This could be considered a random event. in game a popup quest notification could tell you that one of the villages/Cities are under attack by lets say bandits. So then you could choose to ride in and save the day then and there or let the people fend for themselves sometimes winning sometimes losing and being taken over and having their town become a bandit stronghold with alot more bandits roaming around than when they were attacking. The important people in the village *Quest givers and shop keepers* being kept as prisoners to keep the village useful and keeping quest options alive then you can ride in and kill the bandits and free the villagers and get rewarded for saving the day! Any villagers who die can respawn a few days later or something. :3

We will probably get plenty of mods like this but it would be cool if something like this were part of the game. Surprises like this would keep you on your toes.

I like it. It reminds me of a similar system in Red Dead Redemption's Undead Nightmare DLC.

Like in San Andreas when your hoods were being taken over and you could go defend your territory?

Yeah, and no doubt that these would be in the game already, cause if dragons attack on their own accord, I would imagine quests would go with them. And if it happens with dragons, it could happen with other sorts of enemies.

Sounds good as long as the villagers come back.

No thank you. I had more than enough of this in Red Dead Redemption Undead Nightmare! Every ten minutes of playing: "Such and Such is under attack" :facepalm:

if they do... hopefully at lot less often then RDR or San Andrea gang wars .. and im pretty sure the idea of the guards is to stop this and i dont think some bandits are going to be able to usurp a better armed, better trained, soldiers who probally will be more in number

I like it, makes the world feel alive, and not entirely dependant on you. The only part I don't like is "game popup notification". Make it believable, make a messenger bring the news, or someone who escaped the ambush, or a trader whose caravan was passing by.

maybe not so much that they over run the place, maybe they can just raid the town. take all the supplies, weapons, women. as wkn pointed out the guards would be better equipped, trained etc etc.
then after they raid it maybe get a quest to reclaim the lost, stolen items, villagers

lol that game was so racist

I like the idea.

I hate the poll.

OP: Stop making [censored] polls.

It would get annoying after a while imo, but i wouldnt mind if was only an option, if i could "aid" but if i didnt want to be bothered the guards would take care of it after all its what their there for.

A village or city full of Nords being over run by a few bandits? Surely you jest. :tongue:

I didn't like the system in Undead Nightmare because town's could be permanently overrun. So long as there is a way to revert the town to normal and doesn't become something that you have to do to prevent Skyrim from becoming Banditopia, it would be a nice addition.

EDIT: The poll options are very biased. Do I have to be boring to say no?

I'd have to agree I voted yes because I like the idea, but you need to change the poll so its unbiased otherwise it serves no purpose!

As a one time event it would be cool, but if it happened randomly and once in a while it would probably annoy the hell outta me very quickly. It would probably have to be a mod, since this doesn't really sound like a quest Bethesda would make.

I agree. If such things occure random / often it will be annyoing. Lets say you do something and some may do not like what you did, some hire assasins to kill you or hire bandits to attack a small village. You need high skills to manage to defend yourself / village so with low level char, you may need to flee and come back when you are ready to fight. You need to spot the assasins before they spot you or else... end game.

-Klevs

It needs to have a few options. First off, you should be able to choose whether or not you actually want to help. If you don't help, maybe the economy in that area goes down for 2-3 days. Not a lot, like 30%. Also, if you are an evil character, you might want to help the bandits raid the town and then either share the spoils or kill them afterwards for all the loot.

Also, biased poll is biased.

OK, I edited the poll to give it a better "no" answer.

<3

You mods are awesome.

I feel like this kind of "random" attacks would get old fast. This idea reminds me of the Oblivion gates which got old fast. However if in oblivion it was only the save Bruma from a major gate quest it would have been a lot better.

Exactly. That was annoying. The system should be that it either happens in front of you, you walk into the town on hte tail end of the attack, or you walk in to see the devestation.

That would be a great way to be introduced to dragons attacking towns - perhaps like a scripted quest, where you travel somewhere for something and find the town on fire and destroyed, and the scale of destruction is just like "Wow ... what could have done this". Buit later you are introduced to live dragon town attacks .... if that makes sense.

ON TOPIC- I think towns should not lose it's people in attacks, but instead suffer from a severely damage economy, buildings, and maybe kill expendable npc's that respawn. In oblivion I hated even killing non essential npc's, because they had their own unique dialog situations for each person. Ask someone about Imperial City, and he'll tell you how he settled there or whatever. Now if it was npc's like fallout's, I could care less as long as they respawn so we don't have a ghost town.

I'm all for random npcs - so long as there is a random name generator, and they have a house. If that were the case, I would be happy to see a few random named npc's kick the bucket.