Skyrim; Populatuion: 750

[Nymrohd]

The problem is, Skyrim is small as it is. You can't walk a minute without finding some ruin or feature. If the cities become bigger (as they should), it will become overcrowded.

[Vinicam]

I suggested a mod to fill up the roads in Skyrim. Is just sad to travel in the roads and don't see anything more than a few wolves and bunnies. My suggestion was to add traders and travel caravans, groups of bandits, important persons being scorted. Don't need to be in every road, but the City to City roads should have more people.

 

Think how it would be cool to travel and get a fight between a traders caravan and a group of bandits, and to choose the side you'll be joining or just look at the fight from far. Also could be quests regarding guarding people or assaulting them on the roads. :D

[Levgre]

I tried to make a battle between 30 bandits and 30 guards. Everything was okay till they actually attacked each other. Only 60 actors moving at same time made the game freeze. Had to reboot. Population is small for a reason.

 

That's actuallly good to hear. So your computer could handle 60 people on-screen as long as they weren't all fighting. Even 40-50 people in one location would be awesome, and would be magnitudes more than what Skyrim has now.

 

Although I'm guessing if you started a fight and everyone started moving away even that might start problems. So the cap may be 20-30, which would also be good.

Edited November 27, 2011 by Levgre

[Julenissen666]

*snip*

And yes, the cities are really small. but remember when you expand the cities by building more houses you still need to add a lot more people to fill the streets that are already there and the new streets that you have made.

Remember how each city is compared to other cities. Think about what types of people should be added to each town. Solitude should have more high class people while Riften for example should have more low class people like mercenaries, thieves and beggars. But since Solitude is the capital city of Skyrim, there should be more beggars there.

I don't know much about the Elder Scrolls lore, but when starting working on this kind of mod you should read up on the lore so you don't make something that does not fit in to the lore.

Good ideas, and the engine limitations could be circumvented by dividing some of the towns into different sections (eg. the Grey Quarter in Windhelm easily could be its own section).

Yes, and gates inside of Windhelm would make sense since its kind of a fortress. And if someone does this, guards should be set on the Grey Quarter side because of the racism in Windhelm.

And the Legion part of Solitude could be its own section. Would kind of make sense.

[CaoMengde777]

add houses to cities in the open spaces near the town, there is plenty of open space.

and like.. on whiterun, there is PLENTY of space around how the farms are, just make some more houses around.

[metall87]

Think how it would be cool to travel and get a fight between a traders caravan and a group of bandits, and to choose the side you'll be joining or just look at the fight from far. Also could be quests regarding guarding people or assaulting them on the roads. :D

 

this made me remember something. An Arena!

That's also needed. But, yeah, we need more people in the cities, or at least more towns around these. In medieval times there were people outside the walls of the castles, usually composed ​​by farmers.

 

In my future mod i plan to make a little of life in the roads by adding merchants caravans,and they'll trade with other cities from your castle to make a monetary income.

 

so I'm putting my grain of sand to the topic. :thumbsup:

[HeroSushi]

You could add more farmhouses to the regions surrounding the cities that could realistically have 10+ NPCs each by placing the Lord of the Manor, his children, wife, and servants inside the manor. Outside there could be some farmland and a few peasant shacks. The peasants work the land and never enter the Manor. Add some poor kids running around and you have yourself a realistic population in a relatively small area.

 

For specific recommendations,

 

I think you could make all the buildings in Riften one story higher and add Tenements/Apartments you could fill with poorer residents. The Ratway could also be expanded with "safer" zones filled with the poor

 

Whiterun: more farms, like i described above

 

Windhelm: more farms and mills along the river... it's a huge river, there should be lots of mills using that potential

 

Winterhold: maybe rebuild some of it, I know it got destroyed but it doesn't have to be a village now

 

Dawnstar: add more docks and buildings

 

Solitude: build slums outside the walls and under the sea-arch and further along the river.. this city should be much larger than it is

 

Falkreath: add more hunter camps and maybe a new village somewhere, and expand the graveyard.. NPCs say its huge but the one in Windhelm is even bigger

 

Markarth: just make it way taller, you could also make the Warrens much deeper

[raatorotta]

I tried to make a battle between 30 bandits and 30 guards. Everything was okay till they actually attacked each other. Only 60 actors moving at same time made the game freeze. Had to reboot. Population is small for a reason.

 

That's actuallly good to hear. So your computer could handle 60 people on-screen as long as they weren't all fighting. Even 40-50 people in one location would be awesome, and would be magnitudes more than what Skyrim has now.

 

Although I'm guessing if you started a fight and everyone started moving away even that might start problems. So the cap may be 20-30, which would also be good.

 

Well, I also made a pile of 100 chickens just for fun, it didn't freeze my comp but sure it did game lagg badly. But chickens have simple mesh and not much of animation.

 

 

What is your PC configuration ?

 

AMD Athlon II x2, Geforce gtx 460 and 4 gb ram ( i'm using ENB series for Skyrim, that has 4gb enabler too)

So mostly what makes freezing and lagging during experiments on actor limits is my CPU, i will get x6 later though, even Skyrim can't use 6 cores.

Edited November 28, 2011 by raatorotta

[boomnuke35]

People in cities don't have to be there all the time or have houses or beds. They can leave and come not permanently there. Think of yourself in the game, you never really stay in a city because you have stuff to do elsewhere people can be the same they can come and go. Now some can live there permanently for realism but not everyone has to and it can change at night too. Like more beggars at night or thieves. I'd actually like to see someone else get arrested randomly(besides myself). Farmers can live at farms around the cities which also makes the dragons more interesting. [farm worker working on field dragon flies by breathes fire farm worker laying on the ground burned(:] there are easy ways to make more populated cities work within the systems limitations

[gmillar]

I think it would be awesome to just add sprawl outside city walls. A mix of peasant shacks, manors with private guards, and shops and farms and s***. Overall the towns seem pretty well laid out, which seems unrealistic to me. I have the impression most medieval towns were like rabbit warrens.

 

http://www.jointsoftime.org/additional/images/rarely/favelas.jpg