Well I suppose it depends what you use to measure something as one or the other. Pretty sure here in Britain it's this.

If it has a church it is a village.

If it has a public toilet it is a town

If it has a cathedral it is a city.

However, I am aware this isn't a set definition, we would probably be best going by building count or some other marker building. For instance,

tavern - village (small settlement)

shop - town (I'm aware villages can have towns, but in this game, I honestly don't think small settlements should have shops)

??? - city, perhaps some central governing building or something?


Of course they could have varying numbers of buildings, but these things are generally built when a certain number of people are present. No sense building a shop where there are only 5 people to buy anything from it.

Well, the game normally decides what is what, Bethesda put different markers to seperate towns and cities. So I guess we go by what their definition is. The largest town in the game will be the largest place without the city marker on it, and we know what the 5 cities are. Cities are just supposed to be the big central trade centers where most towns send excess resources to in exchange for others. I just hope it isn't like Oblivion where the smallest city had, I think, 19 buildings and 40 people or something, and the biggest town had 8 buildings and 9 people, and no shops at all. I mean things aren't such a huge divide. Cities could often form because a town grows for whatever reason and becomes one.

I have nothing more to add. Other than the fact that I completely agree with regards to the sizes of Oblivion's "towns" and some "cities" being to small. I fully accept however that they have to be hugely scaled down and what is a city in the game would never be a city in reality. But 40 people is yes, ridiculously low.

40 people isnt enough for an important city right, Anvil and Leyawiin were Cyrodiil's biggest citys with NPC populations of 50 barily enough.

I would love to see More towns with More people in them.
There could even be optional quests at them. (Obviously you don't want to receive a quest each time you find a new town, but the option would be nice)
The main cities need to have way more people in my opinion. I was playing Oblivion last night and was in the Marketplace in the Imperial City and I spotted 2 people (other than guards) walking through.. Pretty pathetic, how can 10 shops and businesses run with no customers? Shouldn't NPCs be buying stuff too?

So that leaves out Dawnstar, Winter Hold, and Falkreath... are they now considered settlements/villages instead of cities/towns? I wouldn't be too let down if that's the case; it would be more disappointing if they were axed altogether and completey forgotten about.

It would have been nice to see Falkreath as a fiully realized town, though, since it directly borders Cyrodiil and Hammerfell. Such a location would no doubt be influenced by the other two bordering cultures and would present an opportunity to have a unique look/feel than the rest of Skyrim. It would also serve as a politically strategic position given the lore (and Skyrim's current period of civil unrest).

Yeah, Falkreath would be the only town I'm bummed about.

I'll just leave this here for reference, in case anyone is wondering: http://fc03.deviantart.net/fs8/i/2005/323/f/1/Map_of_Tamriel_by_toniworld.jpg. I hope one day Bethersda decides to tackle the entire continent, a la Daggerfall (thanks, Crow); we can dream, can't we?

10+ houses in each of the small settlements (confirmed)

Daggerfall didn't feature the whole of Tamriel. Daggerfalls setting was the smallest setting lore-wise of the Elder Scrolls games (not counting spin-offs).

Wasn't it confirmed that there will be around 30-35 settlements with at least 10 buildings each. If that info is still confirmed it would be a good thing.
Anvil had slightly more than 20 houses I think and it was probably the biggest city besides the IC (at least it felt like that) so if they're at least half the size of Anvil with some 'massive cities' if the rumors are true and with 30+ settlements there will probably be quite a few between 'massive' and 10 houses. So the settlements are not something I worry about for Skyrim (as long as the info is still correct that is)

More important than the number of building is the number of people. IT doesn't matter if a certain settlement has 5, 10 or 15 wooden structures if there's a ratio of 1 person per structure. What's lacking is not size, rather personality, and by such I mean coming from both the town as a whole and its inhabitants. It's a bunch of people that have built, or are building, a reality for themselves, together. There may be the outcomer trying to settle in, the town's imbecile, the town's children, their relationship to their father, etc. etc. I know it's time consuming and that most of the time those templates will have to be as generic as possible in order to make ends meet, but there should be something strong tying together those aspects of living in a harsh environment with a limited number of people. Their problems(read quests) should be consonant with such reality, your participation should resound accordingly.

It's not that I'm expecting or demanding anything from the game. It's just that if I have faith in any company delivering this kind of deep cohesion to its gameworld, it's Bethesda first and foremost. If it's not this time, it will be down the line, I'm sure.

Yes, these cities are now going to be little towns, unfortunately. At least they are in the game, but from the looks of the official map, Falkreath and Dawnstar take up 9 cells and Winterhold takes up 4 cells.

http://www.thedragonborn.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/01/skyrimmap.jpg

Well, its been confirmed they will generally have 10 buildings at least. I think the world economy and trading system will make it much more interesting. Also, I think there will be more focus on towns as possible centers for quest-giving via the radiant story. They said there would be a tavern or communal metting place in each town, which is good.


Also, I beleive that some towns will be more like small cities, not like OB towns of nothingness.

Having a communal meeting place would make the settlements/towns/(insert desired naming convention) sooo much better. To me, having a varied level of sizes for the settlements would be great, and the communal meeting place (tavern particularly) would add a sense of life to things. I personally am hoping for homes with people, tavern, and either a shop (just like general store) or a kind of natural resource. It just needs SOMETHING around which the economy of the settlement is built.

It wont be the amount of people or buildings but the actual point and purpose of the people living there that would make the villages interesting, they should have to be self-sufficient (hunting, raising livestock, growing vegetables) and in some respects self-governing, some villages should also be centered around industry's, for example a few could be right next to a mine and they could be the workers settlement.

I get the feeling Skyrim with be bigger than Cyrodiil, so even well-sized settlements won't take up much of the map space.