Skyrim didn't have definitive geography beforehand. The only clue of it was a couple of mountains shown on the Oblivion map of all Tamriel. This map is fan made, all geography is just a guess. I have seen a few maps of the hold layout as well, but no concrete proof that they are anything more than fan guesses either.

Solitude disappointed me. To walk up to this enormous looking city, and to actually walk in and realize its almost smaller than Whiterun. Let's face it, Solitude is quite boring.

I believe the Oblivion Crisis destroyed a lot of Skyrim. Amol exists as a fort, though.

Yep, they mentioned it quite a lot in Oblivion how the daedra layed waste to the old holds. Then again, hasn′t there been 200 years since that happened?

Well, the Nords don't seem to like rebuilding things. (Minor oblivion spoiler!) I doubt they've rebuilt the Bruma mages guild yet ...

Oh, sorry - where does this map come from, then? I thought it was kind of an official one from (or based on) one of the older games (Arena, or the mobile ones).

The town locations are based on the Arena map, which basically shows nothing but snow everywhere in Skyrim except the reach, but everything else is guesses. It's made by a modder, Vality7, as you can see in the watermark, probably for a mod.

I'd go for Falkreath, just because it's ridiculously small for a hold capitol, even in a TES game.

Please mind that most of us are probably not native speakers, I honestly don't know the difference between town and city.

I am a native speaker and can tell you that the distinction can be a bit... random.

English is, honestly, imprecise by its very nature (there's no governing body officially determining usage like a lot of other languages, for instance). I'd argue this is a good thing, but there's some people who insist on everything being exact. I suppose I can see where they come from...

Never thought of that, but I never learned English the proper way, I just picked up a lot thanks to the almighty internets. But you have the dictionary, so at least the people who write it are some kind of "governing body", right? I honestly couldn't tell if there exists something other than that in my language. Probably should've paid more attention in school.

Falkraeth and Whiterun are pretty whack to me. There's so much empty space around those cities, they should have been expanded.

That is certainly true. But It has been my experience that the most illiterate, incoherent posts come from native English speakers. Folks who learned English as a second language are far more likely, in my experience, to write clear, understandable prose than those who learned English as a first language.

When I read an unintelligible post in these forums my first assumption is that it was written by someone who speaks English as a first language.

It's the internet, like Einstein said: Sanity is relative.

Didn't really like vanilla Vivec, but modded that to be a bit closer to the concept art, so it's more interesting now. Rest of the MW towns were fine.
Oblivion all felt OK really to me.
Riverwood and Whiterun are perfect to me in Skyrim, was majorly dissapointed when I hit Morthal (swamp town/hold), especially with lack of services, then got real annoyed by the small fishing village of Dawnstar, and then the empty hamlet of Winterhold. I even went over to the cliffs and looked down to see some ruins, nothing....

I agree with all of this aside from the Dawnstar bit. I spent. Good half an hour looking for ruins down in the Sea of Ghosts, and no ruined houses or anything. And Morthal? Poor excuse for a hold capital.

I hated Skingrad in OB, actually. The layout seemed horrible, and I hated having to exit the city to get to the castle. I usually fast-travelled around the Imperial city, too, instead of trying to navigate my way around it.

Skingrad was awesome, Anvil tho takes the cake for me. Although for some strange reason Bravil always appealed to me as well.

morthal, dawnstar, kavatch ( because it was never rebuilt ) and the IC

at first when first got oblivion it was the first TES game i ever played so when i first went to the IC i was like holy [censored] this is awesome but then over time i started to actually notice how baren it was and that they could have dune way better than they did at least make some parts way more crowded like the market place and the thing that really pissed me off was the palace ony being able to go to the first 2nd and basment floors ( except for when doing the end of the theifs guild ) i always and still to this day would like to go to the very top of the palace

It's a shame Helgen had to be destroyed. It seems like the most unique looking town in Skyrim due to it being walled and fortified. I think cities such as Dawnstar or Winterhold should have had this type of fortification around it, so that at least you get the feeling that they are more important.

khuul because unless you have bloodmoon its just a few building and a tradehouse that rarely has anything useful

My co-workers will insist that Sanity is no relative of mine.

Anyway, the difference between a city and a town is somewhat vague, since a "town" is a poorly defined term, but "city" conveys a sense of urbanization, a high population density, and all of the features and importance that can be attached to a major population center. In some US states, there are actual definitions as to what constitutes a "town", a "village", a "hamlet", or a "city", but it's not consistent from state to state, and most have no standards.

A few of what have been labelled as "cities" in the in-game literature have turned out to be nothing more than the crumbling ruins of a fort, with no trace of any "city". A few of the other "notable" cities or towns have turned out in subsequent games to be a "hamlet" (populaton of 200 or less, by one definition) at best, with 2 or 3 houses, and Inn, and not much else. In fact, the IC in Oblivion wasn't much above the population of a hamlet, but in really nicely finished stone buildings....now THAT's a disappointment!

yeah i hated how they called them aylied citys when they wern't really cittys if you think about it cause there was really nothing in them that you could call a house or any thing like that there more of say a palace of a sorts if you think about rather than a city

I think was really caused the downsize from MW to OB in populations is AI. What with the sleep and eating schedules, each NPC had to have a home and a bed for their schedule. In MW, it didn't really matter. Not everyone had a obvious home so it was easy to populate towns without having all the buidlings for the population.

Game system complexity has resulted in reduced size settlements. Apart from "realism" there was no real need to build filler NPCs and houses to make settlements larger.

They did have all the buildings for the population of Morrowind. There are far more buildings in Morrowind than any subsequent TES game. Not to detract from your other point, just pointing that out. But none of the games have a realistic NPC to housing ratio for being based off a medieval style world.

Morrowind: Vivec and the fact that every city on the mainland was left out with it entirely, except for a small part of Almalexia, Mournhold ant that was even worse than Vivec!.
Oblivion: The Imperial City and the ever burning Kvatch. As well as Sutch and Stirk for being left out.

That's the point though their not important. The only important holds are Haafingar, Eastmarch, Whiterun, The Reach and The Rift, the rest are just petty kingdoms under the control of the main ones. The Pale and Winterhold are basically nothing more than vassal states to Eastmarch. Hjaalmarch is the same to Haafingar and Falkreath to Whiterun (Maybe less so since the start of the civil war).