PT Could the Separatists have won the war if Palpatine wasn't manipulating them?

Yeah, same here. It could be like bringing 50 troops for the entirety of World War II.

 

I think the script also described the number of clones on Kamino, in a similar way.

Dooku and Palpatine are running both sides - they don't need enough troops to wage a real war - they only need enough to for the galactic population to be convinced they're in a real war.

For "Sci-Fi writers have no sense of scale" - read "Lucas has no sense of scale - and authors don't try to contradict him."

 

It would be extremely hard to convince the populace that they're in a real war if the reality is that there were just a comparative handful of soldiers and droids running around the galaxy. All the officers at every level on both sides of the war would have to be in on it too, as well as any indigenous witnesses to the planetary battles or lack thereof.

It would be much, much simpler and more plausible to simply stage a war more or less for real, with only minor nudges from the top to guide the overall outcome. Which I believe was the intention.

 

The CIS could probably have developed better battle droids and increased production to a scale the republic would have struggled to compete with-but yes I think without palpatine pulling the strings the CIS could have prevailed.

 

I'm just sorta going off a line in Labyrinth of Evil, but Yoda mentions that the war is somehow being carefully balanced between Republic victories and Separatist victories, and it seems to me like the implication is that without this mysterious balancing force, the Republic would have won much sooner. Even with Palpatine's manipulation, towards the end of the war the Republic was on the offensive and the Separatists were clearly losing. This becomes a plot point in ROTS, where because most of the Separatist leaders have been killed or captured, a whole bunch of people start saying that Palpatine should give up some of his emergency powers...which of course leads to Mace Windu trying to arrest him.

 

Remember that Palpatine orchestrated the whole thing. He goaded the TF to invade Naboo. Gunray felt emboldened with the support of two very powerful sith lords behind their back, who promised them reward and support at every turn.
Sidious probably was able to secure Gunrays release earlier and he was able to regain his support via Dooku for his TF droid army.

 

I’d have to say yes, but of course there’s no real way of knowing.

 

Well it seems that, even though the clone outclass the battle droid in combat skills, they're probably outnumbered a thousand to one, if not more, when you compare how fast a droid foundry churns out troops, and how fast the Kaminoans can raise troops, even with growth acceleration. Factor in food, clothing, healthcare, additional equipment and things like that, and the CIS should be able to easily strangle Coruscant and the core systems with their navy and combined armies. You can sacrifice a regiment of battle droids to kill or even severely wound a clone, and it would be a victory. If Dooku suddenly decided to wanted to kill Palpatine and really win the war for himself, he would have been able to, granted he and Grievous followed a proper strategy.