Cities: Skylines II

[MatskiMonk]

... on the plus side, the latest patch fixed the persistent 'not enough customers' warning, and since Biffa explained the easiest way to manage low density residential complaints about high rent (and help with insatiable demand a bit), which takes care of most of the warnings on my map. Everyone on chirper is still complaining about healthcare though.

A minor gripe is laying subway tunnels is a bit of a PITA, snapping to things at different depths seems pretty hit or miss and it ended up taking much longer than it used to, to set up a few lines. It's nearly as bad as getting powerlines to hook up.

I have to say I think they could rebalance the economy a bit, I'm up to 40 million in the bank, I've reduced taxes on everyone to 6%, and raised the budget on everything to about 120-130%, but I'm still pretty much just printing money despite some major deficits in my production stats.

 

[JohnBM01]

I made my "Cities: Skylines 2" debut tonight! One thing I got to say immediately- yes. This game REALLY needs to be better optimized. I have struggled trying to make sure my utilities are connected properly. I can barely tell if (for example) my water pipes and/or sewage pipes are connected. I also can't tell if my power lines are properly connected. The bright yellow and stuff makes it tough to tell if connections are made. I haven't had this much trouble in this department with "Cities: Skylines 1." Graphics aren't really an issue, though I do feel the zooming and blurry zooms kind of slows down the game. But yes- this game needs to be seriously optimized. Anything even close to the previous game's quality in performance would surely suffice.

Outside of these complaints, I can really imagine making the most detailed city possible. This game is INCREDIBLY deep. I'm talking... meticulous detail. All of the extra details, buildings, options, and more are simply mind-blowing. You could literally replicate almost any city in the world if you wanted to. "Cities: Skylines 1" already surpasses SimCity in complexity. "Cities: Skylines: 2" surpasses and puts SimCity several laps down.

Wow!

 

[JohnBM01]

Usually, I call IGN as "IGNore." I finally did see their review of "Cities: Skylines 2" as it stands, and I mostly tend to agree with IGN for once. A lot of the slander towards this game from IGN is substantiated.

I may go out of character a bit for this paragraph. I felt it was a great thing I got to play the first "Cities: Skylines" game just to gain experience. I would otherwise be rather lost with this game. The fact this game has a fair amount of jank to it reminds me of why I never try to get games early. When you have an unoptimized game and a considerable amount of time to iron out the kinks as best as you can, and you end up releasing a buggy game, it feels like you wasted $49.99 USD on a glorified Early Access or Beta game. Maybe I'm an "old head," but I can recall when a lot of older games didn't need 50 (hyperbole) patch updates to get it to work best. I want as complete a game as possible to where the patch updates are mostly minimal. Or otherwise make a patch or two that knocks out several issues at once. No game is ever going to be perfect upon release especially in this day and age. However, if it means you have to iron things out more and maybe delay it to get it right, so be it. This reminds me as to why I do not get modern games soon after they are released or get preorders. It means I'll have to deal with early jank before anyone else when the game could have been engineered and coded much better than what ends up getting shipped out to the world. I am sure Paradox Interactive and Colossal Order will sort things out over time. For now though, I have my disappointments with this game despite its lovely detail all around. I paid for a fully-released game, not a glorified Early Access or glorified Beta game. Don't 🤬 the bed with games, especially highly-anticipated, high-expectation sequels like "Cities: Skylines 2."

Amid my rants, I am fond of the detail and what is possible with "Cities: Skylines 2." Cities: Skylines 2 game series already whacks SimCity hard; it even whacks its own Cities: Skylines 1 with the level of detail and depth to it. I already see Twitch streamers making cities north of 100K people to it. Sometimes even 200K and possibly 300K. I do feel a bit fearful of CPU performance once my cities get larger. I am at about 27 citizens with my fresh C:S2 city. I did make adjustments to graphical detail. I find it hard to see with when laying power lines, underground pipes, or laying out roads. I don't need a radar view to lay down roads. I wish I could change or adjust things to where seeing what I am doing is easier. I wished Cities: Skylines 2 had the ease of control the first game had.

 

[eran0004]

My city reached spring for the first time, it’s nice to see the snow gradually melting away. I also demolished some of the default highway infrastructure and built a “national road” in its place.

 

[eran0004]

I'm starting to get the hang of city-building without mods. Vertical alignment is tricky, but the slope terrain tool usually does the trick. Autumn is my favourite season, with the trees changing colour and the northern lights appearing on the night sky.

 

[eran0004]

I love how easy it is to build great looking roads in this game.
I also discovered that animals crossing the road is a thing.

 

[eran0004]

The city was missing a little something. That something turned out to be a tourist trap in the form of an old fortress.

 

[eran0004]

A diverging diamond interchange. The node where the lanes switch is done with the trick where a roundabout is used to create a "super node". You build a normal roundabout, connect all the roads you want to intersect and then when you remove the roundabout the roads stay connected in one big node.

 

[redhed17]

I've noticed some YouTubers diversifying their regular Cities Skylines content to other games, and I've seen one even abandoning CSII (for the moment) because of the current state of Cities Skylines II.

It seems that Paradox Interactive (the publisher) have had an influence on Colossal Order's decision to cease weekly developer updates last week, and they will be carrying on, though in a different format. PR damage limitation in effect.

Colossal Order look to be in a precarious position atm imho, and they face an uphill struggle to keep players, and get the confidence and goodwill they enjoyed with the first game. They can do this is by quickly improving the game, easier said than done, and adding features they promised, particularly the modding capabilities, which was a major part of CSI. Doing that before the game works in a decent way on lower level systems may be a mistake though. Interesting times for Colossal Order, I hope they can pull it back.

 

[MatskiMonk]

I've noticed some YouTubers diversifying their regular Cities Skylines content to other games, and I've seen one even abandoning CSII (for the moment) because of the current state of Cities Skylines II.

It seems that Paradox Interactive (the publisher) have had an influence on Colossal Order's decision to cease weekly developer updates last week, and they will be carrying on, though in a different format. PR damage limitation in effect.

Colossal Order look to be in a precarious position atm imho, and they face an uphill struggle to keep players, and get the confidence and goodwill they enjoyed with the first game. They can do this is by quickly improving the game, easier said than done, and adding features they promised, particularly the modding capabilities, which was a major part of CSI. Doing that before the game works in a decent way on lower level systems may be a mistake though. Interesting times for Colossal Order, I hope they can pull it back.

Yeah, Biffa's video was fairly scathing despite he trying to be nice about it.

It's a shame it's going down like this, but I just remember the first few times I played the first game - thought it was a total waste of money and it wouldn't run properly, took a good long while for me to go back to it, then a fair while to really dig into the workshop... we're talking years...

... so I'm going to give C:S2 and CO the benefit of the doubt for now, and a couple more years! Without Mods it was never going to be the same as C:S1, and the mods and assets we're used to were very mature... it's going to take time to get to that state with the second game.

 

[redhed17]

Yeah, Biffa's video was fairly scathing despite he trying to be nice about it.

It's a shame it's going down like this, but I just remember the first few times I played the first game - thought it was a total waste of money and it wouldn't run properly, took a good long while for me to go back to it, then a fair while to really dig into the workshop... we're talking years...

... so I'm going to give C:S2 and CO the benefit of the doubt for now, and a couple more years! Without Mods it was never going to be the same as C:S1, and the mods and assets we're used to were very mature... it's going to take time to get to that state with the second game.

I thought Biffa was quite restrained too. He has been one of the YouTubers diversifying their content, as I assume, viewer numbers drop for CS content. It seems there is a backlash against CSII, and CSI content has dropped off too with viewers, even as some YouTubers continue, or in some cases, go back to CSI content. CSII seems to have muddied the brand as a whole for a lot of people. The more videos I watch, the more I think Colossal Order or in more danger of messing this game, CSII, up, and this could sour the good feelings people have had for them.

I think taking Mods away from the Steam Workshop could come back to bite them, because I think the modding scene, transformed CSI over the years, giving users very powerful tools to play the game in many different ways. A lot of those most popular mods should have been built into the new game, imho, and that they were not, puts more emphasize on mods to get close to the functionality of the modded previous game. Delaying their own mod store, will only harm the number of players of the game, the longer that is delayed. And even when it does appear, if it is not done right, could do even more harm.

The mods of course should be built upon a basic working bug free game, and that could be far away too.

 

[eran0004]

I started a new city on the Barrier Island map. I have a pretty good idea of what I want the city to look like, so expansion should be quick. The citizens don't seem to crave for low density residential as much as they did in my previous city, not sure if CO has made some changes to that or if it's because I'm playing with everything unlocked this time.

The plan is to expand the city to a reasonable size and then, once modding support has been added, come back for detailing.

 

[eran0004]

This low rent block turned out well. In CS1 I would have used MoveIt to build something like this, but here I instead let the street zig-zag its way through the lot so I could then zone at an angle.

A rooftop view.

 

[eran0004]

The skyline is taking shape. Population: 10,000. Mods: none.

 

[HarVee]

How the...? What the...? Why the...? I thought traffic was supposed to be improved, but it's as dumb as ever.

 

[TheCracker]

I get that they program the traffic to try and take the shortest route but you'd think they'd take into consideration journey time too. If the shortest route is snarled up, traffic would naturally look for alternative routes. If the algorithm for this has existed for sat nav systems IRL for over 15 years, i'm sure it can be incorporated into the game better.

 

[MatskiMonk]

I get that they program the traffic to try and take the shortest route but you'd think they'd take into consideration journey time too.

They do (speed, distance and 'comfort'), but it's not obvious from that screen shot if there is a faster route.

How the...? What the...? Why the...? I thought traffic was supposed to be improved, but it's as dumb as ever.

In fairness I don't think that design works very well in that amount of space with that amount of lanes. The more lanes, the more lane changes, the more space you need to give people to switch lanes. If the two roundabouts were replaced by a single elongated one, nobody on the junction would have to give way to anyone, as it is everybody getting across the junction has to give way at least once on their journey, once they've entered the junction.

 

[HarVee]

I fixed it by putting another overpass nearby to divert traffic.

Anyway, feels weird to play the game without mods, the grid system is so restricting having come from move it! and RICO combo. Lots of gaps get left in my city that I can't fill in.

 

[eran0004]

Anyway, feels weird to play the game without mods, the grid system is so restricting having come from move it! and RICO combo. Lots of gaps get left in my city that I can't fill in.

Yeah, it takes time to adjust to it. I struggle the most with the vertical alignment.

As for zoning, you can use the pedestrian paths to adjust which road the zoning grid will snap to. When I have non-rectangular lots I try to make at least one 90 degree corner and then have some green space or a mixed zone corner building in the other corners.

For rectangular lots, make sure you have the right snapping options enabled (and the wrong ones disabled) when building the roads. You want snap to angle, snap to zoning grid and snap to grid length.

For curvy roads I would recommend using the complex curve tool, it generally creates longer grid sections than the other curve tools.

 

[HarVee]

My disaster of a starter city just reached 50k Cims... It's very poorly organized, you can still see the beginning areas, like the farming. It also seems to have the world's largest industrial park since industrial demand never goes down. But anyway, I love the game, it reminds me a lot of SimCity 3000, my favorite SC game.

Btw, what is CO's fascination with really large service buildings/parks? That technology college and the subway railyard in particular take up way to much space.

Also, how do you increase high residential demand? I keep getting only the medium demand to pop up no matter how many commerce/industrial zones, city services and parks I put down.

 

[eran0004]

Btw, what is CO's fascination with really large service buildings/parks? That technology college and the subway railyard in particular take up way to much space.

I think they’ve gone for a more realistic scale this time around. For example, the rail yard in the city where I live is about 800x160 meters, equivalent to 100x20 grid units in CS2. Many of the parks are actually smaller this time around though, you could pretty much fit a playground in each residential block if you want to.

Hopefully they’ll be able to get the asset editor up and running within the next few months, it would be nice to have some more compact options for schools and police stations.

As for the high residential demand, I’m not sure exactly how it works. In my first city I had huge low density residential demand, to the point where it would be hard to build anything else. In my current city I have almost exclusively medium density buildings, and nobody complains about that. I guess that as land value increases, the demand for high density residential increases as well (it’s the only way they can afford to live in a high value area), but it’s also tied to things like the age and education of the cims I believe.

 

[HarVee]

Was able to get the high level demand to go up finally, when I reached around 65k Cims the demand for office zones skyrocketed, once I zoned for high density office the high res demand went up half-way. Must be related to job type or something...

I started a new city, "Chillingham", right now only 5k Cims with extreme demand for industry and low density res. I decided to try @eran0004 your advice and use the ped paths to seperate zones better, it works to align the grid, but once I delete the ped path it reverts back to how it was prior. Really frustrating. Can't wait for asset editor + RICO2 + Move it! 2 so I can end all this annoyance.

Btw, is there and option to turn off street names? They kind of get in the way a bit.

 

[MatskiMonk]

Yeah, I actually prefer the more realistic scale buildings. I wish they'd be a little more terrain conforming (the cemetery for instance), and more options would obviously be better.

For reference, these are 2 of about 10 London Underground depots around London.

 

[HarVee]

Yeah, vanilla buildings are definitely better scaled in CS2 than in CS1 now that I see those London pictures. 👍

 

[MatskiMonk]

Yeah, vanilla buildings are definitely better scaled in CS2 than in CS1 now that I see those London pictures. 👍

Hopefully, come mods, variety will be the spice of life.

 

[HarVee]

Hopefully, come mods, variety will be the spice of life.

I do wonder how mods will work with the tile set thing, will buildings that don't fit in either NA or EU tile sets might get shoved into one of those? or will CO release extra tile sets as DLC? Wouldn't mind seeing an official African, Australian and South American tile set.

...Speaking of tile set, which one do you guys prefer to play on? Usually, I just do the NA since I like the way the roads and traffic signals look as they remind me of SC3k, but I will sometimes switch to the EU buildings when playing just for the sake of variety.

 

[eran0004]

Population: 21,000.

 

[MatskiMonk]

or will CO release extra tile sets as DLC? Wouldn't mind seeing an official African, Australian and South American tile set.

I'd always assumed this is how it would work, even if it took mods to do it.

Speaking of tile set, which one do you guys prefer to play on?

US at the moment, I just looks more convincing for how cities end up getting built.

 

[eran0004]

I built a bunch of student flats on a hill overlooking the medical campus. A little over 1000 households. Can't wait to see what it looks like when the trees are fully grown

 

[eran0004]

One year later and the trees are already looking great! 1700 people are now living in these apartments.