You can't ride a siege tower over Whiterun's walls because the interior won't load unless you go through the gate. If you breach the outer walls, all you'll find are a bunch of low-poly buildings and deserted streets. It's the perfect defence.
Jam Starling The city is an illusion and doesn't exist so once the enemy has stormed the castle, they're trapped inside with a slimy low res deserted park
Let's not forget Whiterun's biggest weakness: Most of the guards are ex-adventures who took arrows to the knees. What good are they going to be when dealing with attackers?
To be fair, they have the Companions to do all their freaking work. All of it. The guards can't even keep their prisoners contained or deal with hostage situations
"Everything falls apart after that." Literally, if you go with the Stormcloaks, the guy leading the attack mentions how terrible the condition the walls are in.
I wonder how the analysis changes when you take Skyrim's magic into account. I imagine siege towers would be a lot less effective if the enemy can have a wizard atop the castle slinging fireballs at it.
@@JoseSilva-ht8es At least the walls are stone. Wooden siege machines would be incredibly easy to burn, and a stone siege tower would be extremely heavy.
dude those walls are only against mammooths, wolves etc. the real enemies could easily teleport into the castle. so you protect them with barrier spells.
@@JB-xl2jc honestly everyone gets really political when it comes to the stormcloaks/imperials but I always choose stormcloaks because it's the best imo when it comes to raiding
"Here's a synopsis of whiterun's defenses" "Actually just kidding, this was just a buildup for me to talk about how amazing Corfe Castle was, get jebaited"
As for the state of the walls, I remember Balgruuf saying in one quest that the walls are barely holding together. Considering the age of the city in the lore, I expect those walls have been there since the Second Era and pre-date the design of siege towers and the concept of battlements.
You could argue whiterun has been around since the merethic era because that's when a group of the original companions found the skyforge and turned jorrvaskr into a shelter and settled the land where whiterun is now, all of whiterun was built around the skyforge and jorrvaskr
@@skonenextmadcriminals7776 200 horseback archers though.... you know, or a few trebuches.... like four. Edit: Also, without using a bug, only like 35 units can be on the tower (if there's a siege engine. if not, around 40)
@@udozocklein6023 200 horsearchers would still get slaughtered by 200 crossbow men, with any type of shield it is much harder but it is 200. Trebuchets however are the exact counter to this, with only counter being the balista which, wasn't always so great againts trebuchets most of the time. While yes, technically there is a limit to how many units are on tower, nothing really stops yoou from putting more, infact only a few of grouped units will merge out, though this is something finally fixed in Warlords, with a hard limit on how many can even be on walls.
@@ThatTonnatoTenrec horseback archers can often defeat tower defences, thats why they get banned. They are able to dodge the arrows. Anyways, trebs can be out of range of defence engines by a mininal distance. Though, figuring out this distance can be hard on circumstance.
Udo Zöcklein Dont know what you play but horseriders arent so powerfull, at least withiut shields. When you have 200 crossbow men it is hard to fight that off, comparing 200 horsearchers alone to an AI caste and that it is a big difference. Now im not saying they arent op, oh boy they are, but situation listed is much more trickier
"The great castle of dragonsreach was originally designed to trap and imprison dragons. That's why it's primarily constructed from wood." -The Senile Scribbles, Loading Page
Except it's not made out of wood, it's all stone. The only part that's made of wood are large planks holding up the roof, which even a dragon would have a hard time destroying. Plus, possibly even the roof was originally made of stone but it was easier to repair it with wood and Skyrim has not seen dragons for centuries.
You don't know, maybe one of Olaf's clever mages could of enchanted the wood to make it much more durable to elements (Like enchanting an item with the enchanting table,) or even just make it look like wood, when its really a very durable material, like stone as an example..
The fact that Whiterun's 12 inhabitants life safely inside the walls and the local 382 bandits outside of it should tell us enough about how great the city's defences are
They dont repair the walls because they arent at war until you join one side and due to the lack of time to fix the wall which likely states that they were fixing the walls but. Wasnt given enough time because of dragonborn
I think it's implied (if not outright stated) that between the civil war and the waning Empire, Skyrim just doesn't have the funds and resources left to maintain things. Solitude is well-kept because the High King was living there until less than a year before the game starts, but the further you go from Solitude, the poorer condition things are. The only exception being Riften which is probably a combination of being made of wood (an easier material to replace and build with) and because the Blackbriars are rich.
So strange how it looks insignificant from far away. Just looks like a bunch of small huts. When you're down in Whiterun, it actually feels like a properly sized town.
They could've made it bigger by adding more houses that were nothing more than hollow shells. That you can't interact with and are just there to make it look bigger. That would make the towns a lot bigger. But would also make them less immersive. Houses that are fully fleshed out makes it seem bigger when you can go inside them and move around both inside and out. Empty shells of houses creates size, but it's a size that you'll only see in passing. Whiterun is a dinky little place counted in houses, as seen from far away, but it seems quite big when you actually move around there, because there are things you can interact with. You can go from house to house, go inside some, get back out, go around to the one behind another to go in there. Instead of just walking on the street and seeing them in passing.
@kodaxmax they have no objections to beating up their countrymen, no questions asked, as long as someone pays them to do it, as evidenced by the "Hired Muscle" radiant quests. If you accidentally kill the (possibly innocent) target, they will even give you your payment anyway, but it will be reduced slightly. So they don't really care about who they fight or why, as long as there's glory in it. The only reason they stay in Jorrvaskr during the Whiterun siege is likely for game design reasons.
Shad: you wanna see an awesome fort in skyrim? look for Fort Sungard. it's built on a hard-to-reach spot, one gate, lots of sections and wall protections. it does not have a drawbridge and it's rather old and destroyed, but you can easily see how it would be defensible as hell.
Honestly, I get the feeling that the city defenses were built for the main purpose of keeping wild animals and monsters out rather than an opposing army. Also Skyrim would be a naturally difficult region for a large army to traverse in the first place, not to mention cart across siege equipment.
@@0saintclark0 wich proves an excellent defense for whiterun as its built basically in the center of a plains area, the closes forest is up a steep hill, and youd see them doing it from miles away, providing ample opportunity to do what the nords do best, harras the enemy with raids
@@o98z true, but I also disagree with the videos assertion that there was ANYWHERE a siege tower would work on whiterun. Even the two areas unencumbered by rocks are on slopes that would be too steep to push the towers up.
@Malum Nexus I always get the feeling that he would be a Balgruff type character. Never makes up his mind until the last second and is always too busy to truly ever have a chance to.
I love the enthusiasm you portray towards the castle with the strong defense, and how the queen, her daughters, and five men held the castle. You explained quite well the faults of Whiterun and how they could be improved. I enjoyed this because I learned what makes a good defense for a castle, and I learned some history.
According to legend, the palace today known as 'Dragonsreach' was originally a smaller building. However, with the intent of creating a prison for the dragon Numinex after its defeat at the hands of Olaf One-Eye, the people of Whiterun added a stone prison to the keep and renamed it Dragonsreach. Imperials have nothing to do with it. The only keep that has imperial influence is Solitude.
@@felipealarcon4622 yeah but those are the allegiances of the holds in the civil war, but every town has its own history, from solitude being the imperial jewel in skyrim to the ancient dwemer ruins of markarth, from poor marsh city of morthal to the falkreath which fun fact was actually part of cyrodiil, whiterun is possibly the oldest city in all of skyrim being possibly existent since before the dragon war (the middle of the merithic era) so atleast 5300 years old, i dont know much about riften but i know that dawnstar has been an important trade center in skyrim that was home to many important battles and that winterhold was once the largest and most important city in all of skyrim and if i remember correctly the capital of the province, windhelm is possibly as ancient as whiterun but not quite, funfact windhelm once was attacked by the akavirs
@@ygiuzebbe Isn't it mentioned that Windhelm was the first city in Tamriel settled by men which would make it older than Whiterun since it was made around Jorvaskrr which was made around the Skyforge
@@nemanja4758 Aye, Windhelm is the oldest. Settled after Ysgramor returned with his 500 Companions to wreak vengeance on the Snow Elves. As his campaign progressed he bade his men settle the new lands they came across, with the crew of the Jorrvaskr, under their captain Jeek of the River, first settling what would become Whiterun.
There's no rampant because if they had one the dragon born would be able to jump through the walls. And they can't have that because skyrim is in another loading area.
No, he wouldn't. There are plenty of places where you should be able to jump from the walls, like the back terrace in Dragonsreach, but you can't because of an invisible wall preventing it. Same thing would apply if there was a rampant on the wall.
R Vanzo This argument doesn't work considering Solitude literally has ramparts that you can walk on (with the use of invisible walls). I guess the developers at Bethesda were drunk when they were creating Whiterun.
@@pyroshrimp4073 Mundus, The Physical Plane of Elder Scrolls, is the rotting corpse of the Origin God, so yeah their World is Literally slowly decaying.
@@Ugarimpty That would explain why their technology has been the same for thousands of years and why older civs were more advanced in both tech and magic.
@@kodaxmax Tech in Mundus (or at least Tamriel) has actually been declining. IIRC in the Merethic Era they had airships and what was essentially the Internet. And for that matter, the world as presented in Morrowind seemed more high tech than that of Skyrim, and in turn seemed slightly lower tech than the world as presented in Redguard.
Skyrim was meant to be played on last gen consoles (PS3, Xbox 360) so the world, the city, even the number of npcs and houses have to be small so the consoles won't blow up. I hope bethesda will fix that in the next TES
Alex Sivaas you remember imperial city? Huge city, but it wasn't in my opinion as good as the smaller ones, too big to really explore and Bethesda hadn't even put that many quests in there, I rather want alot of very fleshed out smaller cities than massive repetetive citied
I have fallen off that god damn bridge several times when carelessly walking to the college. Fortunately, a lot of the area below it is water and you don't take damage from falling into water for some... Reason....
Whiterun wasn't made to defend. Whiteun was made around Dragonsreach, you see And Dragonsreach's main goal wasn't to keep people out, it was to keep Numinex in.
While all the points of this video are absolutely valid, one sort of rule of thumb I have when it comes to Skyrim's towns and cities and such is to think of the in-game versions as a sort of "representation" of something that, if it were real, would be maybe ten to one hundred times bigger. It's just something that helps the ol' suspension of disbelief when I'm told a settlement that would barely qualify as a village is supposed to be the central trade hub of an entire province (which if I'm not mistaken, is supposed to be about the size of Germany, though calculations vary greatly). Granted, that doesn't excuse the utterly horrid state of Whiterun's defenses. Though as you mentioned, its defenses along with all the castles and forts around it are in deplorable disrepair, which sort of makes sense. This is a city that probably hasn't needed to deal with anything more than a gang of bandits in somewhere around a thousand years, give or take, so I could imagine that sturdy defenses are pretty low on their priority list. Now I would be much more curious about cities like Solitude and Windhelm, which have seen their share of fighting and sieges even during the time of the Tamrielic Empire, and are clearly built with such things in mind.
This is a good point, and it makes sense to me. A lot of the locations is Skyrim seem bizarrely small. Both in terms of geography and population. It makes sense that they would merely be stand-ins for things that would be an order of magnitude larger. Interesting fact: all of Skyrim itself is actually smaller than Manhattan Island.
That may be the case but the previous elder scrolls games ( morrowind and oblivion) had some sizeable cities. Vivec, Balmora and the Imperial City come to mind,
I think about it more like the planet that Elder Scrolls takes place on is tiny. If Skyrim is really only this big, where you could walk to one end from the other in under a day, the planet couldn't support anywhere near as many people as ours can. So the population is kept fairly low by the availability of food and land, and warring between the other lands. Consequently, the lack of people meant lack of inventors and geniuses to propel science and technology... and >architecture< along as we have.
They may have had a Dr. Who event on. However blue police boxes were common once upon a time in the UK. Red ones were public use only though and some still exist here, most blue ones are gone.
Bethesda in 2011: Hey Todd, should we add towers and actually design these cities to be defensible? Todd Howard: Nah, nobody is gonna’ care about that Shadiversity in 2016: So anyway, I took offence to that
Castles are good places for battlefield control weapons such as anti-aircraft guns and long range artillery. Existing crusader castles in Syria are used for those things. Also, anti-structure bombs have trouble destroying castles. Krak de Chevaliers in Syria took multiple bombs and is still standing, albeit with some damage. Bunker Busters don't work either 'cause castle construction is so much simpler than bunker construction that the bombs don't arm properly and detonate in the wrong spots.
you people are idiots. DRAGONS! remember! forget the damn aa guns, forget the battlefield control, forget anything having to do with modern warfare! None of that has anything to do with my original comment.
To be fair though, in Skyrim, the dragons have been extinct and thought of as legend for centuries, they wouldn't fortify their castle in preparation of what amounts to fairy tale attacked them. The only part of the castle intended to defend against dragons is the keep, as you see in the main story.
All the forts and castles in skyrim, and the majority of all villages were razed during the oblivion crisis, it is said that the region of skyrim suffered the most during the oblivion crisis
Everything in Skyrim is condensed in order to not force players to spend an actual 24 hours to complete a day, and to not spend multiple days of real life playing the game in order to get from one town to another. The time scale is reduced by 20. However, if you apply this to the physical scale of the province, you only get a size of about 70km from east to west - compare that to Belgium, which is over 4 times as large. I think it's more realistic to think of Skyrim as being about the size of Montana, which is about 1,000km across, meaning that the in-game Skyrim is 0.3% the size of a more realistic Skyrim. That means that the 8 homes in Whiterun are meant to represent a population of about 8,000 people if you assume there's 3 people in each home - a totally realistic population for a small regional capital. In fact, you could put 9 people in each home without it being unrealistic, and have a population of 24,000, which is a respectable community without being too large for credulity. Regardless, your analysis is great. The only thing I'd add is that I'm not sure Whiterun has ever really needed to test it's security. The lore doesn't point to any wars having been fought for the city, other than the Civil War, which of course, results in you getting into the city and taking it. Before that they'd only ever been attacked by bandits and beasts, and of course dragons (but those don't care about towers and drawbridges, do they?). So it's possible that it's realistic that Whiterun's defenses are lackluster, but still adequate for their needs.
The oblivion crisis affected all of Tamriel, so surely Whiterun as well. King Olaf, the one who captured Numinex and had dragonsreach be constructed, also warred with some other holds. In fact, infighting is fairly common in skyrim. And allegedly frost trolls also attack Whiterun very often, but I assume this refers to the hold going by the same name and not the city, as it is more likely for a troll to attack a farm for food than to siege a city.
@@raynes6286 it would actually be very cool, too much immersion and you would also feel the real size of skyrim, feel like the real dragon born in a real world with real time
Youssef Guizani Cool yes, but when you ride three days there and back for a generic fetch quest then get sent back to the same city... It’ll get tedious fast.
The thing is, Whiterun's walls are actually accurate to the time, place, and type of settlement that the game features. Corfe castle was built in the eleventh century, when ramparts, battlements and bastions were actually feasible and effective. Corfe was also designed as a defensible fort. Skyrim is set in a time period long before that, sharing many features with the time period of the early Roman Empire (around 350 - 650 A.D.), this can be proven by the Imperial Legion, the fact that ships in Skyrim seem not to house cannons, the lack of cannons and ballistic weapons at all - and, surprise surprise, the architecture - namely the walls and forts. Whiterun is designed as an economic vantage point, rather than a military one. It is central in the land, and oversees a wide stretch of farmland, which is defended mainly by outer forts such as fort Greenwall and the Western Watchtower. The walls of Whiterun are designed primarily to section off parts of the city during peacetime, in order to separate classes, and create an obvious class system. The walls were not designed to be a point of defense should a hostile force attempt to take the castle, but to provide an order to the layout of the city. Ramparts, bastions and battlements, as well as crenelations, proper keeps and even siege equipment itself only became popular in the Saxon and Norman time periods, such as when Corfe Castle was built. Even Solitude doesn't feature much in the way of Castle Age defenses, barring the presence of Castle Dour, and the use of terrain. The same goes for Windhelm and Markarth. The defensible forts dotted throughout Skyrim such as Fort Greenwall, are actually inaccurate in the fact that they DO have ramparts and battlements and bastions and crenelations - all things that only came into being in the Saxon times and beyond, when ballistics became a huge part of any attack or defense. The little siege equipment shown in Skyrim (during the Stormcloak's attack on Whiterun) is also inaccurate for this reason. And the fact that Skyrim is decidedly Scandinavian, where Corfe Castle was built in Norman Britain, means that the architecture of Whiterun as a settlement is actually dead on what it should be! :D (Too long... Didn't read...)
I agree I actually think Skyrim is inspired by Scotland in the period of time just before the Roman Empire fell. Scotland was never taken by the Roman Empire despite numerous attempts. They weren't able to unite 'Albion' which is modern day mainland Britain, the Empire had little influence on Scotland at all and it remained very tribal and divided and supposedly only united to stop the Roman invasions, the Roman Empire only managed to gain a small part of Scotland and never made it further north. The Scottish people weren't Gaelic, Britton or Celtic then, they were Picts, they are the oldest tribes of modern Britain and just google them they are pretty much Nords lol.
>And the fact that Skyrim is decidedly Scandinavian If that were true, what is the Roman legion doing in Scandinavia? The answer is, Skyrim has no real-life definite equivalent. It has Scandinavian, but also Germanic and Briton influences.
Man, Corf Castle really brings back some good memories. When I was like 8 or something, I went camping next to Corf Castle in designated camp site. Must have been one of the first times we went camping as a family. We had an absolute blast there. Loads of other kids around the place and did almost nothing but play games for the whole time were there. The castle itself was bloody impressive as well. Even my feeble 8 year old mind was capable of processing that. I'd seen a few castles with my family up to that point but this one was definitely my favourite
When a place as white run can get half the population death in one night by 3 vampires i say no, the defenses arent good at all. The only reason they are alive is because i lower the difficulty and reload the game.
Well, even so, Whiterun is the economic hub of Skyrim due to its central location. The problem is that we don't get to dig into the lore or here lore rumors from random people anymore like in Morrowind. Because it's heavily implied by the game that Skyrim has been in a big economic depression ever since the Great War and it possibly didn't even fully recover from the Oblivion Crisis by the time the War started. IIRC, Balgruuf also mentions that taxes by the Empire on Skyrim were raised as a result of the War, as well, so he hasn't had the money to fund a rebuilding of the walls.
TBH, this sounds more like a rhapsody on korf castle(spelling ?) than whiterun defenses. Tho of course, you did say everything there is to say about whiterun.
Yeah, I love using real castles as a comparison to the fictional ones I'm reviewing as it means I can put a little bit of history into the video that people would not really be interested in otherwise. How many people here would have clicked to watch a video on Corfe castle by itself? Comparing fictional castles to real ones works better to educate people about history then if I was to just do a video on historical castles by themselves.
CDStoner I'm on the phone so I'm not going to run any research of my own, but what was the water supply of Corfe like? Arguably the most important part of resisting long sieges. Up that hill, I imagine it was all carried in buckets or barrels in carts.
BC, not a 100% on Corfe, but many castles had wells, even if they were on hilltops, or large underground reservoirs. Corfe was very much built with sieges in mind so I imagine it had one or the other beneath the keep.
Imagine trying to use a siege tower to get in whiterun but then you come face to face with a literal demigod who destroys your tower and kill all of your comrades by simply saying 3 words
100% agree. it unfortunate that we have no visuals predating the oblivion crisis leading into the great war of the fourth era however. using windhelm or solitude as examples of what these defenses could have been may give you a different perspective however. try and keep in mind that whatever is among the top 10 in wealthiest cities in tamriel. looking forward to your next one
solitude is the STUPIDEST city I have ever seen. Its built on an arching rock. A FUCKING ARCH. All you need to do to destroy the city and everyone in it is use a catapult to sent it toppling.
Dominic Berry provided you could bypass the overwhelming naval defenses, funnel through the narrow harbour and through great casualty be able to set up a siege on a dock that is potentially now on fire you would be partially correct. the rock the city sits on is three times the thickness of the city. you're up for a challenge using guided missiles. last I checked there aren't any races with missiles in tamriel. by land it's a fortified hill of death, but that's still safer than taking a naval power by sea
Now here are a few issues; You speak of putting up a siege tower against the wall but in order to do that, one has to build or bring up the thing first. As we note, there are no trees around Whiterun. A handful south, but thats it. So either an attacking force(Ulfric I assume) would have to either build a siege tower on site or bring up a tower in a siege train. The former is a serious problem as the lack of trees in the area means that building a tower from wood found on site is impossible. The only other option is to bring the wood up from elsewhere but that is still a logistical nightmare. As we see from history, medieval attempts at proper logistics rarely worked. Edward IIIs attempt at doing such in his very last campaign through France in 1359-60 failed miserably with only a first shipment arriving. Its possible I suppose, but its a considerable effort, still quite timeconsuming. The other option is to bring up a siegetrain but when you look at the road from Windhelm to Whiterun, you can see that that is easier said than done. Whatever way it is done, is timeconsuming and would require a (loose) siege for some time at the least. If Whiterun is supposed to be a bigger city(bigger than represented ingame) then it would take a considerable force. The crumbling walls remain a considerable obstacle. Even the Earl of Lancaster prefered not to assault Perigueux's walls in 1345 despite the fact that part of it consisted of a crumbling roman wall dating back to the 3rd century. The Captal de Buch would capture it by escalade at night ten years later. Walls are expensive btw. Montpellier bancrupted itself and went from an economic powerhouse and tradehub to an insignificant town when it decided to fund and build a new wall. Similar fate to Reims at about the same time, though part of its new walls were paid with royal money, which helped quite a bit. Such a siege is a problem as well, as logistics are a problem. I dont expect the jarl of Whiterun to leave food outside his own walls so that has to come from elsewhere. The only nearby towns are Riverwood and Karthwasten. The former has a wall, a small garrison and a bridge that can defend it. The bridge can be destroyed even. Its an important position and I would assume that it would receive reinforcements(Imperial or from Falkreath) in case a siege is imminent. Karthwasten is far away and goes past Fort Greymoor, held by bandits unless the player frees it. Then an Imperial garisson is installed, one that can attack any foraging parties on the roads east and even make some sorties against a siege around Whiterun. Another important bastion that would require a screening force anyways. Food would be a serious problem for any large force sitting outside the walls of Whiterun and food would run out long before siegeweapons are built imho. Edward III ran into this very problem in his last campaign in 1360 around Reims, he had no food and his army marched off not two weeks after he had arrived, despite elaborate efforts to create a logistical system to feed his forces. Even if Greymoor is guarded you need quite a force to surround Whiterun, unless you decide that it need not be surrounded at all but then reinforcements and supplies can come in from west or north at any time to help defend it. If you do decide to surround it then we look at Rennes which was besieged by the Duke of Lancaster in 1356. But since the city was so large he couldnt entirely surround it and supplies and men constantly entered the city from several directions. Rennes was the Duke's only real failure and not really a strange one. Taking cities was difficult as they were large and require a great effort. Edwards own siege of Calais is a good example. Or the capture of Saint Sauveur le Vicomte in the Cotentin peninsula by Bertrand du Guesclin mauch later in the 14th century. It was shot to bits with bombards and besieged for 9 months, but the large garisson of 900 was eventually bought off. Its commander Sir Thomas Trivet being held responsible for its loss when he returned to England. He lost his 2000 Pound bribe when it was decided that Saint Sauveur could have held out for much longer. He was lucky not to have lost his head. I think a siege of Whiterun would be hard regardless, as supplies are a serious problem. An attack on the walls has to be made else the siege fails, but even a dilapidated wall can be held with some effort and manpower. An I think its always going to end in a play for time, can the attackers build siegeweapons and breach the wall before their food runs out?
Master Nailes i think it would be easy. you can breach the wall with ladders at multible places since there are only a few defenders on the towers and none on the wall.
putting some barrels with planks put solves that problem really, as the wall isnt very high on the inside. In fact, the ground at the wall is hardly lower than that in the towers.
Master Nailes digging under the walls is clearly no option so is poisoning the water. But apart from the classical methodes you could bring in some giants or what ever.
Considering the rocky soil, mining would be hard and timeconsuming. Poisoning the water works both ways as attackers would use local sources aswell. Giants or mammoths may work and so would dragon allies, the latter seemed to have worked well in GoT, but I have little experience with fantasy sieges. So I'll leave that open.
Master Nailes yes i said that mining or poisoning would not work. the problem with whitrun is that they are neutrual so you could only besiege the castle when you are neutrual to Imps and nords yourself.
I don't understand why people of skyrim don't repair their defences. It is not that difficult. At the beginning of the siege of Brno (where I live) by Swedes the city defences were lacking but they were improved a lot during the siege. So much so that Swedes gave up and left.
Short answer: money Even the Jarls that sided with the empire had a very "this revolt is not my problem" kind of approach and would rely on the legion to defend them. Since the empire was just recovering from getting not so gentle butt love from the Altmer they, too, couldn't afford to repair all the holds in a whole province at once.
+ AldalRoderick i would think that a province rich in stone (since its mountainous everywhere) would not have problem to maintain there wall and it would not cost that much to have something abundant
To be fair I think a big part of it is the lack of concern over the necessity of fortifications. Until very recently skyrim never had to be concerned about organized attacks. The last time skyrim was involved in any kind of major war was literally ages ago. The empire in the third age encompassed the entirety of tamriel and kept it relatively peaceful meaning there were no large organized armies sieging cities. The empire got lazy and corrupt and probably let things slide for decades if not centuries, even after the oblivion crisis the empire was probably too busy trying to keep everything from falling apart to be concerned with improving the fortifications of some town in skyrim that's not even at risk of attack. Couple that with now that the great war ended the empire is literally trying to put out dozens of fires they probably cant afford to do much of anything except send a legion up north. As for why the locals didn't fix it, well firstly lack of funding might play a part as I said with the empire being the ones who would probably have funded it, also as I said, it didn't really need good fortifications for the last 1000 years+. The only fortifications it likely needed was enough to discourage bandits and unorganized warbands. While this isn't necessarily a great excuse, my main idea is that the place likely didn't need to be well taken care of for a long time due to how safe it already was by just being at peace for ages, and that the empire and locals as a whole didn't have enough concern to justify the expense.
The problem with Fort Dawnguard is that it has a crummy location. While it works wonderful defensively it does not protect anything other than it's occupants. It also sits in a valley with only one way in or out. Volkihar Keep; I don't think I can call that a proper castle. It's more of a manor than a defensive emplacement. It is kinda a shame because It is an excellent naval fortification location.
The main issue with Fort Dawnguard is its position in comparison to the mountain behind it. If someone wanted to be a proper chode, just cause an avalanche. Plus you almost literally have your back against the wall. It makes for a cool location for a secret order, but will such limited options for escaping and the fear of avalanches, it'd be a nightmare to defend.
Great review, as always! Will you do a Baldur's gate (The entire saga :) Meaning 1, tales of the sword coust, shadows of amn + throne of bhall), city/catles/fortresses etc review? :) I know it may be too much... But here are suggestion for the more obvious options: Baldur's Gate (1) : -Candlekeep -High edge -Friendly arm inn -Gnoll fortress -The city of Baldur's gate Tale of the sword coust (Expansion): -Durlag's tower (Only the the structure itself). Baldur's gate 2, shadows of amn: -The city of Athkatla (As a whole) -De'Arnise Keep Throne of Bhaal (Expansion): -Watcher's keep And that's basically it :) There are more towns, but they lack much deffence. And there are more bbig cities and fortresses... But they are too un realistic :) Like **** *spoiler* *** Under the sea, under the ground and full with fire giants. (All delineated picture maps can be found on gamebanshee.com walkthroughs for baldur's gate 1+2)
Shadiversity If I may make a suggestion for a castle to look at, Ebonheart from Morrowind, it's the seat of the Imperial presence on island and it's level of defenses is quite respectable. I managed to find an overhead screenshot of it if you are interested. vignette1.wikia.nocookie.net/elderscrolls/images/6/66/Ebonheart_Overhead.png/revision/latest?cb=20150402081947
Neuschwanstein Castle is another amazing example of terrain. Sheer mountain on every side, full of trees, it's impossible to approach any way but the one long, easily controlled entryway.
So interesting to hear about Corfe castle as I've visited it so many times as a kid and never realised what a beast it was. Your enthusiasm has made me existed to see it in a knew light the next time i visit. They have lots of plaques and information about the castle there so I'll let you know if i found out anything interesting (like if they once had draw bridge)
I have no idea how this ended up in my recommended feed, but I sure as hell am happy it did! At first i clicked it cause of the Whiterun schematics, but i stayed watching due to the genuin excitement in your voice, then talking about the real life Castle. If you ever want to make a veeery specific castle video.. I live on a small island in Denmark, were the ruins of "Hammershus" is still intact at the most northern part of the island. As far as i know, it used to use similar defensive tactics. Please accept my humble subscription, my good lord.
Well the problem here is you are treating it as a castle or fort city instead of a standard city which it is. The walls are meant to keep out bandits NOT armies with siege equipment. Which is also why Whiterun doesn't have any soldiers, but only city guards. Which is also why Solitude and Windhelm is build so differently from Whiterun.
@@_coolman_8941 you do actually know a city can be really well defended too, right? Not ONLY castles, forts and fortresses were made to repel attacks from armies... of course cities often were situated in areas where convenience was more appropriate but thats the only difference... they had no limitations to defendable assets and armies were often IN cities...
the entirity of dragonsreach was built by nords prior to the empire's golden age. Olaf One-eye supposedly built the rear section to contain Numinex the dragon.
Well we'll be able to see if that happens when ES6 eventually comes out. Unless you meant if they had 8-9 more years to work on Skyrim, in which case sure I guess.
@@olleej1 they deffo would they have even said they didn’t add extra details a.k.a. more houses and more people because of the graphical limit they had
I'm going to take a wild guess and say... Markarth is the best keep in Skyrim. The sheer verticality of it, and because it is only pregnable from one side makes it good already, then add in the fact that it was founded upon dwemer ruins. That's a winning combination in a world like Nirn.
He did a review on the Hornburg of Lord of the Rings. Which is similar in design to Markarth. As far as i remember there was the problem that you couldn't retreat and if the attacker manage to get up that mountain with just a few soldiers they can cause a snow or boulder avalanche.
There is also the Forsworn to take into consideration. At first they would seem like a detriment, but they could unintentionally aid in the defense of Markarth by harassing approaching armies.
Nolynox True, but there are a few defensive walls outside that could hold, if only mere moments. Still, I could imagine a portion of Markarth's hold guards to hide in the mines until the enemy has passed them, then attack from behind.
Coolcleverstone I think thats a feature of all the castles in Skyrim. They are made to deter small war-bands, raiding parties and bandits. But they would never stand a chance against a proper army like the Empire or the Aldmeri Dominion. Skyrim is just to lightly populated to be independent, thats why i would side with the imperials in the war. :)
Nolynox I wouldn't be so sure that applies to Markarth. Sure, in game they already side with the Empire, but the Jarl of Markarth was a cause of the stormcloak rebellion. As for walls, more can be made because it is a city with many mines. More walls means more protection, which means people would feel safer being farmers. Focusing on the Dwemer again, the automatons can be reprogrammed and perhaps added to the hold's defenses. A Centurion is no pushover, and the speed of a sphere and the power of it's crossbow aren't to be underestimated.
I know it was to show the difference in design, but it was so funny when it went from talking about whiterun to ranting about your favorite castle, you madlad.
one thing i noted, the images you are refering to of whiterun are taken by using a free camera from within the city, this means that many objects that are outside of the walls normaly are removed to enhance performance. this is also likely why there are not points where you can see over the walls. if you were to be using an external veiw of whiterun, it may be slightly differen't making it more defencable, but it might not, been a long time since i've played skyrim.
I am playing through the special edition now. He is way off about the slope and cliffs surrounding Whiterun. That large opening also is a farm with a tower...they would need to tear down the whole farm to get to the slope..which leads to a cliff. They were careful in the design to force players not to be able to glitch into Whiterun...he needed to make a character and walk around it. He is right on point about no ramparts...yet wrong when he talks about them failing to utilize the gatehouses. The Battle of Whiterun happens at those gatehouses..and the defenders do use the full advantage of them...well that game will allow without a mod called Open Cities.
Whiterun is built in the Motte and Bailey style. The Motte and Bailey is, generally, not meant to be the most secure. Usually used on a frontier, against barbarians with no heavy siege equipment. While some Motte and Baileys are in very good positions, and would stand against siege equipment, many were not built to. I feel Whiterun is of this latter mindset. A secure outpost, built to protect against wildlife, and the occasional bandit raid. As Skyrim built up, and became more populated over the years, Whiterun's defences became less important, and now the walls are neglected, maintained only enough to keep them standing. The battlements and ramparts may have been reused to repair buildings or collapsed sections of wall. Until the White-Gold Concordat, Skyrim was relatively safe, or as safe as a place with saber cats, and dire wolves could be. Large scale defences wouldn't have been needed. These are just my thoughts though.
While I did enjoy the video greatly, I have a few gripes. As far as we have seen, the only siege weapons that are used in the elder scrolls universe are battering rams, catapults, and trebuchets. This means that while, still relevant as a weakness, the mild slope that you propose a siege tower could move to would not be so much of a weakness, because siege towers were not invented.
I've never seen a video by you before, no idea why it was recommended to me, but I was pleasantly delighted. I see some people getting upset about you talking about real castles and defenses for a chunk of the video but I sort of expected that and was interested to hear you talk about something so passionately and connect it back to a shared interest. Will definitely be checking out your other vids.
dude those walls are only against mammooths, wolves etc. the real enemies could easily teleport into the castle. so you protect them with barrier spells.
You can't ride a siege tower over Whiterun's walls because the interior won't load unless you go through the gate.
If you breach the outer walls, all you'll find are a bunch of low-poly buildings and deserted streets. It's the perfect defence.
solution. install open cities mod.
Jam Starling The city is an illusion and doesn't exist so once the enemy has stormed the castle, they're trapped inside with a slimy low res deserted park
Nikolaj Steffensen attacker has to have a beefy computer
Maxwell Spud Xbox one (that's what I have) can handle it. I would assume most other computers and PS4 could also do it
Open cities is an illusion as well since if you have any other mods that alter Whiterun they do nothing with open cities...
"The security in Whiterun is terrible. Shameful, is what it is." -Sinmir, that drunk guy wearing iron armour in the Bannered Mare.
.........deer Lorde, he was right.
lol you're right
Deer lord? What does Hircine have to do with this?
ACTUALLY it’s Banded Iron armor
Please don’t bully me
ADHD Aiden Bannered Iron Ar-mare
"What do you say now, Proventus?Shall we continue to trust in the strength of our walls? Against a dragon?"
Nöde “I think not”
Why can i hear your comment
@@JonathanMartinez-xg3yq because you have played skyrim.
What are the dragons gonna do? Heat up the stone walls?
@@siegfried2k4 honestly and they could just fly over them sooo like the walls have no effect on dragons
Let's not forget Whiterun's biggest weakness: Most of the guards are ex-adventures who took arrows to the knees. What good are they going to be when dealing with attackers?
NoForksGiven"Arrow to the knee" is acutally a metaphor for getting married. Their actual knees are fine.
To be fair, they have the Companions to do all their freaking work. All of it. The guards can't even keep their prisoners contained or deal with hostage situations
That is false.
*IN the knee
Recommendation: Instead of saying "That is false." Explain why it is false.
do you breach the cloud district often?
Love your vids Welyn!
Whoa it’s welyn!
Oh, what am I saying... of course you don’t
@@CatAdvantage ahh beat me to it
Hello welyn
"Everything falls apart after that." Literally, if you go with the Stormcloaks, the guy leading the attack mentions how terrible the condition the walls are in.
I wonder how the analysis changes when you take Skyrim's magic into account. I imagine siege towers would be a lot less effective if the enemy can have a wizard atop the castle slinging fireballs at it.
@@derekeidum1307 i mean...if the attacker has a mage aswell, they could also use fireballs to take down the walls
@@JoseSilva-ht8es The whole idea of walls and such is a bit weird with magic around.
@@JoseSilva-ht8es At least the walls are stone. Wooden siege machines would be incredibly easy to burn, and a stone siege tower would be extremely heavy.
@@derekeidum1307 and if you count Morrowind magic in, you could just levitate over the defences
The security in Whiterun is terrible. Shameful, is what it is.
Whiterun was the easiest to lay siege on as stormcloak
I could never get into a stormcloak playthrough but storming Solitude and Markarth sounds really fun
dude those walls are only against mammooths, wolves etc. the real enemies could easily teleport into the castle. so you protect them with barrier spells.
@@JB-xl2jc honestly everyone gets really political when it comes to the stormcloaks/imperials but I always choose stormcloaks because it's the best imo when it comes to raiding
@@IHateSmilingFriendsTheTVShow of course, you're playing vikings
Balgruf: Whiteruns walls are strong.
Imperial: they have catapults.
Balgruf: damn it, the walls are crumbling as it is!
tho it's the nordic who invade whiteruns with catapults
And yet when you assault the city supposedly Whiterun has catapults too, but...no clear wheeeere? No idea. XD
@@TangledMind1018 illusion magic
@@Otgel Nah otherwise you would hear farengar excitedly explaining the history of illussion magic and siege engines
The first time you meet jarl balgruuf, he points out that the walls aren't that strong. So your whole comment is just a pile of crap.
"Here's a synopsis of whiterun's defenses" "Actually just kidding, this was just a buildup for me to talk about how amazing Corfe Castle was, get jebaited"
U r a n-word
Seehj
Ikr, i was like now i know why this is 14 minutes long
I'm not mad though. It was interesting. Plus, it was refreshing hearing how passionate he was about it.
@@BioSoldier53 ^^^
As for the state of the walls, I remember Balgruuf saying in one quest that the walls are barely holding together. Considering the age of the city in the lore, I expect those walls have been there since the Second Era and pre-date the design of siege towers and the concept of battlements.
Whiterun was founded in the early days of the First Era
whiterun, like most of the other forts in skyrim, are destroyed like that due to the aftermath of the great war (fairly sure anyway)
You could argue whiterun has been around since the merethic era because that's when a group of the original companions found the skyforge and turned jorrvaskr into a shelter and settled the land where whiterun is now, all of whiterun was built around the skyforge and jorrvaskr
@@hoseapatteson7671 The Great War mostly took place in Cyrodil and Hammerfell. Skyrim was pretty much untouched apart from the troops it sent south.
In Its Early Days It may have once been the most defensible castle in all of skyrim but .... it has fallen from glory
This just confirms my winning strategy from the Stronghold games: several layers of wall in a switchback layout
Just one tower, 200 crossbows on top. Nobody can breach that in Stronghold.
@@skonenextmadcriminals7776 200 horseback archers though.... you know, or a few trebuches.... like four.
Edit: Also, without using a bug, only like 35 units can be on the tower (if there's a siege engine. if not, around 40)
@@udozocklein6023 200 horsearchers would still get slaughtered by 200 crossbow men, with any type of shield it is much harder but it is 200. Trebuchets however are the exact counter to this, with only counter being the balista which, wasn't always so great againts trebuchets most of the time.
While yes, technically there is a limit to how many units are on tower, nothing really stops yoou from putting more, infact only a few of grouped units will merge out, though this is something finally fixed in Warlords, with a hard limit on how many can even be on walls.
@@ThatTonnatoTenrec horseback archers can often defeat tower defences, thats why they get banned. They are able to dodge the arrows. Anyways, trebs can be out of range of defence engines by a mininal distance. Though, figuring out this distance can be hard on circumstance.
Udo Zöcklein Dont know what you play but horseriders arent so powerfull, at least withiut shields. When you have 200 crossbow men it is hard to fight that off, comparing 200 horsearchers alone to an AI caste and that it is a big difference. Now im not saying they arent op, oh boy they are, but situation listed is much more trickier
"The great castle of dragonsreach was originally designed to trap and imprison dragons. That's why it's primarily constructed from wood."
-The Senile Scribbles, Loading Page
Housel lol
The dragon capturing part is made out of stone tho
LUKA , the dragon capturing trap thing is wood and so it the roof though
Except it's not made out of wood, it's all stone. The only part that's made of wood are large planks holding up the roof, which even a dragon would have a hard time destroying. Plus, possibly even the roof was originally made of stone but it was easier to repair it with wood and Skyrim has not seen dragons for centuries.
You don't know, maybe one of Olaf's clever mages could of enchanted the wood to make it much more durable to elements (Like enchanting an item with the enchanting table,) or even just make it look like wood, when its really a very durable material, like stone as an example..
The fact that Whiterun's 12 inhabitants life safely inside the walls and the local 382 bandits outside of it should tell us enough about how great the city's defences are
trying to conquer a main city with 20 soldiers
Bethesda PLS
Whiterun: A+ for layout
D- for building condition
They really needed to get around to repairing things, like, once ever.
They dont repair the walls because they arent at war until you join one side and due to the lack of time to fix the wall which likely states that they were fixing the walls but. Wasnt given enough time because of dragonborn
That's Nords for ya, bandits are better at repairing battlements than Nords are.
This is a common trend with the Skyrim cities
WOuld have loved to see it in it's heyday.
I think it's implied (if not outright stated) that between the civil war and the waning Empire, Skyrim just doesn't have the funds and resources left to maintain things. Solitude is well-kept because the High King was living there until less than a year before the game starts, but the further you go from Solitude, the poorer condition things are. The only exception being Riften which is probably a combination of being made of wood (an easier material to replace and build with) and because the Blackbriars are rich.
So strange how it looks insignificant from far away. Just looks like a bunch of small huts. When you're down in Whiterun, it actually feels like a properly sized town.
Oblivion cities felt larger somehow. Whiterun felt akwardly small for me.
Marc I hear you. Definitely. There's a certain depth to the Oblivion towns. Maybe it's because the buildings are taller?
Morrowind towns are also bigger than Skyrim's.
They could've made it bigger by adding more houses that were nothing more than hollow shells. That you can't interact with and are just there to make it look bigger.
That would make the towns a lot bigger. But would also make them less immersive. Houses that are fully fleshed out makes it seem bigger when you can go inside them and move around both inside and out. Empty shells of houses creates size, but it's a size that you'll only see in passing.
Whiterun is a dinky little place counted in houses, as seen from far away, but it seems quite big when you actually move around there, because there are things you can interact with. You can go from house to house, go inside some, get back out, go around to the one behind another to go in there. Instead of just walking on the street and seeing them in passing.
which is about the only thing larger in morrowind (great game, itty bitty teeny tiny map)
These are Whiterun's walls.
- Jarl Balgruuf, pointing to the Companions
And then They lock themselves in their hall for both versions of the battle.
"Yeah ,sure, you can trust us"
- Vignar Grey-Mane 🤣
@@Nugnugnug It would be a dishonor to both hircine and ysgramir to fight their countrymen in such conditions
@kodaxmax they have no objections to beating up their countrymen, no questions asked, as long as someone pays them to do it, as evidenced by the "Hired Muscle" radiant quests. If you accidentally kill the (possibly innocent) target, they will even give you your payment anyway, but it will be reduced slightly. So they don't really care about who they fight or why, as long as there's glory in it. The only reason they stay in Jorrvaskr during the Whiterun siege is likely for game design reasons.
The Cloud District must be well defended. Because according to Nazeem, I’ve never been there.
He's talking about the Cloud District hidden in the tertiary dimension.
Shad: you wanna see an awesome fort in skyrim? look for Fort Sungard. it's built on a hard-to-reach spot, one gate, lots of sections and wall protections. it does not have a drawbridge and it's rather old and destroyed, but you can easily see how it would be defensible as hell.
Honestly, I get the feeling that the city defenses were built for the main purpose of keeping wild animals and monsters out rather than an opposing army. Also Skyrim would be a naturally difficult region for a large army to traverse in the first place, not to mention cart across siege equipment.
Siege equipment was never really carried long distances, it would have been constructed at the site of the siege.
@@0saintclark0 wich proves an excellent defense for whiterun as its built basically in the center of a plains area, the closes forest is up a steep hill, and youd see them doing it from miles away, providing ample opportunity to do what the nords do best, harras the enemy with raids
@@o98z true, but I also disagree with the videos assertion that there was ANYWHERE a siege tower would work on whiterun. Even the two areas unencumbered by rocks are on slopes that would be too steep to push the towers up.
@@0saintclark0 couldn’t they use horses to pull them? I’ve been able to scale those places with my horse
@@alexs6746 defenders would just shoot the horses.
Shad: “Is Whiterun defensible?”
Ulfric: “Well yes, but actually no.”
@Malum Nexus I always get the feeling that he would be a Balgruff type character. Never makes up his mind until the last second and is always too busy to truly ever have a chance to.
Why is it that I can Hear Ulfric's voice when I read it
This made me cry laughing and i dont know why XD
Jesus this guy is passionate about his castles. Subscribed
Lmao I was going to make the same comment
I’m glad
So passionate that he has now bought land where to build his own castles.
@@AdamBlade17 hello
@@hundragant are you a manwich
I love the enthusiasm you portray towards the castle with the strong defense, and how the queen, her daughters, and five men held the castle. You explained quite well the faults of Whiterun and how they could be improved. I enjoyed this because I learned what makes a good defense for a castle, and I learned some history.
And it wasn’t as boring as say...history class 😂
I love how you typed this as if you had to critique/compliment it for school
8:30
And here, we can see a classic example of a medieval castle missing a great opportunity to properly position their TARDIS. Such a shame.
Yeah, I missed that Dr Who episode :D
Also 7:34
Was that actually from an episode?
Iv been looking for this comment the entire video lmao, such a shame dr who went so down hill
According to legend, the palace today known as 'Dragonsreach' was originally a smaller building. However, with the intent of creating a prison for the dragon Numinex after its defeat at the hands of Olaf One-Eye, the people of Whiterun added a stone prison to the keep and renamed it Dragonsreach. Imperials have nothing to do with it. The only keep that has imperial influence is Solitude.
Werent a map that showed how it was half the map of skyrim imperial and the other half nord
@@felipealarcon4622 yeah but those are the allegiances of the holds in the civil war, but every town has its own history, from solitude being the imperial jewel in skyrim to the ancient dwemer ruins of markarth, from poor marsh city of morthal to the falkreath which fun fact was actually part of cyrodiil, whiterun is possibly the oldest city in all of skyrim being possibly existent since before the dragon war (the middle of the merithic era) so atleast 5300 years old, i dont know much about riften but i know that dawnstar has been an important trade center in skyrim that was home to many important battles and that winterhold was once the largest and most important city in all of skyrim and if i remember correctly the capital of the province, windhelm is possibly as ancient as whiterun but not quite, funfact windhelm once was attacked by the akavirs
@@ygiuzebbe Isn't it mentioned that Windhelm was the first city in Tamriel settled by men which would make it older than Whiterun since it was made around Jorvaskrr which was made around the Skyforge
@@nemanja4758 huh, well i must've missed it. Thanks for telling me this mate, being proven wrong only helps us be better
@@nemanja4758 Aye, Windhelm is the oldest. Settled after Ysgramor returned with his 500 Companions to wreak vengeance on the Snow Elves. As his campaign progressed he bade his men settle the new lands they came across, with the crew of the Jorrvaskr, under their captain Jeek of the River, first settling what would become Whiterun.
There's no rampant because if they had one the dragon born would be able to jump through the walls. And they can't have that because skyrim is in another loading area.
No, he wouldn't. There are plenty of places where you should be able to jump from the walls, like the back terrace in Dragonsreach, but you can't because of an invisible wall preventing it. Same thing would apply if there was a rampant on the wall.
R Vanzo This argument doesn't work considering Solitude literally has ramparts that you can walk on (with the use of invisible walls). I guess the developers at Bethesda were drunk when they were creating Whiterun.
the walls are piss easy to get over anyway.
Open city！
Open Cities Skyrim. Moves all five into the worldmap. Is updated for SE.
Actually yes, Elder Scrolls' world is slowly decaying. And Since Skyrim is the Oldest part of it, it's the very first to die.
wdym elder scrolls is decaying
@@pyroshrimp4073 Mundus, The Physical Plane of Elder Scrolls, is the rotting corpse of the Origin God, so yeah their World is Literally slowly decaying.
@@Ugarimpty That would explain why their technology has been the same for thousands of years and why older civs were more advanced in both tech and magic.
@@Ugarimpty usually if something is rotting it would have something eating it up. What would be able to eat a corpse of a god?
@@kodaxmax Tech in Mundus (or at least Tamriel) has actually been declining. IIRC in the Merethic Era they had airships and what was essentially the Internet. And for that matter, the world as presented in Morrowind seemed more high tech than that of Skyrim, and in turn seemed slightly lower tech than the world as presented in Redguard.
Skyrim was meant to be played on last gen consoles (PS3, Xbox 360) so the world, the city, even the number of npcs and houses have to be small so the consoles won't blow up. I hope bethesda will fix that in the next TES
Oh and you should check out fort Dawnguard. Its epic
Alex Sivaas And Dawnguards defense looks a lot better. I mean a real lot.
agreed, when i saw the Dawngaurd castle i was like "woooaaaah"
Alex Sivaas you remember imperial city? Huge city, but it wasn't in my opinion as good as the smaller ones, too big to really explore and Bethesda hadn't even put that many quests in there, I rather want alot of very fleshed out smaller cities than massive repetetive citied
arnazian Yeah there's not a lot of npc to interact with, but it's probably because of the game limitation
I have a feeling you're going to love the college at Winterhold.
Captain Swing
XD
Captain Swing yeah that place is dangerous to get to even when not attacking.
I have fallen off that god damn bridge several times when carelessly walking to the college. Fortunately, a lot of the area below it is water and you don't take damage from falling into water for some... Reason....
Andrew Coetzee
imagine an enemy army on that bridge while you get a bull or bison to run in their direction xD
+TWARDY Doesn't do anything, the bull just falls off before he reaches them.
just as Eddard Stark said "a wall is only as strong as the men guarding it"
Yet the guards in Skyrim are all retired adventures from an arrow in the knee.
Yeh but an army is also only as strong as it's men
the answer is no I pretty much killed all of skyrim with my own hands and I'm just one guy
Now fight me
Yeah but you're the Dragonborn.
Yah but they weren't actively trying to keep you out, and the game mechanics aren't based around realism
hmm
#DamageMultiplyCheat
"The anwer is no I pretty much killed all of skyrim with my own hands and i'm just one gay"
/Music Plays
Corfe Castle, if anyone was interested in spelling. Amazing structure
GearandaltheFirst thanks
Thanks tried every word to find it.
"Be glad you're in the city, and not out in Riverwood. Those poor sods don't even have a wall."
I want more! and i really like the added history of comparison to a similar real life castle. Excited for more vids
More are on their way! Next, after a video on the best weapons for women, Skyhold from Dragon Age Inquisition.
Mauricio José Osuna edoras
Whiterun wasn't made to defend.
Whiteun was made around Dragonsreach, you see
And Dragonsreach's main goal wasn't to keep people out, it was to keep Numinex in.
Which is, of course, why it's made primarily of wood.
What are you talking about? Numinex was Olaf. I am a certified bard and know a song about it.
Kitsumaru I'm guessing he was a metallic, rather than prismatic, then.
The town was built around Jorrvaskr and Skyforge.
Lol a whole city build around a dragon prison wich is made mainly of wood.
Good job Nords~
Corfe Castle feels like a videogame level, with enemies progressively getting more dangerous as you go through the baileys.
While all the points of this video are absolutely valid, one sort of rule of thumb I have when it comes to Skyrim's towns and cities and such is to think of the in-game versions as a sort of "representation" of something that, if it were real, would be maybe ten to one hundred times bigger. It's just something that helps the ol' suspension of disbelief when I'm told a settlement that would barely qualify as a village is supposed to be the central trade hub of an entire province (which if I'm not mistaken, is supposed to be about the size of Germany, though calculations vary greatly).
Granted, that doesn't excuse the utterly horrid state of Whiterun's defenses. Though as you mentioned, its defenses along with all the castles and forts around it are in deplorable disrepair, which sort of makes sense. This is a city that probably hasn't needed to deal with anything more than a gang of bandits in somewhere around a thousand years, give or take, so I could imagine that sturdy defenses are pretty low on their priority list.
Now I would be much more curious about cities like Solitude and Windhelm, which have seen their share of fighting and sieges even during the time of the Tamrielic Empire, and are clearly built with such things in mind.
I dream of one day playing a TES game with every city of the size of Novigrad from The Witcher, or at least half the size.
This is a good point, and it makes sense to me. A lot of the locations is Skyrim seem bizarrely small. Both in terms of geography and population. It makes sense that they would merely be stand-ins for things that would be an order of magnitude larger.
Interesting fact: all of Skyrim itself is actually smaller than Manhattan Island.
That may be the case but the previous elder scrolls games ( morrowind and oblivion) had some sizeable cities. Vivec, Balmora and the Imperial City come to mind,
I think about it more like the planet that Elder Scrolls takes place on is tiny. If Skyrim is really only this big, where you could walk to one end from the other in under a day, the planet couldn't support anywhere near as many people as ours can. So the population is kept fairly low by the availability of food and land, and warring between the other lands. Consequently, the lack of people meant lack of inventors and geniuses to propel science and technology... and >architecture< along as we have.
Ian Karlin Nirn lorewise would be larger than our planet Earth, but gameplay wise the game is really small
Correct title; A close analysis of Corfe Castle(as compared to Whiterun). xD
Video title: Shadiversity salivates at Corfe castle for 14 minutes
*8
Whiterun is such a small city and yet I manage to get lost even when I'm using the map
Lol getting lost in whiterun?? How did you even find your way in markarth or solitude¿¿
am I the only one who noticed the blue police box at 11:10 ?
same
I paused the video at 7:56 to look for someone who had noticed it too in the comments. I was like "What the hell is the TARDIS doing there ?"
Yep. Confirmed TARDIS sighting at 8:35.
Okay, I am not hallucinating.
They may have had a Dr. Who event on. However blue police boxes were common once upon a time in the UK. Red ones were public use only though and some still exist here, most blue ones are gone.
Bethesda in 2011: Hey Todd, should we add towers and actually design these cities to be defensible?
Todd Howard: Nah, nobody is gonna’ care about that
Shadiversity in 2016: So anyway, I took offence to that
are they good? against an aerial attack, no. against a group of axe wielding savages, yes.
there's also the fact that they have a court mage and the companions
What does modern day have to do with it? There are dragons in skyrim you know, which is what he meant by "arial attack", I imagine.
Castles are good places for battlefield control weapons such as anti-aircraft guns and long range artillery. Existing crusader castles in Syria are used for those things. Also, anti-structure bombs have trouble destroying castles. Krak de Chevaliers in Syria took multiple bombs and is still standing, albeit with some damage. Bunker Busters don't work either 'cause castle construction is so much simpler than bunker construction that the bombs don't arm properly and detonate in the wrong spots.
you people are idiots. DRAGONS! remember! forget the damn aa guns, forget the battlefield control, forget anything having to do with modern warfare! None of that has anything to do with my original comment.
To be fair though, in Skyrim, the dragons have been extinct and thought of as legend for centuries, they wouldn't fortify their castle in preparation of what amounts to fairy tale attacked them. The only part of the castle intended to defend against dragons is the keep, as you see in the main story.
They have immortal people and children, just send them to the defend the city
a toddler with a daedric great axe.
Or the Ebony blade.
+rainick Pr that drradful mace.
" I will huff and I will puff and I will *BLOW THIS CITY DOWN* " - Dragonborn
All the forts and castles in skyrim, and the majority of all villages were razed during the oblivion crisis, it is said that the region of skyrim suffered the most during the oblivion crisis
Everything in Skyrim is condensed in order to not force players to spend an actual 24 hours to complete a day, and to not spend multiple days of real life playing the game in order to get from one town to another. The time scale is reduced by 20. However, if you apply this to the physical scale of the province, you only get a size of about 70km from east to west - compare that to Belgium, which is over 4 times as large. I think it's more realistic to think of Skyrim as being about the size of Montana, which is about 1,000km across, meaning that the in-game Skyrim is 0.3% the size of a more realistic Skyrim. That means that the 8 homes in Whiterun are meant to represent a population of about 8,000 people if you assume there's 3 people in each home - a totally realistic population for a small regional capital. In fact, you could put 9 people in each home without it being unrealistic, and have a population of 24,000, which is a respectable community without being too large for credulity.
Regardless, your analysis is great. The only thing I'd add is that I'm not sure Whiterun has ever really needed to test it's security. The lore doesn't point to any wars having been fought for the city, other than the Civil War, which of course, results in you getting into the city and taking it. Before that they'd only ever been attacked by bandits and beasts, and of course dragons (but those don't care about towers and drawbridges, do they?). So it's possible that it's realistic that Whiterun's defenses are lackluster, but still adequate for their needs.
The oblivion crisis affected all of Tamriel, so surely Whiterun as well.
King Olaf, the one who captured Numinex and had dragonsreach be constructed, also warred with some other holds. In fact, infighting is fairly common in skyrim.
And allegedly frost trolls also attack Whiterun very often, but I assume this refers to the hold going by the same name and not the city, as it is more likely for a troll to attack a farm for food than to siege a city.
A to-scale Skyrim map would be epic, I wouldn't even be mad as long as there were adequate ways to get across the world.
Xavier Rodriguez Probably change your mind after a few three day long trips for a fetch quest lol
@@raynes6286 it would actually be very cool, too much immersion and you would also feel the real size of skyrim, feel like the real dragon born in a real world with real time
Youssef Guizani Cool yes, but when you ride three days there and back for a generic fetch quest then get sent back to the same city... It’ll get tedious fast.
I love the enthusiasm in his voice! Makes me feel excited listening to him
Wonderfully done :)
Thanks mate! I loved your recent video on drawing the sword from the back.
Shadiversity I'm glad you did!
traveling flare gun salesmen :O Oh ye, I'm a fan :3
T FS Metatron is a fellow Skyrim fan. Check out his Skyrim videos :)
The thing is, Whiterun's walls are actually accurate to the time, place, and type of settlement that the game features.
Corfe castle was built in the eleventh century, when ramparts, battlements and bastions were actually feasible and effective. Corfe was also designed as a defensible fort.
Skyrim is set in a time period long before that, sharing many features with the time period of the early Roman Empire (around 350 - 650 A.D.), this can be proven by the Imperial Legion, the fact that ships in Skyrim seem not to house cannons, the lack of cannons and ballistic weapons at all - and, surprise surprise, the architecture - namely the walls and forts.
Whiterun is designed as an economic vantage point, rather than a military one. It is central in the land, and oversees a wide stretch of farmland, which is defended mainly by outer forts such as fort Greenwall and the Western Watchtower. The walls of Whiterun are designed primarily to section off parts of the city during peacetime, in order to separate classes, and create an obvious class system. The walls were not designed to be a point of defense should a hostile force attempt to take the castle, but to provide an order to the layout of the city.
Ramparts, bastions and battlements, as well as crenelations, proper keeps and even siege equipment itself only became popular in the Saxon and Norman time periods, such as when Corfe Castle was built.
Even Solitude doesn't feature much in the way of Castle Age defenses, barring the presence of Castle Dour, and the use of terrain. The same goes for Windhelm and Markarth.
The defensible forts dotted throughout Skyrim such as Fort Greenwall, are actually inaccurate in the fact that they DO have ramparts and battlements and bastions and crenelations - all things that only came into being in the Saxon times and beyond, when ballistics became a huge part of any attack or defense.
The little siege equipment shown in Skyrim (during the Stormcloak's attack on Whiterun) is also inaccurate for this reason.
And the fact that Skyrim is decidedly Scandinavian, where Corfe Castle was built in Norman Britain, means that the architecture of Whiterun as a settlement is actually dead on what it should be! :D
(Too long... Didn't read...)
I agree I actually think Skyrim is inspired by Scotland in the period of time just before the Roman Empire fell. Scotland was never taken by the Roman Empire despite numerous attempts. They weren't able to unite 'Albion' which is modern day mainland Britain, the Empire had little influence on Scotland at all and it remained very tribal and divided and supposedly only united to stop the Roman invasions, the Roman Empire only managed to gain a small part of Scotland and never made it further north.
The Scottish people weren't Gaelic, Britton or Celtic then, they were Picts, they are the oldest tribes of modern Britain and just google them they are pretty much Nords lol.
>And the fact that Skyrim is decidedly Scandinavian
If that were true, what is the Roman legion doing in Scandinavia? The answer is, Skyrim has no real-life definite equivalent. It has Scandinavian, but also Germanic and Briton influences.
Also wasn't there a war before the campaign setting? It would make sense for the castles to be in states of disrepair.
Cheesecake Empire Thank you
Joshua Russell do you get to the cloud district very often? oh what am I saying, of course you don't.
Man, Corf Castle really brings back some good memories. When I was like 8 or something, I went camping next to Corf Castle in designated camp site. Must have been one of the first times we went camping as a family. We had an absolute blast there. Loads of other kids around the place and did almost nothing but play games for the whole time were there. The castle itself was bloody impressive as well. Even my feeble 8 year old mind was capable of processing that. I'd seen a few castles with my family up to that point but this one was definitely my favourite
When a place as white run can get half the population death in one night by 3 vampires i say no, the defenses arent good at all. The only reason they are alive is because i lower the difficulty and reload the game.
I would expect the walls to be dilapidated, they're over 5000 years old.
True but they could certainly be maintaining them better.
Trump will use the same material to build the mexico wall.
Definately
Trump is going to build the Mexico wall out of lines of code? That's his most reasonable plan yet.
Well, even so, Whiterun is the economic hub of Skyrim due to its central location.
The problem is that we don't get to dig into the lore or here lore rumors from random people anymore like in Morrowind. Because it's heavily implied by the game that Skyrim has been in a big economic depression ever since the Great War and it possibly didn't even fully recover from the Oblivion Crisis by the time the War started.
IIRC, Balgruuf also mentions that taxes by the Empire on Skyrim were raised as a result of the War, as well, so he hasn't had the money to fund a rebuilding of the walls.
As it seems, one will never grow tired of playing Skyrim or watching your videos about castles and fortifications. Bravo!
TBH, this sounds more like a rhapsody on korf castle(spelling ?) than whiterun defenses. Tho of course, you did say everything there is to say about whiterun.
Yeah, I love using real castles as a comparison to the fictional ones I'm reviewing as it means I can put a little bit of history into the video that people would not really be interested in otherwise. How many people here would have clicked to watch a video on Corfe castle by itself? Comparing fictional castles to real ones works better to educate people about history then if I was to just do a video on historical castles by themselves.
I found it really interesting as well. Are there any books on castles you can recommend?
Corfe Castle
CDStoner I'm on the phone so I'm not going to run any research of my own, but what was the water supply of Corfe like? Arguably the most important part of resisting long sieges. Up that hill, I imagine it was all carried in buckets or barrels in carts.
BC, not a 100% on Corfe, but many castles had wells, even if they were on hilltops, or large underground reservoirs. Corfe was very much built with sieges in mind so I imagine it had one or the other beneath the keep.
When he got to the castle Pictures I was like "Whoa these graphics are awesome, from which game e they from?" Then I realised lol
From the buggiest game called life which is filled to the brim with bugs and glitches
Imagine trying to use a siege tower to get in whiterun but then you come face to face with a literal demigod who destroys your tower and kill all of your comrades by simply saying 3 words
@@exittierone I think a full power fire breath could easily kill a normal soldier.
@@Ollurim Spoiler alert: It can, even full power Fus Ro Dah
Use fire spells against the siege towers.
Shouts the tower back down the hill
@@getthegoons shout the tower to obliviom
This was interesting, hope to see more videos like this.
Lots more to come, every second to third video will be a castle review.
Tidy...
time to mod whiterun before the civil war.
Can you do one on solitude plz?
100% agree. it unfortunate that we have no visuals predating the oblivion crisis leading into the great war of the fourth era however.
using windhelm or solitude as examples of what these defenses could have been may give you a different perspective however.
try and keep in mind that whatever is among the top 10 in wealthiest cities in tamriel.
looking forward to your next one
whiterun. I hate auto-correct
The city named whatever, has a ring to it.
NetherWalker lol
solitude is the STUPIDEST city I have ever seen. Its built on an arching rock. A FUCKING ARCH. All you need to do to destroy the city and everyone in it is use a catapult to sent it toppling.
Dominic Berry provided you could bypass the overwhelming naval defenses, funnel through the narrow harbour and through great casualty be able to set up a siege on a dock that is potentially now on fire you would be partially correct.
the rock the city sits on is three times the thickness of the city. you're up for a challenge using guided missiles. last I checked there aren't any races with missiles in tamriel.
by land it's a fortified hill of death, but that's still safer than taking a naval power by sea
There’s loads of cover for the tower-like structures because you can’t even look over it in the game
Now here are a few issues; You speak of putting up a siege tower against the wall but in order to do that, one has to build or bring up the thing first. As we note, there are no trees around Whiterun. A handful south, but thats it. So either an attacking force(Ulfric I assume) would have to either build a siege tower on site or bring up a tower in a siege train.
The former is a serious problem as the lack of trees in the area means that building a tower from wood found on site is impossible. The only other option is to bring the wood up from elsewhere but that is still a logistical nightmare. As we see from history, medieval attempts at proper logistics rarely worked. Edward IIIs attempt at doing such in his very last campaign through France in 1359-60 failed miserably with only a first shipment arriving. Its possible I suppose, but its a considerable effort, still quite timeconsuming.
The other option is to bring up a siegetrain but when you look at the road from Windhelm to Whiterun, you can see that that is easier said than done.
Whatever way it is done, is timeconsuming and would require a (loose) siege for some time at the least. If Whiterun is supposed to be a bigger city(bigger than represented ingame) then it would take a considerable force. The crumbling walls remain a considerable obstacle. Even the Earl of Lancaster prefered not to assault Perigueux's walls in 1345 despite the fact that part of it consisted of a crumbling roman wall dating back to the 3rd century. The Captal de Buch would capture it by escalade at night ten years later.
Walls are expensive btw. Montpellier bancrupted itself and went from an economic powerhouse and tradehub to an insignificant town when it decided to fund and build a new wall. Similar fate to Reims at about the same time, though part of its new walls were paid with royal money, which helped quite a bit.
Such a siege is a problem as well, as logistics are a problem. I dont expect the jarl of Whiterun to leave food outside his own walls so that has to come from elsewhere. The only nearby towns are Riverwood and Karthwasten. The former has a wall, a small garrison and a bridge that can defend it. The bridge can be destroyed even. Its an important position and I would assume that it would receive reinforcements(Imperial or from Falkreath) in case a siege is imminent.
Karthwasten is far away and goes past Fort Greymoor, held by bandits unless the player frees it. Then an Imperial garisson is installed, one that can attack any foraging parties on the roads east and even make some sorties against a siege around Whiterun. Another important bastion that would require a screening force anyways. Food would be a serious problem for any large force sitting outside the walls of Whiterun and food would run out long before siegeweapons are built imho.
Edward III ran into this very problem in his last campaign in 1360 around Reims, he had no food and his army marched off not two weeks after he had arrived, despite elaborate efforts to create a logistical system to feed his forces.
Even if Greymoor is guarded you need quite a force to surround Whiterun, unless you decide that it need not be surrounded at all but then reinforcements and supplies can come in from west or north at any time to help defend it. If you do decide to surround it then we look at Rennes which was besieged by the Duke of Lancaster in 1356. But since the city was so large he couldnt entirely surround it and supplies and men constantly entered the city from several directions. Rennes was the Duke's only real failure and not really a strange one. Taking cities was difficult as they were large and require a great effort. Edwards own siege of Calais is a good example. Or the capture of Saint Sauveur le Vicomte in the Cotentin peninsula by Bertrand du Guesclin mauch later in the 14th century. It was shot to bits with bombards and besieged for 9 months, but the large garisson of 900 was eventually bought off. Its commander Sir Thomas Trivet being held responsible for its loss when he returned to England. He lost his 2000 Pound bribe when it was decided that Saint Sauveur could have held out for much longer. He was lucky not to have lost his head.
I think a siege of Whiterun would be hard regardless, as supplies are a serious problem. An attack on the walls has to be made else the siege fails, but even a dilapidated wall can be held with some effort and manpower. An I think its always going to end in a play for time, can the attackers build siegeweapons and breach the wall before their food runs out?
Master Nailes i think it would be easy.
you can breach the wall with ladders at multible places since there are only a few defenders on the towers and none on the wall.
putting some barrels with planks put solves that problem really, as the wall isnt very high on the inside. In fact, the ground at the wall is hardly lower than that in the towers.
Master Nailes digging under the walls is clearly no option so is poisoning the water.
But apart from the classical methodes you could bring in some giants or what ever.
Considering the rocky soil, mining would be hard and timeconsuming. Poisoning the water works both ways as attackers would use local sources aswell.
Giants or mammoths may work and so would dragon allies, the latter seemed to have worked well in GoT, but I have little experience with fantasy sieges. So I'll leave that open.
Master Nailes
yes i said that mining or poisoning would not work.
the problem with whitrun is that they are neutrual so you could only besiege the castle when you are neutrual to Imps and nords yourself.
I don't understand why people of skyrim don't repair their defences. It is not that difficult. At the beginning of the siege of Brno (where I live) by Swedes the city defences were lacking but they were improved a lot during the siege. So much so that Swedes gave up and left.
Shieldmate because no one attack other cities?
Shieldmate and this was taken by the swedes: bit.ly/2fqfbhZ .
Short answer: money
Even the Jarls that sided with the empire had a very "this revolt is not my problem" kind of approach and would rely on the legion to defend them. Since the empire was just recovering from getting not so gentle butt love from the Altmer they, too, couldn't afford to repair all the holds in a whole province at once.
+ AldalRoderick i would think that a province rich in stone (since its mountainous everywhere) would not have problem to maintain there wall and it would not cost that much to have something abundant
To be fair I think a big part of it is the lack of concern over the necessity of fortifications. Until very recently skyrim never had to be concerned about organized attacks. The last time skyrim was involved in any kind of major war was literally ages ago. The empire in the third age encompassed the entirety of tamriel and kept it relatively peaceful meaning there were no large organized armies sieging cities. The empire got lazy and corrupt and probably let things slide for decades if not centuries, even after the oblivion crisis the empire was probably too busy trying to keep everything from falling apart to be concerned with improving the fortifications of some town in skyrim that's not even at risk of attack. Couple that with now that the great war ended the empire is literally trying to put out dozens of fires they probably cant afford to do much of anything except send a legion up north. As for why the locals didn't fix it, well firstly lack of funding might play a part as I said with the empire being the ones who would probably have funded it, also as I said, it didn't really need good fortifications for the last 1000 years+. The only fortifications it likely needed was enough to discourage bandits and unorganized warbands. While this isn't necessarily a great excuse, my main idea is that the place likely didn't need to be well taken care of for a long time due to how safe it already was by just being at peace for ages, and that the empire and locals as a whole didn't have enough concern to justify the expense.
It's so good to hear your excitement about castles!
you should have talked about castle dawngaurd! i think you'd like it.
The problem with Fort Dawnguard is that it has a crummy location. While it works wonderful defensively it does not protect anything other than it's occupants. It also sits in a valley with only one way in or out.
Volkihar Keep; I don't think I can call that a proper castle. It's more of a manor than a defensive emplacement. It is kinda a shame because It is an excellent naval fortification location.
The main issue with Fort Dawnguard is its position in comparison to the mountain behind it. If someone wanted to be a proper chode, just cause an avalanche. Plus you almost literally have your back against the wall. It makes for a cool location for a secret order, but will such limited options for escaping and the fear of avalanches, it'd be a nightmare to defend.
I would personally prefer if Fort Dawnguard was another one of those ancient forts overrun with bandits that are all over the place.
The End is Night eh personally if I were going to take it, I'd want to hold it too
Are you going to look at any of the other cities in the game? I really like these videos :)
Watch the video.
seriously he talks about just that
And about going back to Oblivion.
+dillan mcdaniel Does he? I'm halfway at the video and I hope to see him talking about Solitude.
He protecc
He attacc
But most importantly it has guards on the bacc
Great review, as always!
Will you do a Baldur's gate (The entire saga :) Meaning 1, tales of the sword coust, shadows of amn + throne of bhall), city/catles/fortresses etc review? :)
I know it may be too much...
But here are suggestion for the more obvious options:
Baldur's Gate (1) :
-Candlekeep
-High edge
-Friendly arm inn
-Gnoll fortress
-The city of Baldur's gate
Tale of the sword coust (Expansion):
-Durlag's tower (Only the the structure itself).
Baldur's gate 2, shadows of amn:
-The city of Athkatla (As a whole)
-De'Arnise Keep
Throne of Bhaal (Expansion):
-Watcher's keep
And that's basically it :) There are more towns, but they lack much deffence. And there are more bbig cities and fortresses... But they are too un realistic :) Like **** *spoiler* *** Under the sea, under the ground and full with fire giants.
(All delineated picture maps can be found on gamebanshee.com walkthroughs for baldur's gate 1+2)
I actually have De'Arnise Keep on my to do list of castles to review ^_^ so Baldur's gate castles are certainly on the list.
Shadiversity If I may make a suggestion for a castle to look at, Ebonheart from Morrowind, it's the seat of the Imperial presence on island and it's level of defenses is quite respectable.
I managed to find an overhead screenshot of it if you are interested. vignette1.wikia.nocookie.net/elderscrolls/images/6/66/Ebonheart_Overhead.png/revision/latest?cb=20150402081947
Shadiversity These are great news :)
You're the best man
HheheHEHEheheHEHE
go to trutHContesTCom, Read the pResEnt
Neuschwanstein Castle is another amazing example of terrain. Sheer mountain on every side, full of trees, it's impossible to approach any way but the one long, easily controlled entryway.
It was never meant to be defensive...
And yet it did it better than almost anywhere else.
So interesting to hear about Corfe castle as I've visited it so many times as a kid and never realised what a beast it was. Your enthusiasm has made me existed to see it in a knew light the next time i visit. They have lots of plaques and information about the castle there so I'll let you know if i found out anything interesting (like if they once had draw bridge)
oh boy I can't wait for your take on other cities.
Nobody else noticed the TARDIS at 11:14?
yeah just saw that...
you can alseo see it at 7:55
Yes no body even though the two comments before this one mentioned that exactly....
and 8:30
I adore how passionate you are about this topic videos like this, analyzing niche topics, are SO fun to watch
I have a feeling that Sadiversity plays Stronghold for hours without end.
SO! It looks like I'm the first one to mention the TARDIS on the walls of the internal bailey at 8:32
I saw it as well. :D
I have no idea how this ended up in my recommended feed, but I sure as hell am happy it did! At first i clicked it cause of the Whiterun schematics, but i stayed watching due to the genuin excitement in your voice, then talking about the real life Castle.
If you ever want to make a veeery specific castle video.. I live on a small island in Denmark, were the ruins of "Hammershus" is still intact at the most northern part of the island. As far as i know, it used to use similar defensive tactics.
Please accept my humble subscription, my good lord.
Well the problem here is you are treating it as a castle or fort city instead of a standard city which it is. The walls are meant to keep out bandits NOT armies with siege equipment. Which is also why Whiterun doesn't have any soldiers, but only city guards.
Which is also why Solitude and Windhelm is build so differently from Whiterun.
A city is designed to be able to defend the people in it against armies too... your comment makes absolutely no sense...
@@s8theninjawarrior916 there is a massive difference between a city with a city wall and its guard and an actual fort for military use
@@_coolman_8941 you do actually know a city can be really well defended too, right? Not ONLY castles, forts and fortresses were made to repel attacks from armies... of course cities often were situated in areas where convenience was more appropriate but thats the only difference... they had no limitations to defendable assets and armies were often IN cities...
Jarl Ballruff said “the walls are made for bandits not stormcloaks”
Sadox Gaming both are the same :)
the entirity of dragonsreach was built by nords prior to the empire's golden age. Olaf One-eye supposedly built the rear section to contain Numinex the dragon.
The game came out in 2011 if it came out in 2019 or 2020 they would have added a lot more detail for defenses like that
Well we'll be able to see if that happens when ES6 eventually comes out. Unless you meant if they had 8-9 more years to work on Skyrim, in which case sure I guess.
No they wouldn't.
@@olleej1 they deffo would they have even said they didn’t add extra details a.k.a. more houses and more people because of the graphical limit they had
The design for Whiterun was heavily inspired by Rohan in the Two Towers?.
Sloth from The Goonies *edoras
The back keep like part was built by Olaf one eyed to trap the dragon Numinex inside. That's why it's called dragonsreach.
Why would he make it out of wood? Was the dragon an ice dragon?
John Trollston the back part is stone
John Trollston The wooden parts were built later on.
Ok. That makes a lot more sense then.
Great video. I always love hearing people nerd out about something they think is really cool.
I'm going to take a wild guess and say... Markarth is the best keep in Skyrim.
The sheer verticality of it, and because it is only pregnable from one side makes it good already, then add in the fact that it was founded upon dwemer ruins. That's a winning combination in a world like Nirn.
He did a review on the Hornburg of Lord of the Rings. Which is similar in design to Markarth. As far as i remember there was the problem that you couldn't retreat and if the attacker manage to get up that mountain with just a few soldiers they can cause a snow or boulder avalanche.
There is also the Forsworn to take into consideration. At first they would seem like a detriment, but they could unintentionally aid in the defense of Markarth by harassing approaching armies.
Nolynox True, but there are a few defensive walls outside that could hold, if only mere moments. Still, I could imagine a portion of Markarth's hold guards to hide in the mines until the enemy has passed them, then attack from behind.
Coolcleverstone I think thats a feature of all the castles in Skyrim. They are made to deter small war-bands, raiding parties and bandits. But they would never stand a chance against a proper army like the Empire or the Aldmeri Dominion.
Skyrim is just to lightly populated to be independent, thats why i would side with the imperials in the war. :)
Nolynox I wouldn't be so sure that applies to Markarth. Sure, in game they already side with the Empire, but the Jarl of Markarth was a cause of the stormcloak rebellion. As for walls, more can be made because it is a city with many mines. More walls means more protection, which means people would feel safer being farmers. Focusing on the Dwemer again, the automatons can be reprogrammed and perhaps added to the hold's defenses. A Centurion is no pushover, and the speed of a sphere and the power of it's crossbow aren't to be underestimated.
The parliamentarians: IF WE CANT HAVE THIS CASTLE, NO ONE CAN! *blows it up*
This bit about Corf Castle I heard from Lindybeige, and now it makes a lot more sense.
Whiterun's keep was built as a prisión for a captured dragon, a vanity display for the prick that was High King back then.
A display of glory.
+Honved1000 If you belive the most accepted version of the tale.
Lynch85 made to capture fire breathing dragons but is built out of wood xD thats where the game messed up a bit imo
petargrad well there are both fire and frost breathing dragons, but Alduin is firebreathing right?
didnt catch alduin i dont think
I know it was to show the difference in design, but it was so funny when it went from talking about whiterun to ranting about your favorite castle, you madlad.
Great Video! Whiterun's Drawbridge can be easily gotten around as well, as there is a series of ramps that leads above and behind it.
one thing i noted, the images you are refering to of whiterun are taken by using a free camera from within the city, this means that many objects that are outside of the walls normaly are removed to enhance performance. this is also likely why there are not points where you can see over the walls. if you were to be using an external veiw of whiterun, it may be slightly differen't making it more defencable, but it might not, been a long time since i've played skyrim.
I am playing through the special edition now. He is way off about the slope and cliffs surrounding Whiterun. That large opening also is a farm with a tower...they would need to tear down the whole farm to get to the slope..which leads to a cliff. They were careful in the design to force players not to be able to glitch into Whiterun...he needed to make a character and walk around it. He is right on point about no ramparts...yet wrong when he talks about them failing to utilize the gatehouses. The Battle of Whiterun happens at those gatehouses..and the defenders do use the full advantage of them...well that game will allow without a mod called Open Cities.
Pfft, Whiterun's defences only managed eight bears.
Do a new video series called rate my castle. Viewers request you to review castles both real and fictional. Could you review Bunratty castle ?
theirish shane its not the best castle though
caolan ferry
Are you referring to Bunratty castle ? Also I was asking Shad to review it and not the community.
theirish shane great idea dude
StickySprite
Thank you kind sir
8:37 That police call box seems suspicious.
police call box was an imposter
Whiterun is built in the Motte and Bailey style. The Motte and Bailey is, generally, not meant to be the most secure. Usually used on a frontier, against barbarians with no heavy siege equipment. While some Motte and Baileys are in very good positions, and would stand against siege equipment, many were not built to. I feel Whiterun is of this latter mindset. A secure outpost, built to protect against wildlife, and the occasional bandit raid. As Skyrim built up, and became more populated over the years, Whiterun's defences became less important, and now the walls are neglected, maintained only enough to keep them standing. The battlements and ramparts may have been reused to repair buildings or collapsed sections of wall. Until the White-Gold Concordat, Skyrim was relatively safe, or as safe as a place with saber cats, and dire wolves could be. Large scale defences wouldn't have been needed.
These are just my thoughts though.
The back-part of dragonsreach was built under Olaf One-eye to serve as prison for the dragon Numinex. So no imperial building ;)
7:56 "its absolutely perfect"
Of course it is cause if it fails theres a getaway TARDIS for all the troops
Non sequitor - Time 8:40, looks like the Doctor is visiting your castle. :)
While I did enjoy the video greatly, I have a few gripes. As far as we have seen, the only siege weapons that are used in the elder scrolls universe are battering rams, catapults, and trebuchets. This means that while, still relevant as a weakness, the mild slope that you propose a siege tower could move to would not be so much of a weakness, because siege towers were not invented.
Pretty sure ladders would work just as well though.... no defenders on top to stop you.
Is there a TARDIS in 7:54?
I've never seen a video by you before, no idea why it was recommended to me, but I was pleasantly delighted. I see some people getting upset about you talking about real castles and defenses for a chunk of the video but I sort of expected that and was interested to hear you talk about something so passionately and connect it back to a shared interest. Will definitely be checking out your other vids.
dude those walls are only against mammooths, wolves etc. the real enemies could easily teleport into the castle. so you protect them with barrier spells.
11:07 Why is there a police box in this castle?
www.eyeofhorus.org.uk/images/photo/10tennant/series-04/13-journeysend/tardis-dalek-teleport.jpg
Original Narrator it's the TARDIS!
TARDIS* not police box
+awesomenamehere Nope. Just a police box...
Actually it is the TARDIS. This castle is actually a model village in Corfe- they place a tardis here and there as a game for kids.