in oblivion one of my favourite things to do was go and explore new towns and meet the people there, now when they say five cities and 9 settlements, do they mean 9 large settlements? and then they have a bunch of smaller five-person ones like aleswell?

Thats about what were thinking right now. Riverwood(i think its called) the town in the e3 demo is classified as a settlement.

5 main giant ones
9 moderate ones
and im sure that there will be quite a few small ones and a bunch of single cabins out scattered about

I'm not sure as far as smaller settlements other than the 9 mentioned large settlements. I just know it's confirmed that the 9 are a lot bigger than the ones in OB...possibly the size of an average city in Cyrodiil.

I'm going to say that it's like this :foodndrink:.

Im would presume the 9 settlements are smaller, though I hope they are slightly more populated in this game.Not counting bandits, the total pop count of cyrodel was like 100 or something(Im not sure exactly, but since theres only around 20 or so people in each town).Since the techs gotten better, we should get more NPCs now. :celebration:

It was said at one point that the settlements contained a minimum of 10 structures.

That's a big difference in my book! 7 up from 3, lol.

That's not entirely accurate. According to the UESP Anvil, as an example, has about 70 named NPC's.

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

Riverrun seemed to be pretty busy in the demo. I can't wait see an actual city street!

i hope they are all that big, one thing i really want though, is to be able to buy a small cabin in a tiny mountainous community.

I like where your mind's at. And with your own smithing and enchanting equipment.

Their toting that these five main cities are much bigger than the main cities in Oblivion. So I'd think the 9 minor settlements will be as big or a little smaller than Oblivion's main cities. I hope there are also more smaller and insignificant settlements in addition

5 larger cities are larger then the ones in Oblivon

9 settlements are similar to Hackdirt maybe a bit larger as seen in the G4 video.

Then there's the huts and Inns and stuff around the land most likely

i'm really hoping that they'll use mountains to make things seem further away from each other than they really are, like they did in Morrowind. they could have a bunch of really big settlements without that feeling of "hey these are awfully close to each other" that there would've been in Oblivion. Riverwood looked huge, more in line with somewhere like Ald'Ruhn or Caldera than Aleswell or Hackdirt (which i think were the biggest settlements in Oblivion).

i hope that's not ALL THERE IS, though. like, for the cities in particular i'd really like a bit of hinterland like outside of Skingrad, but apart from that just random farmsteads and plantations in the countryside would be fantastic.

I wonder if we are talking Vivec-large, or Mournhold-large?

Was Vivec really bigger than the Imperial City?

i did not like vivec...the five times i went in there i got lost....frownie face

ya i always got lost in vivec as well it was more maze like and less like a city hope they arent like that in skyrim. i would have no problem with them being large, but i hope they are not labyrinthes

It was a lot bigger. It had like fifteen cantons or something, and each canton had a top level, a middle level, a lower level, and a canolworks level. Each level (with the exception of the canolworks) had interiors for shops and things. It was so large that there was a fast travel gondola system just for the city itself.

And yeah, I always got lost in Vivec too. =D Luckily the NPCs are actually helpful when you ask for directions, unlike Oblivion NPCs. I asked a guard where the shops were in the Imperial City, and he gave me a full list of what shops there were, and told me they were in the Market District. Where is the Market District? Find it yourself.

http://fc06.deviantart.net/fs48/f/2009/188/e/5/Open_Vivec_WIP___Random_Pic_by_Archibald_TK.jpg
http://www.rankopedia.com/CandidatePix/17162.gif

Just an outside view and not accounting for the inside.

I want them as big as Daggerfall cities

I see from your screenshots that there were eight cantons and not fifteen. I was counting the squares on the world map. :3

Either way like you said, inside those cantinas was a labyrinth of shops and alleyways. It was fun to get lost in that city. Never knew what shop you'd find first :3

I'm pretty sure Bethesda said: 5 major towns (much larger than OB's), 4 smaller towns (not villages like Riverwood, just about the size of OB's). These would add up to the nine holds within Skyrim. High Hrothgar being a hold among the other 8.