Cities: Skylines

BUDFORCE · 9 Apr 2018 at 12:08

Just a suggestion of course, and the end of the day do what you like, but personally I find cities based on a particular theme are very satisfying to make.

Also dont be tempted to just include everything in because you can, so for example, you don't have to have a shipping yard or and airport etc - and maybe base your industry from one natural resource (so mine is oil production) but of course you could make quarries to have ore, or forrestry on a temperate map - so for that last one, something like making smaller settlements in valleys, with heavy forestry in the valleys (I am thinking around Newport/Risca area in South Wales for example) could make a good theme.

Use google maps - I do a lot. I've looked at Las Vegas on street view and 3D sattlelite etc - and whilst again I am not making a direct copy but you can take ideas of how things are laid out and a general idea of the environment.

Vimes · 9 Apr 2018 at 14:55

Good points and well made.
This large city probably represents the last sandbox type where I have indulged for no other reason than I can.
I have started downloading some more detailed maps, which offer something more than just flat build plains.
Good point about Google Maps, I have seen how that has helped with your build.
Of course this is where it is possible to get focused on the workshop and asset content. That can be both time consuming and memory intensive.

almoststew1990 · 9 Apr 2018 at 21:47

Sorry, lots of pictures incoming...

Thanks for the advice. I sort of took it on board yesterday and expanded my city to have less side roads off the main road and also spaces the zones away from the main road:

However I still found myself with quite a few problems as each zone expanded, especially with rat running and the cross roads over the main road...

So i had a read of the steam guide and thought about how I can retrofit some intersections and came out with a few like this...

It had a few problems. Cars would go up the offslip and straight down the other side as it is the quickest route, so I overcame this by upgrading all of the roads to motorways. My original of setting the roads two grid squares apart worked - I could fit two motorway carriageways side by side.

I got my traffic flow to 76%. The last pinch point to sort was the main East West / North South interchange in North Side. Before:

After

The sense of accomplishment you get for fixing something and seeing a little number or percentage bar creep up is immense!

BUDFORCE · 10 Apr 2018 at 06:25

HAha congrats man, you have a nice little city coming along, keep up the good work!

Vimes · 10 Apr 2018 at 08:11

Yeah congrats indeed. The changes are pretty amazing and it is looking good.

It is indeed most satisfying to make the sort of accomplishments as you have.

Offices can be used as a noise buffer between residential and commercial, it also keeps the delivery trucks and vans off the slower residential roads. Keeps the Cims happy and the traffic flowing.

willhub · 10 Apr 2018 at 15:00

Anyway to mass unsubscribe, I tried some of these themes like South of France, and it's subscribes to tons of individual assets, it didn't seem to be working so removed the theme however when loading it is really slow and now assets not found and performance is really bad.

BUDFORCE · 10 Apr 2018 at 15:30

yea, well whilst there maybe an easier way this way works for me, cleaned up a ton of assets yesterday evening.

Download loading screen mod (which by the way is a great mod to have permanently running anyway):

Link - https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=667342976

Enable it and also set the checkbox to create a log - set it to a folder so you can find it!

Anyway, load up the game, save exit, find and load up that log, it very excellently links all the assets that fail etc back to the steam workshop, and then you can just hit subscribe/unsubscribe as necessary.

I cleaning up 155 missing down to 22 yesterday evening and didnt take that long.

almoststew1990 · 10 Apr 2018 at 20:00

Does anyone know why I suddenly get blackouts across some of the map in large "pockets"? I have enough electricity availability overall, and all my power stations have several weeks of oil, and my sustainable power stations are all generating electricity...

Begbie · 10 Apr 2018 at 20:02

almoststew1990 said:
Does anyone know why I suddenly get blackouts across some of the map in large "pockets"? I have enough electricity availability overall, and all my power stations have several weeks of oil, and my sustainable power stations are all generating electricity...

Enough water?

Is everything linked together?

Like a small part of the city using one different power source to the other?

Smokey Deza · 10 Apr 2018 at 20:25

Thinking of playing this again but my middle mouse button is broke so I can't pan the camera. Can you bind it to a key?

willhub · 10 Apr 2018 at 20:37

Smokey Deza said:
Thinking of playing this again but my middle mouse button is broke so I can't pan the camera. Can you bind it to a key?

You can indeed in controls settings

BUDFORCE · 10 Apr 2018 at 20:39

almoststew1990 said:
Does anyone know why I suddenly get blackouts across some of the map in large "pockets"? I have enough electricity availability overall, and all my power stations have several weeks of oil, and my sustainable power stations are all generating electricity...

Yea you'll probably find that not all of your power is all on one grid, everything needs to be connected to everything for that power availability indication to be accurate.

Smokey Deza · 10 Apr 2018 at 21:11

@willhub Brilliant thanks.

willhub · 10 Apr 2018 at 21:41

Smokey Deza said:
@willhub Brilliant thanks.

Mine you it's a bit of a faff to use it, I only found it out for when on laptop in bed and GF not leaving any space next to me, had to switch sides in bed to use mouse haha.

willhub · 12 Apr 2018 at 11:34

Should my laptop with a 3GB 1060 in it and a i7 7700HQ with 8GB of ram be running Skylines better than my PC in sig? As it's much better on the laptop that my PC :s

BUDFORCE · 13 Apr 2018 at 07:43

Lack of good deathcare buildings.

The vanilla assets are rubbish, the cemetery imo looks rubbish without being integrated into some kind of larger piece, cemeteries themselves are easy enough to build and look nice, but I don't want to have masses of land area dedicated to cemetries, intact for my city size I don't really want more than two max.

The main thing I'm struggling with though are crematoriums, the vanilla asset is aweful, just looks terrible, particularly in more built up areas where this little thing next to a 4x4 tower looks so out of place.

Seems deathcare in this game is a little over the top, I really just think it should have been integrated in to health care, and lack of good crematoriums is a pain. The only half decent one I found was BTB crematoriums which you can "hide" in your industrial areas.

Begbie · 13 Apr 2018 at 08:09

BUDFORCE said:
Lack of good deathcare buildings.

The vanilla assets are rubbish, the cemetery imo looks rubbish without being integrated into some kind of larger piece, cemeteries themselves are easy enough to build and look nice, but I don't want to have masses of land area dedicated to cemetries, intact for my city size I don't really want more than two max.

The main thing I'm struggling with though are crematoriums, the vanilla asset is aweful, just looks terrible, particularly in more built up areas where this little thing next to a 4x4 tower looks so out of place.

Seems deathcare in this game is a little over the top, I really just think it should have been integrated in to health care, and lack of good crematoriums is a pain. The only half decent one I found was BTB crematoriums which you can "hide" in your industrial areas.

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1120207864&searchtext=

Not tried it, but this looks handy. For a more high density area.

Vimes · 13 Apr 2018 at 08:40

willhub said:
Should my laptop with a 3GB 1060 in it and a i7 7700HQ with 8GB of ram be running Skylines better than my PC in sig? As it's much better on the laptop that my PC :s

I wouldn't have thought so. So many other variable tho.

BUDFORCE said:
Lack of good deathcare buildings.

The vanilla assets are rubbish, the cemetery imo looks rubbish without being integrated into some kind of larger piece, cemeteries themselves are easy enough to build and look nice, but I don't want to have masses of land area dedicated to cemetries, intact for my city size I don't really want more than two max.

The main thing I'm struggling with though are crematoriums, the vanilla asset is aweful, just looks terrible, particularly in more built up areas where this little thing next to a 4x4 tower looks so out of place.

Seems deathcare in this game is a little over the top, I really just think it should have been integrated in to health care, and lack of good crematoriums is a pain. The only half decent one I found was BTB crematoriums which you can "hide" in your industrial areas.

When I mentioned to you before about building to a particular style or theme that is when it can go a little crazy with the workshop and assets that is an example I had meant. It's not just about numbers it is also about finding the appropriate asset to fit your needs.
I once build a small community of shacks / tin corrugated type housing. That type of building was quite limited but there were some props to support it. However the service care buildings, which were needed, just looked vanilla and totally out of context to the downtown rough area I tried to create. It can be difficult to maintain consistency at times, if vanilla doesn't suit.

Death care IIRC - the game treats it as a full map type of service, unless you use a mod to restrict that care to districts. That can mean the first hearse allocated could be at the other side of the map to where a body needs to be picked up, even tho there is a Crem almost next to it. This can be an issue, or it was becoming so on my very large sprawled out map. Nothing to do with the traffic, that was very clear, or the numbers of Crems. It was often the case that by the time the hearse got there the building was abandoned.

willhub · 13 Apr 2018 at 08:48

I have more than enough crematoriums and cemeteries, I have them separate from the city neat to all the garbage and things, however, I look and I see some parts of the map are grey road so had to add some more near this part of the map. There is so many dead people on my city though it's ridiculous.

I find traffic in this game a bit daft even with Traffic Manager PE, I'm making enough junctions and alternative routes and bypass routes and the city still grinds to a halt, I'm at 80,000 people and traffic flow down to 67%, it's like a blood bath on traffic view.

Vimes · 13 Apr 2018 at 09:42

With 67% traffic flow I guess that your dead can't be picked up in a timely manner and so buildings etc will get abandoned.

Good public transport etc is very much needed and traffic should be around 80%, I had around 83% at 570k. I'm far from an expert at traffic management but segregating zones with arterial large roads for traffic should mean that no vans or trucks go anywhere near your residential. You can use TMPE to ban certain vehicles as well, if needed. Do not build too many junctions and keep building l-o-n-g at one time, so the nodes are far apart. That way ioif you use DLS at 50% then traffic will swap lanes at two nodes back. If you build a road in small segments the nodes are too close.
Keep the exports right down, exporting finished goods earns you zero income and trucks leaving with goods have to return.