It would be easy enough to variate monsters giving them different surnames and skins, like weak goblin, clubber goblin, armored goblin etc.
But as you say the more variation the better, though they had many varations of human npcs, which was good.
Yep, that's one easy way. Take a page from Martigen's Monster Mod for Oblivion (among others)... But don't go quite as far. A well-done retexturing can give you a new enemy with relative ease. Keep them subtle, and have a few. NPC enemies like goblins can have variation by giving them different equipment. And the bandits/adventurers can run the gamut. Personally, I don't think either Morrowind or Oblivion had too
few enemies - but the number they did have could have seemed much more vast if they'd employed some of those tricks to greater effectiveness.