Cities Skylines 2 is Official!

[b0rn2sk8]

Do you think that there is a similar number of vehicles on the roads as there would have been expected, considering you also played CS..? I have still put this game aside for a while but I did feel that a larger city, loading test maps, seemed fairly empty of expected traffic.

From my experience playing it, that’s not really how how game is designed, it seems to actively encourage you to re-develop your city as it grows.

It’s really crucial that you get your arterial roads correct but beyond that, bulldoze and rebuild is very normal.

The simulation plays very differently to CS1 and as much as people think the low density housing demand is broken, I don’t think it actually is as broken as people think. Let’s be honest, few people actually want to live in big blocks but few can also afford a big detached house in the ‘burbs’.

You really have to manage carefully the size of the buildings you are placing and their land value. In CS1 you just used to max the land value everywhere, where as in CS2 you need to be really careful with the land value. Bigger buildings take more land which means they cost more to buy/rent.

That means you can’t zone low density housing on areas with high land value because no one can afford to live there.

It means that as your starting areas grows and gets more services, you need to increase its density and push the lower density housing out to the edges which don’t get as many services.

It makes island maps a real challenge as I found out when using one for my first city.

 

[BUDFORCE]

Same, I try and grow it organically and slowly from a tiny village to a city instead of going straight in with the perfect layout. Thinking about how I'd need to tear down this street to make it wider and the know on effect. I created smaller "new build" estates before this so I feel less dictatory when I do it.

Still get annoyed and bulldoze the whole place lot like, a bit like what should happen to Milton Keynes IRL.

haha yeah

@dlockers - I tend to either go on google maps or build from memory roughly stick to real layouts. Its quite interesting seeing how different UK and US cities are, obviously the game is US made it geared up towards that more, but you can definitely build to a more european/UK theme.

Really, if you can be arsed, you should plan the whole thing out on a high level first, as in, know roughly where you built up city centre will be, suburbs, industrial etc, then before you start building as such, make sure you terrform your map completely, then start laying in all the major infrastructure, motorways, major roads, railways etc, do all of that first before you start building and it'll start flowing from there. Although that is a lot of unrewarding work to start with, also relies on playing with unlimited money etc, but if you can be bothered its the best way.

Most cities in Europe, particularly the UK basically started out as tiny hamlets and grew from there, or often around a railway station, so they are generally round in shape, with all major roads leading in and out of the very centre. Then of course you get ring roads being built after etc.

One thing you'll find about American cities is how much of the land area is dedicated to car parks compared to the UK, depending in city of course but I would guess roughly 30% of the land area on most american cities is just car parks.

It's also interesting seeing on google maps the square area some things take up compared to houses, you look at how big any major power station or factory etc is in area compared to housing and its huge. I tend group lots of industries together in one big fenced off complex, to make it seem like one large factory, where as it'll be several together. But I use google maps all the time, have it up on one screen and the game up on another.

The mods available in the first allowed you to fill the gaps in a lot better, these will come.

 

[BUDFORCE]

See here for example, this area is a town a made just outside of the main city area, I very loosely based from a town call Holt in Norfolk I visit fairly regularly.

It's not quite the same, and the large green area on the actual map in the middle is actually a large (quite posh) private school which I decided not to include and made it a more build up in the middle on the game instead, but you can definitely take inspiration.

It's just frustraiting you dont have the tools available like you did on the first, but I think the second like for like base game vs base game is better, so has potential to be better than the first, just need to be patient.

 

[arknor]

Seems BUDFORCE is already doing my suggestion

Any tips for someone wanting to get into this? I find I try and build the perfect city from the get-go, **** it up, then OCD kicks in and I bin it all off and close the game for a few years.

look for real life examples on google images and emulate parts of them into your city?

you can also find real life city plans on google

For cities skylines there used to be a way to create a new map via a third party website that could grab elevation data from google.
so you could try to properly recreate your city but the scale never seemed right compared to the road sizes etc.

shame skylines II doesn't have something like that built in.

 

[Vimes]

Perhaps the first unofficial mod....

GitHub - Captain-Of-Coit/cs2-city-monitor: "City Vitals" but for Cities: Skylines 2

"City Vitals" but for Cities: Skylines 2. Contribute to Captain-Of-Coit/cs2-city-monitor development by creating an account on GitHub.

github.com

Thread over at CSII forums

Introducing "City Monitor" and "HookUI" mods

I'm excited to share some recent developments I've been working on since the release of Cities: Skylines 2. After some experimentation and hard work, I've successfully created a couple of mods that I hope will enhance your city building...

forum.paradoxplaza.com

 

[Vimes]

From my experience playing it, that’s not really how how game is designed, it seems to actively encourage you to re-develop your city as it grows.

It’s really crucial that you get your arterial roads correct but beyond that, bulldoze and rebuild is very normal.

The simulation plays very differently to CS1 and as much as people think the low density housing demand is broken, I don’t think it actually is as broken as people think. Let’s be honest, few people actually want to live in big blocks but few can also afford a big detached house in the ‘burbs’.

You really have to manage carefully the size of the buildings you are placing and their land value. In CS1 you just used to max the land value everywhere, where as in CS2 you need to be really careful with the land value. Bigger buildings take more land which means they cost more to buy/rent.

That means you can’t zone low density housing on areas with high land value because no one can afford to live there.

It means that as your starting areas grows and gets more services, you need to increase its density and push the lower density housing out to the edges which don’t get as many services.

It makes island maps a real challenge as I found out when using one for my first city.

It is not unexpected that people start to play CSII as they had played, minus the workshop content, the original game. The launch hasn't been the best and I am looking forward to some decent sized patches, rather than the hotfix type ones we have received so far. I'm in no rush to play this as yet.
Unlike when CS originally launched this game seems to be far more demanding of my 4080 than the original one was of my GTX 970, by some margin as well.
Time, and patching, will tell how this continues to shape. Hopefully by the time I start to play this we shall see how the mods and assets are going to be delivered as well as the game having had a patch or two more....

 

[arknor]

I don’t think it actually is as broken as people think. Let’s be honest, few people actually want to live in big blocks but few can also afford a big detached house in the ‘burbs’

Maybe for somewhere like London.more european cities often have no normal residential near the city centres but tons of big apartment blocks and any houses will be about 2-3x the size of your average UK house

I'd argue more Industrial is broken


I see many real life examples which wouldn't fly in game
for example

every house next to that in game is gonna complain omg omg pollution, wahhh wahhhh noisey.
It's also right next to a school


omg look train tracks near houses, thats a no no too.

 

[arknor]

btw Tiny swiss village population less than 1000, and thats about double what it was 10-20years ago.

It's called Andeer if you want to go there on google maps, most swiss villages are about identical to this, although this one is quite a famous place for tourism, natural hot mineral baths and close to italy.

notice the buildings are all 3-4 stories tall?
English houses are tiny compared to how Europe seems to do it.

makes no sense to have a map ot tiny low residential houses

if you wanted to copy it ingame what zoning would you use? sure wouldn't be low

 

[willhub]

Wonder if they'll fix population because my city has a population of 12k and has quite a spread, it doesn't look like a 12k population city or town.

 

[b0rn2sk8]

btw Tiny swiss village population less than 1000, and thats about double what it was 10-20years ago.

It's called Andeer if you want to go there on google maps, most swiss villages are about identical to this, although this one is quite a famous place for tourism, natural hot mineral baths and close to italy.

notice the buildings are all 3-4 stories tall?
English houses are tiny compared to how Europe seems to do it.

makes no sense to have a map ot tiny low residential houses

if you wanted to copy it ingame what zoning would you use? sure wouldn't be low

It entirely depends on there you go in Europe. One assumes those are houses but in reality they probably are apartments.

In some countries in Europe, most people live in apartments, in others they don’t. The U.K. is low, like ~20%, in France it’s something like 60%.

 

[arknor]

It entirely depends on there you go in Europe. One assumes those are houses but in reality they probably are apartments

yea but the point is it's a village the game will think it's meant to be tiny buildings.

even the houses towards the edge of the village are monsters compared to how we live in the UK.
it's not normal to have rows upon row of tiny little houses. covering 80% if the land.

That is literally a family house for a normal family, not some mansion or apartment building.

I've stayed in the house next door to it, and that was just as big, not a rich person living in the one I stayed at either.

Instead of adapting the games buildings to be more realistic they have basically just copied sim cities 1 because its easier.

 

[uksoldierboy]

Picked this up recently, I've never played the first.

Really enjoying it so far, although it's certainly not the most stable of games, had to remove all overclocks and still ctds from time to time.

It is fun and I'm enjoying watching my city unfold.

Just hit the "Great Town" milestone, my population seems to have grinded to a halt at 12k, the info tab mentions no one leaving, but my population is decreasing with what I guess are deaths?

Few annoyances are the game just seems all over the place with the chripper information, I get "people don't look well" yet my coverage is great.
"Doesn't feel safe to go out" but thr police cover every part.
Lack or customers is bloody annoying too.

Overall the it's fun, going to invest in a college next and see if they helps with my employment.

 

[chrismscotland]

Been enjoying this with my 2nd city but I've hit 200,000 population and its got very, very slow

 

[agnes]

How is the performance at the moment? Any better or still something to avoid if looking for similar performance as the first?

 

[Vimes]

How is the performance at the moment? Any better or still something to avoid if looking for similar performance as the first?

It is being worked on, and has been so. Performance and bugs being at the top of their list. I do note that some elements of the ultimate buyers pack has been pushed back, the game not being ready for that.
Whilst disappointing that it was rushed to released in such a state I am looking forward to when the rush of hotfix type patches has somewhat reduced and we get bigger and regular patches.
The post above yours might give you some indications of work needed, for the bigger cities, if you think 200k is big for a map.

 

[agnes]

It is being worked on, and has been so. Performance and bugs being at the top of their list. I do note that some elements of the ultimate buyers pack has been pushed back, the game not being ready for that.
Whilst disappointing that it was rushed to released in such a state I am looking forward to when the rush of hotfix type patches has somewhat reduced and we get bigger and regular patches.
The post above yours might give you some indications of work needed, for the bigger cities, if you think 200k is big for a map.

Thanks, I'll give it a year then. From the looks of it, this is an alpha at best.

 

[Vimes]

Thanks, I'll give it a year then. From the looks of it, this is an alpha at best.

I do note that some mods are now appearing on GitHub, but nothing official as yet.
I am mindful how much I enjoyed CS and will not doubt very much enjoy this one. But CS, after 8 years of mods, assets and DLC's raised my expectations, at least for some of the mods I like to use.
I have enough games on my backburner to play without needing to try this one out much. When I have tested it.....

Bigger and clickable picture here

that GPU loading, lol....!

Oh my.

 

[willhub]

I'm not sure I want to use all these separate mods, with how simple the steam workshop and mods were, this is just a layer of complexity to me. I'm tempted to just go back to CS1 because the more problems become apparent with CS2, the more CS1 and all its assets and mods seems much more desirable.

 

[Tombstone]

I'm not sure I want to use all these separate mods, with how simple the steam workshop and mods were, this is just a layer of complexity to me. I'm tempted to just go back to CS1 because the more problems become apparent with CS2, the more CS1 and all its assets and mods seems much more desirable.

Yeah I wont be bothering with these current mods, I will wait for the Paradox mods to open up as they will use the same oneclick method as the steam workshop.

 

[BUDFORCE]

I don't have any issues with perfomance even on a 200k city.

Just the lack of mods and assets is the killer right now, it'll come, and I am also going to wait for a more centralised platform for mods, whatever that will look like.

The game has lots of potential, if they allow it, can go further then the first one, it's just a waiting game at the moment.

Still in its current form I did have a lot of fun building my first city.

Depending on how accessible and easy they make it I might have a go at making my own assets this time around.