The civil war in Skyrim is presented as a conflict that decides the fate of an entire province, but in reality it looks like a brawl between two dozen men in the courtyard of Whiterun. Battles that are described in dialogues as turning points are handled by the engine with a couple of squads, and after the third guard is killed, everything ends with a cry of victory.
One of the players decided to check how it would look at normal scales, and using console commands he pitted 120 Stormcloaks against 120 Legion soldiers on an open field. The result is impressive in scale and at the same time clearly demonstrates why Bethesda such scenes in Skyrim I didn’t. The Creation Engine considers each NPC a separate actor with its own package of behavior, and a hundred or two fighters in one cell for many modified builds ends up being eliminated even before the first strike.
The problem isn’t just performance. In combat AI Skyrim there is no formation, no flanks, no orders, so any mass battle turns into a slam near the stage, where two crowds run into each other and start waving their weapons. The Imperials in the video resemble a shield wall from afar, but this is an accident of the animations, not a tactic. One of the discussion participants put it bluntly:
It looks not like a phalanx, but like a crowd of confused people spilling out of a tavern.
The equipment was also a bit of a stretch. All legionnaires were given heavy armor, all Stormcloaks were given light armor, although in the game the standard set of the Legion in Skyrim is light, and heavy armor is worn by legates and officers. The reason is lore: after the Great War, the Legion is scattered throughout the Empire, supplies are poor, and units in Skyrim are closer to border scouts than to ceremonial cohorts. Apparently, the rebels’ two-handed axes were also removed, otherwise the armored formation would have been dismantled much faster.
A separate issue is the number. The Legion picks up people on the spot, that is, the Nords are mainly fighting on both sides, and reinforcements from Cyrodiil are stuck due to snow debris and never reach the province. The plausible picture looks more like two or three thousand rebels of varying quality against a thousand legionnaires with better discipline and equipment. The Stormcloaks have a minimum bar for entry; it is enough to kill an ice ghost and bring a tooth, and the religious fervor around Talos drives everyone into the ranks.
An attentive gamer noticed the different attitude of the Nords towards Talos in Oblivion and Skyrim – and received a completely logical explanation from the fans
And there is a factor that breaks any medieval tactics: a pair of battle magicians with a fireball turns a dense formation into a sieve, and one Shout of “Fus Ro Da” scatters fifty people at once. In this situation, the battles in Skyrim should have resembled not the collision of a legion with a phalanx, but the scattered formation of the First World War.
Three hundred people in one frame is no longer a battle for Skyrim, but an endurance test for the processor.
