I know they are capitals of their holds but my question is "what makes a city a city?" and "why can't a town be a capital?".

To look at the size of them then they look more like towns and isn't there some rule that a city has to have certain buildings like a place of worship, a fortification (castle) and a place of authority or something like this.

Solitude, Riften, Windhelm, Whiterun & Markarth are all fortified and have proper temples of worship.

??? Anyone?

What separates them is their lack of "walls". They aren't as fortified or populated as the other walled settlements.

I'm sure They are proper cities in lore.

You don't need to be large city to be a capital. Hell, you don't even need to be the largest city in a territory to be a capital.

Look at Pennsylvania - biggest cities in descending order by population of : Philadelphia, Pittburgh, Allentown (on Saturdays during football season, University Park), Erie, Reading, Scranton, Bethelehem, Lancaster, and in 9th place and capital of Pennsylvania: Harrisburg.

How about New York? New York City, Buffalo, Rochester, Yonkers, Syracuse, and in 6th place and capital of New York: Albany.

How about the United States of America? I would go down the entire list but the first 10 are (and off the top of my head, so I'm not sure exactly): New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, Houston, Philadelphia, Phoenix, San Diego, San Antonio, Dallas, and I think either Austin or San Jose...

Washington DC is somewhere in the mid-20's.

So they might be towns, and they are the largest in their holds, but even if time progressed and they grew but other towns grew faster and became larger, they would still be the capital unless the Jarl decided otherwise.

There is an in-game book recording when the mysterious ice warriors (the Falmer) were once sighted when they attacked the Imperial garrison "town" of Dawnstar.

They are all much larger in lore.

Falkreath is definitely important, given it's location (accessible from Cyrodiil) and not just the lumber trade.

Dawnstar was much larger and most definitely had walls (it even had a Queen at the end of the Third Era!). Not really sure why Dawnstar appears as it does in Skyrim (technical limitations aside) because although it may have fallen on hard times I doubt it's fallen so far as to be regarded as nothing more than a fishing village.

Morthal's definitely a town, however. It's never been particularly important (strategically or economically) and the surrounding area is far from inviting.

Blame it on engine limitations.

The towns are capitals of the their holds. They aren't cities because they're small.

personally i attribute it to laziness on the developers part, or at the very least taking shortcuts. This has been one of my biggest beefs with the direction the elderscrolls has been taking since oblivion, none of the cities feel like cities, and the towns usually consist of 3 houses and 3 people. Balmora wasn't even a city and it was as big as whiterun, or bigger.

Although I suppose it could also be an attempt to have towns with out walls and an extra load screen, as that was a complaint many people had about oblivion. However they still could have made it larger and added more npc's. They have been saying for a while now that they can't add more npc's because of graphical limitations, however there are plenty of mods that do it with out much or any issue.

Falkreath is the only "town" that has a blacksmith, alchemist, and a general trader, though it lacks a court mage to do business with. The other plaes (Morthal, Dawnstar, Winterhold) are all missing one or more of these, for whatever reason.

they are cities and they are large in lore.

All the settlements in Skyrim are "Towns", none of them deserve to be called a city. The "Big" ones have great aesthetics but they come off as anything but genuine because of their minimalistic approach. Oblivion/Morrowind Cities just hit that sweet spot. Enough redundancy and size to be seen as legitimate and maintain suspension of disbelief, where The Imperial City and Vivec went all out.

But for the presentation in the game, they come off lacking. One of the reasons I'm excited about the new consoles is with 8GB memory standard, huge towns are a much more realistic goal now.

Yes they are. Towns have three houses, cities have four

But seriously, they are not in separate worldspaces, to speak with technical terms, so judging by that alone they are smaller than the cities that have to be in separate worldspaces due to performance issues.


I agree. Imperial City is the only one i've seen i'd call a city. And maybe New Sheoth too.

i think they could do atleast 2 imperial city sized cities in the next game.

You can't really compare Skyrim to Morrowind because the scale is completely different (if Skyrim had only focused on say Eastmarch, Winterhold and the Rift then the game probably would have had similar scale as Morrowind).

Also mentioning mods add more NPCs successfully isn't really helpful to the problem; the game is published on two other platforms which are already at their limits and then some.

It's something that needs to be worked on for TES VI though. And hopefully they will.

In the lore, they probably have populations somewhere in the 10,000-20,000 range. I'd consider that a city by medieval standards. In the game, however, they're nothing more than glorified cottages.

I think there is probably a minimum of 50,000 people.

London had a population of around 50,000 in the medieval ages, that's more of a metropolis in that time, in my opinion. I'd consider Whiterun and Solitude having that many people.

Dawnstar was originally the largest port in skyrim with walls...then skyrim happened...Falkreath was once the capital city of the Colovian estates and should have the castle of Cuhlecain aka emperor zero and would probably be the major center for the cult of emperor zero that Tiber set up...then skyrim happened.

They are minor cities, while Solitude, Whiterun, etc. is major cities.

Towns would like Rorikstead and Riverwood.

its not because of Skyrim. It is because of the limitations. Xbox and ps3 are lucky to be able to run skyrim as it is.

They are cities in Lore but not in the game.