Anyone know how tall White-Gold Tower is supposed to be, or how tall it was shown in Oblivion?

I think we can use simple math if we can figure out how tall the http://attachments.techguy.org/attachments/90754d1162142537/whitegold-tower_sunset.jpg are.

My first guess off the top of my head was around 500 ft.

Representation in-game differs from the lore. Just think about: if Cyrodiil, the main province of a mighty empire really as small as it is shown in-game? That would be ridiculous, it's not even as big as a real world city. Besides that, the cultures and climates differ too greatly to be confined in such a small space.
The games are just a representation of Tamriel, which is basically a fictional construct.

Yeah; the Imperial City in lore isn't a mere few hundred people. Likewise, White-Gold Tower is probably larger in lore than it is in game.

But knowing how tall it is in game would be a good start. 600 feet is what I was guessing bittergreen. It'd probably be relatively easy to figure this out if I had a working copy of Oblivion on hand... alas.

Yeah, I know, but the2crow asked for an estimation of Oblivions version specifically. Plus, thats all we really have to go on.


Yes, I definitely agree its(White-Gold & Imperial City) bigger in lore than in the in-game representation. That goes for Morrowind and Oblivion, and probably Skyrim as well.

Well, I got in the construction set and stacked a bunch of cupboards (CupboardFoodMiddle, to be precise), which are almost the exact height of an Imperial Male, on top of each other from the street all the way to the top of White-Gold. Ended up with 109.

If we assume an Imperial Male is 6 feet tall, then that makes White-Gold 654 feet.

Not at all far from what we guessed. Now we need to figure out how to scale that to a lore-accurate size... How much smaller was Oblivion's Imperial City than the lore-IC?

Good job figuring that out. I probably will be of no use determining a lore-accurate size, but I will add that the initial image of White-Gold in my head was the Empire State Building which is over 1,200 ft tall.

I'd say the Imperial City, using in-game distance, would probably stretch to the outskirts of Bruma, Cheydinhal, Skindgrad, and Chorral, from the center of the Imperial City. At the very least. Just my humble opinion.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sGAYk5VWkTw

I'm pretty sure its population has been mentioned somewhere, but I can't be bothered to find it this late at night/early in the morning. Knowing it's population would give us something to compare to, and then we could just scale up White-Gold's size with the city's.

I'd imagined it as around 1,200 as well, just because there's a massive http://lh3.ggpht.com/-nXh7BALAyZ8/SKYqqGR4M5I/AAAAAAAAAw4/3AdjFoNdp1w/DSC00372.JPG nearby that's 1,215 feet tall. It's an imposing structure, and makes a good template for visualizing White-Gold.

But White-Gold could very well be three times its size in Oblivion, I think.

I don't think conjecture will be able to pull a concrete (or even approximation) of the actual height of the White Gold Tower. After all, Cyrodiil was only about 16 square miles in Oblivion. I think we'll need an official statement.

Id like to throw this out there from http://www.imperial-library.info/content/daggerfall-history-daggerfall:


There is sufficient archaeological evidence for the modern historian to believe that there has been some variety of human settlement in the city-state of Daggerfall starting at least a thousand years before recorded history. The first use of the name Daggerfall to refer to the area around the current capitol was most probably in the 246th year of the 1st Era. The north half of the Iliac Bay, in fact all of the current province of High Rock, was conquered by invading Nords who brought a rough sort of civilization with them. One of the first civilized acts the Nords performed was a census -- the so-called Book of Life. Listed on page 933 of the Book is this entry:

"North of the Highest bluffs, south of the moors, west of the hills, and east of the sea is called DAGGERFALL. 110 men, 93 women, 13 children under 8 years of age, 58 cows, 7 bulls, 63 chickens, 11 cocks, 38 hogs live here."

Nearly four thousand years after this census was taken, we can see that these two hundred and sixteen people have multiplied heartily. The last census, in the year 3E 401, lists the population at over 110,000. It is always difficult to find an exact number, but the capitol city of Daggerfall certainly outnumbers her rivals, Sentinel and Wayrest.

Now I think we can assume Cyrodiil has a larger population than High Rock? I think you may be right the2crow, White-Gold maybe way bigger than we originally thought.

Wayman, there will be no point in waiting for an official statement because one might never come. All we can do is try to figure it out logically, for now.

I know, just sayin'. I checked the Imperial Library for books that mention the tower, but none give any real information on its height.

EDIT: Just fired up Oblivion, stood at the bottom of the tower, got my y coordinate via the console, then no-clipped to the top and got my coordinates again. Results: bottom of tower is placed at 61650.61 on the y-axis, top is 63421.37. Based on this, the height of the tower in in-game measurements is 1,770.76. If anyone here is familiar with what these units correlate to in real-life measurements, that would be awesome.

If Daggerfall is 100,000, I'd say the Imperial city has to be half a million. That'd make sense in comparison with real-world cities as well. Not gonna bother with the armchair estimations to extend population to a guess regarding size atm though.

Wayman, very nice. Smarter than my method.

This doesn't help, but in Planescape, Spire appears finite, when actually it spans an eternity. It's a vertical cosmology, with countless planes crossing it. Point being, does White-Gold's perceived height matter? After all, the tower farms magic from Oblivion.

A single Wheel? More like a Telescope that stretches all the way back to the Eye of the Anui-El, with Padomaics innumerable along its infinite walls.

Again, this doesn't help, except maybe to say you'll never find your answer. :thumbsup:

Nice. Can you find out how many of these units makes up the cupboard that the2crow said was equal to the size of an Imperial? Assuming average Cyrodiils are around 6 ft. we should be able to determine how tall White-Gold is. In-game at least.


Perhaps, but its fun trying.

Since it's a fantasy game, and White-Gold are momentous-like!

I would say it stands quite a bit taller then most skyscraqers IRL.

It would have been just fine as a squat ziggurat. No one said Cyrodiil assumed a literal wheel, until Nu-Hatta.

Going out of universe for an attempt to measure this thing, White-Gold tower reminds me of the White Tower of Hoeth in Warhammer. They were both constructed by elves with a fancy for powerful magics, can be seen from miles around, and are focal points of culture and power.

The White Tower is described as half a mile tall, which is 2640 feet. White-Gold is probably shorter than that, but keep in mind that the Imperial Palace, like any other decent home of an emperor, is HUGE by default. Plus it's what keep Nirn from going up in immaterial smoke to boot.

Going by the Thieves' Guild quest alone, it holds the vaults of the Elder Scrolls, apartments for members of the Elder Council and their retinues along with the Elder Council chambers itself, their own division of soliders and mages, labs, libraries, a "monastery" for the Moth Priests, an extensive storage area, along with the basics like a few large suites for the Emperor and his family, a throne-room or rooms should the Emperor be needed at a moments notice, feast halls, chapels, guest rooms, and countless areas for its many servants. This was once the home of an Elven Sorcerer-King, and the Ayleids loved big, airy, majestic spaces if their ruins say anything about their architecture.

If that would be 1,770.76 metres... Then it would be quite impressive, and I would actually believe it could be something like that. Of course there are propably magical teleports inside the tower, like in the Arcane University, so that you will not have to walk up 1,770.76 metres just because you have been ordered to relieve whatever guard could be posted up on top.

I doubt its meters in-game, but that would be impressive.

Y'ffre, don't forget the Tower goes underground a bit. I don't know if we would count that to our final height though. Would we?

True, being an American game company and all it would propably be feet, or just some imaginary system. Is it not possible to use Wayman′s system to see how tall a man is, in-game? If the person is somewhere at 1.8 or 2.0 then it is most likely in metres. If it is like 6.0 or something then it is propably in feet. Would be interesting to know even if it only helps us to a lesser degree.

And thinking how deep it could be under the ground... Who knows what the Empire keeps in there? Dangerous artifacts, valuable treasures and other interesting things... Maybe the ruins of the old Ayleid city? Who knows...

Yes, but probably not also. If it's anything like the majestic, magical white tower archetype, it probably has chambers that don't even exist in the same level of reality. You've got an hourglass in its basemant that lets you turn back time and scrolls that can alter history. Canis might be on to something saying that magical spires that go on forever tend to "stop" at a certain point. Logic really isn't Mundas' strong suit.

Combining these two:

It's about 0.36 feet per game unit, which corresponds to about 10 centimeters / game unit.

200 meters ain't bad for a tower.

Well, I just wanted to know how far above the ground it extends. And Canis, my interest was purely mundane, but nice post.

Thanks for the math, Proweler.

Maybe, but it still feels too small...