how was the usurpation successful?

[Murcushio]

A war that lasted so long because it was more expensive to disband the mercenary armies than to keep them in the field,

This is absolutely not why it lasted so long. It lasted so long because the political and military goals of the relevant participants both had not been achieved, and they had not yet exhausted themselves. The mercenary armies got up to some hinky shit that did prolong some campaigns, that's true, but they weren't the primary driver here.

and consisted primarily of them rampaging around the German countryside committing atrocities of such scope that in many areas the population was reduced by as much as thirty percent.

Nothing incompetent there.

You're correct. The chevauchee was a moral outrage but it was not, in any way, incompetent; it was very smart tactics and strategy.

[DrLoveMonkey]

While the story doesn't require the Usurpation to make system-sense in any way, the way to do it if possible at all would be

This is very true, but it wasn't just system stuff in 2e that lead to that idea that the usurpation was impossible. There were usurpation stories like 10,000 dragonblooded being bricked up in a basement with a dawn under the implication that one side barely killed the other and then died of exhaustion trying to get out. I think there was another about a Solar king being jumped by 3-5 sidereal master ninja assassins, and turning it around to kill all of them instead. Or that other one about the sidereal and air aspect assassins who get given away by a creaky floorboard and all die, alone with their entire city.

Solars are supposed to be legendary but I think under the new third edition style direction there might be few stories of a dawn going 500 to 1 odds against terrestrial exalts a straight 20 times in a row. Also though the first age maybe doesn't have to include millions of DBs to the point where 10,000 is almost a drop in the bucket.

Also having some noble loyalist forces and including mortals in the story would be cool too.

[chance]

Even if the Usurpation story isn't required to make sense system wise, isn't it preferable if it does?

The story of the game after all builds the expectations of what is possible for the players, it should reflect the actual capabilities they are going to play with.

Love the idea of the usurpation taking place over the five days of calibration and a few holdouts afterward and am very happy nothing about the usurpation is going to matter for my current game because there is no way I can make that work in a plausible way.

[emeraldstreak]

This is very true, but it wasn't just system stuff in 2e that lead to that idea that the usurpation was impossible. There were usurpation stories like 10,000 dragonblooded being bricked up in a basement with a dawn under the implication that one side barely killed the other and then died of exhaustion trying to get out. I think there was another about a Solar king being jumped by 3-5 sidereal master ninja assassins, and turning it around to kill all of them instead. Or that other one about the sidereal and air aspect assassins who get given away by a creaky floorboard and all die, alone with their entire city.

You'll find out that in 2E these stories make more sense if they were unfolding under a Greater Sign of Venus / Indestructible field. Which is proof the stories 2E wanted to tell were aimed under the power level it afforded.

[Blaque]

Even if the Usurpation story isn't required to make sense system wise, isn't it preferable if it does? ...

I think the big thing is the game needs to prioritize being playable in the time period that is its assumed default, and being fun while doing so. Making the game "work" so to speak for a one-off event fifteen centuries ago which is not really meant to have happened before nor likely to ever happen again, is generally just not worth it a lot of the time. Remember that in 1e, the dev at the time (GCG) said that had he were given the chance to do something like a First Age book, it would likely not even use Exalted's system at the time.

I think that's the big thing there, what is the design intent of your systme and its goals. And having the Usurpation be replicable in the game down to mechanical details is likely not one of them, especially when you consider that the moving parts of myriads of Exalts and their millions of mechanical widgets is probably just beyond something any game system could even pretend to really replicate.

So I guess TL;DR, not really. It's not preferrable unless it begs the question that such a thing is more usable beyond again, a single historical event without precedent and with no notable future replicant.

... The story of the game after all builds the expectations of what is possible for the players, it should reflect the actual capabilities they are going to play with. ...

-Ish. The story of the game is about playing Solars in the current Time of Tumult and the Usurpation being assumed to have been successful in leading to that. In 1e the assumption was we'd never get to such a system without well, a new system. In 2e it tried to do something where mechanics of the now did try to map to the past, but the way they designed high Essence and its design assumptions made that fundementally untennable in its own system. 3e is again focusing on the modern, with a pretty blatent statement that the rules aren't physics and that if story dictates over mechanics, story probably wins. So in this case, no replication is needed: all is needed is to have had it happen as it's not something the game is even considering as something important going for.

I mean, remember that the Usurpation only gets a few paragraphs in itself, while all of modern Creation gets thousands of words. I think that implies what really is the story here and it ain't about some past event.

... Love the idea of the usurpation taking place over the five days of calibration and a few holdouts afterward and am very happy nothing about the usurpation is going to matter for my current game because there is no way I can make that work in a plausible way.

Again, this is because to the game, it's not really even a thing of "this woudl be good or not". It's not worth its time to bother to make the setting work now. It's also soemthing to make the setting something to do yourself really. It might well be that the solution depends on teh setting really and if it is an issue, that's soemthing for an ST to figure and make a point of for her games.

[nalak42]

Actually the way combat is supposed to work getting the solars overwhelmed, caught off guard when possible, or any other of a million little tricks to get a solar more penalties beyond just the onslaught penalties. Lets be fair about this the Sids and DBs were not operating in a vacuum of information on the Solars. While charms aren't a list of known powers in universe it isn't like they wouldn't have a general idea of things. You know "She's a nightmare to sneak up on, he freaking seasons his sandwiches with the worst poisons he can find, and I'm pretty certain those three are immune to stabbing for different reason." I mean not necessarily personalized death traps, but probably a case of knowing who's vulnerable to what and setting things up so they weren't trying to ambush the group that makes a game out of reading the letters people are writing in the next room by eavesdropping on the sound of the the writing instrument.