How has the empire not just obliterated the rest of the world?

[EdwinLi]

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A lot of these travel methods still remained necessary due to how Aetherytes only work on a person and the things they carry since the thing being transfered by Aetheryte must have proper flow of aether to guide it to the destination which goes back to why even Garlean pure bloods could not use them since just like inanimate objects they lack that flow of aether in their bodies.

It seems Aetherytes have not been developed to teleport massive amount of inanimate objects yet so dependency on these other form of transportation is still important for supplies, transfer of good, and trading.

[Corvanther]

Isn't magic a lot more limited in range then say an air battleship? I get the point on how fragmented it is, that is why they are loseing. I didn't mean literal cavemen. I thought about this in ff 7 to. Where ONE person uses a gun and the rest are swinging around stupidly oversized swords or kick boxing. Can't the conscripts use magic? I have seen imperial black mages and healers. I thought it was just the purebloods who couldn't. Was Baelsar a pureblood? He is useing all kinds of magic in castrum when he goes all power ranger on the elevator.

I guess our over population of mary sues does give us an advantage. =)

[VargasVermillion]

Isn't magic a lot more limited in range then say an air battleship? I get the point on how fragmented it is, that is why they are loseing. I didn't mean literal cavemen. I thought about this in ff 7 to. Where ONE person uses a gun and the rest are swinging around stupidly oversized swords or kick boxing. Can't the conscripts use magic? I have seen imperial black mages and healers. I thought it was just the purebloods who couldn't. Was Baelsar a pureblood? He is useing all kinds of magic in castrum when he goes all power ranger on the elevator.

I guess our over population of mary sues does give us an advantage. =)

It's assumed any "magic" you see purebloods use is artificially made via magitek, possibly to do with their armour and Zenos was confirmed to use crystals to help control his aether. Eorzean mages are generally stronger than ilsabardian ones because eorzea has a huge abundance of aether while ilsabard is supposedly thinner on the stuff but it has way more ceruleum which helps the garleans a fair bit. As for the mary sue bit, that's part of it too but that's a consequence of the story being in an mmo, so the devs naturally have to limit what antagonists can get away with, admittedly one of the weaker elements but it is what it is.

[WhiteArchmage]

Isn't magic a lot more limited in range then say an air battleship? I get the point on how fragmented it is, that is why they are loseing. I didn't mean literal cavemen. I thought about this in ff 7 to. Where ONE person uses a gun and the rest are swinging around stupidly oversized swords or kick boxing. Can't the conscripts use magic? I have seen imperial black mages and healers. I thought it was just the purebloods who couldn't. Was Baelsar a pureblood? He is useing all kinds of magic in castrum when he goes all power ranger on the elevator.

I guess our over population of mary sues does give us an advantage. =)

Gaius is, indeed, a pureblood. He uses Magitek powered by ceruleum; and you'll notice random imperials also tend to use magitek to use their spells. Although, yes, conscripts don't have Garleans' inability to manipulate aether, given that their superiors wouldn't be well-versed in the arcane arts they're reduced to using those who come "pre-trained" (This is, in fact, mentioned in the Bozja field notes, with several recruits being foreigners).

One note about Aetherytes, given that it was a plot point apparently dropped until Aplphinaud just so casually mentions it in Stormblood: While people CAN use aetherytes to teleport to and from any other aetheryte they've attuned to, teleportation apparently consumes anima, which was a resource in 1.0 that regenerated with time and was essentially a cap on how often you could teleport. Alphinaud mentions that the PC has large reserves of anima which allows him/her to teleport much more frequently. That's likely why Aetherytes haven't completely phased out more traditional transportation methods (besides, yeah, how to transport large amounts of products and such. Oh! And the fact that one needs to attune to an Aetheryte first, before transporting there).

[Kesey]

Isn't magic a lot more limited in range then say an air battleship? I get the point on how fragmented it is, that is why they are loseing. I didn't mean literal cavemen. I thought about this in ff 7 to. Where ONE person uses a gun and the rest are swinging around stupidly oversized swords or kick boxing. Can't the conscripts use magic? I have seen imperial black mages and healers. I thought it was just the purebloods who couldn't. Was Baelsar a pureblood? He is useing all kinds of magic in castrum when he goes all power ranger on the elevator.

I guess our over population of mary sues does give us an advantage. =)

Those mages aren't pureblood Garleans. They are conscripts from conquered territories forced to fight in the Garlean armies.

The military structure of the Empire is similar to how Ancient Rome raised legions. They would institute their military training and discipline on people forced to conscription to continue to bolster their armies. Sometimes techniques from the conquered peoples would be exploited to expand Rome's military prowess, like armed combat from horses and archery. Rome's solution to stop revolt was to offer citizenship after 20 years of service. The game even reflects this as Garlean conscripts gain citizenship after 10 years of service.

So it makes sense that they would recruit magic using races to their army just to bolster what the army is capable of doing, holding the carrot of citizenship to get the loyalty it needs.

[Rannie]

A way to tell a pure blooded Garlean is by their third eye in their forehead as stated by Cid... Gaius indeed has one of them. I've honestly wondered about that third eye and its abilities, it allowed Cid to recognize the WoL when they used the Echo on him, while he was trying to piece his memories back together. They may not have the ability to manipulate Aether but they can do something...

[Veloran]

Given the revelations from 4.4/.5 it seems very "convenient" that Solus "uncovered" Allagan tech

[HB]Given Emet-Selch mentions being involved with the Allagan Empire, it stands to reason he rounded up a bunch of disgruntled tribes, fostered their feelings of superiority through technology, and "casually" led them to where he remembered Allagan Tech being. Hell, he basically fostered a culture where the higher ups just can't help backstabbing one another to get in his favors; guaranteeing that there is chaos and in-fighting.[/HB

He probably did actually need to rediscover Allagan technology. The vast majority of their advancement in aetherochemistry came from the discovery of Omega. The Ancients were extremely advanced, even moreso than the Allagans, but it was all based on their creation magic, it seems like even mechanical or technological innovations were brought into being through their use of concepts.

There also seems to be a pretty sharp distinction between earlier Allagan technology, which was more magically-focused, and what they created later, which was more technological in nature. Garlean technology, due to their inability to manipulate aether, obviously borrows way more heavily from that side of the equation.

[Jandor]

It seems to me that the Empire really should be crushing the Alliance.

I haven't really seen anything on our side that seems like it could reliably take out those giant flying battleships that the Garleans used to use before we had to have the Alliance start winning battles .

I mean, maybe the Skysteel Manufactory invented a big anti-air cannon that can damage the airships enough to keep them away, but it would be nice if we could see it, or even be told about it. Would help me buy into the idea that our rag-tag group of "savages" really have turned the tide.

[Rufalus]

Empire seemed a lot less advanced in V1. Mostly mechanical stuff, not digital age. The magitek vanguard with the pointy arms was seen as a big threat alone, and the airships had flappy wings to aid flight. After the lore exploded in the reboot they pretty much pull in all kinds of assets/cameos from other games, including some robots that look more 22nd century near future stuff. I guess the Garleans have some incredible resources over there in Ilsabard and massively accelerated their understanding of stuff thanks to ascians and allagan tomes. Eorzeans do seem very outmatched until you factor in exceptional individuals such as Estinien, Exarch and above all the Warrior of Light/Darkness.

[LineageRazor]

He probably did actually need to rediscover Allagan technology.

Oh, undoubtedly. But there are many ways he COULD have approached the Garleans in order to give them a leg up. He could have appeared to them as a "god" bestowing upon them technological gifts. He could have pretended to be an Allagan survivor, just released from stasis. But he didn't. Instead, he posed as a Garlean himself - and this was most likely because, even if grateful to a god or stranger, the Garleans would likely have been reluctant to allow such a being to LEAD them. By acting as a Garlean, all the things he lead the Garleans to do became GARLEAN achievements. As far as the Garleans knew, it was by their own sweat and blood that they emerged from obscurity into a terrifying Empire. And for the most part, this was even true! Undoubtedly, Solus nudged them in the right directions. "We should mine over HERE - there may well be Ceruleum. What, you found a cache of ancient technology? What a completely unexpected and pleasant surprise! Let's get to studying it immediately!" But for the most part, the Garleans' incredible achievements were very much their own.

Which, of course, played perfectly into the society Solus was moulding which included a culture of racial superiority. He took a hold of the well-deserved pride at their achievements, and planted the seeds to ensure that the Garleans believed that their achievements were because they were innately BETTER than the other races, lack of magic ability be damned. The other races had banished them to the north out of jealousy - not becuase they were easy pickings (which is likely the actual reason early Garleans were bullied). Now it was time to take back what was theirs - and once that was done, to "protect" the savage races from their own Primal problem since they were clearly doing a terrible job of reining in the Beastmen themselves!