to rebuild lost military power and infrastructure. From the atmosphere I got from the game, it seemed like the next Great War was looming quite near on the horizon. And although the Dominion suffered heavy losses in the first war, the power struggle and civil unrest that is still present in Cyrodiil three decades after the Concordat will make the province an easy target. It's not like they have a lot of allies now either.

High Rock and the Orsimer strongholds are currently their foremost sources of allied troops. But High Rock has a history of internal struggles and hunger for power.
The Dunmer bellied up after the Red Year and 2nd Arnesian War. Dunmer will probably be coming from the "refugee" areas in Skyrim and resettlers in Morrowind. Solstheim Dunmer, not so much if Lord of Souls indicates anything about their "independence".
Hammerfell basically resents the Empire and would probably only "ally" as a last resort. Even then, they were so ravaged by the time the Second Treaty of Stros M'Kai was signed that there isn't much strength left there. Some must've been rebuilt but it couldn't have been much.

If the Blades could get their organization operational, they could possibly at least sow some unrest in Anequina and Pelletine given the controversy the aftermath of the Void Nights caused. As far as I know, we've never been given any solid evidence of the Thalmor's involvement in the event. There's a lingering possibility of it all being opportunistic propaganda.
Unrest could also be sown in Valenwood by spreading knowledge about the many "purges".
It should at least buy the other provinces more time.

The real wildcard in my opinion is Argonia. The last major event was Umbriel 160 years ago. In that time span, the Argonians along with the Hist is probably close to full military strength, if not more, and would be a force to be reckoned with, especially if influenced by the Hist. However, they don't owe "true" allegiance to either the Empire or the Dominion. They've theoretically been independent all along, Tiber Septim never truly conquered all of Black Marsh. While I do find it unlikely that they'll side with the Dominion given said part's racial policy, they might go with the Empire out of security reasons or stay on the sidelines. That would make sense, strategically, weakening both parties and then sweeping them away with ease. But the Argonians have also never truly gone to war other than for "revenge" or defense as seen in the 1st and 2nd Arnesian Wars, the war with Tiber Septim's Empire and the Oblivion Crisis. So it truly is hard to tell how Argonia will play its cards.