In Skyrim they present to you that half of the country is Imperial controlled & half is Stormcloak, but this is not true. rather, collectively Imperial & Stormcloak control about 2% of the land and the rest is very solidly controlled by the bandits
You don't "play" a Bethesda game. You either install 400+ mods and then play it for ten hours and get bored, or you install 400+ mods and sink like 600 hours into it. Both of these then have a cooldown of between 6 - 12 months until you take either path again. I don't make the rules, that's just how it is.