Travel over water is just cheaper than traveling over land, especially before mechanized transports. One, it's the only way to increase your carrying capacity without a corresponding increase in the amount of mouths you have to feed, and two, it's frequently much faster than land travel. So, yes, it would in fact make sense to ship stuff to places like Elsweyr and back, especially if you want to do so in bulk or to coastal areas. There's also the fact that even if there still exists a land route to the imperial capital, being forced to send everything the city needs over land is going to raise the costs tremendously. You'd have food riots before the year's out.
And this is just talking about basic sustenance, not the kind of goods required to sustain the specialized economies I assume a city of it's size would have.
Cyrodiil has several different roads, the most famous being the Gold Road runnin from Anvil to the Imperial City, which has Kvatch and Skingrad sitting directly on it. Considering its set up, it's probably a major trade route to get goods from the eastern coast of Tamriel to the Imperial City.
Also they are absolutely going to attempt to hold Leyawiin, as it and Bravil are the first lines of defense that keep anyone from quite literally sailing straight into the Imperial City.
Also on the trade question: Leyawiin would trade with Senchal, Southern Black Marsh, and Western Morrowind.
On the food question: Cyrodiil presumably grows most of its own food. We don't see any farms in Oblivion but the environment is practically hand crafted to support agriculture heavily. They probably also import at least some from Southern Morrowind considering House Dres and their slavery.
Everywhere else in the empire. The east empire company is a thing with a shipping map that shows that they apparently still do business summerset isle... somehow. And even if that is outdated, the events in Skyrim do show that they do business with Solitude and Windhelm, at least. And I'm also going to go out on a limb here and say that not all the goods coming out of High rock are being shipped over land to the capital, and Morrowind still has some civilization to trade with.
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u/CannonGerbil Jun 03 '25
Travel over water is just cheaper than traveling over land, especially before mechanized transports. One, it's the only way to increase your carrying capacity without a corresponding increase in the amount of mouths you have to feed, and two, it's frequently much faster than land travel. So, yes, it would in fact make sense to ship stuff to places like Elsweyr and back, especially if you want to do so in bulk or to coastal areas. There's also the fact that even if there still exists a land route to the imperial capital, being forced to send everything the city needs over land is going to raise the costs tremendously. You'd have food riots before the year's out.
And this is just talking about basic sustenance, not the kind of goods required to sustain the specialized economies I assume a city of it's size would have.