Kul Tiras seemed like they really could have given a run at being stronger than Lordaeron in its prime.
I think it is a similar power scale to SW - Kul Tirans in BFA.
Kul Tirans pretty much control the seas, but SW has more pure military strength.
I would say that at their prime Lordaeron was the more powerful of the two nations. Not only did it’s destruction send the Alliance reeling the Burning Legion is revealed to have desired the fall of Lordaeron and Quel’Thalas before launching their on invasion into Azeroth as per the “The Revelation” interlude of the Path of the Damned in Warcraft 3.
Kul Tiras easily had the superior navy. Lordaeron was probably greater in all other aspects, though. Territory, military, population, economy, etc. The last one is a little iffy because we’re told that Kul Tiras was wealthy due to their trading fleets, but the fact of the matter is that five of the seven kingdoms were all next to each other on land, and Lordaeron was so large that it shared borders with all of them. So any trading advantage Kul Tiras may have had due to their fleets is negated somewhat, with the exception of Stormwind.
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It was called the The Alliance of Lordaeron for a reason. Kul’Tiras has always been described to be one of the, if not the foremost naval power in the world, however overall I believe Lordaeron boasted the larger army, stronger economy and probably a decent navy in it’s own right.
The fact that all the Human Kingdoms, the Dwarves and the Elves were all willing to march under the banner of Lordaeron to battle the Horde speaks volumes to it’s ability to manage and maintain Armies and Supply lines of quite a substantial nature. Even if was just due to location said location put them into a position of power to rally all those nations.
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Kul’tiras would have the superior navy, and probably more exploration knowledge of the world, but Lordaeron would have the bigger land army, more territory, and probably a bigger economy (Though Kul’tiras economy is also very strong).
Overall id classify Kul’tiras as a mid tier human nation in terms of power, maybe upper mid tier, while Lordaeron is top tier, only second to Azeroth/Stormwind (This is dubious, some arguments could be made Lordaeron was even more powerful than Stormwind/Azeroth.)
I don’t think SW was in the same league as Lordaeron at its height. Lordaeron was the foremost human kingdom.
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OG Kingdom of Azeroth was stated to be the strongest human kingdom of all, but I dont know if that applies post Second War, since the Kingdom of Azeroth was reduced to Stormwind and a few surrounding villages.
Considering how easily the Kul Tiran fleet is either lost or sunk I’d rate its strength somewhere below par.
Lordaeron always came across to me as the most powerful just insofar as having the largest standing army thanks to a huge population, while Stormwind had a smaller, tougher, more tested and experienced military because it was essentially a “frontier” kingdom that still had to contest with frequent Gurubashi troll raids and gnoll uprisings within its own borders.
For all intents and purposes the only northern kingdom that seemingly had to fight any wars of note after the Troll Wars (and before the Second War) was Kul Tiras with its founding conflicts against the Drust. Otherwise it comes across like post-war Arathor did a fairly splendid job of taming the northern subcontinent such that even after it split into multiple kingdoms, none of them had been forced to deal with any serious existential threats until the orcs showed up. Meanwhile, Stormwind was basically still a growing kingdom settling new lands even when Llane was prince, which was what led to their war against the Gurubashi. There are just a lot more prevalent wars in Stormwind that would probably have turned their army into a more seasoned fighting force than those lands up north where the human kingdoms didn’t seem to significantly war against each other and nobody alive had seen a hostile non-human army on the march in hundreds of years.
One might recall that the death of Llane is played up as a big part of why the city of Stormwind fell; the thematic beats outright suggest that had they remained stalwart and not lost hope with the murder of their king, the armies of Stormwind may well have withstood the onslaught of the Horde. The same Horde that would later challenge and almost defeat the entire Alliance of Lordaeron.
(Obviously that’s notwithstanding that if the Horde had been beaten back by Stormwind again, they’d have potentially called the rest of the clans to Azeroth and just swamped the whole southern subcontinent with sheer numbers.)
First War Stormwind’s army wasn’t necessarily massive like those of the north, but it was tough. Which isn’t surprising; their army by the time of the First War was built around a core of veterans - not least of them Lothar - who’d already been made to fight a massive Gurubashi invasion that overran much of the kingdom and was eventually won only as the fighting reached the streets of the capital city itself. By the time the orcs came, the Stormwind humans had already been hardened by battle against the sort of enemy the other human kingdoms hadn’t been forced to fight since the Troll Wars.
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I know nothing of the size of their armies, but the Warcraft II manual did state that before the coming of the orcs, Azeroth was the mightiest of the human kingdoms. It could have been by army size, or perhaps your idea, that their armies were far more seasoned than the northern kingdoms.
I think that Azeroth(Stormwind) being the mightiest of the human kingdoms has been somewhat soft retconned, in all honesty. Looking at the geography of the Eastern Kingdoms, there’s an inference that Stormwind was probably considered something of a backwater compared to the rest of the continent. Military wise it was still fairly strong, but Chronicle talks about how a century before WC1, the kingdom was in dire straits due to an army of gnolls of all things, and they were on the ropes with the trolls as well, until Medivh went Guardian on them.
Stormwind seems to me to have been the kingdom people from the other kingdoms would have gone to start over, or hide. It didn’t have the sheer size of Lordaeron, the history of Arathor, the naval power of Kul Tiras, the magical prowess of Dalaran, Gilneas’ wealth, or Alterac’s strategic location. Chronicle even puts emphasis on the Dwarves getting along best with Gilneas and not Stormwind, in spite of Ironforge being closer.
All Stormwind had of note were the Brotherhood of the Horse, and presumably a lot of untapped resources due to being the only southern human kingdom and still having a lot of frontier land.
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My vague recollection is that Stormwind was considered the strongest kingdom militarily, but Lordareon was considered to be the preeminent human kingdom in terms of sophistication, culture, economy etc.
I see a lot of lordaeron, and i agree
Victory for the Forsaken?
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Who was more powerful in WW1, France or Britain? (not counting colonies) France had the stronger army. It was massive and despite the surrender memes, competent and well trained. The British had a small expeditionary army. Bismarck once quipped that if the British invaded he’d just have the police arrest them. If the British landed their army in continental Europe and tried to go toe-to-toe with France, they’d get smashed.
By contrast, Britain was by far the preeminent sea power in the world at that point, and their navy could essentially run the waters and blockade any country they wanted to, which is of critical importance for the survival of a country. The strength of Britain’s navy is one of the main reasons a relatively small island came to dominate half the world.
So in other words, ehh.
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I see Kul Tiras as a long stronger than I once did due to how big it is ingame now. It’s essentially its own sub continent as is Zandalar.
My mind immediately went to the classic Britain/France comparison but it’s hard to say, because despite how sophisticated WoW technology can get, neither Kul Tiras nor Zandalar (the two most powerful seafaring nations) really seem to maintain a blue water navy with far imperial outposts and colonies. The only examples of that kind of projection are the establishments of Orgrimmar and Theramore, which are both kinda one-off deals rather than the feats of global navies.
Maybe there’s more about it in a lore book but I only have what I get in game for the most part.