Has there been any discussion on the population of Tamriel? Search is not turning up anything useful. My guess, 30-40 million.

You'd probably have better luck with this question in the Lore section :thumbsup:

If you consider how DF was populated, your assessemant might be good.

If you consider how Cyrodil was populated in Oblivion, I would say Tamriel might have around 3000-5000 folks at max!

Population density was one of the serious scale flaw of Oblivion. In the absolute, having around a thousand NPC for a game is great, though Oblivion ones were empty shells, but this number becomes ridiculous if you consider the geographic scale the game is supposed to cover.

If Oblivion was to be happening in a secondary provincial town, its number of NPC might have fitted, as the map size. But Devs wanted it to represent the core imperial province, its capital and secondary towns... and just thrown us in a 16 square miles map with around a thousand NPC.

I hope next game will have a coherent size/scale/population with what it is supposed to be.

i agree. a place like Cyrodiil should atleast cover something like 20.000 Square miles and have 3.000.000 NPCs... atleast.

A gabillion.

The difference between the game scales makes this question complete faff.

I've noticed you using the word "faff" quite frequently as of late.


Anyway, it's impossible to accurately (or even inaccurately) judge the entire population of a province, let alone the entire continent, of Tamriel. No census exists in-game that documents the population, and since the games are scaled down for gameplay purposes, there's really no way to answer this question short of throwing a random number out there.

But if I had to guess, i'd say 3,908,358,277 people (not including the 106 Sload that currently occupy the continent). This guess is based on nothing more than randomly typed numbers on my keyboard.

there is a way i will get on and count every person man woman and necro in ob then do a forest gump and just run from anvil light house to dive rock

Walter:
Well, you're not going to get much of a definite answer, or a really good educated guess, but four billion sounds a little big for a continent.

Then again, I'd expect certain pronvinces to have a large population (High Rock, Cyrodill) and others to have small ones (Skyrim, maybe, and Balck Marsh). I'd guess a quarter billion, maybe (which is more probable than 4 billion ). There's no way of knowing, unless a dev makes an official statement.

Yes, and we'll be biding our time until they do, and then *BAM*, we go kill an NPC... 'In your face dev'


Anyway, anything over a billion sounds too high unless your doing all of Nirn.

:turtle:

Walter:Yeah.

That's one hell of a dense population. That or people are living under the ocean. Or in the air. One of the two.

Anuad say...

Nirn originally was all land, with interspersed seas, but no oceans...This war reshaped the face of Nirn, sinking much of the land beneath new oceans.

So hey maybe

To which I reply:



And skooma.


But I agree with you nonetheless. 3 billion people on one continent does see a little too far out there. Maybe I should have come up with a more convincing fake number.

I agree that the population of Oblivion was lacking, but I just want to point out that the NPCs in Oblivion were quite advanced. Each had their own daily and weekly routines. That was a part that I really loved about Oblivion. Boosting the population could possibly take away from this. The devs need to find some sort of balance.

But, as you said, the population might have been fine for a smaller region, but the Imperial Province...

Well, if we use medieval Europe (just to pick something) to get a bit of scope, the population would probably vary wildly depending on whatever was happening: war, disease, idiocy, etc. In 1350 for example, the estimated population of the whole of Europe was 73.5 million with the countries varying between 2 and 19 million.

If Tamriel is similar, I'd be fairly happy with that number. We'd have a good density in cities while still have low enough populations to have a huge amount of wilderness and such to explore. Anything between 75 and 150 million would make a believable world to me.

I think that the oblivion in-game population was really nothing to complain about when you consider:

Some people don't have $5000 computers, and so cannot handle such a massive game world

Bethsof actually wants their game to be affordable/profitable, and so cannot afford to invest the thousands of extra hours into creating such a population (believe me, labor is VERY expensive)

They also realize that giving the player such a MASSIVE world would be a tremendous strain on gameplay -it would actually take ALL DAY to walk ANYWHERE (by ALL DAY, I mean 24 actualy, real world hours!) And when faced with such a task, most people would not enjoy the game at all, it would be horribly boring. either that, or no one would ever want to spend any time in the wilderness as it would be such a time eater, thus making it pointless to have made such a world to begin with.

In my opinion, the game world is acceptable if you consider that it is merely a representation of reality, just to give you an idea of what things actually are like, and by giving an entire province, gives the players TONS of options for extended gameplay.

Sure, emmersion and simulated reality are neat and all that, but I can almost guarantee that if they had made the game like the emmersion-fans wish they would have, then we would not play it much at all. I say the developers were smart for doing what they did, and I will give them a big :goodjob:

Now, for a more on-topic statement:

I believe when making a guess at popultion, a good basis would be looking to our own past.
In ancient times, Rome was the biggest city in the world, the first city with 1,000,000 people. That is HUGE considering they lacked things such as towers that stack people one on top of the other. (Personally, I live way out in the country, and cannot understand the desire to stack people on top of one another, or to live in such crammed, unprivate conditions. It actually kind of freak me out!) The next time a city would accomplish this was not for 1000 years after the fall of ROME! (it was London, by the way. At least in the west, not sure about Asia.) Now, if one would continue on this ancient comparisson, the other largest cities in Tamriel would likeyl have populations in the hundreds of thousands, almost certainly below 500,000.

I would say to generate a reasonable guess on tamrieal's population, look up the popultion of Europe some time around 1500.

actually, 1350 may be a better year.

Medieval Europe was at its height poulation wise around 1350, with 70 to 100 million people, one source estimates 73.5 million

By 1500, the population had declined substantially due to plague, colder climate, and social factors (no one is absulutely sure just why it happened) to fall to a total population of around 50 million.

Perhaps 1500 does represent a closer figure, as the earlier figure represnts an overpopulated Europe, while the lower figure may be more comparable to a strife-ridden Tamriel.

Population Estimates (in millions) at specified times 500-1450


AREA -500 -650 -1000 -1340 -1450



Greece/Balkans -5 -3 -5 -6 -4.5

Italy -4 -2.5 -5 -10 -7.3

Spain/Portugal - 4 -3.5 -7 -9 -7

Total - South -13 -9 -17 - 25 -19



France/Low countries -5 -3 -6 -19 -12

British Isles -0.5 -0.5 -2 -5 -3

Germany/Scandinavia -3.5 -2 -4 -11.5 -7.3

Total - West/Central -9 -5.5 -12 -35.5 -22.5



Slavia. -5 -3 - -

---Russia - - 6 -8 -6

---Poland/Lithuania - -2 -3 -2

Hungary -0.5 -0.5 -1.5 -2 -1.5

Total -East -5.5 -3.5 -9.5 -13 -9.3



TOTAL EUROPE -27.5 -18 -38.5 -73.5 -50



If you can make sense of that chart, then please do.

So I place my bid at 50,000,000 people or less in all of Tamriel.

To put these dates into perspective for those unfamiliar with midieval history:
500~fall of Rome
650 middle of the dark ages, right before Frankish Empire and Charlamagne
1000~Viking Age, Norman conquest of England, Holy Roman Empire (Germany) birth of many modern European nations (France, England, etc.) Crusades start in a short while (first in 1095)
1340 What mosy people think of when they think of the middle ages. Height of the feudal age in France. Crusades pretty much over for 100 years. Height of medieval poulation
1500 End of the middle ages, Reformation starts in about 20 years, Rennaisance will come about in a little while. At this time, there are cannons, the printing press, even crude guns in Europe.

I believe that comparing Tamriel to medieval Europe is an excellent way for getting a rough estimation on the population number, I was about to mention it myself when I read this.

Your guess makes a lot of sense to me, but I'd like to know where you get the 70-100 million people around 1350 from. In my medieval history colleges they've been telling me (if I recall correctly) that around 1350, when Europe was seriously overpopulated, Europe had about 50-70 million inhabitants (pretty much the same number as the Roman Empire had at it's peak). That number dropped to about 30 million around 1500, mostly due to the Great Plague.

Anyway, the 73,5 million inhabitants estimate is bullcrap. There aren't nearly enough sources to come up with a guess that accurate.

well, you could count the current known population, but I don't think anyone can be bothered to count every single NPC from OB, MW, DF and all the other TES

We have to realize that the devs simply cannot recreate a convincing numerical population that behaves with personality. Daggerfall made a good attempt to have a realistic number of folks, but they were all templates with a generated name slapped on them. This made a whole lot of folks where were basically the same person. Quite useless.

Morrowind and oblivion gave a bit more depth to each character, but at the expense of numbers. Hard to write dialogue for 20, 000 npcs, especially considering that most would answer your questions with the Tamrielic version of "Lol, wut?".

I became much happier playing when I just figure what we see is a representation, and that the actual world (in physical size and population) is bigger by a factor of 20 or more. 20,000 or so folks in Morrowind? That works for me. We just get to see about 5% of them.

Well I can see your point, and do not give these estimates with any guarantee. But one must also consider what regions are included in these estimates
Also we must remember that all we have for this are guesses based on what little we know of density of certain areas, and the availability of farming methods to support a population (which being connected to farming as I am, I realize that the historians have no idea what they are saying when it comes to this.)

And also I must admit I have never studied medieval demography in any detail, so I cannot make any claims.
This once again shows an interesting parallel to the Tamriel situation, all we can do is guess withing a range of a few million people.

and it is also (speaking to Harlequin) nice to see that there are others that feel this way in regards to accepting it as a representation.

My rough estimate is around 120 to 170 million people (thats counting all of the races that are playable in the game). This is completely not taking into account the actual presented populations in the games. Oblivion only had a low pop so as to make the game feasible. Until you have advanced enough AI that they can write there own quests and will be auto assigned places based on lore and other prerequisites, the population presented in future games will be VERY low.

If I would try to assign this number of 120-170 million to specific regions, I would have to say that 3 to 5 million live in Imperial city with between 300k and 700k living in each of the major cities (like Bravil, Bruma, Anvil) which adds up to maybe 25 to 35 mil total living in small cities/large towns or in the capital. Most people live as farmers outside of the cities, so about 80 mil reside in the countryside or in villages. The Imperial Legion adds up to maybe 100k to 180k troops with town guards adding up to another 30k (Imperial Legion patrols and garrisons a lot of positions, running both road guards/woodsmen, imperial city guards and various forts around Tamriel. So yes, there are a LOT of them).

I assign these numbers based on a couple factors. For starters I look at the number of people present in the "old world" here on earth around 500 years ago. This is just the numbers for Tamriel, not Nirn...or Nurn...or whatever the planet is called. I made tamriel a bit less due to the fact that its land area isn't as big as the "old world" here on earth but then again Nirn could be a massive planet. Magic makes me both subtract and add to that number. On one hand magic can cure many diseases but on the other hand a awful lot of people get murdered by spell casting skeletons.

Its also pieced together from rough estimates and guesses...

If I were to visit one place in Tamriel that was upped in scale both when it comes to buildings and population, it would be imperial city. I imagine a mountain Island with that massive tower in the middle...maybe a mile high...with luxurious villas and manors as far as the eye could see in a dozen tiers going down the side of the mountain. Then there would be the massive impenetrable walls that would be 500ft thick and 60 stories high with a giant gateway leading out the the bridge that connects to the mainland. The waterfront would be a cross between the main port at Carthage and the city of St. Petersburg with a few run down manors inhabiting the poor. Pretty epic, not going to even get into the Mages University or the Legion Fort.

What? 80 million people in the countyside? Ei ei ei, that's a pretty crowded countryside!

In a culture like tamriel's the majority of its population, say 75% or more, would be rural (Roman Italy had a small 25% urbanization, which is actually quite large for those days.)

Now consider how much of the land is farmable by their technology, and how mauch of a population their yields will be able to support.

Also consider that, for a familly to be entirely self-sufficient, it would require at least 5 acres of quality farmland just to support itslef, with no profit. (I think modern methods we need about 3 acres or so to support someone)

Then consider cattle and pigs and other livestock also. For every farmer in tamriel there needs to be a lot of farmland. Then throw into the equation forests and swamps and mountains etc. There is just no room in Tamriel's countryside at the game-represented time for 80 million people.

Also, walls that are 500 feet thick and 60 feet tall would be an engineering impossibility, and beyond impractical.

Krak des Chevaliers- I believe the biggest walls in any castle on earth, up to 100 feet thick -massive, massive walls. And they were not solid, they were full of secret rooms and passages.

With a tower that is a mile high, I'm sure we can accommodate and equally over sized wall.

Just out of curiousity, what does Lore give as the dimensions of White Gold Tower and the cities walls.

But 500 feet, half the city would be the walls that protect the other half! That seems... odd.

The ONLY way sucha thing would happen is IF people lived/worked/had shops. etc. within these monsters in addition to whatever government/legion things are going on inside already.

But hey, I am rambling just a bit. Which I tend to do.

The IC should be rather massive. WETA tried to render Barad Dur to be a mile high too, so just think of that tower's size and dimensions when thinking about White-Gold.

People need to realize these are videogames, and more NPC's does not mean better gameplay. Many NPC's only talk about Rumors.