Cities: Skylines

Vimes · 9 Jul 2020 at 10:22

I have always thought of this game as a city builder with the greatest emphasis on traffic management. Take away the traffic management and, apart from painting a city, there isn't a great deal there, in terms of a game.
It has been quite a while since I bothered with this game, more into Workers and Resources Soviet Union now, but I do remember that the Cims will only travel to meet their needs, work and food etc. If you find that you are building districts which means that they need to travel beyond walking distance to meet those needs then either change your layout or make better use of public transport.
I used to increase the bus capacity limits, as well as metro and tram capacities. Getting the Cims out of their pocket cars and on a bike or public transport helped a lot.
District policies also, to limit industrial traffic etc helped.

CaptainRAVE · 9 Jul 2020 at 11:21

I quickly realised that it is basically a traffic simulator. Seeing as most of my mods revolved around traffic management and sending more work to the cpu to deal with the traffic.

PinkFloyd · 9 Jul 2020 at 11:59

I like the game because of the traffic management / road planning side. So a mod that directly reduces traffic doesn't appeal! I'm pushing public transport as best I can and it seems to be working nicely, quite like the trams for this as they look nice too.
Maybe I'll just have to cave and retry TPME and have to micro manage certain key roundabouts. I swear roundabouts never used to act like I'm seeing them behave currently though :s

Vimes · 9 Jul 2020 at 12:22

When I used TMPE I made sure that I had the option ticked for dynamic lane selection, at 50%.

Firejack · 9 Jul 2020 at 12:35

Roundabouts in Cities Skylines function as one-way systems. Without dedicated turn lanes or give-way signs you will never get a perfect roundabout. That said, for low to medium traffic they function as close to the real world that you can consider roundabouts "good enough" for the intended usage.

If you are finding roundabouts overloaded. You can fudge things a little to force the creation of a dedicated turning lane. I normally do this by having a 2-lane road meet the roundabout. The road segment leading into junction point is a 2-lane one-way segment and the segment leading out is a 3-lane asymmetric road from the Mass Transit DLC. This forces the 2-lane one-way road to split into dedicated lanes to stay on or leave the roundabout. The asymmetric road should only be one segment and not connect between 2 junctions. So junction >> asymmetric road segment >> 2-lane one-way segment >> junction >> asymmetric road segment >> etc etc

Still, even if you fudge things its probably not the best thing to do once roundabouts become overloaded. You need to look at either elevating road sections or creating one-way systems to reduce the number of junctions. Or if you can't, I recommend upgrading roundabouts to DCMI junctions. These will handle a lot more traffic then roundabouts and aren't too much bigger then a large roundabout.

scorchedbee · 26 Aug 2020 at 19:42

https://steamcommunity.com/id/scorchedbee/screenshots/

been playing this a fair chunck recently and finally got my city to a decent standard i think. 190k pop 85% traffic flow with despawning off!

I dont think i have felt this addicted to a game in a long time, but oops!

https://steamcommunity.com/id/scorchedbee/screenshots/

Link to my city skylines screenshots - All taken at 1440p if thats high enough resolution for this thread!

scorchedbee · 26 Aug 2020 at 19:59

Really good mod is the CSL map view mod

Plenty more space to expand too, but my road network is getting pretty full, flowing, but full!

DoneADougalOnSofa · 27 Aug 2020 at 01:30

That's amazing work.
Puts my efforts to shame!

Vimes · 27 Aug 2020 at 08:12

Very nice work there, must have taken you a long time to create that, well done.
Paradoxically, not really a pun, the bigger the city grows the easier traffic management should become. Due to a maximum of 16k vehicles very big cities have typically ended up like ghost towns for me, compared to the early and smaller type.
Never tried with the despawing off option, had enough problems without that, lol.
For me Metro was always king, but, at times, I would often try and force overground public transport and pushed the use of trams etc over that of the Metro when possible.

willhub · 27 Aug 2020 at 08:42

I gave up, no matter what I was doing I couldn't get over 60k, putting many more buildings the buildings seemed to fill up but population not increase.

Begbie · 27 Aug 2020 at 08:46

Vimes said:
Very nice work there, must have taken you a long time to create that, well done.
Paradoxically, not really a pun, the bigger the city grows the easier traffic management should become. Due to a maximum of 16k vehicles very big cities have typically ended up like ghost towns for me, compared to the early and smaller type.
Never tried with the despawing off option, had enough problems without that, lol.
For me Metro was always king, but, at times, I would often try and force overground public transport and pushed the use of trams etc over that of the Metro when possible.

I always found traffic easy in the game, once you got an understanding of it.

All about the overground for me, Metro was best for sure but it just wasn't as satasyfying. My issue with the game now is I hate it being random, so I have to plob everything and it's a time sink :/

Vimes · 27 Aug 2020 at 09:01

This game seemed to plateau for me when I topped 1k in play time. That means I haven't played much at all since they brought Metros to the surface, somewhat like the MOM mod. Metro was a great way to move vast numbers of people quickly and resolved lots of traffic issues, but it didn't offer much visually to the city. Perhaps that has improved with the overground aspect of it.
That's why I used to like Trams, at least you could see them, getting the Cims to prefer using them over their pocket cars was another thing tho.

@willhub you can get stagnant points with the game but the attractiveness of your city goes a long way to getting people to move in, as do all the public services iirc. You can check to make sure all your existing residential buildings are levelling up.

The game can be a time sink tho, no quick five minutes of play.

Moved on the Workers and Resources game now.

scorchedbee · 27 Aug 2020 at 10:04

I think I’m at 130hrs for this city.

yeah metro is king and a robust bus system with each route having a counterclockwise route. I have made sure all metros have a bus stop also which seems to help.

also my rail network is just a circular around the city again with a clockwise and counterclockwise train and as the city grows gets used more and more.

haven’t enjoyed a game as much in years! Ill keep expanding as my target was 500k pop!

Watched a YouTube channel called “biffa plays” and learnt a lot from him!

I’ll post my city up if anyone is interested!

cheers guys.

Vimes · 27 Aug 2020 at 10:18

I used to watch some of what Biffa did but preferred to watch Sam Bur, overall I liked his presentation and builds better.
IIRC I got over 550k in a couple of cities, using a 6700k at 4.7ghz and then my 9900k at 5Ghz, ast that time, helped to keep things chugging a long. Later it became more of style, but not like some of the city painters you can watch - I simply did not have the focus to spend so long painting my city as they do.
You can tell when it slows as default for 1x for a day and night cycle is 9 secs, 2x it is 6 and 3x it is 3 secs. When your cities get to certain size 3x speed seems more 1x....!

Post it up, might give me a reason to launch the game out of curiosity

@willhub - take a look, you might feel inspired. You have the PC now that you upgraded to play it, I remember you liked the workshop - he says with over 2k assets and around 90 mods, lol.

BUDFORCE · 27 Aug 2020 at 10:45

I'm planning on building a new PC end of this year / early next, and get back into this.

Vimes · 27 Aug 2020 at 10:53

^^^ look forward to your themed cities, did well last time.

petridish · 27 Aug 2020 at 11:16

BUDFORCE said:
I'm planning on building a new PC end of this year / early next, and get back into this.

Both statements true for myself but with a soon™ timeline! I'm blown away by some of the cities I see here and really wish I could drop some serious time into the game to try and get a mega city going. My aging 2500k isn't up to it though so a rebuild is long overdue.

Back when I last played I was never the best at planning ahead with my cities, and my public transport was always a mess. Since then I've been lurking here picking up tips and I'll check out a few of the recommended YouTubers before I get stuck in again. If and when I get a new build sorted I'll set aside some time to really commit to building something decent. I can't remember how large a city I've managed before but don't think I ever got up over 100k.

BUDFORCE · 27 Aug 2020 at 11:30

petridish said:
Both statements true for myself but with a soon™ timeline! I'm blown away by some of the cities I see here and really wish I could drop some serious time into the game to try and get a mega city going. My aging 2500k isn't up to it though so a rebuild is long overdue.

Back when I last played I was never the best at planning ahead with my cities, and my public transport was always a mess. Since then I've been lurking here picking up tips and I'll check out a few of the recommended YouTubers before I get stuck in again. If and when I get a new build sorted I'll set aside some time to really commit to building something decent. I can't remember how large a city I've managed before but don't think I ever got up over 100k.

I'm also on a Sandbridge CPU all be it the i7 version but yes, I am also well overdue.

I'm not planning a big city, I'm more of a detailer and the next project will definitely go small and detailed, I made a Las Vegas themed city last time (not a copy) but in my PC it became unplayable, that city wasn't even that big either.

I'm tempted to go UK themed, there are a lot of good UK style assets on the workshop, possible a costal town but I won't copy anything directly, just take inspiration from Google maps etc.

UK coastal town, you could have like a pleasure beach section, docks, then industry section. Holiday caravan parks, some cliffs, a beach, main line train station, all nice detail but not too big.

scorchedbee · 27 Aug 2020 at 11:49

BUDFORCE said:
I'm also on a Sandbridge CPU all be it the i7 version but yes, I am also well overdue.

I'm not planning a big city, I'm more of a detailer and the next project will definitely go small and detailed, I made a Las Vegas themed city last time (not a copy) but in my PC it became unplayable, that city wasn't even that big either.

I'm tempted to go UK themed, there are a lot of good UK style assets on the workshop, possible a costal town but I won't copy anything directly, just take inspiration from Google maps etc.

UK coastal town, you could have like a pleasure beach section, docks, then industry section. Holiday caravan parks, some cliffs, a beach, main line train station, all nice detail but not too big.

Take a look at Cleethorpes / Grimsby for this kind of thing, Clee for the holiday parks/beach/train/pier etc and Grimsby for the industry and docks! (PS - biased as i live there!)

Here is a link to my mods used https://steamcommunity.com/id/scorchedbee/myworkshopfiles/?appid=255710&browsefilter=mysubscriptions

Here is a link to my city https://drive.google.com/file/d/1ZCjqnt9OCMN_qQxnpr_74enYUE_Wnh1k/view?usp=sharing - (Please excuse the mess of my tunnel system, my industry areas killed my highways and that is my next task to fix!

almoststew1990 · 27 Aug 2020 at 14:24

*sigh* looks like I need to redownload CS again...