So apparently there is a war going on in skyrim but i have yet to see anything pointing towards this war. Sure i here people talk about it, and i see every once and a while some imperials taking stormcloaks to Solitude but still, i'm seeing no war. here is what i'd love to see

I'd love to see some battle's happening. I'm out hunting something then i come ontop of a hill and i see like 10 storm cloaks and 10 imperials fighting to the death. would that not be cool*question mark* sorry my key bored just like broke and i cant put punctuation other then periods...

any ways, i think it would be pretty cool, just to come up on a little battle, just random, not scripted, just randomly in the open, id love to see some happen in the rift forest, oh my, by the nines that would be amazing to watch!

what do you think*question mark*

Unless you yourself start the civil war questline, there are no battles. And even then, only the battles that you take part in for the questline take place... Yep, another thing Beth didn't manage to do right...

There are some random encounters with, I think, four on four soldiers battling it out. There are also a few signs of past battles here and there.
I haven't yet started the Civil War quest line either, so its all pretty low key.

Civil war my ass, a few four man battles once in a blue moon is more of a 1000 year family feud than a civil war. It doesn't have an effect on anything. another example of pure lack of depth.

New Vegas's Warzones mod springs to mind.

You can start battles by your actions in the main quest without starting either side. The "truce" that is negotiated will start some skirmishes. But I agree... for a country in a state of war, it's pretty much business as usual.

I think the war was a bit weak. I never ran into post-battle corpses, I never stumbled upon a battle in the wild. I attack an Imperial Patrol and get a bounty on me. I attack an Imperial camp and find an unkillable NPC for some reason, and end up running away. Random imperials wandering around never reacted to me being a high ranking stormcloak. There were no defense missions - what I mean by that is, the Imperials never attacked a stormcloak city.

Basically I dont feel like a war is going on in my absense. I feel it stops and starts each time I take a quest. Lore wise it's a pretty interest conflict, as you can see with all the imperial vs. stormcloak threads, but ingame it just feels like a task.

There was a bigger war around Ranger station Charlie.

The reason there's no "War" going on is because neither side really wants to try and restart anything - Both factions are too exhausted to try and take new territory. Until the Dragonborn gets involved, neither side has enough offensive ability to actually do anything. If it were a risk-board, there are only two armies on each held territory, and nobody's getting more than one reinforcement per turn.

While there may not be large battles until you advance through either side, there are descriptions of skirmishes between the Empire and Stormcloaks. In my 200+ hours with Skyrim I've only seen four skirmishes between the two parties and I didn't feel like there was a war going on at all until I played the Civil War questline.

It's kind of like everyone else in Skyrim, if I just stood around and did nothing after getting out of helgen no body would do anything important. Sorry Bethesda, I still love Skyrim but why can't anyone do anything for themselves?

Because its a video game not a movie. We're suppose to do stuff not watch it happen. In most every video game nothing happens if you just stand there. How would you feel if you missed out on most of the game because you were doing other stuff.

A simple fix would be to add patrolling Imperials and Stormcloaks, and have them only hostile to each other. They would spawn randomly too. That would make things interesting.

There is none, until you join up. Even then it is pretty bad.

Okay, I didn't think the post through and now I feel stupid. Excuse me while I put my foot in my mouth.

This is why I look forward to this mod:

http://www.gamesas.com/topic/1325691-idea-radiance-a-simple-immersion-booster/

I agree there should have been more signs of war, obviously you couldn't have significant battles, but small skirmishes would be cool