CIS?

[Gurges-Ahter]

I don't think that Palpatine was playing both sides during the war. I think that after he initiated it he was just allowing the war to take its natural course until the senate had become scared enough and granted him enough emergency powers, or the Jedi discovered him or the Republic were close to defeat. In which case he would direct the GAR to carry out order 66 and have Dooku execute the CIS leaders. Ending the war.

 

He did change his mind in ROTS when he suddenly decided he wanted Dooku dead though, lol.

I disagree with this. I think Palpatine needed the war to continue to ensure his leadership of the senate, and to wait for Anakin to be ready for his plot to unfold. He definitely played both sides in making that happen - one as Palpatine and one as Sidious.

[The Dark Lord]

To conclude:

 

The clones had better accuracy and better weapons but the CIS(Confedrency of Independant Systems) had more units and different units. In my own opinion the clones would win but, after calculations they showed that the CIS had a 78% chance of winning. The war would of gone on for ages but the CIS would never run out of units so even with the jedi on the clones side the CIS would control at least 80% of the galaxy before they called a peace Treaty.

 

But in order for this to happen the war must have gone on for about 18 years.

[Kurgan]

The CIS should have won, by all counts, since they can make droids far faster than the Republic can make clones. The numbers quoted in the movie then interpreted by the EU lead to a huge fiasco... where you had thousands, millions, or even billions of times the number of droids as clones, and the number of Jedi is absurdly small.

 

So really, it should have been obvious to everyone that the war was "rigged" from the start, or else the CIS should have mopped the floor with the Republic in short order.

 

But then there's the apparent (and illogical) refusal of the Republic to use droids in battle. So they'll risk expensive clones, and even more expensive Jedi, and regular citizen planet armies... but not droids?

 

Here and I thought this was supposed to be some kind of culture that "mistreated droids"? C'mon, even during the American Civil War (which influenced some of the portrayals of the wars in SW as we know), both sides used black soldiers.

 

Numbers matter... with equivalent technology, it just doesn't make much sense to assume a foot soldier could realistically defeat 1,000 (nevermind 1,000,000) enemies, or that a pilot could take out 1,000 other similarly equipped pilots in combat. The droids in the movies may seem hapless, but then again, so are the stormtroopers in the OT. Even that aside, these men can't be that lucky. Plus, we see LOTS of clones killed in Episode II and III, showing that they definitely aren't that much better (if at all) than droids in combat. And the TPM novel only gives us "10,000 Jedi." Even if that's only referring to Knights and up (not including Padawans and librarians or janitors who have some knowledge of the Force but no real combat readiness), that isn't enough to make up for the huge disparity in numbers. And when you further consider that the main battles aren't just taking place between groups of infantry or dog fighting pilots, but between equivalent ground, air, and space vehicles, which are equivalent in firepower (but need to be manned, except in the cases of the droid fighters), the CIS has a huge advantage.

 

 

So when I watch the movie, I just pretend "units" (in AOTC) means a group, rather than one individual clone to maintain suspension of disbelief. AOTC's droid factory scene establishes that there must be a great number of droids, far more than any number in the single digit millions of soldiers (elite clones or otherwise) could deal with. A galactic civilization like the Republic couldn't realistically wage a "full scale war" with an army that could fit comfortably within the nations of 21st century planet earth.

[hhunter6]

Well assuming no sith were involved it would be a tough choice. If you read the republic commando series books you get alot more detail about how they were always being held back and taking on minor far off worlds rather than the main bases and factories the CIS had.

 

Speaking from a Military background if you stop your main supply, this being droid factories you limit your enemy numbers. Since the republic arc troopers ran independently from the chain of command the republics main intel came from them.

 

I think the republic would take out the CIS if they could run the war their way it would have been the Republic victory hands down

[TKA-001]

So when I watch the movie, I just pretend "units" (in AOTC) means a group, rather than one individual clone to maintain suspension of disbelief. AOTC's droid factory scene establishes that there must be a great number of droids, far more than any number in the single digit millions of soldiers (elite clones or otherwise) could deal with. A galactic civilization like the Republic couldn't realistically wage a "full scale war" with an army that could fit comfortably within the nations of 21st century planet earth.

Some guy from somewhere wrote a comprehensive list of information on the scale of the Clone Wars, including troop numbers and the like, using the largest number of agreeing Canon sources as a basis, among other things. If I may quote him here:

 

Even if it is a matter of weeks instead of years' date=' the additional time required to produce clones instead of directly producing droids was clearly a concern. This raises an interesting point – to prevent the Republic from being rapidly overwhelmed by faster produced droids, one would surmise that the initial strength of the Grand Army of the Republic must be far greater then that of the Confederacy. This is a fact confirmed by Lord Tyrannus in a public address when he states, “The forces on our borders and outlying colonial assets are admittedly facing greater numbers" (CIS Shadowfeed 14:2:14, article "Dooku Addresses 'Spurious' Republic Reports" SW Insider 65, page 75). However continual casualties would remove that advantage and inspire them to reduce this handicap as much as possible, which is what they did. Sixteen months into the war the Republic prototyped a new kind of clone vat commonly known as the Spaarti cylinder. These new hatcheries cut the growth time down to one tenth the time required by the original method (The New Essential Chronology).[/quote']

 

His writings, found here, may shed some considerable light on the issue of what sort of war the Clone War really was.

 

My own view: Not every single thing that happened in the Clone Wars was a result of Dooku and Palpatine. The two were obviously in cahoots, but they viewed the Clone War mostly as a friendly game of chess that they would play, which in addition to being entertaining, would serve to further Palpatine's goals:

 

1. Make Palpatine look like a savior. The Confederacy has some extremely nefarious people leading it (Supreme Commander Grievous being an obvious), and Palpatine's leadership seemingly allowing the Republic to defeat them would gain him enormous public support. Three years of a devastating war weakened the will of the galaxy, that is, made it want a strong central leader to fix everything up.

 

2. Prepare for the rise of the Empire. Palpatine needs a powerful military to control the galaxy. Through the Separatist Crisis and the Clone Wars, get acquired that military.

 

3. Prepare for the destruction of the Jedi. A good number of the Jedi were killed during the Clone War, so that was a bonus on the side that held Palps over until the execution of Order 66 and the beginning of the Great Jedi Purge. The Clone War wasn't the first time Palpy did this sort of thing, either - one of the reasons he supported the Outbound Flight project was because he knew it would crash and burn with hundreds of Jedi on it.

 

In conclusion, Palpatine and Dooku used the war as a cover for their own agenda, which was ultimately the preparation for the Empire's creation. They did orchestrate a number of campaigns and other events - One of the reasons for the Battle of Coruscant was because the Jedi were coming close to discovering who Darth Sidious really was, and Palpatine needed the Jedi distracted - but for the most part, the war was left to its own devices. It was a friendly game a chess, but both sides knew how it would and, and the game was in reality a cover for the real plot.

 

Conclusion: The Clone Wars could have and would have gone either way, if Palpatine hadn't set the final events (the systematic elimination of the Confederate leadership) in motion.

[PoiuyWired]

To be fair, to balance both sides and prolong the war Palpy and a selected few leak information to one side or another so ground-breaking developments can be controlled, enhanced or eliminated.