It would make perfect sense for Dooku to just decide at any point during the war to go rogue and try to win for real. That he didn't shows he wasn't a true Sith, but merely a fallen Jedi.
@@kianvandenberg6364unless Dooku found a way to hide on a distant planet, leading the battles remotely. Palpatine himself stands no chance against a Rogue Dooku, the seps held the upper hand the entire time.
@@kianvandenberg6364 If Dooku let himself be found in that situation, without having prepared the ultimate ambush, he would deserve to die. Only someone brain-dead would not prepare in that case. Alternatively, Dooku could also just fortify Serenno and order any spacecraft that doesn't have access to new access codes, created entirely by himself, to be shot into oblivion. If Dooku betrays Sidious early enough, he could probably also ally with the Night Sisters, since he still has Ventress as his apprentice and Mother Talzin hates Palpatine. This would add more layers of ritualistic protection against esoteric Sith rituals.
Palpatine also pushed for the war to be on his schedule. Without him the CIS would have had time to develop their army as they saw fit. They also had Death Star plans.
I thought the original Death Star plans were given to the CIS by Palpatine? Though I guess that doesn't matter depending on the scenario we're looking at, like a rogue Dooku deciding to topple Palpatine and the jedi.
@@xaveircombs2690 but then there's Rogue One. To me it feels like Death Star would be a combination of several research programmes led on BOTH sides of the war so that without Palpatine no one would get all the pieces of the puzzle. So my guess would be that CIS developed either main laser battery, or the main superstructure. Given the time difference between Rogue One(where we see Death Star get its armament) and epilogue of Revenge of the Sith(where we already see it under construction), it might have spent decades in deep space without energy system, FTL drive and main laser, all of which were titanic projects even as separate things.
@@redherring5016 "I thought the original Death Star plans were given to the CIS by Palpatine?" if that so then what is the point of the very last scene of the attack of the clones?
@@marco002I thought that it was of Geonosian design. Like the Geonosians came up with it and gave it to Dooku. I could be wrong but idk if they knew they were giving it to Palpatine, just giving it to Dooku. The head of the CIS
I really like how I hated the CIS for killing the Clones as a child and betraying the Republic, but now that I rewatch the Prequels I realise how much of a failed and corrupt government the republic is and that the wish of the CIS to be separated from the republic is pretty reasonable. But we also see how the CIS government has the fight with the same issues between the different parties in its ranks like the republic.
Not really. Like, people claim that, but the movies themselves demonstrate that the corporate leaders in the CIS were not Separatists and intentionally helped the Sith win because money. And then the lore proves that they basically won the war for the Republic all by themselves. Even TCW, with its biased messaging, made it clear that the corporations were screwing over the CIS Senate.
They don't portray the CIS with nuance much other than in it's aesthetics, but it always seemed doomed to be an oligarchy instead of a republic or true confederacy. It'd have "less corruption" because lots of corrupt practices would just be stated policy. Now most of my ramble below is about what I find interesting in a storytelling perspective, like what I THINK would make the best background story for the clone wars politics of the CIS. So essentially all those random world & star system states are in minor wars with their neighbors or themselves, and the only thing uniting them is an Army and Navy they had to buy from the Dystopian Mega-Corporations that played a part in the Republics corruption. This certainly entailed massive amounts of debt to those Megacorps. Like the corporate leaders who were all in that meeting with Dooku clearly thought they were buying the entire confederacy of independent systems and any territory the confederacy could conquer from Republic worlds. And they would've infact "bought" the CIS if it was run secretly by the Sith. I do like the Clone War show episodes that show some of the confederate politics. But I interpret everything presented as showing that the independent systems joining the Confederacy were hoping to pay the Dystopian Mega Corporations using conquered worlds, otherwise they'd have to foot the bill off of their own populations. But other than having a Senate of their own, by the implication of being Independent Systems in any postwar time they'd have a lot less collective bargaining power against the Dystopian Megacorps. So if the war ended in a white peace the Dystopian Megacorps would have strong armed world governments separately from each other for more money and resources, prioritizing the corporate profit margins over their own populations. If the Confederacy won big and conquered many other systems, then those worlds wouldn't even have the courtesy of their own government to bargain with, resulting in classic fantasy slavery. The only difference in the big win scenario is that the world governments too, which in Star Wars seem to be mostly constitutional or even feudal monarchies, would've gotten to partake in a bit of the exploitation. The only version of the Confederacy that had any hope of accomplishing the Republics functions without the terrible amount of corruption is one that gained independence without the clone wars even having to happen, which is what the peace loving characters like Padme seemed to have wanted. EVEN then though, many worlds and star Systems trying to join the confederacy had a political faction that wanted to stay in the republic. Thus they had a ton of minor civil wars, which is probably what lead up to the events of Episode 2. But yeah sorry for rambling this just seemed like a good place to write down a but of plot thoughts.
@@OneSecretPerson The reason these corporate leaders pledged their armies to Dooku is that they had vested interests in seeing the CIS discredited and destroyed, and as we see in ROTS, they purposefully have the CIS lose the war, and in the Extended Universe we see how they use war crimes to discredit the CIS. The CIS droid army was essentially just a combined corporate military that the Sith had executive control over which occupied the territory of the Separatist Alliance. Why would the Separatist Senate allow Dooku to do this? Because Dooku is the founding father of the CIS and the one who united so many Separatist factions together to form the confederacy. They have ridiculous levels of confidence in him. Furthermore, if the CIS military was not limited and controlled as it actually was, it would be a matter of months before the Republic capitulated, and the CIS wouldn't have committed huge war crimes either, meaning many planets (Kashyyyk, Ryloth, Eriadu, etc.) would have joined willingly. This means that the CIS would not have lost much financially and would be relatively OK economically. With Cato Neimodia and other Neimodian purse worlds willingly joining the CIS for their own reasons, the Neimodian leadership of the Trade Federation could be arrested and their droids could be shut down or control could be handed to the government. The Trade Federation leadership would be replaced by ones approved of by the CIS government. This would most likely be enough of a warning to the Techno Union and Banking Clan that the CIS wasn't someone they could cross, and honestly both would probably prefer just to continue doing business and not make a fuss. The only company I think that would really pose a threat would be the Corporate Alliance, but they relied heavily on military commanders who had genuine Separatist interests like Trench or General Loathsom, so without them, they would not have much in the way of military success.
Man I’ll always love the CIS in Star Wars just cause of all of the creativity in both its armed forces as well as the many races, planets, and organizations that made it up. The Clone Wars was a dramatic change up from the whole “Big evil empire vs plucky underdog good guy rebels”, being a far more complicated, detailed, and insidious affair due to how it all played out over the course of decades.
Indeed. If Maul had revealed Sidious's plans to Dooku I'm convinced they would've formed an alliance. Dooku would sneak Maul on board the Invisible Hand, once Sidious is "captured" according to his plan Maul, Dooku and Grievous would ambush Sidious. They then would flee to the outer rim and build up forces while the GAR recovers from the massive siege on Coruscant and the death of their Chancellor. Maul would eventually betray Dooku but Dooku would promise Maul Kenobi if he does his bidding. Maul would amass his criminal syndicate once again, this time with Dooku's financial resources. With the syndicate in place under Maul's command the CIS would have increased funds and would no longer be restricted by Sidious's will. At that point there would be a lot more Lucrehulks, Providence dreadnoughts and CIS would amass massive fleets for the attacks to come. With Maul's syndicate easily extending the CIS's reach into the many underworld slums of the core world and weapons contributed by the CIS, sabotage would become rampant. While not entirely destructive itself, the onslaught of sabotage would ferment unrest amongst the lower classes of society and more importantly would distract the Jedi/GAR. While they're distracted the CIS would launch massive attacks and cripple GAR infrastructure worlds like Kuat and Kamino. From that point on, the war would begin to shift in the CIS's favor.
Facts man. The clone wars is and always be my favorite era of star wars. It was so intricate, creative and expanded fhe universe so much. I get so bored with the rebellion vs big bad empire over and over again
If you stop and think about it, most of the actual separatists (not Dooku, Grievous, or the major corporation leaders) were the good guys in the Clone Wars. They had legitimate grievances with The Republic and any attempts at peacefully resolving them had utterly failed due to the corruption, bureaucracy, and straight up discrimination of that had become core aspects of The Republic. Not all of the separatists were good, some committed war crimes and crimes against sentience, but many of them were tired of the issues not being resolved and decided to just leave.
@@lokensicarius9347 that is correct, but who was it that made the Outer Rim a free trade zone, completely neglected even the most basic government oversight over the major corporations, and even gave them seats in the Senate? The Republic may not have directly hurt them, but it enabled those who did.
I dunno about that. Even if most of the CIS was made up of smallish mid to outer rim worlds who had legitimate reasons to secede from the republic, the separatist council and senate were dominated by corporate executives or puppet politicians who served corporate interests. They only were interested in efficient governance as a way to ensure their profits continued to grow. And it doesn’t help that their automated military was controlled almost entirely by the corporations who supplied the droids and starships.
Bro every time I hear your intro/outro music it fills me with so much nostalgia for when I used to listen to your videos on car rides or when going to sleep almost 8 years ago. Like I remember when the biggest talking point in Star Wars was "who is Syfo Dias?" Love your channel, love your content, hope you're doing well my man!
I think the only way the republic could have won the war legitimately would have been to take their veteran clones and have them train conscripts while also producing battle droids of their own and using the clone soldiers as elite units within the Republic.
Yeah if Palpatine wasn't also short-handing the Republic, the economic superiority of the Republic could of been used to in a proper way and would of overwhelmed the CIS.
@@MillionsofDollar100 Is the Republic economically superior? Thought CIS represents the financial sectors of the galaxy. The Republic is one giant corrupt bureaucratic machine that can barely hold itself together. It even has to rely on a 3rd party (clones) to wage its wars.
Palpatine nerf both republic and cis , he purposely makes republic struggle in their war while simultaneously makes the cis more villainous and the jedi barbaric so the people more and more hopefull on the government because they're the good guys
@@MillionsofDollar100I don’t really think either could have overwhelmed each other. Both sides had basically limitless armies, the Republic volunteers, and the Separatists the droids. It would have come down to attrition and public opinion, which I feel like the Republic would lose on that front, simply because they’re using people to fight, even if they did just use a shit ton of clones like in our timeline, they were still sentient beings with lives and personalities, while the CIS used droids that were (relatively) cheap as dirt, and were not sentient. Public opinion would probably quickly sway against the war after seeing all the death and destruction it can wrought
The time of planetary defense fleets, corporations, and judicial forces before the Clone Wars seems like a really interesting period. Particularly in terms of ships. They already had Munificents for the Banking Clan, Lucrehulks for the Trade Federation, and the Judicials had the Consular Class (which would become the Charger C70 in the Clone Wars) and CR70/CR90 Corvette (aka the first ship ever seen in Star Wars, A New Hope, used by the Rebellion). Really the Clone Wars just added and popularized the Acclaimator, Venator, Recusant, and Providence as the primary military ships.
I think Palpatine could have easily just chosen the CIS to win, but doing so would have resulted in him having many more potential rivals and many private organizations capable of building their own armies and asserting their own territorial claims. So instead he set up the CIS as the overwhelming, OP af, and top heavy baddies so that basically all the absolutely winning traits they had would be demonized, thus further making the galaxy dependent on him and his empire.
The reason the CIS is dominated by non-humans and corporations is specifically because Palpatine wanted to forge a human-dominated, centralized Empire where private industry was nationalized and humans held all the power. He basically hand-picked every faction he wanted to discredit and put them into the CIS.
The only situation where the CIS could have been in a position to win would have been if Dooku said "Kriff it, we ball", and betrayed Palpatine in order to lead the Confederacy against the Republic legitimately. Frankly given how much Dooku detested the Sith, and how much Palpatine seriously damaged the idea of there being any trust between them by forcing (threatening) Dooku to kill his own apprentice even while openly grooming Anakin towards the Dark Side, essentially undermining his own justifications in the process, this was probably a real possibility.
I also think that without Palpatine's meddling, we would see a lot of strife within the Jedi Order. Without Palpatine calling the shots, and assuming Dooku- if he was even still in charge- wanted to win, many Jedi may be swayed to join his cause, or simply step out of the war altogether. (Really, I think that trying to execute Jedi on Geonosis was just about the dumbest way they could've started a civil war, when they were led by a prestigious and beloved member of the Order itself, especially considering that the Jedi were the only real fighting force to contest the CIS)
Dooku could have attracted many Jedi to his alternative order if he had gone that route. Many Jedi agreed with him. But, the Battle of Geonosis was set up, partially, to burn the bridge between Dooku and the Jedi. Sidious was very wary of Dooku for a number of reasons and having the Jedi turn against the former Jedi was one easy to remove one possible avenue from which Dooku could have betrayed Sidious.
I don't understand why Dooku allowed that to happen, though. He clearly was still a Jedi at heart in many ways, even to the end of the Clone Wars. He could have siphoned off members, and converted them to the Dark Side. It kind of seems like Dooku's form of the Dark Side, especially early in the Clone Wars, wasn't seen as apparently wrong by the other Jedi. I mean, Obi Wan wasn't mad when he saw Dooku (If it weren't for Jango), he was still seen as a master. @@crownprincesebastianjohano7069
#AskEck What do we know of the development of the Venator? Was it ready at the outset of the Clone Wars or did it enter service sometime after it began? And what did the Republic Navy have before the Venator (and by extension, the Victory) came into service that could stand up to Seperatist capital ships? Lore ship Versus video request: Resurgent vs. Starhawk Tie Striker vs. New Republic V-Wing World Devastator vs. Vong Worldship Tie Silencer vs. X-83 Twintail Tie Silencer vs. Tie Defender (legends version) Keldabe vs. ISD II MC90 vs. Nebula class star destroyer Nebula class vs. Pellaeon class Majestic class vs. Bothan Assault Cruiser EAWX: FOTR’s Mandator II portrayal vs. Subjugator Praetor vs. Subjugator EAWX: TR’s Mediator portrayal vs. Resurgent Starhawk vs. Bulwark MK III Gargantua/Aratech 520 Battle Platform vs. A6 Juggernaut
I think it’s important too note that the CIS had spent 10 years of military build up between episodes 1 and 2. Let’s not forget that the Republic had massive production capabilities. It’s just as pointed out in the video the Republic did not have the stomach or political will to go into total war like it did in the Sith Wars. Like let’s not kid ourselves here there are hundreds of quadrillions of people in the Star Wars galaxy with many of those people in the Republic.I think if both sides were completely unshackled it would be way more massive with more loss of life. Makes for great day dreams lol.
Facts! He forgets to mention if the Replubic wasnt short-handed by Palp their pure economic resources and man power would of overwhelmed the confederacy
@@MillionsofDollar100Or he wants to engage with them just enough to help politically crush them not chase them away with so much resources to just play cat and mouse. In other words he doesn’t want a forever war like we have going on right now in the real world. Palpatine is a very smart statesmen.
@@MillionsofDollar100 Nonsense. The Republic's economy was almost completely civilian, their worlds also barely have any combat experience. The militarization of the Republic dragged on so long, despite Palpatine having emergency powers and basically went to "work" since the battle of Geonosis. And yet it took years to gain the upper hand until the Outer Rim sieges against the artificially held-back CIS forces. "Short handed by Palp" is an utterly absurd statement, literally his FIRST act with his emergency powers was starting militarization. If anything, Palpatine is holding back the CIS - not the Republic. His act for militarization is literally in Episode 2, you don't even need to know the Expanded Universe lore - which btw showed how outmatched the Republic was in the first half of the war. Even on the Republic side they started to scratch their heads after finding out that the CIS held so many of their forces in reserve instead of going all-in. Sorry, i know the Republic and Clones are very popular, but lore-wise, they would have lost if the CIS gave it all, even with the Republic having the bigger economy. It simply takes too long to militarize an economy, even Germany before WW2 needed several years - and at the end half of the Wehrmachts equipment was still drawn by horse. In Star Wars we are talking about a galactic institution with thousands of systems, that were under the Ruusan Reformation for centuries that have populations that aren't combat ready, not even mentally. Giving a civilian a rifle dosen't make him a soldier, again, look at Germanys last effort in WW2 with the "Volkssturm", where they gave weapons to almost every german civilian and yet its military value was close to 0 due to the complete lack of any military professionalism. The oh-so-great manpower of the Republic would have even struggled against the most basic battle droids, since they are simply not soldiers. You need *at least* some kind of basic military drills which would take several months or even years. Time that a non-held-back CIS would use to conquer more systems. If you really thing Palps (or some other chancellor) could have simply snapped his finger and suddenly had the largest galactic military at their disposal (which again, Palpatine actually tried), you are utterly underestimating how much effort true militarization on such a scale is actually required. Another good historical example are China and India. They had tons of people and yet they were outmatched and (partially) colonized by European powers with much less manpower, but far greater military professionalism. People underestimate how much of a difference that really makes.
I agree, both sides were fighting at like 1% of their real capabilities, and let's be honest the entire clone wars is a skirmish that occasionally struck too close to home (battle of coruscant) and even then it was purposefully engineered that way by palps. There were at most 10 000 planets conquered by the CIS, aka between 5% (at most) and less than 1% of the planets under the control of the Republic. The republic could simply recruit 1% of all their planetary polices and/or local millitia and have an army considerably more effective and larger than the clones. Palps stopped this, and an explanation for the small size and capabilities of the Republic military (other than no political will, lack of military tradition, etc...) is the probably astronomical embezzlement of funds and corruption on a galactic scale, coupled with colossal delays, cost overruns, resulting in the defense budget doing 1‰ of what it should on paper
@@MillionsofDollar100 Not at all, Palpatine was holding back the CiS. The Republic was weak because of how strong it admittedly was, since this strength all went into the wrong ‘sectors’ completely unhelpful in a war situation. The droid army would’ve made the CiS unstoppable over any stretch of time, dragging the Republic to its knees by attrition and doing so with extreme ease.
#askeck this one has always bothered me about the Grand Army of the Republic: Clones being grown and trained in secret on an actively forgotten planet is one thing, but the Venators? The baby's first star destroyers? The clearly a -war ship- in the post Russon Reformation eras, surely was going to turn a few heads at the ship yards, or at the transporting thereof into whatever deep space hidey hole the fleet waited at. The arms and armor being smuggled to Kamino are small enough scale, and the vehicles are plausibly taught via the simulations we see briefly in The Clone Wars... But we also see something like a half dozen Star Destroyer scale warships, in the first battle of Geonosis. The moment of their big debute, where the Jedi put their clone army to emergency activation... And had no time to commission a bunch of warships. They had to be already-existant.
The Acclamators at Geonosis were built in much the same way the Clones were, in secret in a planet long-forgotten. The Venators were only built after the Clone Wars had already started.
If I remember right, the ships were developed by Rothana Engineering, a subsidiary of Kuat Drive Yards created specifically for the creation of the GAR fleet. Due to Ruusan Reformations and the secrecy of the army, Rothana was made so that the fleet and arms could be made by the best in the galaxy whilst still remaining hidden and keeping Kuat out of any trouble or responsibility
1)does it remind you of Rebel Alliance "cruise ships"? 2)as people have said, "units" didn't mean individual soldiers and could be anything from squad to battalion. So 6 million units weren't as easy to stealthily supply. However still within realm of single planet. 3)as funny as it is, the battleships didn't have to be hidden as much. They still were, but there wasn't as much of a need. They were just a bunch of cruisers built to replace previous active ships if anybody asked. Like how people forget that USN doesn't have ONLY newest supercarriers in categories of capital ships and carriers and there are also dozens of mothballed(but periodically maintained and modernized) capital ships available.
@@josesanchezrodriguez1783 Nope, the Venators were also ready from the start. They take part in the Battle of Christophsis only months after the opening of the Clone Wars at Geonosis, it's a miracle they even managed to train the crews on a completely new ship within the span of a few months.
#AskEck Hey Eck, what do you think Grievous's story would be like if the jedi sided with the Kaleesh in the Huk war? This is the last time I'm gonna ask since it doesn't seem to be a very popular question.
not eck, but i think he would become the leader of the kaleesh. not only this, but he would probably push to have his planet fight in the clones wars out of respect for the jedi.
Because the Senate believed in their stupidity that they could be United as whole instead of two separate governments. Just like how the American civil War played out. The people in the South wanted to keep doing what they were doing because they believed what they were doing was okay and they also refused to address the slavery problem after they defeated the British after the American independence movement. Back to the CIS they believed they were being left out of the affairs of the Galaxy because they were farther away from the inner rim where all the senators were. My problem with the alliance to restore the Republic they refused to use CIS holdouts as helpful members because they were still stupid.
Not to get political or anything, but I can sum up why the CIS can’t leave with a modern irl comparison. Why can’t Texas just leave the U.S.? The government of our republic clearly doesn’t care about it, the state wants to leave so they should be allowed to leave.
@@jamesesterline Mon Mothma surely was she could have used droids as well as humans to fight the Stormtroopers but she refused because of her own hubris. That is why I want Disney to wreck on how she died I believe she died peacefully but she should die violently. It is just come out that Palpatine has set bombs on all of coruscant and to activate it is called protocol 23. It was used in one of the latest Canon comic issues.
Tthe CIS had the 4 sides of the military problem solved: 1. Manpower - they could produce droids on an industrial scale. 2. Equipment - they had Cooperations that could build new fabricationlines within weeks. 3. Logistics - again, interstellar cooperations that were on a war footing. While military logistics are a bit more complicated then civilian logistics - after all, people are shooting at you - if you are good in the civilian world, you are at least OK on the military side. 4. Public moral - no dead soilders returning home on mass, just a lot more jobs in the factories and at worst more taxes to pay for everything + a cause for freedom. Honestly, thats the war i would love to fight as a commander. I could lose millions and my CO would just ask how much more i need. Lost a tank battalion, here, have tow new once with updated software. One of your driods is just RAMBO, lets update all other driods with his experience then. You want to run the enemie out of ammunition by throwing bodies at your problem russian style? And you want to do that because you really like that cantina there + they do have a mine that would be nice to have? Forget the cantina, but the mine - yeah, lets do it.
I would love a video on the mega-conglomerates of the galaxy. Especially concerning how the Sith Order essentially hijacked the Secessionist Movement within the Galactic Senate to implement the manipulated whims of the mega-corporations into what was the fledgling CIS, whom formed leading up to the Battle of Geonosis. The actual constituents of the CIS were likely none-the-wiser to the brutality of their offensives, nor just how heavy the stakes, many mega-corporations had essentially invested into the CIS. The actual legislature did grant corporate senators representation - so these individuals were aware of dealing with these entities. However, they surely must have simultaneously believed that they retained autonomy, since dealing with the industrial/manufacturing and weaponsmith juggernauts of the galaxy would be perceived as a necessary woe. They couldn't have known their plight had died the moment Dooku had interjected himself into their movement, now a cornerstone of Separatist authority. It was too late. The meeting on Geonosis was, in essence, a business deal. The outlined contracts between entities such as Trade Federation, Corporate Alliance, Commerce Guilds, Techno Union, the Banking Clan and Dooku himself (whom had by now ascended to firmly representing the CIS as their head of state). The exchange for providing resources, aside from payment of course, was a seat on an executive Separatist Council with administration over the Separatist Military. Grievous' EU background does fit well into this dynamic Lucas revealed via TCW. Lucas perceived the conflict as two belligerents, with war profiteering right along the middle. The Sith had control over both belligerents and them being puppeteers of these factions would serve their purpose.
Just a question that really intrigued me: how did the citizens of the Empire believe the Clone Wars ended so swiftly if they were never told about the droid shutdown? Or were they?
I was listening to a fan story where Grevious, *real* Grevious from the mini series, got control of a major droid factory. First thing he did was scrap the B1 for Supers and Commandos.
Yeah i always wondered about this as well, why not scrap (or heavily reduce/rethink) the B1's and even B2's (i think that's what Super battles are called) and regular Tac Droids for, possibly less in total number but orders of magnitude more effective, Commando's/Super Commando's, Destroyer's (Droideka's), Super Tactical Droids (Kehlani's), and Magna Droids. I know the answer, Palpatine/Sidious of course, but it's an interesting thing to wonder in my opinion.
@@lastmanstanding-xp3ub The Sideous answer never sits well with me. The Seperatists were largely businesses and that short of waste should have stood out as a bad idea. Saying Sideous did it anytime that something doesn't make sense makes him frankly godlike to the point that explaining how he lost becomes the new problem.
@@135forte Well I mean he was, sort of, god-like in a way, or rather Devil/Satan-like I suppose. I mean it took Space Jesus/Jesus's (Anakin & Luke) to defeat him, and it was his hubris/vanity that largely caused his defeat via his overconfidence, not unlike the real world biblical story of the fall of Lucifer/the Devil/Satan/etcetera. I see what you mean I think though, Palpatine couldn't have micro-managed everything, in the Clone Wars or otherwise, but I think it was his general opinion/policy of neither side being too overpowered that could result in the B1's and B2's being the standard infantry "soldiers" that were used on the battlefields, and with their lack of individual effectiveness they made up for it (and evened out) in number, and the Clones & GAR as a whole lacked the numbers but individually were exponentially more effective which evened out things out, at least in appearance to the general public and even the military & Jedi.
@@lastmanstanding-xp3ub How often has history shown that eventually people start to question blatantly bad ideas, and being businessmen the CIS should have been questioning things sooner at several levels of their respective companies. And, if we are allowing Legends, then we have Clones questioning how things were done on day one. We are supposed to believe Palpatine was able to fog the minds of the entire Jedi Order, puppet the Senate, puppet the CIS, parade his plans in public and hide massive projects like the Deathstar for decades. But then he turns around and gets done in by the Rebelion which was even on the level of a PDF and led by tsundere who liked to neck with her brother. It's like the conspiracy theorists that think they have managed to outsmart the Deep State that run rings around all the intelligence agencies of the world from their mother's basement. To quote Looney Tunes, 'It just don't add up!' Edit: And reduce the Jedi to the level of a hokey religion within 20yrs, to the point war vet Chewey couldn't convince Han they were real.
@@135forte The separatists were not the businesses, they were in league with them for the war effort alone. They wouldn’t go all out except to save their own hides or profit margins.
I think the CIS could've ended it before it started at Geonosis I remember hearing somewhere that they had way more battle droids just sitting up in space not being used and could've just killed all the clone troopers and Jedi there. I could be wrong on that just remember hearing it somewhere.
MAYBE.. The Republic if their Navy was deployed as good as the Army could an would probably done the same thing. Especially if the GAR Strategy had been executed alot better. A huge secret from thus SW Era was when Kenobi landed an surprised to find he could literally walked through front door an almost no stealth at all was needed. Was the numbers of clones. When she told him round a million "units" was ready if she meant a LITERAL Million SOLDIERS OR "Units" OF soldiers. If the latter we've all these years been a lil misled all these years as to the true chances of the GAR as its then a Hella lot BIGGER then led to wonder Bout an believe
I mean there were many moments where Anakin and Obi Wan could have been killed, but instead they were captured or re enforced so they could easily excape and keep on causing a threat to the CIS.
If the CIS built up the Death Star and used it during the Clone Wars, it would give them enough time to blow up Corcusant and get an easy win. And maybe if the CIS still had the Malevolence with them in the Battle of Corcusant, it would help out a lot too. And another bunch of stuff.
I just think the threat of a destruction of Corcusant alone would bring an end to the war, the CIS wouldn’t want to seem like obviously the bad guys with such an unstable political system at play. And that’s even if they can get the Death Star. Even at the empires might and during peacetime, they still had issues building the Death Star and it took them quite a while, the weaker CIS which is more a collection of spread out outer rim systems can’t mobilize the economy for such a massive project especially during the war.
Also to respond to mobilization questions, with how gigantic the republic is, and considering that’s where the industry is, even with the mega corps they would still loose alot of their ownership of said factories and companies if war broke out.
@@pyroboss1013 This is true, but as it is said, the CIS was the faction with the largest army in the whole Star Wars era, so of they sacrificed their numbers, they could have used up money on the Death Star. Their numbers didn't really matter as they were very incompetent, and would be better invested on the Death Star.
Eh. The Republic's bigger economy, population and territory are significant advantages that can't be ignored. While the CIS obviously had the advantage when it came to spamming troops, the many major loyalist shipyards and recruitment of non-clones into the military would more or less counteract that advantage, although that would probably give the CIS an initial advantage. Plus, the Republic was also capable of making battle droids, so if they were desperate I'd imagine that would be on the table.
To be fair, that would have caused a civil war amongst the CIS. There WERE actually plenty of decent planets and people in the Separatist cause; and the Death Star is not something that can be hidden. The Death Star can only fulfill its purpose as a weapon of fear if people know it exists.
#AskEck which version of General Grievous do you prefer his 2003 version or his modern version and if you could what would you change about modern Grievous
This was a good breakdown, also Media Zealot's video highlighting the CIS in his Civilizations to Stupid to Exist series also brings up lots of good points on how they were doomed from the get go.
#AskEck: What are your thoughts on Operation Domino and how the Galactic Civil War would've gone if it was successful? I wish we could've gotten more lore about the "Secession Worlds" mentioned in The Essential Guide to Warfare that the Empire crushed early on.
I think it's also important to realize that it's exactly because Palpatine and Dooku were fixing matches between the CIS and GAR that gave the Republic a predetermined win. The main example I can point to is the absorption of the IGBC, if the CIS (Dooku) really cared about the independence from Republic influence then they would've amassed a whole force
I have to somewhat disagree with your take about the Confederacy not existing w/o Palpatine. While it is true that Palpy brought them together, people generally don't rebel just because someone tells them to. They need to believe that they have something to gain from it: in this case that they can topple the managerial, byzantine, bureaucratic tyranny of the Republic, or at least force reforms or their own independence from it; and that the present situation is bad enough to warrant such drastic action. I believe the CiS would've risen with or without Palps, but that it would'be been less unified at the start and more competent the further the war went. There's also the argument that Dooku was a genuine believer in the CiS' cause, but I'll defer that question to people who known more than I
I really want to see a Star Wars version of “what if”. Like it would be so awesome to see episodes that show what if Anakin believes Fives, what if Dooku actually betrays Palpatine or what if Luke actually saved Anakin. It would be so cool to watch that!
As long as Palpatine was alive long enough to move the pieces for the war but not alive long enough to build up his secret Armada, than very clearly yes
#AskEck Once again, could you please answer my question as to why in Canon the Jedi and Clones got along well while in Legends they were far colder with each other? The video’s question seems to be answered in the realm of Legends, but I feel the same answer would come up in Canon. The Separatists have an advantage via numbers. If Dooku used his knowledge of the Jedi and Clones to the full extent, he probably would gain many more victories. Palpatine is no longer getting info to the Republic on Separatist plans. Unless the Republic did something drastic, defeat seems likely. Of course, victory for the Separatists would be a mess. Besides Jedi and Clones leading pro-Republic resistance groups, the Separatist Council and Parliament would come to blows. The government will hate all of the freedom the corporations will have, but the corporations have the entire military, so things seem like they’ll fall apart. Dooku is hard to consider. He certainly hates corruption, but he’s also fallen far morally and believes in empires, not democracy. Even if he used a code to take over the Droid Army, odds are he would turn the CIS into his own Sith Empire. It’ll probably be fairer than the Galactic Empire, but it’s still going to leave the galaxy in an era of darkness. If Dooku instead sides with the corporations, they’ll use the military to ensure they become rich and the Separatist worlds might revolt. That’s the issue with a Separatist victory. The Sith never intended to have the CIS win and thus combined political idealists with corporate armies, two groups that normally would oppose each other.
Just came back from active duty and I see your video. Good to be back to normal, it all clicked with your ending part of the dog I remember it from months ago. :P
My view is they had a very small window to win, and the longer things go, the more that applies. Stuff like Cortosis droids is never going to sway things because Cortosis is expensive and limited in number, while the Republic's production will continue to ramp up and improve it's own weapons. If it wasn't the battle of Coruscant, it would be something else; the fact the CIS struck first and use terror strikes mean that the Republic probably had the political will to fight for a couple years and I don't see the smaller CIS lasting that. I do think *a* CIS with different approach could've won, but not the Dooku/Grievous CIS.
As I understand it, the Republic was on the verge of bankruptcy by the end of the Clone Wars. The only way the Empire was able to exist at all was by completely gutting the CIS, which is why none of the massive, galactic scale corporations that comprised the CIS exist following the Clone Wars. Add to that the fact that one of the final battles of the War was the Siege of Coruscant. Even if the CIS lost that battle, the fact they were able to push all the way to the Republic's Capital is a damning insight into the state of the Republic's military at that point.
While it would no doubt be brought up in a more detailed video but I believe two main factors to this. The first is the cloud of the dark side fully unleashed helped put the Jedi temple on edge. They knew something went wrong when the council members didn’t return but not sure what it was and didn’t sense the emendate danger. The second is the Grand Inquisitor who was once not only a temple guard but a decently high ranking on. With the guard not truly sensing the danger until it was too late but also now a member stabbing them in the back. There isn’t too much detail on his actions during order 66 but I do believe he didn’t just run and hide.
@@shadowwriter329 I like these points. Out of universe explanation could be that writers just forget them? I find it hard to believe that the Grand inquisitor dispatched all of them. Although, we haven’t seen any in all the flashbacks they give of order 66, which could be intentional for a later bit of lore. Hoping Ecks depth of SW lore could turn my attention to something I missed
#AskEck what would have been the “breaking/turning point” for the Republic to use their production capabilities to manufacture and produce their own droid army had the Clone Wars continued like this video describes? Would the Republic then definitely win that war?
The success in war holds on four factors: - Your army strenght - Your Economics and Logistics - Your people's support - Your final goals We can see how Republic had many problems with factors 2 and 3 which caused people revolt with even terracts happening and falling into debts to Banking clans to maintain the expensive Clone army. Separatists on the other side had morally fine, cheap and desposable army, had far less problems with those who don't support the war and their goals to break free from the corrupted Republic was achievable and easy/understandable to propagate to the people.
2:15 hang on, that is simply untrue. I don't understand where the idea that the megacorporations were actual separatists is coming from. Episode 3 in of itself clearly shows them to be Sith alligned war profiteers whose only goal was to earn money in the war. This is expanded on in the Extended Universe in both continuities, where we know they did business with both sides, particularly the Techno Union and Banking Clan. Canon further clarifies the sovereignty of Cato Neimodia and other Neimodian purseworlds, which were not under the control of the Trade Federation. They decided to join the CIS part of the way through the war and were neutral beforehand. The CIS was a large minority of disenfranchised Outer Rim star systems. Not a huge conglomerate of megacorporations. We literally see in Episode 1 how the Core Worlders were covering for the Trade Federation. Those people are allies, not enemies.
Counterpoint: CIS was minutes away from accidentally unleashing Von Neumann swarm upon the galaxy. Idk if it counts as winning😅 And that's among the long list of weapons of Clone Wars that almost ran out of control because Palps wasn't an expert in their design and use, but played both sides.
This reminds me of the current warfare dynamics of drones (droids) vs conventional manned aircraft & equipment (clones). You’d clearly rather have a fighter jet, but the amount of capital that goes into it is just an insanely massive logistical and financial barrier, so unlimited drones dropping hand grenades can do pretty well for a tiny fraction of the price/logistics challenge/production time.
I asked this a long time ago when you were still doing your Star Wars vs series. I think it’d be cool to see an analysis of the imperial fleet at Endor invading a united earth from the horizon zero dawn universe
We really need to see more of the confederacy in star wars lore. We know lots about the republic, the rebels, the galactic empire; what do we truly have on the CIS in canon? Only Clone Wars episodes visiting the planets of key species in the CIS hierarchy.
Without Palpatine interfering with the Jedi though, they could present a balancing force to the CIS's industrial might. Similar to how they helped defend a weak republic from the mandalorians.
#AskEck Was the CIS truly united? The Guilds and Corporations were business people not revolutionaries. Offering favorable deals or using blackmail could’ve had some members switch sides
@AskEck Regarding Grand Admiral Thrawn in Canon, do you think we could see a Canon Empire of the Hand, perhaps operating without Thrawn, until it serves as his starting point for the inevitable Canon Thrawn Campaign?
Just imagine if the CIS, led by Dooku, could have successfully brought Mandalore and Dathomir into its fold. Palpatine wouldn't be able to take on the sheer amount of dark side wielders.
I think that the unstable nature of the Senate was also one of Palpatine's doings. Beyond that, The Republic has the positional advantage here as well. I recall from Clone Wars that a lot of the things that went wrong for the Republic in space happened because the CIS was straight up given exact details about strategic locations, which ships were there, the locations of key facilities, so on so forth. Also, if I'm not mistaken, these corporations were also allowed to operate inside the Republic during the Clone Wars, possibly another Palpatine thing. How long would those corporations have lasted if the Galactic Senate nationalized all the assets belonging to those corporations on Republic worlds and barred them from operating inside the Republic?
I would love to see an alternate version of the clone wars, where there was no influence from Palpatine. One where maybe the influence of the corporations has more of a protected interest in their dealings in the mid to outer rims. While the republic and jedi struggle to get a functioning military ready to face the war.
Because on every republic citizen (And I mean Citizen not Soldier of Local Republic Alligned PSF or Clone - clones were Republic Property Anyway) there were atleast 1000 battle droids of different types.
also missing the fact that Palpatine is using the war to draw out the most dangerous people who could oppose him when he takes power to be crushed and broken up during the clone wars
If the CIS were fighting the war seriously, they would’ve won through sheer attrition alone, Palpatine even playing both sides had to work hard to stop the republic senators from capitulating or asking for a cease fire. Had he not been able to orchestrate the war, CIS would’ve won and become legitimate.
It was a civil war and not a revolution. Worse case scenario (for the Republic) in a Palpatine-free conflict would have been, as you stated, a separate self-determined State in the galaxy.
Of course, the Repiblic was also fighting with one hand tied behind its back. It should've introduced conscription and volunteer armies and invested into a disposable grunt droid. The Clones are great, but they can't afford to be replaced. You need a force of grunts who can negate or mitigate the CIS' numbers advantage so your vastly superior clone troops can bring that advantage to bear.
The numbers are still on the CIS side. Conscripts still need training, minimum 2-3 months so they could be decent in battle. Plus they need resources (food, water, medicine). The CIS just had to keep producing droids that only needed programming and were really cheap to replace and repair.
Facts, the Republics resources would of outlasted the CIS. Likely outcome would be peace treaty if Palp wasnt involved (the citizens were not fully supportive) as the war never hit the core worlds for much of the war until Coruscant which was orchestrated by Palp.
Did the Ancient Sith know about the Star Forge? Ajunta Pall alludes quite heavily to the treasure of the Ancient Sith from his era to be the Star Forge, but I have yet to see this referenced anywhere else. I don't believe anyone other than the Rakatta, Revan, and Malak had anything to do with the Star Forge, or even had any knowledge whatsoever about its existence, and yet Pall seems to state otherwise and the Star Map is located within Naga Sadow's tomb, which couldn't have been a coincidence. Continuity error? Plot thread left unresolved? #askeck
In Kotor 2 it's implied the Sith on Korriban were just a far-flung outpost of the True Sith Empire residing in the Unknown Regions (later retconned to what we see in TOR). At that point the downfall of the Rakata was also still a mystery, so it could be the two were once connected or even one in the same in an earlier period.
Sure but I'm asking about in greater canon. Because Kotor seems to be the only reference whatsoever to the ancient Sith knowing ANYTHING about the Star Forge, let alone having been users of it. @@RevanX77
A bunch of systems leaving The Republic would've left space for some new systems to finally get representation. The ones that didn't get fed up and leave with the CIS that is
In a more straight-up war, I'd view it as very akin to the German invasion of Russia in WWII. Massive initial gains with an opposition seemingly in tatters, but it's sheer size makes it impossible to fully conquer. Then the sleeping giant eventually wakes, with massive counter-attacks and territory regains.
To be honest, with this setting, you can come up with any number of reasons to balance the sides beyond just being manipulated behind the scenes. For the C.I.S. military their troops are droids. Droids are made up of metal, wires, circuitry, etc. All these things take up resources, and we see today in the real world how some resources for necessary items we use can be scarce or difficult to obtain due to numerous reasons. Combine that with them needing these same materials to make ships and vehicles with and you could have a resource strained Military vs the Republic which uses those same materials for ships and vehicles but their soldiers are organic and mostly only need organic materials for "maintenance". That could make for a neat contrast and also gives the Republic other targets to hit such as vital resource spots necessary for droid construction, not just the factories or worlds themselves.
In Rebels, when they find the old CIS tactical droid, it says that by its calculation, the CIS were on track to win the clone wars as they outnumbered republic forces 4 to 1, before the war came to an abrupt end.
I know you probably won‘t see this but here is a Video idea: What if the empire invaded Marvel‘s earth? In this scenario the empire will have a blockade around the earth and the avengers and all militaries wich in this scenario will allie rogether have to defend the planet. Both sides have access to their full range of weaponry , except for planet destroyers. I‘d like to know your tactics for both factions, and who you would let the empire lead the attack and what units and tactics they should use if you were in charge of them and also how you would try to defend earth as our mightiest heroes. Keep in mind the empire can use Vader, the Inquisitors, Palps, all their ground forces they had in the entire e SW galaxy and also their entire navy including fighter support. They can also use any tacticians in any way they like and same goes for earth.
I mean heck, maybe without Sidiious, the CIS never attack Republic positions, worlds, etc, and just bolster their own defenses, and gain sympathy that way. Never even touching Coruscant. Maybe Palpatine is why several battles were the Republic trying to liberate places like Ryloth, that would have never happened if he was at minimum, never pulling the strings. I'll give a take even, if I dare, that even in the show Grievous said he doesn't care about politics and just want Jedi dead, so even if he was on his Hypori level skill, long as he could kill Jedi who came to CIS systems and make it seem defensive? Maybe even he wouldn't have been a "monster" or "terrorizing face of the Confederacy" who knows! Nice video.
If Palps wasn't involved, the corporations wouldn't help the Confederacy either. I really don't get why Ecks and other lore channels don't understand this. The movies alone show it clearly enough, and the lore backs it up as well. The corporations were run by greedy war profiteers who disliked the CIS. Heck, the entire reason for the idea of a CIS gained traction was because of the Naboo crisis. For years, the Republic had been inept and allowed corporations and criminals to do as they please, but the idea that they would allow the Trade Federation to invade a Mid Rim populated by Core World colonists was a shock to everyone. If wealthy, Core educated humans on middle income worlds weren't safe anymore, poor people sure as heck wouldn't be safe either. The war, if it happened, would have gone differently. Either the entire galaxy would have turned into several different corporatocracies ruled by major companies, or it would have been a CIS victory. If Dooku didn't intentionally sabotage the CIS reputation, planets such as Ryloth, Kashyyyk, and Eriadu would have joined the CIS. Yes, that is correct, and they would've taken a ton of other planets with them. For Eriadu, Dooku basically told Tarkin not to join the CIS in his final 'offer'. For Kashyyyk, at least in the EU, there was a lot of political debate about which side to join, despite the CIS clearly trying to provoke the Wookies, it seemed as though the Wookies were still at the very least 50-50 on the issue until the CIS finally pulled a big one and murdered the crown Prince. Technically, it was an accident, but still. As for Ryloth, the Republic did nothing about slavery, and initially, the CIS had a good sales pitch. But obviously, the Sith had them do a full 180 for... reasons. And then they had DJ Tambor roll up in there, pulling a classic USA strat with bombing villages to get resources, and steal the Ark of the Covenant just to make sure.
The Republic may have had the larger navy but the problems with that comes down to pilots and crew to staff them. The Republic could build more but replacing and training pilots and crew takes a long time whereas the CIS is all a matter of programming. The CIS can build ships and send them out the same day. Just my thoughts.
One factor that might have held back the CIS is the cost of making all those droids. The CIS, the empire, and other criminal organisiations made extensive use of slaves, and live personnel were used extensively in other positions such as many on star ships and other jobs that a droid could do. The easiest explanation I can think of is that droid are rather expensive in the Star Wars universe. And Palpatine definitely helped fund the CIS. Maybe without Palpatine, the republic would have placed sanctions on the trade federation and other 'neutral' organisations that would have harmed their available assets. Though without a full economic breakdown of the entire galaxy and all the tedious logistics of making droids, I imagine it's hard to say for certain if they had enough money or not.
Earth fielded larger armies during WW2 than the Republic did in the Clone Wars, which makes sense since Clones come from a single, not very habitable, planet. At the same time this tiny army costs a huge amount of resources just because the Republic is completely responsible for raising their soldiers for years even before factoring in the cost of technology and the Kaminoans' profit margin. And almost all the major shipyards are in the core, the Republic could have a massive advantage in ship numbers if it chose to. The CIS was pulling it's punches, yes, but only so that the Republic wouldn't be forced to remove it's blindfold or untie it's hands and use non-clone forces, which would have messed up Order 66.
Honestly, the Republic was never a state to begin with, at least not in the way we would recognize. It lacked a couple of key fundamentals for being a state. First and most important, it lacked Sovereignty. The Galactic Republic had NO sovereignty and could not act without the consent of the worlds represented in the Senate. Not even the Jedi could be sent to mediate disputes without the approval of the Senate. Furthermore, the Republic could be frozen out of disputes simply by a declaration from the leadership of that system. During the short Pantoran-Talz conflict on Orto Plutonia, Chairman Cho of Pantora declared the conflict an internal matter, which left the Jedi powerless to stop him until the Pantoran Assembly declared him out of order and authorized Senator Chuchi to negotiate. Secondly, the Republic lacks a monopoly on violence. In an entity that is a state, the legality of using force is largely monopolized by the State, with limited exceptions in some regions such as self defense. But the Republic has no such monopoly. Instead, the Jedi, who until the Clone Wars were the closest thing the Republic had to a military AND a police force, had to work in concert with local systems and governments and were limited in their powers. Indeed, it appears that it may even have been not entirely illegal to kill Jedi, given how quickly the Trade Federation were to destroy the Radiant VII and attempt to kill Qui-gon and Obi-wan, despite insisting that everything they were doing was legal. In fairness, they also denied that the Jedi ever arrived but still, I doubt they would have done something like that if they weren't confident they could get away with it. So with no sovereignty and no monopoly on violence, the Republic wasn't a state and the CIS had every right to secede. Indeed, the events of The Clone Wars and Attack of the Clones in particular demonstrate this. Raising an army to fight to the CIS was SO controversial and SO unpopular that Palpatine had to be given emergency powers in order to raise that army by decree.
#AskEck Have you ever wanted to create a new universe for people to share without a big company like Disney being able to send C&Ds out to fans or stealing their art?
#AskEck The way I'd look at this would be as a scenario where Palpatine was no longer in power after the beginning of the war, for instance if Dooku secretly sent someone to assassinate him during or shortly after the battle of geonosis, and from there, without holding back, continued in his campaign to eliminate what he saw as a corrupt republic. I think in that case, the republic would still be committed to the war seeing as their head of state was just assassinated, the clone army would still be present, fleets would still be built, and overall military assets would still be the same. In a context like this, where the war has been committed to, but Palpatine is no longer around to pull the strings, would the CIS have won?
When Zahn writes? He's more friendly and less evil. When Filoni writes he's more stupid and more evil 😂 so there's not even unified canon Thrawn when two writers pull him in different directions
I would say it would probably used something like skirmish calvary is used. Move in fast hit the enemy and retreat. It would find its home as more of a harassing unit then a mainbm battle line unit
It would make perfect sense for Dooku to just decide at any point during the war to go rogue and try to win for real. That he didn't shows he wasn't a true Sith, but merely a fallen Jedi.
Palpatine would have killed him and replaced him with Grievous
@@kianvandenberg6364unless Dooku found a way to hide on a distant planet, leading the battles remotely. Palpatine himself stands no chance against a Rogue Dooku, the seps held the upper hand the entire time.
If he tried that, Palpatine would have stopped holding back.
The CIS would have been obliterated
@@Mr.Kingen Palpatine would still find him. And Grievous ( leader of CIS army ) wouldn’t side with Dooku I think.
@@kianvandenberg6364 If Dooku let himself be found in that situation, without having prepared the ultimate ambush, he would deserve to die. Only someone brain-dead would not prepare in that case.
Alternatively, Dooku could also just fortify Serenno and order any spacecraft that doesn't have access to new access codes, created entirely by himself, to be shot into oblivion.
If Dooku betrays Sidious early enough, he could probably also ally with the Night Sisters, since he still has Ventress as his apprentice and Mother Talzin hates Palpatine. This would add more layers of ritualistic protection against esoteric Sith rituals.
Palpatine also pushed for the war to be on his schedule. Without him the CIS would have had time to develop their army as they saw fit. They also had Death Star plans.
The Death Star was their plan or at that’s how it looked in the video
I thought the original Death Star plans were given to the CIS by Palpatine? Though I guess that doesn't matter depending on the scenario we're looking at, like a rogue Dooku deciding to topple Palpatine and the jedi.
@@xaveircombs2690 but then there's Rogue One.
To me it feels like Death Star would be a combination of several research programmes led on BOTH sides of the war so that without Palpatine no one would get all the pieces of the puzzle. So my guess would be that CIS developed either main laser battery, or the main superstructure. Given the time difference between Rogue One(where we see Death Star get its armament) and epilogue of Revenge of the Sith(where we already see it under construction), it might have spent decades in deep space without energy system, FTL drive and main laser, all of which were titanic projects even as separate things.
@@redherring5016 "I thought the original Death Star plans were given to the CIS by Palpatine?" if that so then what is the point of the very last scene of the attack of the clones?
@@marco002I thought that it was of Geonosian design. Like the Geonosians came up with it and gave it to Dooku. I could be wrong but idk if they knew they were giving it to Palpatine, just giving it to Dooku. The head of the CIS
I really like how I hated the CIS for killing the Clones as a child and betraying the Republic, but now that I rewatch the Prequels I realise how much of a failed and corrupt government the republic is and that the wish of the CIS to be separated from the republic is pretty reasonable. But we also see how the CIS government has the fight with the same issues between the different parties in its ranks like the republic.
Not really. Like, people claim that, but the movies themselves demonstrate that the corporate leaders in the CIS were not Separatists and intentionally helped the Sith win because money. And then the lore proves that they basically won the war for the Republic all by themselves. Even TCW, with its biased messaging, made it clear that the corporations were screwing over the CIS Senate.
They don't portray the CIS with nuance much other than in it's aesthetics, but it always seemed doomed to be an oligarchy instead of a republic or true confederacy. It'd have "less corruption" because lots of corrupt practices would just be stated policy. Now most of my ramble below is about what I find interesting in a storytelling perspective, like what I THINK would make the best background story for the clone wars politics of the CIS.
So essentially all those random world & star system states are in minor wars with their neighbors or themselves, and the only thing uniting them is an Army and Navy they had to buy from the Dystopian Mega-Corporations that played a part in the Republics corruption. This certainly entailed massive amounts of debt to those Megacorps. Like the corporate leaders who were all in that meeting with Dooku clearly thought they were buying the entire confederacy of independent systems and any territory the confederacy could conquer from Republic worlds. And they would've infact "bought" the CIS if it was run secretly by the Sith.
I do like the Clone War show episodes that show some of the confederate politics. But I interpret everything presented as showing that the independent systems joining the Confederacy were hoping to pay the Dystopian Mega Corporations using conquered worlds, otherwise they'd have to foot the bill off of their own populations. But other than having a Senate of their own, by the implication of being Independent Systems in any postwar time they'd have a lot less collective bargaining power against the Dystopian Megacorps.
So if the war ended in a white peace the Dystopian Megacorps would have strong armed world governments separately from each other for more money and resources, prioritizing the corporate profit margins over their own populations. If the Confederacy won big and conquered many other systems, then those worlds wouldn't even have the courtesy of their own government to bargain with, resulting in classic fantasy slavery. The only difference in the big win scenario is that the world governments too, which in Star Wars seem to be mostly constitutional or even feudal monarchies, would've gotten to partake in a bit of the exploitation.
The only version of the Confederacy that had any hope of accomplishing the Republics functions without the terrible amount of corruption is one that gained independence without the clone wars even having to happen, which is what the peace loving characters like Padme seemed to have wanted. EVEN then though, many worlds and star Systems trying to join the confederacy had a political faction that wanted to stay in the republic. Thus they had a ton of minor civil wars, which is probably what lead up to the events of Episode 2.
But yeah sorry for rambling this just seemed like a good place to write down a but of plot thoughts.
@@OneSecretPerson No no, it's a interesting perspective. And it makes sense.
@@OneSecretPerson The reason these corporate leaders pledged their armies to Dooku is that they had vested interests in seeing the CIS discredited and destroyed, and as we see in ROTS, they purposefully have the CIS lose the war, and in the Extended Universe we see how they use war crimes to discredit the CIS. The CIS droid army was essentially just a combined corporate military that the Sith had executive control over which occupied the territory of the Separatist Alliance.
Why would the Separatist Senate allow Dooku to do this? Because Dooku is the founding father of the CIS and the one who united so many Separatist factions together to form the confederacy. They have ridiculous levels of confidence in him.
Furthermore, if the CIS military was not limited and controlled as it actually was, it would be a matter of months before the Republic capitulated, and the CIS wouldn't have committed huge war crimes either, meaning many planets (Kashyyyk, Ryloth, Eriadu, etc.) would have joined willingly. This means that the CIS would not have lost much financially and would be relatively OK economically.
With Cato Neimodia and other Neimodian purse worlds willingly joining the CIS for their own reasons, the Neimodian leadership of the Trade Federation could be arrested and their droids could be shut down or control could be handed to the government. The Trade Federation leadership would be replaced by ones approved of by the CIS government.
This would most likely be enough of a warning to the Techno Union and Banking Clan that the CIS wasn't someone they could cross, and honestly both would probably prefer just to continue doing business and not make a fuss. The only company I think that would really pose a threat would be the Corporate Alliance, but they relied heavily on military commanders who had genuine Separatist interests like Trench or General Loathsom, so without them, they would not have much in the way of military success.
Man I’ll always love the CIS in Star Wars just cause of all of the creativity in both its armed forces as well as the many races, planets, and organizations that made it up.
The Clone Wars was a dramatic change up from the whole “Big evil empire vs plucky underdog good guy rebels”, being a far more complicated, detailed, and insidious affair due to how it all played out over the course of decades.
I always found the droid armies to be more interesting and ironically more “human” than the clones
Indeed. If Maul had revealed Sidious's plans to Dooku I'm convinced they would've formed an alliance. Dooku would sneak Maul on board the Invisible Hand, once Sidious is "captured" according to his plan Maul, Dooku and Grievous would ambush Sidious. They then would flee to the outer rim and build up forces while the GAR recovers from the massive siege on Coruscant and the death of their Chancellor.
Maul would eventually betray Dooku but Dooku would promise Maul Kenobi if he does his bidding. Maul would amass his criminal syndicate once again, this time with Dooku's financial resources. With the syndicate in place under Maul's command the CIS would have increased funds and would no longer be restricted by Sidious's will.
At that point there would be a lot more Lucrehulks, Providence dreadnoughts and CIS would amass massive fleets for the attacks to come. With Maul's syndicate easily extending the CIS's reach into the many underworld slums of the core world and weapons contributed by the CIS, sabotage would become rampant. While not entirely destructive itself, the onslaught of sabotage would ferment unrest amongst the lower classes of society and more importantly would distract the Jedi/GAR.
While they're distracted the CIS would launch massive attacks and cripple GAR infrastructure worlds like Kuat and Kamino. From that point on, the war would begin to shift in the CIS's favor.
Facts man. The clone wars is and always be my favorite era of star wars. It was so intricate, creative and expanded fhe universe so much. I get so bored with the rebellion vs big bad empire over and over again
If you stop and think about it, most of the actual separatists (not Dooku, Grievous, or the major corporation leaders) were the good guys in the Clone Wars. They had legitimate grievances with The Republic and any attempts at peacefully resolving them had utterly failed due to the corruption, bureaucracy, and straight up discrimination of that had become core aspects of The Republic. Not all of the separatists were good, some committed war crimes and crimes against sentience, but many of them were tired of the issues not being resolved and decided to just leave.
Not entirely, some of the major banking clans and trade unions are why the outer rim is such a shit hole in the first place.
@@lokensicarius9347 that is correct, but who was it that made the Outer Rim a free trade zone, completely neglected even the most basic government oversight over the major corporations, and even gave them seats in the Senate? The Republic may not have directly hurt them, but it enabled those who did.
@@DanTheUA-camAddict Yeah an now the cis are ran by the same corrupt muppets who bribed the said same republic, cis or republic everyone loses. xD
I dunno about that. Even if most of the CIS was made up of smallish mid to outer rim worlds who had legitimate reasons to secede from the republic, the separatist council and senate were dominated by corporate executives or puppet politicians who served corporate interests. They only were interested in efficient governance as a way to ensure their profits continued to grow. And it doesn’t help that their automated military was controlled almost entirely by the corporations who supplied the droids and starships.
If you stop and think about it, Sheev was the good guy in the Clone Wars.
He brought peace, freedom, justice, and security to his new Empire.
Bro every time I hear your intro/outro music it fills me with so much nostalgia for when I used to listen to your videos on car rides or when going to sleep almost 8 years ago. Like I remember when the biggest talking point in Star Wars was "who is Syfo Dias?" Love your channel, love your content, hope you're doing well my man!
syfo dias is the most powerful sithlord to ever walk naboo
Master who? I was recruited by a man called Tyranus on one of the moons of Bogden.
CIS would have won if legend Greivous was canon, all facts
For The Separatist Alliance!!!
Roger Roger!
No matter how good your videos are, and this one is good, the dog bit at the end (7:44 on this one) is always a treat on top.
I think the only way the republic could have won the war legitimately would have been to take their veteran clones and have them train conscripts while also producing battle droids of their own and using the clone soldiers as elite units within the Republic.
Yeah if Palpatine wasn't also short-handing the Republic, the economic superiority of the Republic could of been used to in a proper way and would of overwhelmed the CIS.
@@MillionsofDollar100 Is the Republic economically superior? Thought CIS represents the financial sectors of the galaxy. The Republic is one giant corrupt bureaucratic machine that can barely hold itself together. It even has to rely on a 3rd party (clones) to wage its wars.
Palpatine nerf both republic and cis , he purposely makes republic struggle in their war while simultaneously makes the cis more villainous and the jedi barbaric so the people more and more hopefull on the government because they're the good guys
@@MillionsofDollar100I don’t really think either could have overwhelmed each other. Both sides had basically limitless armies, the Republic volunteers, and the Separatists the droids. It would have come down to attrition and public opinion, which I feel like the Republic would lose on that front, simply because they’re using people to fight, even if they did just use a shit ton of clones like in our timeline, they were still sentient beings with lives and personalities, while the CIS used droids that were (relatively) cheap as dirt, and were not sentient. Public opinion would probably quickly sway against the war after seeing all the death and destruction it can wrought
@@MillionsofDollar100the cis had basicly unlimited amout of droids so no
The time of planetary defense fleets, corporations, and judicial forces before the Clone Wars seems like a really interesting period.
Particularly in terms of ships. They already had Munificents for the Banking Clan, Lucrehulks for the Trade Federation, and the Judicials had the Consular Class (which would become the Charger C70 in the Clone Wars) and CR70/CR90 Corvette (aka the first ship ever seen in Star Wars, A New Hope, used by the Rebellion).
Really the Clone Wars just added and popularized the Acclaimator, Venator, Recusant, and Providence as the primary military ships.
I think Palpatine could have easily just chosen the CIS to win, but doing so would have resulted in him having many more potential rivals and many private organizations capable of building their own armies and asserting their own territorial claims. So instead he set up the CIS as the overwhelming, OP af, and top heavy baddies so that basically all the absolutely winning traits they had would be demonized, thus further making the galaxy dependent on him and his empire.
The reason the CIS is dominated by non-humans and corporations is specifically because Palpatine wanted to forge a human-dominated, centralized Empire where private industry was nationalized and humans held all the power. He basically hand-picked every faction he wanted to discredit and put them into the CIS.
The only situation where the CIS could have been in a position to win would have been if Dooku said "Kriff it, we ball", and betrayed Palpatine in order to lead the Confederacy against the Republic legitimately. Frankly given how much Dooku detested the Sith, and how much Palpatine seriously damaged the idea of there being any trust between them by forcing (threatening) Dooku to kill his own apprentice even while openly grooming Anakin towards the Dark Side, essentially undermining his own justifications in the process, this was probably a real possibility.
I also think that without Palpatine's meddling, we would see a lot of strife within the Jedi Order.
Without Palpatine calling the shots, and assuming Dooku- if he was even still in charge- wanted to win, many Jedi may be swayed to join his cause, or simply step out of the war altogether.
(Really, I think that trying to execute Jedi on Geonosis was just about the dumbest way they could've started a civil war, when they were led by a prestigious and beloved member of the Order itself, especially considering that the Jedi were the only real fighting force to contest the CIS)
Dooku could have attracted many Jedi to his alternative order if he had gone that route. Many Jedi agreed with him. But, the Battle of Geonosis was set up, partially, to burn the bridge between Dooku and the Jedi. Sidious was very wary of Dooku for a number of reasons and having the Jedi turn against the former Jedi was one easy to remove one possible avenue from which Dooku could have betrayed Sidious.
I don't understand why Dooku allowed that to happen, though. He clearly was still a Jedi at heart in many ways, even to the end of the Clone Wars. He could have siphoned off members, and converted them to the Dark Side.
It kind of seems like Dooku's form of the Dark Side, especially early in the Clone Wars, wasn't seen as apparently wrong by the other Jedi. I mean, Obi Wan wasn't mad when he saw Dooku (If it weren't for Jango), he was still seen as a master. @@crownprincesebastianjohano7069
#AskEck What do we know of the development of the Venator? Was it ready at the outset of the Clone Wars or did it enter service sometime after it began? And what did the Republic Navy have before the Venator (and by extension, the Victory) came into service that could stand up to Seperatist capital ships?
Lore ship Versus video request:
Resurgent vs. Starhawk
Tie Striker vs. New Republic V-Wing
World Devastator vs. Vong Worldship
Tie Silencer vs. X-83 Twintail
Tie Silencer vs. Tie Defender (legends version)
Keldabe vs. ISD II
MC90 vs. Nebula class star destroyer
Nebula class vs. Pellaeon class
Majestic class vs. Bothan Assault Cruiser
EAWX: FOTR’s Mandator II portrayal vs. Subjugator
Praetor vs. Subjugator
EAWX: TR’s Mediator portrayal vs. Resurgent
Starhawk vs. Bulwark MK III
Gargantua/Aratech 520 Battle Platform vs. A6 Juggernaut
I think it’s important too note that the CIS had spent 10 years of military build up between episodes 1 and 2. Let’s not forget that the Republic had massive production capabilities. It’s just as pointed out in the video the Republic did not have the stomach or political will to go into total war like it did in the Sith Wars. Like let’s not kid ourselves here there are hundreds of quadrillions of people in the Star Wars galaxy with many of those people in the Republic.I think if both sides were completely unshackled it would be way more massive with more loss of life. Makes for great day dreams lol.
Facts! He forgets to mention if the Replubic wasnt short-handed by Palp their pure economic resources and man power would of overwhelmed the confederacy
@@MillionsofDollar100Or he wants to engage with them just enough to help politically crush them not chase them away with so much resources to just play cat and mouse. In other words he doesn’t want a forever war like we have going on right now in the real world. Palpatine is a very smart statesmen.
@@MillionsofDollar100 Nonsense. The Republic's economy was almost completely civilian, their worlds also barely have any combat experience. The militarization of the Republic dragged on so long, despite Palpatine having emergency powers and basically went to "work" since the battle of Geonosis. And yet it took years to gain the upper hand until the Outer Rim sieges against the artificially held-back CIS forces.
"Short handed by Palp" is an utterly absurd statement, literally his FIRST act with his emergency powers was starting militarization.
If anything, Palpatine is holding back the CIS - not the Republic.
His act for militarization is literally in Episode 2, you don't even need to know the Expanded Universe lore - which btw showed how outmatched the Republic was in the first half of the war. Even on the Republic side they started to scratch their heads after finding out that the CIS held so many of their forces in reserve instead of going all-in.
Sorry, i know the Republic and Clones are very popular, but lore-wise, they would have lost if the CIS gave it all, even with the Republic having the bigger economy.
It simply takes too long to militarize an economy, even Germany before WW2 needed several years - and at the end half of the Wehrmachts equipment was still drawn by horse. In Star Wars we are talking about a galactic institution with thousands of systems, that were under the Ruusan Reformation for centuries that have populations that aren't combat ready, not even mentally. Giving a civilian a rifle dosen't make him a soldier, again, look at Germanys last effort in WW2 with the "Volkssturm", where they gave weapons to almost every german civilian and yet its military value was close to 0 due to the complete lack of any military professionalism. The oh-so-great manpower of the Republic would have even struggled against the most basic battle droids, since they are simply not soldiers. You need *at least* some kind of basic military drills which would take several months or even years. Time that a non-held-back CIS would use to conquer more systems.
If you really thing Palps (or some other chancellor) could have simply snapped his finger and suddenly had the largest galactic military at their disposal (which again, Palpatine actually tried), you are utterly underestimating how much effort true militarization on such a scale is actually required.
Another good historical example are China and India. They had tons of people and yet they were outmatched and (partially) colonized by European powers with much less manpower, but far greater military professionalism. People underestimate how much of a difference that really makes.
I agree, both sides were fighting at like 1% of their real capabilities, and let's be honest the entire clone wars is a skirmish that occasionally struck too close to home (battle of coruscant) and even then it was purposefully engineered that way by palps. There were at most 10 000 planets conquered by the CIS, aka between 5% (at most) and less than 1% of the planets under the control of the Republic.
The republic could simply recruit 1% of all their planetary polices and/or local millitia and have an army considerably more effective and larger than the clones.
Palps stopped this, and an explanation for the small size and capabilities of the Republic military (other than no political will, lack of military tradition, etc...) is the probably astronomical embezzlement of funds and corruption on a galactic scale, coupled with colossal delays, cost overruns, resulting in the defense budget doing 1‰ of what it should on paper
@@MillionsofDollar100 Not at all, Palpatine was holding back the CiS. The Republic was weak because of how strong it admittedly was, since this strength all went into the wrong ‘sectors’ completely unhelpful in a war situation. The droid army would’ve made the CiS unstoppable over any stretch of time, dragging the Republic to its knees by attrition and doing so with extreme ease.
#askeck this one has always bothered me about the Grand Army of the Republic: Clones being grown and trained in secret on an actively forgotten planet is one thing, but the Venators? The baby's first star destroyers? The clearly a -war ship- in the post Russon Reformation eras, surely was going to turn a few heads at the ship yards, or at the transporting thereof into whatever deep space hidey hole the fleet waited at. The arms and armor being smuggled to Kamino are small enough scale, and the vehicles are plausibly taught via the simulations we see briefly in The Clone Wars... But we also see something like a half dozen Star Destroyer scale warships, in the first battle of Geonosis. The moment of their big debute, where the Jedi put their clone army to emergency activation... And had no time to commission a bunch of warships. They had to be already-existant.
The Acclamators at Geonosis were built in much the same way the Clones were, in secret in a planet long-forgotten. The Venators were only built after the Clone Wars had already started.
And Acclamators are not as armed as later Venators. They probably were compliant with the Ruusan reformation rules.
If I remember right, the ships were developed by Rothana Engineering, a subsidiary of Kuat Drive Yards created specifically for the creation of the GAR fleet. Due to Ruusan Reformations and the secrecy of the army, Rothana was made so that the fleet and arms could be made by the best in the galaxy whilst still remaining hidden and keeping Kuat out of any trouble or responsibility
1)does it remind you of Rebel Alliance "cruise ships"?
2)as people have said, "units" didn't mean individual soldiers and could be anything from squad to battalion. So 6 million units weren't as easy to stealthily supply. However still within realm of single planet.
3)as funny as it is, the battleships didn't have to be hidden as much. They still were, but there wasn't as much of a need. They were just a bunch of cruisers built to replace previous active ships if anybody asked. Like how people forget that USN doesn't have ONLY newest supercarriers in categories of capital ships and carriers and there are also dozens of mothballed(but periodically maintained and modernized) capital ships available.
@@josesanchezrodriguez1783 Nope, the Venators were also ready from the start. They take part in the Battle of Christophsis only months after the opening of the Clone Wars at Geonosis, it's a miracle they even managed to train the crews on a completely new ship within the span of a few months.
#AskEck Hey Eck, what do you think Grievous's story would be like if the jedi sided with the Kaleesh in the Huk war? This is the last time I'm gonna ask since it doesn't seem to be a very popular question.
not eck, but i think he would become the leader of the kaleesh. not only this, but he would probably push to have his planet fight in the clones wars out of respect for the jedi.
Not much would change if the separatists still kidnapped and brainwashed him
Why can't the CIS just leave?
Because the Senate believed in their stupidity that they could be United as whole instead of two separate governments. Just like how the American civil War played out. The people in the South wanted to keep doing what they were doing because they believed what they were doing was okay and they also refused to address the slavery problem after they defeated the British after the American independence movement.
Back to the CIS they believed they were being left out of the affairs of the Galaxy because they were farther away from the inner rim where all the senators were. My problem with the alliance to restore the Republic they refused to use CIS holdouts as helpful members because they were still stupid.
Are they stupid?
Not to get political or anything, but I can sum up why the CIS can’t leave with a modern irl comparison.
Why can’t Texas just leave the U.S.? The government of our republic clearly doesn’t care about it, the state wants to leave so they should be allowed to leave.
@@Darth_Traitorous kinda ironic when the US was founded on the principle of succession by leaving
@@jamesesterline Mon Mothma surely was she could have used droids as well as humans to fight the Stormtroopers but she refused because of her own hubris. That is why I want Disney to wreck on how she died I believe she died peacefully but she should die violently. It is just come out that Palpatine has set bombs on all of coruscant and to activate it is called protocol 23. It was used in one of the latest Canon comic issues.
Tthe CIS had the 4 sides of the military problem solved:
1. Manpower - they could produce droids on an industrial scale.
2. Equipment - they had Cooperations that could build new fabricationlines within weeks.
3. Logistics - again, interstellar cooperations that were on a war footing. While military logistics are a bit more complicated then civilian logistics - after all, people are shooting at you - if you are good in the civilian world, you are at least OK on the military side.
4. Public moral - no dead soilders returning home on mass, just a lot more jobs in the factories and at worst more taxes to pay for everything + a cause for freedom.
Honestly, thats the war i would love to fight as a commander. I could lose millions and my CO would just ask how much more i need. Lost a tank battalion, here, have tow new once with updated software. One of your driods is just RAMBO, lets update all other driods with his experience then. You want to run the enemie out of ammunition by throwing bodies at your problem russian style? And you want to do that because you really like that cantina there + they do have a mine that would be nice to have? Forget the cantina, but the mine - yeah, lets do it.
I would love a video on the mega-conglomerates of the galaxy. Especially concerning how the Sith Order essentially hijacked the Secessionist Movement within the Galactic Senate to implement the manipulated whims of the mega-corporations into what was the fledgling CIS, whom formed leading up to the Battle of Geonosis. The actual constituents of the CIS were likely none-the-wiser to the brutality of their offensives, nor just how heavy the stakes, many mega-corporations had essentially invested into the CIS. The actual legislature did grant corporate senators representation - so these individuals were aware of dealing with these entities. However, they surely must have simultaneously believed that they retained autonomy, since dealing with the industrial/manufacturing and weaponsmith juggernauts of the galaxy would be perceived as a necessary woe. They couldn't have known their plight had died the moment Dooku had interjected himself into their movement, now a cornerstone of Separatist authority. It was too late.
The meeting on Geonosis was, in essence, a business deal. The outlined contracts between entities such as Trade Federation, Corporate Alliance, Commerce Guilds, Techno Union, the Banking Clan and Dooku himself (whom had by now ascended to firmly representing the CIS as their head of state). The exchange for providing resources, aside from payment of course, was a seat on an executive Separatist Council with administration over the Separatist Military.
Grievous' EU background does fit well into this dynamic Lucas revealed via TCW.
Lucas perceived the conflict as two belligerents, with war profiteering right along the middle.
The Sith had control over both belligerents and them being puppeteers of these factions would serve their purpose.
Just a question that really intrigued me: how did the citizens of the Empire believe the Clone Wars ended so swiftly if they were never told about the droid shutdown? Or were they?
I was listening to a fan story where Grevious, *real* Grevious from the mini series, got control of a major droid factory. First thing he did was scrap the B1 for Supers and Commandos.
Yeah i always wondered about this as well, why not scrap (or heavily reduce/rethink) the B1's and even B2's (i think that's what Super battles are called) and regular Tac Droids for, possibly less in total number but orders of magnitude more effective, Commando's/Super Commando's, Destroyer's (Droideka's), Super Tactical Droids (Kehlani's), and Magna Droids. I know the answer, Palpatine/Sidious of course, but it's an interesting thing to wonder in my opinion.
@@lastmanstanding-xp3ub The Sideous answer never sits well with me. The Seperatists were largely businesses and that short of waste should have stood out as a bad idea. Saying Sideous did it anytime that something doesn't make sense makes him frankly godlike to the point that explaining how he lost becomes the new problem.
@@135forte Well I mean he was, sort of, god-like in a way, or rather Devil/Satan-like I suppose. I mean it took Space Jesus/Jesus's (Anakin & Luke) to defeat him, and it was his hubris/vanity that largely caused his defeat via his overconfidence, not unlike the real world biblical story of the fall of Lucifer/the Devil/Satan/etcetera. I see what you mean I think though, Palpatine couldn't have micro-managed everything, in the Clone Wars or otherwise, but I think it was his general opinion/policy of neither side being too overpowered that could result in the B1's and B2's being the standard infantry "soldiers" that were used on the battlefields, and with their lack of individual effectiveness they made up for it (and evened out) in number, and the Clones & GAR as a whole lacked the numbers but individually were exponentially more effective which evened out things out, at least in appearance to the general public and even the military & Jedi.
@@lastmanstanding-xp3ub How often has history shown that eventually people start to question blatantly bad ideas, and being businessmen the CIS should have been questioning things sooner at several levels of their respective companies. And, if we are allowing Legends, then we have Clones questioning how things were done on day one.
We are supposed to believe Palpatine was able to fog the minds of the entire Jedi Order, puppet the Senate, puppet the CIS, parade his plans in public and hide massive projects like the Deathstar for decades. But then he turns around and gets done in by the Rebelion which was even on the level of a PDF and led by tsundere who liked to neck with her brother. It's like the conspiracy theorists that think they have managed to outsmart the Deep State that run rings around all the intelligence agencies of the world from their mother's basement. To quote Looney Tunes, 'It just don't add up!'
Edit: And reduce the Jedi to the level of a hokey religion within 20yrs, to the point war vet Chewey couldn't convince Han they were real.
@@135forte The separatists were not the businesses, they were in league with them for the war effort alone. They wouldn’t go all out except to save their own hides or profit margins.
I think the CIS could've ended it before it started at Geonosis I remember hearing somewhere that they had way more battle droids just sitting up in space not being used and could've just killed all the clone troopers and Jedi there. I could be wrong on that just remember hearing it somewhere.
MAYBE.. The Republic if their Navy was deployed as good as the Army could an would probably done the same thing. Especially if the GAR Strategy had been executed alot better.
A huge secret from thus SW Era was when Kenobi landed an surprised to find he could literally walked through front door an almost no stealth at all was needed. Was the numbers of clones. When she told him round a million "units" was ready if she meant a LITERAL Million SOLDIERS OR "Units" OF soldiers. If the latter we've all these years been a lil misled all these years as to the true chances of the GAR as its then a Hella lot BIGGER then led to wonder Bout an believe
I mean there were many moments where Anakin and Obi Wan could have been killed, but instead they were captured or re enforced so they could easily excape and keep on causing a threat to the CIS.
If the CIS built up the Death Star and used it during the Clone Wars, it would give them enough time to blow up Corcusant and get an easy win. And maybe if the CIS still had the Malevolence with them in the Battle of Corcusant, it would help out a lot too. And another bunch of stuff.
I just think the threat of a destruction of Corcusant alone would bring an end to the war, the CIS wouldn’t want to seem like obviously the bad guys with such an unstable political system at play. And that’s even if they can get the Death Star. Even at the empires might and during peacetime, they still had issues building the Death Star and it took them quite a while, the weaker CIS which is more a collection of spread out outer rim systems can’t mobilize the economy for such a massive project especially during the war.
Also to respond to mobilization questions, with how gigantic the republic is, and considering that’s where the industry is, even with the mega corps they would still loose alot of their ownership of said factories and companies if war broke out.
@@pyroboss1013 This is true, but as it is said, the CIS was the faction with the largest army in the whole Star Wars era, so of they sacrificed their numbers, they could have used up money on the Death Star. Their numbers didn't really matter as they were very incompetent, and would be better invested on the Death Star.
Eh. The Republic's bigger economy, population and territory are significant advantages that can't be ignored. While the CIS obviously had the advantage when it came to spamming troops, the many major loyalist shipyards and recruitment of non-clones into the military would more or less counteract that advantage, although that would probably give the CIS an initial advantage. Plus, the Republic was also capable of making battle droids, so if they were desperate I'd imagine that would be on the table.
Gosh I didn't realize how much I missed these types of lore/speculation videos
If not for Palpatine the CIS wouldve also had the death star
To be fair, that would have caused a civil war amongst the CIS. There WERE actually plenty of decent planets and people in the Separatist cause; and the Death Star is not something that can be hidden. The Death Star can only fulfill its purpose as a weapon of fear if people know it exists.
But not the Super Laser
Imagine A Lukrehulk , but the Core ship is death star , and the main hull is just a Ring
7:19. Civil War buffs entering the chat 💀
#AskEck which version of General Grievous do you prefer his 2003 version or his modern version and if you could what would you change about modern Grievous
2003 but with the 2008 voice
@@user-op8fg3ny3j Agreed.
Legends Grievous, the Vader of the clone wars.
2003 as grievous but 2005 as his voice. It just seems better in my mind.
I love all versions of Grievous tho I understand the problem people have with TCW Grievous
I always preferred the CIS. I just love the droids, I love greivous, dooku, love em. I loved making alternate scenarios where the CIS won
This was a good breakdown, also Media Zealot's video highlighting the CIS in his Civilizations to Stupid to Exist series also brings up lots of good points on how they were doomed from the get go.
#AskEck: What are your thoughts on Operation Domino and how the Galactic Civil War would've gone if it was successful? I wish we could've gotten more lore about the "Secession Worlds" mentioned in The Essential Guide to Warfare that the Empire crushed early on.
I think it's also important to realize that it's exactly because Palpatine and Dooku were fixing matches between the CIS and GAR that gave the Republic a predetermined win. The main example I can point to is the absorption of the IGBC, if the CIS (Dooku) really cared about the independence from Republic influence then they would've amassed a whole force
Maturing is realizing that the CIS were the good guys
I have to somewhat disagree with your take about the Confederacy not existing w/o Palpatine.
While it is true that Palpy brought them together, people generally don't rebel just because someone tells them to. They need to believe that they have something to gain from it: in this case that they can topple the managerial, byzantine, bureaucratic tyranny of the Republic, or at least force reforms or their own independence from it; and that the present situation is bad enough to warrant such drastic action. I believe the CiS would've risen with or without Palps, but that it would'be been less unified at the start and more competent the further the war went.
There's also the argument that Dooku was a genuine believer in the CiS' cause, but I'll defer that question to people who known more than I
I really want to see a Star Wars version of “what if”. Like it would be so awesome to see episodes that show what if Anakin believes Fives, what if Dooku actually betrays Palpatine or what if Luke actually saved Anakin. It would be so cool to watch that!
As long as Palpatine was alive long enough to move the pieces for the war but not alive long enough to build up his secret Armada, than very clearly yes
#AskEck Once again, could you please answer my question as to why in Canon the Jedi and Clones got along well while in Legends they were far colder with each other?
The video’s question seems to be answered in the realm of Legends, but I feel the same answer would come up in Canon. The Separatists have an advantage via numbers. If Dooku used his knowledge of the Jedi and Clones to the full extent, he probably would gain many more victories. Palpatine is no longer getting info to the Republic on Separatist plans. Unless the Republic did something drastic, defeat seems likely.
Of course, victory for the Separatists would be a mess. Besides Jedi and Clones leading pro-Republic resistance groups, the Separatist Council and Parliament would come to blows. The government will hate all of the freedom the corporations will have, but the corporations have the entire military, so things seem like they’ll fall apart. Dooku is hard to consider. He certainly hates corruption, but he’s also fallen far morally and believes in empires, not democracy. Even if he used a code to take over the Droid Army, odds are he would turn the CIS into his own Sith Empire. It’ll probably be fairer than the Galactic Empire, but it’s still going to leave the galaxy in an era of darkness. If Dooku instead sides with the corporations, they’ll use the military to ensure they become rich and the Separatist worlds might revolt.
That’s the issue with a Separatist victory. The Sith never intended to have the CIS win and thus combined political idealists with corporate armies, two groups that normally would oppose each other.
Just came back from active duty and I see your video. Good to be back to normal, it all clicked with your ending part of the dog I remember it from months ago. :P
My view is they had a very small window to win, and the longer things go, the more that applies. Stuff like Cortosis droids is never going to sway things because Cortosis is expensive and limited in number, while the Republic's production will continue to ramp up and improve it's own weapons. If it wasn't the battle of Coruscant, it would be something else; the fact the CIS struck first and use terror strikes mean that the Republic probably had the political will to fight for a couple years and I don't see the smaller CIS lasting that. I do think *a* CIS with different approach could've won, but not the Dooku/Grievous CIS.
As I understand it, the Republic was on the verge of bankruptcy by the end of the Clone Wars. The only way the Empire was able to exist at all was by completely gutting the CIS, which is why none of the massive, galactic scale corporations that comprised the CIS exist following the Clone Wars.
Add to that the fact that one of the final battles of the War was the Siege of Coruscant. Even if the CIS lost that battle, the fact they were able to push all the way to the Republic's Capital is a damning insight into the state of the Republic's military at that point.
Both the CIS & Republic were waging a war in the best interests of the future Empire- I like to look at it like that. Good video as always
That should be the first episode of a Star Wars what if series: “what if count dooku betrayed palpatine?”
#AskEck not sure if you covered this, but I’ll ask anyway. Why did the temple guards fall so easily? What do we know about their ranks and culture?
While it would no doubt be brought up in a more detailed video but I believe two main factors to this. The first is the cloud of the dark side fully unleashed helped put the Jedi temple on edge. They knew something went wrong when the council members didn’t return but not sure what it was and didn’t sense the emendate danger.
The second is the Grand Inquisitor who was once not only a temple guard but a decently high ranking on. With the guard not truly sensing the danger until it was too late but also now a member stabbing them in the back. There isn’t too much detail on his actions during order 66 but I do believe he didn’t just run and hide.
@@shadowwriter329 I like these points. Out of universe explanation could be that writers just forget them? I find it hard to believe that the Grand inquisitor dispatched all of them. Although, we haven’t seen any in all the flashbacks they give of order 66, which could be intentional for a later bit of lore.
Hoping Ecks depth of SW lore could turn my attention to something I missed
Got to say, it’s odd hearing you talk about Star Wars as I have been watching your hockey channel, been meaning to start watching this channel again
I think the reliance on droids is a weakness as well, given the risk of hacking or the more intelligent droids/AI going rogue.
#AskEck what would have been the “breaking/turning point” for the Republic to use their production capabilities to manufacture and produce their own droid army had the Clone Wars continued like this video describes? Would the Republic then definitely win that war?
The success in war holds on four factors:
- Your army strenght
- Your Economics and Logistics
- Your people's support
- Your final goals
We can see how Republic had many problems with factors 2 and 3 which caused people revolt with even terracts happening and falling into debts to Banking clans to maintain the expensive Clone army.
Separatists on the other side had morally fine, cheap and desposable army, had far less problems with those who don't support the war and their goals to break free from the corrupted Republic was achievable and easy/understandable to propagate to the people.
2:15 hang on, that is simply untrue. I don't understand where the idea that the megacorporations were actual separatists is coming from. Episode 3 in of itself clearly shows them to be Sith alligned war profiteers whose only goal was to earn money in the war. This is expanded on in the Extended Universe in both continuities, where we know they did business with both sides, particularly the Techno Union and Banking Clan. Canon further clarifies the sovereignty of Cato Neimodia and other Neimodian purseworlds, which were not under the control of the Trade Federation. They decided to join the CIS part of the way through the war and were neutral beforehand.
The CIS was a large minority of disenfranchised Outer Rim star systems. Not a huge conglomerate of megacorporations. We literally see in Episode 1 how the Core Worlders were covering for the Trade Federation. Those people are allies, not enemies.
There was also the B3 Battledroid which is so strong that Sidious Had to shut down production since they could have turned the was into CIS favor
He was quick to cover up his tracks by shutting down CIS immediately, smart military genius, to prevent the rebellion from reviving the droid army
Counterpoint: CIS was minutes away from accidentally unleashing Von Neumann swarm upon the galaxy. Idk if it counts as winning😅
And that's among the long list of weapons of Clone Wars that almost ran out of control because Palps wasn't an expert in their design and use, but played both sides.
This reminds me of the current warfare dynamics of drones (droids) vs conventional manned aircraft & equipment (clones).
You’d clearly rather have a fighter jet, but the amount of capital that goes into it is just an insanely massive logistical and financial barrier, so unlimited drones dropping hand grenades can do pretty well for a tiny fraction of the price/logistics challenge/production time.
CIS supporter here!
I support the confederacy as well. We can’t have states rights taken away!
I asked this a long time ago when you were still doing your Star Wars vs series. I think it’d be cool to see an analysis of the imperial fleet at Endor invading a united earth from the horizon zero dawn universe
We really need to see more of the confederacy in star wars lore. We know lots about the republic, the rebels, the galactic empire; what do we truly have on the CIS in canon? Only Clone Wars episodes visiting the planets of key species in the CIS hierarchy.
Without Palpatine interfering with the Jedi though, they could present a balancing force to the CIS's industrial might. Similar to how they helped defend a weak republic from the mandalorians.
#AskEck Was the CIS truly united? The Guilds and Corporations were business people not revolutionaries. Offering favorable deals or using blackmail could’ve had some members switch sides
@AskEck Regarding Grand Admiral Thrawn in Canon, do you think we could see a Canon Empire of the Hand, perhaps operating without Thrawn, until it serves as his starting point for the inevitable Canon Thrawn Campaign?
Just imagine if the CIS, led by Dooku, could have successfully brought Mandalore and Dathomir into its fold. Palpatine wouldn't be able to take on the sheer amount of dark side wielders.
I think that the unstable nature of the Senate was also one of Palpatine's doings. Beyond that, The Republic has the positional advantage here as well. I recall from Clone Wars that a lot of the things that went wrong for the Republic in space happened because the CIS was straight up given exact details about strategic locations, which ships were there, the locations of key facilities, so on so forth. Also, if I'm not mistaken, these corporations were also allowed to operate inside the Republic during the Clone Wars, possibly another Palpatine thing. How long would those corporations have lasted if the Galactic Senate nationalized all the assets belonging to those corporations on Republic worlds and barred them from operating inside the Republic?
I would love to see an alternate version of the clone wars, where there was no influence from Palpatine. One where maybe the influence of the corporations has more of a protected interest in their dealings in the mid to outer rims. While the republic and jedi struggle to get a functioning military ready to face the war.
Because on every republic citizen (And I mean Citizen not Soldier of Local Republic Alligned PSF or Clone - clones were Republic Property Anyway) there were atleast 1000 battle droids of different types.
also missing the fact that Palpatine is using the war to draw out the most dangerous people who could oppose him when he takes power to be crushed and broken up during the clone wars
Oh nice, I was literally thinking about this topic yesterday.
Finite amount of Jedi, endless amount of droids and upgrades.
Im reading the republic commando series right now so this vid is perfect
I watch both your hockey and star wars videos
If the CIS were fighting the war seriously, they would’ve won through sheer attrition alone, Palpatine even playing both sides had to work hard to stop the republic senators from capitulating or asking for a cease fire. Had he not been able to orchestrate the war, CIS would’ve won and become legitimate.
It was a civil war and not a revolution. Worse case scenario (for the Republic) in a Palpatine-free conflict would have been, as you stated, a separate self-determined State in the galaxy.
The first game clip looks like bomb-om battlefield but with star wars
Man, a spinoff series of the CIS and Republic war starting without Palpatine would have been juicy, or if order 66 failed and the war continued, etc
Of course, the Repiblic was also fighting with one hand tied behind its back. It should've introduced conscription and volunteer armies and invested into a disposable grunt droid. The Clones are great, but they can't afford to be replaced. You need a force of grunts who can negate or mitigate the CIS' numbers advantage so your vastly superior clone troops can bring that advantage to bear.
The numbers are still on the CIS side. Conscripts still need training, minimum 2-3 months so they could be decent in battle. Plus they need resources (food, water, medicine). The CIS just had to keep producing droids that only needed programming and were really cheap to replace and repair.
Peace treaty gets signed instantly cause no one is willing to die for a war they have no stakes in.
Facts, the Republics resources would of outlasted the CIS. Likely outcome would be peace treaty if Palp wasnt involved (the citizens were not fully supportive) as the war never hit the core worlds for much of the war until Coruscant which was orchestrated by Palp.
Did the Ancient Sith know about the Star Forge? Ajunta Pall alludes quite heavily to the treasure of the Ancient Sith from his era to be the Star Forge, but I have yet to see this referenced anywhere else. I don't believe anyone other than the Rakatta, Revan, and Malak had anything to do with the Star Forge, or even had any knowledge whatsoever about its existence, and yet Pall seems to state otherwise and the Star Map is located within Naga Sadow's tomb, which couldn't have been a coincidence.
Continuity error? Plot thread left unresolved? #askeck
In Kotor 2 it's implied the Sith on Korriban were just a far-flung outpost of the True Sith Empire residing in the Unknown Regions (later retconned to what we see in TOR). At that point the downfall of the Rakata was also still a mystery, so it could be the two were once connected or even one in the same in an earlier period.
Sure but I'm asking about in greater canon. Because Kotor seems to be the only reference whatsoever to the ancient Sith knowing ANYTHING about the Star Forge, let alone having been users of it. @@RevanX77
A bunch of systems leaving The Republic would've left space for some new systems to finally get representation. The ones that didn't get fed up and leave with the CIS that is
In a more straight-up war, I'd view it as very akin to the German invasion of Russia in WWII. Massive initial gains with an opposition seemingly in tatters, but it's sheer size makes it impossible to fully conquer. Then the sleeping giant eventually wakes, with massive counter-attacks and territory regains.
A video on the lore and history of the Bogdo species from Star Wars and how it’s in Return of the Jedi.
To be honest, with this setting, you can come up with any number of reasons to balance the sides beyond just being manipulated behind the scenes. For the C.I.S. military their troops are droids. Droids are made up of metal, wires, circuitry, etc. All these things take up resources, and we see today in the real world how some resources for necessary items we use can be scarce or difficult to obtain due to numerous reasons. Combine that with them needing these same materials to make ships and vehicles with and you could have a resource strained Military vs the Republic which uses those same materials for ships and vehicles but their soldiers are organic and mostly only need organic materials for "maintenance". That could make for a neat contrast and also gives the Republic other targets to hit such as vital resource spots necessary for droid construction, not just the factories or worlds themselves.
The cis was really the best way to make the outer rim more stable
In Rebels, when they find the old CIS tactical droid, it says that by its calculation, the CIS were on track to win the clone wars as they outnumbered republic forces 4 to 1, before the war came to an abrupt end.
I know you probably won‘t see this but here is a Video idea: What if the empire invaded Marvel‘s earth? In this scenario the empire will have a blockade around the earth and the avengers and all militaries wich in this scenario will allie rogether have to defend the planet. Both sides have access to their full range of weaponry , except for planet destroyers. I‘d like to know your tactics for both factions, and who you would let the empire lead the attack and what units and tactics they should use if you were in charge of them and also how you would try to defend earth as our mightiest heroes. Keep in mind the empire can use Vader, the Inquisitors, Palps, all their ground forces they had in the entire e SW galaxy and also their entire navy including fighter support. They can also use any tacticians in any way they like and same goes for earth.
I mean heck, maybe without Sidiious, the CIS never attack Republic positions, worlds, etc, and just bolster their own defenses, and gain sympathy that way. Never even touching Coruscant. Maybe Palpatine is why several battles were the Republic trying to liberate places like Ryloth, that would have never happened if he was at minimum, never pulling the strings. I'll give a take even, if I dare, that even in the show Grievous said he doesn't care about politics and just want Jedi dead, so even if he was on his Hypori level skill, long as he could kill Jedi who came to CIS systems and make it seem defensive? Maybe even he wouldn't have been a "monster" or "terrorizing face of the Confederacy" who knows! Nice video.
If Palps wasn't involved, the corporations wouldn't help the Confederacy either. I really don't get why Ecks and other lore channels don't understand this. The movies alone show it clearly enough, and the lore backs it up as well. The corporations were run by greedy war profiteers who disliked the CIS. Heck, the entire reason for the idea of a CIS gained traction was because of the Naboo crisis.
For years, the Republic had been inept and allowed corporations and criminals to do as they please, but the idea that they would allow the Trade Federation to invade a Mid Rim populated by Core World colonists was a shock to everyone. If wealthy, Core educated humans on middle income worlds weren't safe anymore, poor people sure as heck wouldn't be safe either.
The war, if it happened, would have gone differently. Either the entire galaxy would have turned into several different corporatocracies ruled by major companies, or it would have been a CIS victory. If Dooku didn't intentionally sabotage the CIS reputation, planets such as Ryloth, Kashyyyk, and Eriadu would have joined the CIS. Yes, that is correct, and they would've taken a ton of other planets with them. For Eriadu, Dooku basically told Tarkin not to join the CIS in his final 'offer'. For Kashyyyk, at least in the EU, there was a lot of political debate about which side to join, despite the CIS clearly trying to provoke the Wookies, it seemed as though the Wookies were still at the very least 50-50 on the issue until the CIS finally pulled a big one and murdered the crown Prince. Technically, it was an accident, but still. As for Ryloth, the Republic did nothing about slavery, and initially, the CIS had a good sales pitch. But obviously, the Sith had them do a full 180 for... reasons. And then they had DJ Tambor roll up in there, pulling a classic USA strat with bombing villages to get resources, and steal the Ark of the Covenant just to make sure.
Well it was several billion droids vs a few million clones for one
If it came down to that Palpatine would have started conscripting the people of the Republic. The Droids would have been outnumbered
@@jamesricker3997The CIS can do the same thing.
The majority of battles during the War were fought by planetary Militias, Clones and droids didn't make up the majority of them.
EPISODE 3: REVENGE OF THE CIS
The Republic may have had the larger navy but the problems with that comes down to pilots and crew to staff them. The Republic could build more but replacing and training pilots and crew takes a long time whereas the CIS is all a matter of programming. The CIS can build ships and send them out the same day. Just my thoughts.
One factor that might have held back the CIS is the cost of making all those droids. The CIS, the empire, and other criminal organisiations made extensive use of slaves, and live personnel were used extensively in other positions such as many on star ships and other jobs that a droid could do. The easiest explanation I can think of is that droid are rather expensive in the Star Wars universe. And Palpatine definitely helped fund the CIS. Maybe without Palpatine, the republic would have placed sanctions on the trade federation and other 'neutral' organisations that would have harmed their available assets. Though without a full economic breakdown of the entire galaxy and all the tedious logistics of making droids, I imagine it's hard to say for certain if they had enough money or not.
Earth fielded larger armies during WW2 than the Republic did in the Clone Wars, which makes sense since Clones come from a single, not very habitable, planet. At the same time this tiny army costs a huge amount of resources just because the Republic is completely responsible for raising their soldiers for years even before factoring in the cost of technology and the Kaminoans' profit margin. And almost all the major shipyards are in the core, the Republic could have a massive advantage in ship numbers if it chose to.
The CIS was pulling it's punches, yes, but only so that the Republic wouldn't be forced to remove it's blindfold or untie it's hands and use non-clone forces, which would have messed up Order 66.
Honestly, the Republic was never a state to begin with, at least not in the way we would recognize. It lacked a couple of key fundamentals for being a state. First and most important, it lacked Sovereignty. The Galactic Republic had NO sovereignty and could not act without the consent of the worlds represented in the Senate. Not even the Jedi could be sent to mediate disputes without the approval of the Senate. Furthermore, the Republic could be frozen out of disputes simply by a declaration from the leadership of that system. During the short Pantoran-Talz conflict on Orto Plutonia, Chairman Cho of Pantora declared the conflict an internal matter, which left the Jedi powerless to stop him until the Pantoran Assembly declared him out of order and authorized Senator Chuchi to negotiate.
Secondly, the Republic lacks a monopoly on violence. In an entity that is a state, the legality of using force is largely monopolized by the State, with limited exceptions in some regions such as self defense. But the Republic has no such monopoly. Instead, the Jedi, who until the Clone Wars were the closest thing the Republic had to a military AND a police force, had to work in concert with local systems and governments and were limited in their powers. Indeed, it appears that it may even have been not entirely illegal to kill Jedi, given how quickly the Trade Federation were to destroy the Radiant VII and attempt to kill Qui-gon and Obi-wan, despite insisting that everything they were doing was legal. In fairness, they also denied that the Jedi ever arrived but still, I doubt they would have done something like that if they weren't confident they could get away with it.
So with no sovereignty and no monopoly on violence, the Republic wasn't a state and the CIS had every right to secede. Indeed, the events of The Clone Wars and Attack of the Clones in particular demonstrate this. Raising an army to fight to the CIS was SO controversial and SO unpopular that Palpatine had to be given emergency powers in order to raise that army by decree.
Imagine a version of the Empire that originated from the CIS. Could see it being something like the combine with a mix of humans aliens and droids
#AskEck Have you ever wanted to create a new universe for people to share without a big company like Disney being able to send C&Ds out to fans or stealing their art?
Ok, but would the CIS have won without Dooku? Or would they suffer from factionalism and infighting?
We need an alternate universe Star Wars show where the CIS won
Great video!
Excellent video on star wars clone troopers vs super battle droid
#AskEck The way I'd look at this would be as a scenario where Palpatine was no longer in power after the beginning of the war, for instance if Dooku secretly sent someone to assassinate him during or shortly after the battle of geonosis, and from there, without holding back, continued in his campaign to eliminate what he saw as a corrupt republic.
I think in that case, the republic would still be committed to the war seeing as their head of state was just assassinated, the clone army would still be present, fleets would still be built, and overall military assets would still be the same.
In a context like this, where the war has been committed to, but Palpatine is no longer around to pull the strings, would the CIS have won?
Palpatine also had the so called enemy be members of different races but none were human
Ask Ec: What are the major differences between canon and legends Thrawn?
When Zahn writes? He's more friendly and less evil. When Filoni writes he's more stupid and more evil 😂 so there's not even unified canon Thrawn when two writers pull him in different directions
I would say it would probably used something like skirmish calvary is used. Move in fast hit the enemy and retreat. It would find its home as more of a harassing unit then a mainbm battle line unit