Which of these two civilizations was more advanced?

[Rinoa_353]

As the title says, which civilization was the most advanced between the Allagan Empire from the Source and Alexandria from the ninth reflection with their Electrope based technology?


Which one of these civilizations would win in a hypothetical war at their respective heights of power?

[Cleretic]

I don't think they're necessarily very comparable despite having kinda similar aesthetics, because they actually have very different focuses, and we see them at different times; we essentially visited Alexandria at their prime, or at least close enough to their prime that we got the whole picture, while we only ever visited Allagan ruins.

But in terms of tech, Alexandria's got a lot of its focus put into electrope, with a predominant focus on computing and digital storage; Living Memory seems to be the core of their society's advancement and intentions, and I'm more impressed by it than anything Allag ever did. However, everything seems to be either directly related to that, or a very recent development spearheaded by Zoraal Ja, and the latter category seems a lot shakier.

Meanwhile, Allag's focus was generally scattershot, stretching everything they could make magitek do to its absolute maximum. Their results are no doubt impressive, and they do stand the test of time better than Alexandria's--Azys Lla is basically completely fine after five thousand years of neglect--but that spread-out approach means that they never quite shot for the moon in the way Alexandria did. ...probably because the one time they did, it dunked their entire civilization into the planet.

That said: while I think Alexandria's more advanced, in a hypothetical war between the two at their peak, Allag's coming out on top. Hell, I think Alexandria at their peak would lose a fight against Allag now, and Allag's dead. Alexandria can certainly put up a fight, but at the end of the day it's not actually their focus. Meanwhile if Allag was good at one thing, it was 'conquering the entire planet'. And if they were good at two things, it was 'creating war machines that remain functional longer than any other participant in said war'.

[Cilia]

At its height Allag conquered most of the known world and routed roughly half of the First Brood.

For all the marvels of electrope Alexandria couldn't defeat a nation whose most advanced technology is an ersatz steam engine or take down one of the First Brood once it lost the element of surprise.

The answer should be pretty obvious.

[SannaR]

I'm also going with Allag. They might have had a scatter gun approach to their tech but I feel that has to do with the variations of what or who they were fighting. You give any Allag scientist or inventor worth their salt a look at electrope and they'd either find a way to integrate it into their own tech or find a way to make it inert. Let's not forget who probably used Azys La as their playground both Fandaniel as Amon and whomever Lahabreha was. Let alone Noah who we know also was a brilliant mind if they said the truth about having worked on some of the more dangerous stuff in the depths of Eureka Orthos. The Alexandrians on the other hand domed themselves off and seemed to have been losing the war against Lindbloom. At least that's my reading of what happened while they were still completely on the 9th. As far as we know they weren't dealing with anyone else but other regular people.

Meanwhile Allag had to deal with Primals, Dragons, weapons that could turn people into a primal like Save the Queen and voidsent. All that they either looked to subjugate or destroy completely. Heck we recently helped one of the only nations that had gone toe to toe with Allag and survive and that was Bozja whose best weapon was as I mentioned Save the Queen.

[No_Nick_Needed]

I think what Cilia said, is pretty much it. We've seen how easily a single dragon of the first brood, !!with only one eye!!, who's also the diplomat among his siblings and thus potentially the weakest fighter, was able to deal with the Alexandrian airships. And the Allagans defeated multiple of the first brood, in possession of both of their eyes, including Bahamut, who had a reputation for being the strongest of them. If Alexandria can't even scratch a weakened Vjitra, how could they ever hope to deal with an Empire that overcome Vjitra with his full power, alongside multiple of his siblings and their entire broods?

There's also the issue of vulnerability. All of Alexandria's technology relies entirely on Electrope and apart from a handful of officers, their forces seem entirely made up of robots. If the Allagans found some way to disable the use of Electrope, or made some EMP-analogue that disables robots, Alexandria would be helpless. Meanwhile Allag has so many different technologies and magics to fall back on, they can't be shut down with just one or two techniques. Not to mention they most likely have a massive manpower advantage and in the worst case can bring in entire hordes of voidsent.
I'm also not so sure Allag really was less developed than Alexandria to begin with. They were able to build space stations and space ships after all. And with the nodes, we know they also had AI technology and advanced robotics, meaning they could probably have built combat androis like the Alexandrian, but likely chose not to due to having more than enough manpower to have no need for them.

But for a fully accurate comparison,we lack information on both sides. Both Allag and Alexandria seem well past their prime, with Allag being mostly gone, except for a few artifacts and stories and the Alexandrians having turned into a pampered society, that can't deal with the reality of life, once bereft of their toys.

[Connor]

It’s worth mentioning, outside of technology Allag had Summoners taking the command of their military.

Technologically Alexandria would have been at a disadvantage anyway, but I really can’t see any technology they do have doing much against the soldiers summoning physical manifestations of mythical creatures lol. I mean, Titan is a literal rock, what are they gonna do? Shoot it? lol

[Cleretic]

Technologically Alexandria would have been at a disadvantage anyway, but I really can’t see any technology they do have doing much against the soldiers summoning physical manifestations of mythical creatures lol. I mean, Titan is a literal rock, what are they gonna do? Shoot it? lol

I mean, that's how a number of us dealt with Titan.

I'd play devil's advocate credit to Alexandria that Vrtra hit them when they were generally expecting a land war against Tuliyollal. You're gonna need some serious anti-air defenses against a First Brood dragon, and they just weren't expecting to need those. My concern is that we probably saw their best in the context of a land war (both in those attacks and throughout dungeons), and I'm still not sure they beat any given boss we fought in Eureka Orthos.

[Connor]

I mean, that's how a number of us dealt with Titan.

I'd play devil's advocate credit to Alexandria that Vrtra hit them when they were generally expecting a land war against Tuliyollal. You're gonna need some serious anti-air defenses against a First Brood dragon, and they just weren't expecting to need those. My concern is that we probably saw their best in the context of a land war (both in those attacks and throughout dungeons), and I'm still not sure they beat any given boss we fought in Eureka Orthos.

True; there’s bound to be a decent amount of us that beat Titan up with just theirs fists lol, but I think that says more about the/our WoL(s) than the primals themselves.

To add my point, I think before Zoraal Ja appeared Alexandria wasn’t particularly militaristic or even focused on like, defending against invaders and the like. Whereas from my understanding Allag was more or less built on starting wars over territory. So it does make sense that Alexandria isn’t as ‘war-ready’ as a civilisation with their technology could have been. Likewise with them being unprepared for Vrtra; maybe Alexandria could have used electrope as a counter measure if there was time to prepare. Just a thought

If Zoraal Ja had more time (maybe centuries? How old did Allag even get? lol) to turn them towards electrope-military-stuff like the beast soul things or whatever, I think it’d be much harder to choose a clear winner.

[Rinoa_353]

I mean, that's how a number of us dealt with Titan.

I'd play devil's advocate credit to Alexandria that Vrtra hit them when they were generally expecting a land war against Tuliyollal. You're gonna need some serious anti-air defenses against a First Brood dragon, and they just weren't expecting to need those. My concern is that we probably saw their best in the context of a land war (both in those attacks and throughout dungeons), and I'm still not sure they beat any given boss we fought in Eureka Orthos.

Alexandria does have them, just not where Vrtra attacked the airships, these may even hurt or kill Vrtra since he only has one eye. I don't think Vrtra and his brood he summoned would have been successful had they attacked Vanguard. Since Zoraal Ja had intentions to conquer the world, Alexandria may have warmachines we have not seen yet. This also could imply Alexandria has the resources and production capabilities to go on a total war footing. Though they would have to build many more bases like Vanguard around the dome to keep Allag out enough to go on a total war footing.


But I also agree that Allag does have the advantage of massive manpower and their magitek, chimera and synthetic voidsent before they would have to tap into actual voidsent. Allag also has airships but they are largely unknown in what they were capable of. A major advantage Alexandria does have is the Soul Regulator, so killing Allag troops, maybe their chimera troops and definitely their voidsent would replenish the souls Alexandrian troops would need in massive numbers. They would have to institute a draft to have all citizens go to war for officer or hunter training but with how pampered they are, it would be difficult at first. The Soul Regulator helps balance of sorts against Allag's massive manpower advantage.

[No_Nick_Needed]

I just remembered another issue that Alexandria would be facing in a large-scale conflict: Limited resources. We know that their reflection went to hell, in no small part because there wasn't enough Electrope around for everyone. So they not only have to deal with how much they can mine and refine in a given time, but almost asuredly a physical limit of how much raw Electrope there is.
If the war turned into one of attrition, that gives them a pretty severe disadvantage.

I also wonder how useful Electrope even is, outside of it's home reflection. Electrope turns lightning aether into other kinds of aether. Wouldn't that mean that it's a whole lot less powerful, away from lightning flooded areas? They seemed to do well enough in their invasion of Tulliyolal, but that was a relatively short and one-sided affair, that probably didn't fully exhaust their energy reserves. If they had to fight drawn out battles, would the same still be the case?