Cities: Skylines
- Thread starter Scotty123
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Soldato
The day/nigth cycle does make the game looks much better:
MY biggest gripe, mentally impaired drivers, there is no need for a traffic jam here, they all want to be in the middle lane, morons:
But there are numerous examples where the lane choice of the ai is retarded.
MY biggest gripe, mentally impaired drivers, there is no need for a traffic jam here, they all want to be in the middle lane, morons:
But there are numerous examples where the lane choice of the ai is retarded.
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Soldato
Yeh lane choice does my head in, as does the lack of stock control over traffic lights. I should really explore some mods which allow you to change them / remove them entirely!
6 lane road with 2 close together junctions = guaranteed traffic jams
6 lane road with 2 close together junctions = guaranteed traffic jams
Outstanding pictures above, love the night look. I cant play this just now as I’m on a 2004 PC build I got for BF2 last game I played. Buying the odd game on stream on sale and picked this up half price. Looking forward to trying it. The dev’s still need work on a few things I see like road traffic but I’m sure they will get there. Love the house pic on the hill with Day and night.
Soldato
What's also typical, train traffic jams ( which in way, jam up any same level railway crossings/roads), there are WAY to much trains:
I do like the light glare:
I do like the light glare:
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Soldato
lol that third train pic 
I did have one map that hard real issues with trains (combined with too many level crossings) but nothing to that level of blockage!
I did have one map that hard real issues with trains (combined with too many level crossings) but nothing to that level of blockage!
Seeing trains like that actually disappoints that this is how the game is just now. Need to go into detail with things like that and show more awareness ofwhat is right and what is obviously not. Attention to detail is everything in a game like this. No point giving us light glare that looks fantastic only to see trains work like that.
Soldato
Well, the biggest issue with the game imho is the lack of contrast between the low and high density zones like in SC4, and the obvious lack of ''mid density'' ( eg. city apartments up to 4 story's or so).
How is my city, with a seemingly huge amount of skyscrapers, only have 140k people ? How can those skyscrapers only contain 19 households, but some low density ''villa'' contain 4 households ?
The scale is wrong with this game. Of course things can't be perfect in a game, the traffic is an example of this, it's unrealistic for the engine to track 500.000+ individual commuters like they are now. But the contrast, between low and high density, should be at least tenfold of what it is now, not to mention the lack of an ''in between'' situation like mid density.
In a way I'm very disappointed in how some things were done in this game. I'm an infrastructure ( road) geek, and the little amount mobility means in this game ( you can have a city that is half clogged up/congested and still function well) is disappointing for me. The scale is also wrong imo and the overall max city size is quite small. ( but I understand the limitations of both hardware and software). Other points is the traffic, it's better than pretty much every game out there, but in no way near similar to traffic simulation in real life. So much more detail and balance required here.
In other ways, this is by far the best city builder since SC4: Rush hour. And, because SC4 gets unstable for me ( crashes, performance issues, especially if you have over 5 gb's of mods) in larger cities for me, for me it is the better game/city sim. I can easily say that for me this was probably the best game of the past 2 years ( or at least on par with gta5 ).
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Impossible to tell from the one angle but I'm guessing you have another set of motorway exit/entrance slip roads just at the bottom of that screenshot?
If that is the case you need to space them out further. Or create a frontage road to collect local traffic and feed it onto the motorway using 1 entrance/exit slip road.
You can achieve this in a limited way by enacting the Highrise Ban over a district so it doesn't upgrade to the tallest buildings.
Are most of those trains nearly empty? Have you not separated your local train network from the regional train network? This is a must in cities with more then 1 train station.
My main thought is you should not have to the game should be intelligent to be doing this on its own and it needs looked into. It’s the small things like this that make a huge difference as they all add up. If roads don’t work right and trains don’t work right and it goes on and on with things just not working right then as a whole it disappoints.
Start fixing and bringing in structure that goes from “just not working right” to “ very well done and working right” and the game will improve so much. I enjoyed Sc04 because I trusted the background simulation. Has developers skill/talent dropped since 04. SC rightly should be the bench mark as it was terrific at what it did.
I look forward to what the next update brings with regard to stuff like this.
Soldato
That's not true, if I remove the junctions it's still train after train after train. They are moving but there are to many of them for the crossings to open for traffic. ( which is why I've built tunnels or viaducts everywhere where possible except on deserted roads or where I lacked the space).
That is true, the motorway splits into 2 motorways, but still, this is idiotic, they don't need to be in the middle lane to go right, they should be able to go right from both the middle and right lane. There's no space to space them out further, if they had normal lane choices then there'd be no problem. Also it's a shame you can't widen motorways in advance of junctions, by that I mean an extra lane for the ''exit'' or an extra 2 or 3 lanes for something splitting off eg. :
Thanks, I'll try that for aesthetics, shame the contrast population wise ( and with it traffic) is still messed up though!
Nope I haven't, this is ridiculous though, this doesn't happen IRL, I live near a busy railway myself with both local and regional traffic and stations every 2-3 miles or so, during the day there's a train every 5 minutes for both directions, you don't see train traffic jams though.
Trains are often around half full to full in my game.
I miss wider (level) junctions, a 2x3 road crossing a 2x3 road, should have at least 6 lanes at the junctions ( eg. 2 lanes left 2 lanes straight 2 lanes right) with also individual traffic lights for each turn ( preferably more customization with lanes, and traffic light timings, to give dominant traffic flows more green time and more lanes).
And the lane choice of the ai in general is appalling, I mean yes there are loads of dumb drivers IRL, but not so dumb, you won't see a traffic jam on just the middle lane, because further on the motorway splits into two. ( if anything the right 2 lanes or all 3 should be jammed up).
Also the ''keep to the right'' ( or left in the UK's case) doesn't seem to be existent, moving over to the left lanes only to overtake, give space to joining cars or in congestion.
I know I'm way to demanding, but I'd love a far better traffic simulation. ( even though that is probably way to complex for a game, especially on this scale).
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Yeah totally a valid point. On a few approaches to busy junctions I've had to split the road to better accommodate the dominant flow of traffic. Here I've highlighted an example.
http://steamcommunity.com/id/firejack/screenshot/405681973447510190
From the bottom I had a motorway connecting to my industrial processing area. The 6-lane road always had a queue at the junction. So I made the approach a 6-lane one way and added a 2-lane one way going in the other direction and then added a dedicated turning lane from my farming district - that was the busiest. No extra traffic lights were placed and the junction cleared up in no time
If you build perfect roads the perfect AI will navigate without problems. The issue is we like to build imperfect roads in crazy layouts that the AI can't adapt too. It never got an understanding of how to route through bad road junctions like humans can.
Bit annoying you have to accommodate the design of the AI instead of having full freedom to build in a style you want.
There are mods for all these situations though. Keep meaning to try the Network Extensions mod ( http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=478820060 ). Might give a little more freedom without having to consume as much space as I often do like that example above.
If the trains slow down or stop because there's not enough space to change tracks, then the game spawns more trains because it still wants that cargo.
So, if your train doesn't make it in time, you get more trains, which adds to the traffic.
And with regards to traffic and roads - each vehicle, when it spawns at the start of its journey, calculates the route it will take, INCLUDING which lane on which bit of road. Traffic is not taken into consideration at all. This is why you are getting high utilisation of a single lane.
In most cases in this game, bigger roads do not help. What does work, however, is looking at where you traffic is going, and try to split it as much as possible. I know it's "unrealistic", but if you have 2 exits from a highway close to each other - put one on the "outside" of the carriageway (coming off the overtaking lanes). Or, put an "on" ramp on the outside, so that it can join on the outside lane, and then move across when required to the inside lanes to exit again.
The game isn't a realistic simulation of real life transportation - it has its own set of rules, and you either need to learn them (which we're trying to teach you) and adjust how you make things (such as train systems, separating your external trains/lines from purely internal trains/lines, or road layouts), or don't learn them, and keep running into these issues and you can continue moaning about it.
Take a look at this guide - it's pretty in depth, and describes a lot of the mechanics of the game in detail.
Soldato
Ty, network extentions seems great, I'd love to use it in combination with traffic++ mod, but traffic++ makes my city lag from around 100k people .
Ah well, an excuse to upgrade cpu sometime soon lol, new gen i7's go to 5.5 ghz don't they ?
EDIT: @ Confused: I have no problems at all with traffic in general, just trains and sometimes motorways ( lane choice), but overall all my city is pretty much free flowing.
EDIT2: Meh, network extensions doesn't work properly without traffic++, and my cpu isn't beefy enough to run that in my city .
EDIT3: @confuse,d having quickly read through this guide, I see your point, this annoys me though:
This lane behaviour is annoying and inefficient, also countries where cars coming onto the highway have the right of way are idiots imo.
Leaving 2 lanes clear makes no sense imo. There should be a mod that changes the lane behaviour to European, keep right unless congestion/overtaking, and any joining roads give way.
. Ah well, an excuse to upgrade cpu sometime soon lol, new gen i7's go to 5.5 ghz don't they
?EDIT: @ Confused: I have no problems at all with traffic in general, just trains and sometimes motorways ( lane choice), but overall all my city is pretty much free flowing.
EDIT2: Meh, network extensions doesn't work properly without traffic++
, and my cpu isn't beefy enough to run that in my city .EDIT3: @confuse,d having quickly read through this guide, I see your point, this annoys me though:
This lane behaviour is annoying and inefficient, also countries where cars coming onto the highway have the right of way are idiots imo.
Leaving 2 lanes clear makes no sense imo. There should be a mod that changes the lane behaviour to European, keep right unless congestion/overtaking, and any joining roads give way.
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Soldato
Thought I'd post a few photos from my current city, tempted to buy after dark but it would mean starting again with a new city to build. This city is complete vanilla skylines using a euro map:
Top view of the main part of the city:
Bridges over junctions help the traffic flow a lot, also pave next to main roads to stop development and increase pedestrian access
Few more bottlenecks to clear, but overall a good flow
Top view of the main part of the city:
Bridges over junctions help the traffic flow a lot, also pave next to main roads to stop development and increase pedestrian access
Few more bottlenecks to clear, but overall a good flow