Hello everyone,

I would like you to give me what you think are the best choices to get more people out and about in the Oblivion world. Mods and combinations of mods that you feel enrich the atmosphere without too much tax in performance.

I've found some potential candidates and I'd appreciate if you chime in with your experience in using these mods (or others you know about) and which ones you'd pick for your load order:

Tavern-goers: http://www.nexusmods.com/oblivion/mods/34744/?

Populated prisons: http://www.nexusmods.com/oblivion/mods/25232/?

Crowded roads revamped: http://www.nexusmods.com/oblivion/mods/4805/?

Crowded roads advanced: http://www.nexusmods.com/oblivion/mods/18251/?

Crowded cities: http://www.nexusmods.com/oblivion/mods/6665/?

Tamriel Travelers: http://www.nexusmods.com/oblivion/mods/4387/?

Roaming NPCs: http://www.nexusmods.com/oblivion/mods/32747/?

10Travelers: http://www.nexusmods.com/oblivion/mods/3958/?

Immersive travelers: http://www.nexusmods.com/oblivion/mods/19060/?

NPCs Travel: http://www.nexusmods.com/oblivion/mods/44076/?

I will be using Better Cities, not-open version.

Don't. Not only are NPCs incredibly resource-intensive when you're watching them, all NPCs with low-level processing contribute to background AI load. If there are too many NPCs, the game gets overloaded and NPCs don't do anything.

Or, at least, that's what I heard.

I would recommend "populating" Cyrodiil by using quest mods -- quality over quantity, etc.

Shroob is right.

First, install Better Cities and see how your performance is. Oblivion only uses one CPU core, and it's the CPU that gets taxed with AI. The best thing you can have is a super fast CPU and you can watch one core's use shoot up while the rest stroll along effortlessly taking care of background processes.

Population density is a major performance issue, particularly in outdoor areas. It doesn't matter which mods you pick. Any mod that adds "more" within the same "space" will decrease performance.

Performance hit rises exponentially with population density. 40 actors within one cell is going to pay a higher price than 40 actors spread out in a 9 cell block.

Read the descriptions of the mods carefully and eliminate the ones that want to do things like double up city populations. Mods that do things like adding a couple of travelers on the roads shouldn't be too bad.

However, you also need to consider mods that add creatures as well. For instance, mods like "alive waters" add lots of fish which adds atmosphere. But each one has an AI that needs to be processed and so dampers things down.