How big is Tamriel in sq miles/kilometers? From the northern most point to the southern most point? East to West?
How big is Cyrodiil for that matter?

Apparently the size changes from one game to the next. I'll dig around and see if I can find a number though.

EDIT: It took very little time to find some scaeled maps over at the IL, but you'll have to eyeball the scale thing in the map's key to get an estimate of the sizes/distances you are looking for, or take the image and load it into an image editing/viewing program and you can get a more accurate number.

http://www.imperial-library.info/sites/default/files/gallery_files/minibigmaproadslore31gv.jpg
http://www.imperial-library.info/sites/default/files/gallery_files/cyrodiillargelowrescr7.jpg

I might not set my hopes to high as far as the numbers lining up from different maps, but maybe.

EDIT 2: And as it so happens, a thread on the first page of another section discussing the sizes of the various maps.

http://www.gamesas.com/index.php?/topic/1192233-how-big-are-the-tes-game-maps/

I got 1150 miles from Daggerfall to Necrom. I expected bigger really.

Map 1 says that Akavir is 4200 miles away. How the hell did Uriel V and his legions manage to survive for so long in Akavir?

What do you mean?

As a side question to that observation (4200 to Akavir), I'm gonna check to see how long it took comparable ships to travel that distance in Earth's own history, and see how it compares to the 2 weeks or whatever that is reported in the Disaster at Ionith book.

4200 is a guess, by the map-maker, mind you. Both of those are unofficial maps. As for how he survived, Uriel V also did a bit of island hopping for his campaign and his battlemages actually started to create water and the like as the campaign neared it's ugly end.

I'd say...take the DF scale and use that.

As a side note, I found that Red Mountain's diameter is roughly the radius of Olympus Mons on Mars.

Yeah, that's one point that I wish got more attention and was elaborated on. I can't find a lot of info about the island kingdoms conquered along the way to Akavir. Such as the races that inhabit them, their sizes, etc.

For context, the US is about 3500 mi (5632 km) across.

This. I always wanted to know if they were still under the Empire's control.



I meant how did they survive there for ~1 year with such a long supply line.

Tamriel is 675,390 sq miles. From the northernmost tip of Skyrim to the southernmost tip of the Black marsh vertically is 880 miles. Far west High Rock to far east Morrowind is 1201 miles. Cyrodiil is 137,382 sq mi.

Using the distances from the Arena fast travel map, it's about 2800 miles from Daggerfall to Necrom and about 2000 from Solitude to Senchal. This would make Tamriel roughly the size of the continental United States, give or take, which seems like a much more reasonable estimate.

The 250 miles on the map scale is probably taken from a line in the Morrowind section of the first PGE that mentions that Red Mountain is 250 miles north of Mournhold. That's about half the scale presented in Arena. It's possible Bethesda intentionally cut the size of the game world in half, intentionally moved Mournhold north or Red Mountain south, or just forgot about the Arena numbers. Whatever the reason, I'm not sure that one line should be used as a basis for determining the size of the continent.

I know it's heretical to put Arena "lore" ahead of PGE lore, but I think in this one case it gives a more realistic size for Tamriel, given all the geographical and climatological differences throughout the provinces.

It's also possible that (1) the PGE's measurement was somehow erroneous - from a bad source, perhaps, or due to a unit conversion error from the native Dunmer measurement or (2) Tamriellic miles are around half the size of our miles, and the PGE's version wasn't "translated". Naturally, neither of those might have been intended, but they both could be "interesting" which is the important part, right?

I like the way you think! Perhaps the anti-elven author of the PGE asked the locals how far away Red Mountain was, heard back "250 (Dunmer distance units)" and decided he or she didn't want to sully the PGE with elven nonsense. The author just swapped out the actual unit for good old Imperial miles, naturally assuming that solid, dependable Imperial measurement systems are more precise than the Dunmer's anyway.

It seems to be somewhat consistent with the Daggerfall scale used actually.

http://i5.photobucket.com/albums/y199/Proweler/Lore/distancemeasured.jpg

I made this a while ago. It's not verry accurate but should give you an impression of the ball park.

Red & Blue derived from Daggerfall. Green from the PGE.

http://www.imperial-library.info/content/distance-measurements-daggerfall



A few significant digits to many I'd reckon.

I hope not, I made the size chart based on that map you posted. If Tamriel is that 675,390 sq miles, it's the size of Alaska. If you take away one digit off the back, it's the size of Missouri. If you take away another digit, Tamriel would be the size of Connecticut. I say we add a digit or two.

He's not digging at the number of numbers you have. He's digging at the precision you presented it.

Exactly. Sig figs refer to rounding and the like, not how many numbers there should be.

Example, 8,800 is 2 sig figs, 8,810 is 3. The latter number assumes a great amount of certainty. proweler is just pointing out there is too much uncertainty to say that Cyrodiil is 137,382 square miles. A better answer would be 140,000.

Gotcha. There's some wiggle room, but who gives a crap? There's no reason to round it when the number doesn't matter.

Realistically, when the accurate number is unknown, 137,382 is no more precise than 140,000. They're both essentially random estimates. We just prefer the latter because it looks nicer in our counting system.
So yeah. The number doesn't matter; no reason to round it.

I agree. There isn't an essential reason to be exact. In fact, I'm tempted to sayt that it doesn't need to be considered at all. Tamriel can be as big or as small as the developers and particular game needs it to be.

Ah. I wasn't that serious. I'm not a dog that just wags his tongue.

Though I'm sure the ballpark is useful to some one. The question pops up ever so often.

I don't know the proper size but assuming Nirn to be the size of Earth, I imagine Tamriel to be a bit bigger than Australia.