Let's suppose Skyrim's economy was designed to be completely alive and organic (the amount of money, raw materials and merchandise is always controlled by the game to be real life like, for example a shop owner's stock won't refill by magic, the man must go and buy stuff, the blacksmith only has for sale what they crafted in real time that day, the shopkeepers would refuse to buy 20 iron daggers, they can only buy what they can sell further, etc etc... let's say people don't have anything to eat unless they go to the shop and buy or go hunting, etc...let's say the town atmosphere during starvation/lack of resources would mean big visible changes of atmosphere such as street fights, riots, crimes, decent people start begging or try to steal and get arrested, some sort of perfect radiant a.i. & economy in motion).

That being said, what village, town or one of those things they call cities would you like to see in chaos (and you would personally make sure it happens)?

Definitely Solitude.

First place that came to my head, is Solitude too!
The stormcloak place is already like that!

(p.s I said SC place, cause it's been months since I played the game, and that's the only town I can't remember....)

Riften. That place is rotten to the core. With so many criminals around, the backstabbing viral dance for a carrot and a slice of bread should be fun.

I want DLC with that

None thats a horrible depressing idea for a game

All of them, one by one until the land becomes deserted like in I Am Legend and the few ones who left would fight you to death for a bottle cap

I wouldn't like to see any cities economy to weaken because it would mean bad business for my theif character, though if I was going to join in on the civil war, crippling the economy of a city would mean it to disrupt its supplies and defenses. Economy in the game would greatly improve my gameplay!

Oh this is easy: Whiterun! The most annoying people in the game are from Whiterun hands down so I'd enjoy watch them struggle a little for their comfortable lives.

Windhelm!

I think it's a brilliant idea. Also, committing crimes in those holds should have an effect as well. Rob a store? Maybe it goes out of business, closes. (Or the owner gives you a quest to take out his competition!)

NPC shop keepers could be turned into beggars. The more prosperous a town is, the more money they should have to barter with, the better items they should sell.

I would destroy Windhelm, down with Ulfric.



Wrong game

I think I can see why the original idea was scrapped. With the wealth you accumulate it would be so easy to tear a city apart economically.

Personally I would take out Markrath. The ruler there is just so arrogant and gives no chance for any kind of peace with the Forsworn.

This, definitely. Solitude should have more shops and more wealth than somehwere like Riften. Same with Markraeth (at least in terms of wealth). In the same way that you build up the Thieves Guild, it would be good to be able to build up town economies - clearing the road of bandits, finding suppliers etc.

As for the opposite - dunno. I'm not sure I would see the point of it. Generally you want the shopkeepers to have more money and more stuff as you progress during the game, not less.

I remember FO3 has an investment option in certain businesses - remind me if you can do that in Skyrim as well? Can't remember...

You can, it's a perk in the speech tree.

If you can build up a town, you should be able to ruin it. Killing shop keepers, robbing them, etc. Maybe killing livestock or destroying crops in the hold as well.

OT: Windhelm

I think messing with economy and peoples lives would be a great step forward in a series that's meant to be sandbox "be whoever you want, do whatever you want". In my dream TES, everybody is killable by the player (live with the consequences of your decisions!) and the environment is deformable (partially) so as to allow things like arson (you hate somebody? Plant a fire! They will try to put it off helped by the neighbours that hear them screaming, but there will be damage!) You can see a rich shopkeeper forced to close their business after your repeated caravan assaults, sell their house, move to some other town! How cool is that, a month ago this imperial city shopkeeper was the arrogant [censored] who insulted you, and now he's working the corn fields at a small farm! They live with the consequences of your decisions!

Great idea. But arent the NPC's supposed to use their money for fixing bugs in their cities, like paying the guards properly for justifying murder, adding missing meshes and fixing texture glitches?
Imagine how would that look like...

If only that were so...

Why wouldn't a blacksmith be able to sell things he made the previous day? Or a week ago?

The collision of Sims with TES... what fun. I'd buy it.

I'm coming now, I'm coming to reward them.
First we take Winterhold, then we take Windhelm.

Ivarstead........just because

Riften... because they just tried to arrest me

Windhelm

Winterhold. All those people complaining about the college all the time. It would be so nice if the town would just finish killing itself and they could all move. Then the college could be the town(which it kind of already is). Plus destroying that economy would be easy... kill the 1 shopkeeper and lock the townspeople out of the college.

Now with my background(financial planning) I would take over the economy of the rest of Skyrim, and get it roaring. Skyrim would overtake Cyrodil and the dominion in economic wealth in a year with me in charge. How could it not? I can turn iron into gold ! Step 1: clean out every dungeon with iron. Step 2: hire the townsfolk to mine iron. Step 3: turn it to gold. Step 4: before all the other provinces figure out that there is a super oversupply of gold buy up all their gems, enchanted items, etc. Step 5: when everyone figures out the oversupply of gold and inflation starts to kick in declare that silver is the new currency in skyrim and repeat process since I can turn iron into silver as well . Now I have some time to have these savages start making green paper with my face on it.