My view would be that Tatius thinks he is creating a power vacuum. He expects the Orlanthi to give up their mythology, and stop being Orlanthi, if enough force is applied. He expects them to turn toward Doburdan; or to embrace the Goddess; or to adopt an Elmal centric view of the mythology; if only he can find a way to make it impossible to contact Orlanth. If I were role playing him, he wouldn't care what they changed to, so long as the new mythology didn't teach them to hate the Goddess and the Empire. After all, his mission is military, to conquer the Orlanthi, not religious, to convert them to the way of the Goddess. He assumes that if he gets rid of Orlanth, the Goddess can take care of herself in the resulting religious vacuum.
On some level his problem is not lack of theoretical understanding of Orlanthi mythology. It is failure to understand why anyone would insist on being an Orlanthi. He does what many smart people have done - he assumes that other people are like him. Since he cannot imagine wanting to be an Orlanthi, he cannot imagine wanting to undertake a LightBringer quest to remain one; or for that matter, someone wanting someone else's HeroQuest to succeed badly enough to oppose his army. This leads him to underestimate his enemy's will to fight.
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