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Just on an idle point of curiosity....

Clearly Sidious would have done a lot better to have sent Maul to Naboo in the first place. Not much chance of him failing to get the Queen then!

Of course, the invasion of Naboo was forced to happen early, but it was still celar that Maul was being kept in reserved, and was released only because things went wrong.

Presumably this was because Sidious still wanted the presence of the Sith kept secret. As it happens, he seems to have got virtually clean away with it anyway, due to inefficient investigation afterwards.

But assuming things had gone to plan, when do people think that Maul would have been revealed? And how different would things have been if Maul had not died? Would the Clone Wars even have ever happened...?

Probably as far down the line as when Sidious revealed himself, when the Jedi would have got into gear, Maul (who may have had time to learn Force lightning by then...) would probably have been dispatched to help the clones out.

I am guessing that Maul's singular purpose was to wipe out Jedi; the role that Vader eventually took.

Well, I doubt he would have been too politically minded. I think he was intended as a super-powerful, flashy executioner. Maul as emperor doesn't bear thinking about...

If Maul was kept hidden than he wouldn't have fought with Qui Gonn, so the Jedi Council wouldn't have known about the Sith so they wouldn't have to search for them, by that Dooku wouldn't be a Sith aprentice, so there would be never a Clone War and Palpatine would become very easy Emperor

General assumption has been that the CLone Wars wnet a lon way towards wiping out the Jedi; anyone have any idea how this would have been accomplished if there was no war?

There was a war, Leia said "you fought ...in the clone WARS." So thats a moot point.

It happened so we can't speculate on what ifs. (That is for the dark times, the times with no new SW movies to see )

But if we do a what if then I should say: without revealing Maul would mean the blockade was succesful + Amidala was captured + the Jedi were killed by the battle droids = no Star Wars movie. It would have been over in 20 min

And that is NO GOOD for us, we would otherwis sit here and only discus EP IV trough VI

Jameous, the entire POINT of this topic was that it was a What If...

Of course there WERE the wars as well, I was just interested in seeing what people thought was MEANT to happen, as far as Sidious was concerned. That's a valid enough thing to discuss!

If the Trade Federation had been sucessful and got the queen to sign the treaty, how would Sidious have benefitted from it? Obviously he still got exactly what he would have wanted, did he not really mind about the treaty, as long as the situation brought to light the inadequacy of the senate in resolving it?
As for Maul, I think he would have been sent on those single Jedi killing missions, e.g. to Tatooine to kill Obi Wan, the missions which would have been awkward for a clone army.

You don't get the point. If the invasion was succesfull like it should be ("The chancelor should never have brought them into it,...". A whole planet was in the power of the Trade Federation for ever. Now that is some heavy blow for the senate! So Palpy/Sid, would still be able to point out the weak spots of the senate

I am pretty much of the opinion that Palpatine would have made himself even more the hero of the hour by pulling together Republican forces and freeing his homeland of Naboo.

He would have made a martyr of the Queen (that he himself ordered killed) and the wave of sympathy would have made his rise to total power far faster than what happened as presented, because NOW a lot of the credit has gone to Amidala, Obi-Wan and even Anakin.

However, he still pretty much got what he wanted, though Maul's loss was a great blow.

All in all, I'd say it would take a decade to recover from failing to achieve all he wanted...