I have counted every NPC in Oblivion and Morrowind these Numbers are either close to being accurate or are accurate. Also These numbers do not count any Town Guards or Any Generic Characters. Don't Ask how I got the time, I was just very bored.

Oblivion:
Anvil-51
Kvatch-21
Skingrad-40
Chorrol-45
Bruma-38
Cheydinhal-47
Bravil-43
Leyawiin-50
Imperial City-150
New Sheoth-48

Morrowind:
Vivec-225
Balmora-77
Ald'Ruhn-88
Sadrith Mora-64
Mournhold-Missing
Solsthiem-Missing

Missing Mournhold and Solsthiem because i do not have either Expansions for Morrowind if any of you want to take the time to do that great.
Ive also found out that Morrowind's biggest citys had a bigger population than Cyrodiil's citys

Also am very curious to what everyone thinks on what the population of Skyrim's citys could be.

I don't have a number I want. I think there should be an appropriate number for the size of the city. I don't need 300 unique people if the city only has enough buildings for 50 people. On the other hand if the city is huge I don't want it to feel empty either. We have a few visuals that make the cities look large, but it is still hard to tell how big they will be,

http://www.uesp.net/wiki/Bloodmoon:People

http://www.uesp.net/wiki/Tribunal:People

While I agree with ahglock, to an extent, I would love to see a city with 300+ people (including children) that is appropriately sized for that number. That just feels like it'd be a nice sized city for a video game.

Of course, even more so, I'd love to see cities with a 1000+ people running around. Then they'd really feel like cities.

approprietly populated. everyone should have a place where they live/sleep.

More people than Oblivion or Morrowind. I want the marketplace to be real busy and crowded during the middle of the day.

Thank you Brawler ill be sure to keep this in the books
i do have plans to get the Expansions eventually

Not a problem. And yeah if you get the chance you should definitely give em a look. All of BGS expansions have good content in them

This was one of the biggest problems with the old ES4 and FO 3/NV engine, populating big cities was a huge task. Hopefully the new engine can support more NPCs.

Wow, I'm positively surprised people don't just spam the "Over X" option. As long as the cities feels larger, busier and the AI behavior makes npcs look like they're doing more than just faffing about in their daily lives, I'm happy!

It does kill me that i dont have the expansions yet well eventually

Still i will count the NPCs in Skyrim as well

You didnt have the option for over 9000. But I chose the most for all of them. The more the merrier.

That would have warranted the OP being shot, as well as anyone selecting it, for using a meme that was stupid even before it was old and over-used.

:thumbsup: more is better if the system can handle it
Remember everything is bigger in Texas or Skyrim in this case

Hopefully, with a combination of Radiant AI, randomly spawned NPCs with no names, and randomly created daily tasks FOR those NPCs, we'll see cities that come alive with characters that are totally disposable. Then we can watch people get mugged, people getting arrested or killed, etc. That would be awesome.

Is this an expectation or a wish-list? I've honestly no idea what to expect, but I hope we won't see the likes of Oblivion's settlements along the lines of "two houses and an barne with a pigge in itte" such as Pells Gate and its enormous population of... three.

Whatever can fit inside 512mb of memory.

Nobody will need more than 640K.

considering how the imperial city had something barily above 50 and every city definitly had less than that, I voted the bottem of all the choices. now if this was about how many there should be, I would say a median of the options would be nice.

I did the math it was 150 and more if you count the guards, not barily above 50 thats more like Anvil and Leyawiin

That's what we get for letting every person having a damn backstory and everything. Most dirt-poor peasants don't have that interesting a life u know.

Overall I'd say bigger is better. TES games generally have problems with population size. This especially hit me in Oblivion where all the 'cities' had less than 50 people, save the disturbingly sterile Imperial [capitol] City. I want to walk the streets and see crowds of people (all with unique names, none of that 'villager' junk). Overall I'd say Balmora was one of my favorite cities in a TES game, and even that was pretty barren. Vivic had a decent population, but the structure and size made that too feel rather empty.

Of course each city needs it's own size, population, and feel. But they all need to go hand-in-hand. Basically we need a higher people:size ratio. Your average manor home should have a family and servants all living there, not just some dude and maybe his butler. Actual medieval cities held huge numbers of people within their walls, and even more lived outside them. I've love to see a place like that in Skyrim; a city with a Keep and noble's houses within an inner wall, a busy marketplace, church, tradesmen, guilds, and a fair populous inside the outer wall, and a sprawling shanty town outside the walls housing the poor.

Basically I think in order to be a 'major city' the population has to be at least over 200 [in a video game] preferably over 300 if the cities are large enough. The important part is making all those people move about and be seen, give the city some life. The minor cities should have at least 100 people, while the smaller villages and settlements should vary more widely- though unless it is in fact a single farm, it should have more than 5-10 people.

I suppose it depends what you want: games that have cities with large populations tend to have NPCs with no real autonomy or interest; Oblivion gave them all their own schedules but it consumed quite large amounts of processing resources. Of course I'd rather have both, but if I had to choose one or the other, I guess I'd go for autonomy over numbers. Perhaps if numbers were configurable in line with the likes of graphics details that would be better, though it's starting to get a little complicated.

Edit: typo. Sigh.

I don't see the issue of housing. I think the houses in IC could house way more people than they did.

Though I think in games like this where there is a need for a population but it would be a bit ridiculous to try and house them all, there should be more travellers.
A city doesn't just have a large population, in some cases it has an even larger amount of people just 'passing through' as it were, to trade and get some supplies before they head off elsewhere.

I would like this to be handled in a similar way to red dead redemption, though to a greater extent. Remember those guys with carriages? Why can't we have carriages? Perhaps I'm getting ahead of myself. But npc's travelling through seems like the best solution to me. Especially if most of them go to the market. Maybe named npc's you can talk to that reappear every few days travelling in through the gates? Would be nice to see a bunch of npcs coming through the city gates for a change. Instead of almost nobody, almost ever. Save your character.

More people are confirmed from what I've heard their will be "Travelers" walking around. You just won't be able to talk with them. Which is good I prefer having lively cities with 200+ each than having cities with 50- people 70% of them which only give rumors nobody cares about.

10K everyone has a quest as well