I have met two people I had to intimidate. Other than that, persuasion every time.

I always prefer the Brawl option if there is one. I love to Brawl.

Intimidate, then persuade. My Dunmeri guerrilla is inverted like that.

I always just bribe. Money is too easy to obtain and the bribes always work while being pathetically cheap.

Persuade as I always feel Intimidate will glitch the quest and screw me over...

Probably bribe just cause money is easy to come by.

In Morrowind, because of the Reputation stat, if you finished the MQ, most NPCs already liked you enough to talk to you. If you were a member of their faction, even more so. Under those conditions, we did not have to do anything to get information out of them. Morrowind was pretty good at having subtleties from the skills until the mid levels of the skill, then it was pretty easy to talk folks up or down.

As for Intimidation, I stopped using it after Morrowind as the NPC as disposition would plummet next time I talked to them. Does that happen in Skyrim?

Yes and no. There is no visible game mechanic that shows you your status to another character and maybe there is none. In most cases is one able to just restart the dialogue. So no. But there are a few dialogues, where the choice matters and it will change the relationship.

To be realistic, most people do not think in terms of numbers or have some sort of linear behaviour. The choice here is based on forgiveness and one just does not forgive an intimidation to 20% or to 98%. A logical/binary system is much better than a linear system to simulate social interaction.

A good, old example for this is: "she loves me, she loves me not, she loves me, she loves me not, she loves me, ..."

I have yet to see a "she loves me...0%...20%...40%..."