Cities: Skylines II

[TheCracker]

Looking at all these fine-looking CSII screen shots along with trying to figure out why some aspects of my own cities never quite look 'right' i've realised that the blank canvases we start with don't really accurately represent the enviroment where real life cities spring up. Certainly not in Europe.

You don't just get endless grass plains. You get farm land with walls and hedgerows, small wooded areas and small roads. I recently came across some victorian-era photos online of the area where i live, some showing roughly the view out over the valleys that i get from my home office window. Even though they're over a century old now the dozen or so houses you could make out largely all still exist today. The roads/tracks that linked them are roads i'm familiar with but now on a greater scale. Where my IRL city has expanded out into what was then countryside, it did so by taking over farm land. Where i now see estates of 1950's semi-detached houses and a couple of 1960's tower blocks, the old photos just show small fields and their boundaries and those odd few houses scattered in between.

It's a shame the tiles we begin with don't reflect this better in game. @eran0004 pictures above and @HarVee at the top of the page look great and those cities have nice realistic looking layouts, but they're 'spoilt' by the areas not yet built on. It wouldn't be grass plains with a smattering of trees, it would be farm land. Sure, it's something you could replicate, especially now with the way farmland fields can be generated, but i think it would be better if these things existed to be built over (or not) in the first place.

 

[MatskiMonk]

but i think it would be better if these things existed to be built over (or not) in the first place.

I certainly don't disagree, also being from the UK, things like decent hedge networks, different field 'coverings' with a tractor track network would really help as well.

It's interesting to see what lays around cities and towns in various different parts of the world. Without mods the selection of buildings is very limited, but once we get new assets that can be tailored to specific regions it would be good to get other tools that allow the player to make the surrounding area as much a part of the localisation as the built up areas.

 

[eran0004]

Yeah, a nicely made countryside makes a big difference. The problem is that it’s such a huge area that it takes a lot of work to fill it in. In CS1 I wrote a Python script that would plant the forests automatically based on an image mask and a specified density, hopefully it will be possible to do something similar in CS2 once modding gets supported.

Speaking of which, seems like Paradox Mods will go live with map editing and code mods by the end of the month, so my vanilla days may soon be gone

Edit: Here is the tree script in action in CS1. The first iteration was kind of slow (still a lot faster then placing the trees manually), but later versions were much faster.

 

[eran0004]

The map editor will become available on the 25th of March. Seems like you can customise the climate in detail, including the chance of clouds, the chance of snow, the length of seasons and how quickly the weather may change. Resource painting can be done via mask images (which I’m sure it’s a feature that won’t be abused by anyone), but it doesn’t look like that functionality will extend to tree placement.

Map Creation - Cities Skylines 2 Wiki

cs2.paradoxwikis.com

 

[eran0004]

I started experimenting with transition curves again. They are quite easy to build manually, with the information about road length and turn angle. I'm working on a spreadsheet to help with the design.

 

[eran0004]

The transition curve spreadsheet is ready for testing. I’m not sure how to share it without making every user edit the same document, so if anyone knows how it can be done please let me know 😁




Link to edit

 

[eran0004]

I decided it was time to test the map editor. I'm going to try to create an island map, similar to the ones I made in CS1, will be interesting to see if it's possible to build a city with only ship connections to the outside world.
So far I've loaded a heightmap and a worldmap and started shaping the terrain, these cliffs turned out great! I'm going to try changing the map texture as well, and figure out some smart way to paint the forests.

 

[eran0004]

Trees are done
I went to to https://www.globalforestwatch.org/map/ and screengrabbed a map of the forest coverage on the island, then I created a PNG mask of it in GIMP and loaded it in the map editor as a resource mask for fertile land. That way, the mask appears as a yellow overlay on the landscape and it's pretty easy to just fill it in with trees. I went for a mix of popplar, oak and alder. Then to get some variation I created a second biome, where above a certain elevation as well as for terrain that faces north I replaced the oak trees with spruce. This was done by creating a normal map from the height map and isolating the green channel, then combining it with the forest mask and the heightmap and setting appropriate threshold values. The result was loaded into the editor as an ore resource mask, which appears blue on the map, or green when it overlays with the fertile land mask. Then it was just a matter of deleting the oak trees from the green areas and replacing them with spruce.

Next I would like to customize the climate, but it seems like that functionality is not available in the editor yet so I guess I'll have to wait for an update.

As for my impressions so far, I really like that the "world" stretches out so far from the playable area, it works especially well for an island like this.

Here are the resources I used.

1. The tree cover map from Global Forest Watch, and next to it the forest mask created in GIMP.


2. The heightmap, normal map and the spruce mask created from them.

 

[MatskiMonk]

Now there's mods I thought I'd jump back into CS2.

MoveIt causes a crash to desktop 50% of the time.. might give it a while for some more of these bugs to work out.

 

[MatskiMonk]

Economy 2.0 patch lands/landed today... Significant amount of changes (including a fix for numerous crash to desktop problems - hopefully mine!):

Patch Notes 1.1.5f1

Building Upgrade Rework

• More control over upgrades from the Selected Info Panel of City Service buildings.
  • All upgrade types can be removed from the Selected Info Panel of a City Service building.
  • Sub-buildings can be removed by using the bulldozer as well.
  • Sub-buildings can be relocated.
  • Sub-building can be turned on/off.
  • Sub-buildings can be selected.
• Sub-building upgrades can now be placed freely within a radius limit from the main building.
• Updated City Service tutorial.

Economy updates

• Government subsidies for the city have been removed to make the economy more challenging and transparent.
• Taxes and Services tabs in the Economy panel now unlock at milestone 1 and the Production tab unlocks at milestone 2.
• Added “Import City Services” city policy to toggle import of city services from Outside Connections.
  • Separate imported service items in the budget panel.
  • Outside Connections won't send service vehicles if the policy is toggled off.
  • Added imported service expenses for ambulance, hearse, fire engine, garbage, and police. The fee scales with the city's population.
• City Service changes:
  • Increased chance of entering and graduating both Elementary School and High School.
  • Adults can now apply to High School if they didn’t finish it (1% chance, can apply 3 times).
  • Garbage accumulation accounts for students, employees, prisoners, occupants, and homeless people in the calculation.
  • Balanced garbage city service upgrades.
  • Buildings now pay a fixed fee for garbage collection instead of a variable amount based on garbage collected.
  • Adjusted garbage accumulation values.
  • Adjusted upkeep costs of most City Service Buildings.
  • Wages for city service employees are paid from player money
  • Increased electricity import price.
  • Increased the time it takes for Ambulance and Hearse notifications to appear.
  • Adjusted the Service Fee curves for efficiency and consumption.
  • Adjusted water service fees (With old saves the game will force reset the value to the new default position).
  • Increased the amount of workers for
    • Medical Clinic
    • Small Coal Power Plant
    • Police Station
    • Cemetery
    • Fire House
    • Landfill
• Demand changes:
  • Residential density depends on household wealth and family size.
  • Household spawns are based on average citizen happiness, homelessness, tax, available student positions, and available jobs.
  • Commercial companies spawn based on household needs, reducing how often the same companies appear in the city.
  • Commercial and industrial demand has been adjusted to avoid “Not enough customers” complaints for newly spawned companies.
  • Taxes now have more effect on demand.
• Employment changes:
  • Workers from Outside Connections no longer pay tax.
  • Workers from Outside Connections are not included in population or workplace infoviews.
  • Workers from Outside Connections will look for new job more frequently.
  • Workplaces in Outside Connections are less desirable than workplaces in the city.
  • Only citizens who don't have health problems (such as Sick or Injured) count as valid employable citizens.
  • Citizens can only receive unemployment for a limited amount of time. When they run out of unemployment, they will complain about “High Rent” and move away.
  • Fixed population jobs & workers amount issue.
• Households & happiness changes:
  • Households without adults will now move away.
  • Rich households prefer larger homes in attractive neighborhoods (higher land value, good service coverage, etc), poor households prefer cheaper houses and don’t mind services being far away.
  • Household needs are calculated based on their spendable money (what’s left after paying rent), so they now spend their money more reasonably.
  • Reduced the number of senior citizens moving into the city.
  • Adjusted wealth happiness factor to a reasonable value.
  • Low happiness affects the chance a household will move out of the city.
  • Households consider the garbage fee when calculating their spendable money.
  • Added curve parameter to death rate to smooth the death of senior citizens (existing cities will experience an immediate death wave)
• Production and Company changes:
  • Adjusted values for:
    • Resource production.
    • Resource price.
    • Household wages.
    • Tax income.
  • Resource price now has two parts, a lower one for industrial processing, and another for commercial companies’ service prices. Customers (households) pay full price, which is both parts combined.
  • Changed the workforce needed per unit for resource processing to a preconfigured amount instead of automatically calculated at the start of the game.
  • Companies now go bankrupt instead of looking for new locations if their current property isn’t suitable for profit.
  • Changed Industrial Manufacturing space multiplier from 1 to 5 to allow more workers per grid so fewer buildings are needed.
  • Adjusted office employee amount.
  • Adjusted amount of work required per product to decrease city income.
  • Adjusted simulated service prices.
  • Improved companies to move away not just because of bankruptcy, but also because of the tax rate and workforce factors.
  • Rebalanced Extractor Resource greatly reducing profitability.
  • Balanced Industrial and Office companies Default Output Amount, Max Workers Per cell, Resources Initial Price, and Work needed per unit. Increased Space multiplier of Industrial and Office zones.
• Rent and Building Level changes:
  • Removed the virtual landlord so building upkeep is now paid equally by all renters.
  • Added new rent calculation: Rent = (LandValue + (ZoneType * Building Level)) * LotSize * SpaceMultiplier.
  • Tweaked “High Rent” notifications to be based on the household’s income. Even if they currently don’t have enough money in their balance, they won’t complain and will instead spend less money on resource consumption.
  • Building level is now based on whether renters can pay the upkeep fee. When they pay the full fee, the building condition increases by a constant amount, if they cannot pay it, the building condition decreases by the same amount.
• Crime rate adjustments:
  • Fixed police service coverage for zoneable assets. The police station will patrol regularly to decrease the crime rate, and all zone type buildings will increase crime rate depending on the police service coverage.
  • NA and EU PoliceVehicle02 Crime Reduction value changed to match the NA and EU policevehicle01 value.
  • Removed crime scene pathfinding limitation of building's crime rate to avoid all criminals having the same pathfinding result to queue up to do crime.
  • Added new crime factor to lower crime probability in cities with larger populations.
  • Lower crime recurrence probability due to criminals needing to wait a long while to remove criminal tag.
• Increased the cost of purchasing Map Tiles.
• Added upkeep fee for new map tiles
  • The 9 starting are excluded and do not have have map tile upkeep fee
• Added option to “Unlock all map tiles” (also disables achievements and the tile upkeep cost)
• Increased construction cost and upkeep costs for roads.
• Moved upkeep breakdown from Tooltip to Selected info panel.
• Reduced the amount of money the player gets back from bulldozing roads and buildings.
• Adjusted the max shopping amount of the household from 4000 to 2000.
• Adjusted Specialized Industry Unlocking to start from milestone 0.
• Fixed taxes being collected after bulldozing the entire City.
• Fixed Citizen Wealth Infoview not highlighting households with 'Wretched' wealth level.
• Fixed the wrong moving away statistic data being displayed.
• Fixed a newly spawned company complaining about a lack of workers.
• Fixed commercial zones incur massive amounts of debt for the citizens.
• Fixed refund inconsistencies when replacing roads and stops.
• Fixed high death possibility issue:
  • Fire accidents now will only cause 1% death compared to the previous 50% death of an on fire medium/high density building.
  • The building's destruction event will now cause 50% death compared to previous 90% death of citizens who are still in it.
• Fixed Outside Connection workers won't find a job.
• Fixed trade cost divided by zero bug.

Modding

• Updated mod publisher to use auto login from Paradox SDK.
• Updated Paradox Mods to Version 1.5.2
  • Added new feature: Mod details will now show what dependencies are installed and if any are missing
  • Improvement: When started, it will now try to go online again if being offline before
  • Improvement: Change the close X hover effect when using a gamepad
  • Improvement: Improve text on empty state when on library or playset details when offline
  • Fix: Offline mode will now start with your active playset
  • Fixed double back click from following creators view
  • Fixed broken bumper navigation when offline and using a gamepad
  • Fixed gamepad legend when offline on library or playset details
  • Fix: Pressing the B button on a gamepad will now close the Sync modal
  • Fixed a warning with font weights
  • Fixed a warning with height not being set correctly in scrollbars
• Added support for custom units for sliders used in mod settings
• Added support for keybindings for mods:
  • Mods can introduce their own input action which are integrated into the game input system.
  • Added key binding field to the automatic option which allows mods to provide key rebinding for their actions.
  • Added built-in conflict detection between the game bindings and mods bindings based on action usage.
  • Added warning sign next to each binding which has conflicts.
  • Added main menu notification if a mod has a key binding conflict.
  • Added support for 3 different types of actions: press (1 button), axis (negative and positive button), vector (up, down, left, right buttons)
  • Added the ability to set separate keyboard key and gamepad button for one action.
  • Added the ability to use built-in and write custom processors and interactions for actions.
• Fixed issue where downloading a certain number of mods in a specific way resulted in a crash to desktop.
• Fixed a bug where SettingsUISetterAttribute could not use private methods and properties
• Fixed installing notification getting stuck when downloading a mod failed.
• Updated notification texts.
• Updated "mod loading error" dialog to show the error.
• Fixed issue with mods not loading if playset was changed using the web version or there are mod updates.
• Fixed some cases when mods are not loaded or "enabled code mods are changed" notification does not appear.
• Fixed "mod page" and "disable" buttons being visible on mod loading error message box with local mods.
• Fixed endless "mod loading..." notification if mods failed to load.
• Fixed Unity installation not being found if the game is running on a different account than the one who installed Unity
• Fixed issue where modding toolchain install/uninstall warning dialog overflows when the list of dependencies is long by making the panel scrollable

Performance

• UI performance optimizations for the economy panel.
• Other UI performance optimizations with audio bindings, rendering, cursors, and updating panels.
• Performance optimization for Chirper panel.
• Optimizations for particle effects.
• Optimizations for audio memory usage.
• Optimized placement to improve FPS when placing complex buildings or roads.
• Fixed job-finding performance issue when there were no available workplaces and no employable workers, causing endless job pathfinding queries which heavily affect the performance.

Fixes & improvements

• Unity update 2022.3.29f1
• Fixed a crash to desktop when using the quick load function while relocating and rotating a building.
• Fixed a crash to desktop after deleting Train Station with a broken Subway connection and trying to place new subway tracks.
• Fixed crash to desktop in SetupFindHomeJob
• Fixed crash to desktop caused by removed renter.
• Fixed crash to desktop when resizing oil extractor area so that some pumps get deleted
• Improved likelihood of household members traveling together as a group.
• Improved hue, saturation, and randomness values of tree leaves.
• Improved collision radius for BirchTree, PineTree, and SpruceTree to better match the visual empty space. The bushes etc. can now be propped closer to the trees.
• Improved citizens and delivery vehicles pathfinding to take building construction time and path duration into account to avoid arriving at construction sites.
• Ambulances transport some patients in emergency mode (randomized with health level).
• Lowered building fire spreading probability to other buildings.
• Changed default glass material from tinted brown to non-tinted.
• Updated EU and NA theme icons.
• Improved wealth info view color and citizen wealth state parameters.
• Fixed wealth info view color not matching household wealth, changed it from household member based wealth to household based wealth.
• Improved Airport development tree node icon.
• Adjusted XP values for low construction cost building.
• Fixed depots so trains/subway can now only drive through them by using dedicated by-pass track (the track without “No Track Connection”).
• Fixed Several Signature Buildings don't get occupied (must be rebuilt for the fix to take effect)
• Changed signature building info view color priority higher in RCIO infoviews
• Fixed Ludo Square and Cane Residences signature building bonuses to be more consistent.
• Fixed issue with some settings not getting saved.
• Fixed achievements progression on saves that have used mods not being disabled.
• Fixed specialized industry main building missing.
• Fixed Forestry and Ore Industrial Storage yard props not showing.
• Fixed farming extraction area color so it’s visible on fertile land with the info view open.
• Fixed crematorium sub-building car access when snapped to the main building. Main building or sub-building(s) need to be moved/replopped for this to take effect.
• Fixed specific situation causing taxis from Outside Connections to get stuck for a long while.
• Fixed wrong passenger count/capacity displayed for personal cars that have a trailer attached.
• Fixed driver not included in passenger count and capacity for personal vehicles.
• Fixed vehicles driving through parking facilities or transport stations without intending to use their services.
• Fixed citizens parking their cars at public transport stations without the intention to board a transport line there.
• Fixed traffic jams occurring inside Parking buildings.
• Fixed airplanes driving through the runway without landing at the airport.
• Fixed issue where fire engines are unable to react to and extinguish the additional buildings from the specialized industry areas
• Fixed Garbage Trucks collecting garbage outside their operating district if their way goes through different district.
• Fixed resource piles on spawnable storage yards not instantly updating when delivery truck unloads cargo.
• Fixed trucks keep going back and forth between commercial and industry.
• Fixed commercial companies accidentally exporting goods to other companies.
• Fixed broken pathfinding warning after rebuilding destroyed service building that has extension upgrades.
• Fixed mail getting stuck due to heavy traffic at the cargo terminal by adding a trip needed buffer amount as another cost in resource trade pathfinding.
• Added a penalty for resource pathfinding when the cargo station has more requests or sent out most of the vehicles.
• Fixed Water Tower’s viewing upgrade not providing entertainment.
• Fixed Hospitals and Clinics not refilling their pharmaceuticals storage
• Fixed cargo train terminal left and back paths not connecting to roads too
• Fixed City Policies not clearing properly and carrying over between different save game loads
• Fixed The Deep End achievement not unlocking at exactly 200000 loan
• Fixed citizens stopped finding jobs when unemployment was high
• Fixed high unemployment rate issue by adding variety to the citizen education levels when spawning
• Fixed population infoview jobs didn't match workplace info view's data
• Fixed discrepancy in workplace count by excluded the Outside Connection workplaces from population's calculation
• Fixed DateTime overflow error by reducing the max starting year for a map to 3000.
• Fixed floating prop issues with Deuclidia Apartments, Nuclear Power Plant and Technical University.
• Fixed hotel renter deserialization bug causing unknown mayhem for tourist / hotel logic.
• Fixed tourists with "Leaving the city" status not leaving the hotel.
• Fixed Parallel and grid roads misplace connected road lane.
• Fixed Roundabouts disappear when connecting roads at a certain angle.
• Fixed track slope causing tight curve warning / no connection when built a certain way.
• Fixed connection notifications with buildings over a train truck tunnel.
• Fixed net-tool replace mode is enabled when no compatible assets exist.
• Fixed destroyed buildings still create Noise Pollution.
• Fixed 'No Pedestrian Access' warning appearing for Medical University after adding Extension Wing upgrade
• Fixed issue where the cost of purchasing multiple map tiles varied depending on the order in which the map tiles were selected
• Fixed workplace links in citizen Selected Info Panel not working when the workplace was a service building.
• Fixed screen resolution set in the launcher right after the game launch not being applied.
• Fixed all overlay shaders broken when using dynamic resolution scaling.
• Fixed minor inconsistencies with infoview coloring for cables/pipes/lot for buildings under construction, destroyed or otherwise without mesh.
• Added secondary infoview background color so that roads don't disappear on terrain.
• Improved RCIO tax statistic colors to correspond zone colors
• Removed car paths and parking on NA_MixedRight01_L1_4x6 (and L2) and NA_MixedLeft01_L1_4x6 (and L2) to prevent pathfinding fails due to how the buildings can spawn
• Several improvements and fixes for controllers:
  • Added more controller hints.
  • Improved options navigation with controller so that moving between page content and search is consistent when tabs or advanced options are visible
  • Improved multiline text to be focusable so that scrollable panel can scroll to it while using a controller
  • Fixed navigating with the controller over an upkeep section required multiple up/down presses on the controller.
  • Fixed options menu controller navigation issues when "Show advanced" toggle is present.
  • Fixed not all locked toolbar items were focusable with the controller making it impossible to see the conditions to unlock a given feature.
  • Fixed requirement tooltips for placing a building not updating properly when moving the building with a controller
  • Fixed an issue with controller that it was impossible to scroll to the end of the building info panel list if the building did not have any upgrades
  • Fixed tooltips not rendering properly on top of the controller hints.
  • Fixed issue with opening mods UI profile page with gamepad
  • Fixed issue where names of tabs inside the City Services panel cannot be accessed when using a controller
• Fixed building effects not rendering correctly in the UI.
• Fixed a bug where placing a road could cause tooltips to jump between their target positions
• Fixed building effects when viewing detail tooltip where placing a building could overlap with building icon
• Fixed options slider field slider position not updating properly if its value was changed outside of the options menu - ie. changing radio volume in radio panel
• Fixed issue where closing citizen lifepath detail view the list would not re-focus on the last focused entry
• Several fixes for UI interface scaling when using bigger text size.
• Fixed UI disappearing on some tutorial step transitions.
• Fixed UI disappearing on closing signature building unlock dialog.
• Fixed options description not changing after scrolling certain dropdown lists.
• Fixed loading warning popup staying on top of the frozen/busy state of loading screen and not fading out.
• Fixed non-centered error message in Paradox Account -panel.
• Fixed Paradox account link button overflowing in various languages.
• Fixed Economy budget panel overlapping text in some languages.
• Fixed tooltips rendering outside of the screen.
• Fixed edge case of quitting the main menu or starting a new game by opening the pause menu from the button in the upper-right corner while using map tiles view.
• Rebalanced all citizen audio volumes.
• Fixed cemetery sounds not playing.
• Fixed audio source position that was not correctly set for multiple assets:
  • Fixed sounds of Residential Signature Buildings play even if buildings are not functional
  • Fixed sound effect of navigating through the Main Menu is almost inaudible
  • Fixed Overground Parking's upgrade does not add new sounds
• Keybinding:
  • Block all actions while listening for key press when the rebinding process is ongoing.
  • Added the ability to reset key binding to the default.
  • Added controller button icons to key binding options.
  • Added support for rebinding some specific tool actions and camera rotation
  • Added batch rebinding option which allows changing multiple keybinds without receiving the "cannot be rebound" error
  • Fixed controller hint when two direction action has bindings when one direction has binding with modifier and another one without modifier.
  • Added auto-detect for keyboard layout. Keybinds are converted to the current layout and keep their physical location (for example, WASD key bindings on French keyboard will be shown as ZQSD). It converts only Latin-based layouts, while US international layout is used for other non-Latin-based layouts.
  • Fixed building Selected Info Panel not opening when the Info Panel option is assigned to the Right Mouse button and disallowed the same key being set for Info Panel and Cancel actions.

Known issues

• Medical clinics not refilling their pharmaceutical storage is fixed, but with old saves you might need to wait longer to see it to recover because the resource could become negative. As a workaround, you can destroy and rebuild the building.
• With old saves, the water budget is reset to the default 100% value.
• Existing saves may experience a death wave if they have a lot of senior citizens, however, we’ve made changes to avoid these in the future.

 

[MatskiMonk]

Well, I've not had any crashes since the patch...

But... economy 2.0 is kicking my ass! The pressure to grow the population quickly, to be able to afford the upkeep on everything is huge, bank balance just hits free fall once you've got the basics. Seems to stabilise after getting to 10,000 population, but until then, I was just leaving them turned off until the service they offer became a problem, turned it on till it clear, then turned it back off. Need for healthcare was massive!

 

[redhed17]

Well, I've not had any crashes since the patch...

But... economy 2.0 is kicking my ass! The pressure to grow the population quickly, to be able to afford the upkeep on everything is huge, bank balance just hits free fall once you've got the basics. Seems to stabilise after getting to 10,000 population, but until then, I was just leaving them turned off until the service they offer became a problem, turned it on till it clear, then turned it back off. Need for healthcare was massive!

I don't know whether you have seen this video by City Planner Plays, but looks at a lot of the effects of the Economy 2.0 updates, and strategies to work with the changes.

 

[MatskiMonk]

I don't know whether you have seen this video by City Planner Plays, but looks at a lot of the effects of the Economy 2.0 updates, and strategies to work with the changes.

I think there's a big difference in how it affects established cities versus how you grow a new city, and a lot of the YouTubers are focusing on the former. An established city will have very high service upkeep, but the expense of building it will have come during the heavily subsidised Economy 1.0, and the population is big enough that income taxes on residents can generate a lot of money without having to be too high.

I've only started a couple of new cities since the patch, the first I abandoned at about 14,000 population because it was U-G-L-Y... slapping up grid neighbourhoods as fast as possible, then having to wait for the next milestone to get the bank balance back above zero in order to build more roads to zone off. Traffic was interesting, with massive spikes of people leaving the city, then coming back in. I think this was related to jobs, as the number of positions available was significantly less than my adult population. Weirdly, a lot of the backed up cars (~50%) were taxis. These taxi's were ferrying people from the highway junction into town, constantly stopping the traffic at the junction. I demolished and rebuilt the junction and it started behaving more normally.

The second city has been built much more cautiously, currently at ~5000 population, and it just about sits at breakeven financially, but still with demand... though as soon as I build a school or firehouse I'm going to be back to switching services off until residents complain again. It also requires about 6MW output from my two wind turbines, if that drops I start loosing money,

It's interesting to go back to Cities: Skylines being a challenge as a game, rather than just a frustration in my lack of skill in city painting.

 

[MatskiMonk]

Not much to look at, at the moment ...

 

[eran0004]

I finished the island map and started the build. The only outside connection for now is by ship.
With a population count of 4, there are currently more bears than people on the island.

 

[MatskiMonk]

I finished the island map and started the build. The only outside connection for now is by ship.
With a population count of 4, there are currently more bears than people on the island.


View attachment 1369430

I assume you're going to play that with some mods?

 

[eran0004]

I assume you're going to play that with some mods?

Unlock all and unlimited funds. Perhaps I’ll switch off unlimited funds once I’ve got the city going, we’ll see. And then there’s Anarchy, MoveIt and Plop the growables, but I think that’s pretty much all I need for now.

 

[eran0004]

A new patch dropped! Looks like a lot of new content and changes.

https://forum.paradoxplaza.com/forum/threads/detailers-patch-1-patch-1-1-6f1.1693090/

The patch notes are very long, here’s the first bit:

 

[MatskiMonk]

New service buildings are welcome!

 

[TheCracker]

Its good they're adding free content to the base game as they've anounced that there's no new DLC due until 2025 now. From their comments on the pushed back console release, i'm doubting we'll see it on Xbox and PS until then either.

 

[MatskiMonk]

Its good they're adding free content to the base game as they've anounced that there's no new DLC due until 2025 now. From their comments on the pushed back console release, i'm doubting we'll see it on Xbox and PS until then either.

If its any console-ation, you'll be starting off with a much better game than you might have done on day 1.

 

[TheCracker]

Hope so. I've not spent any time on C:S in recent months as all my cities are 'finished'. I only ever get interested in booting it up when any of the DLC comes up on sale on the PS Store. Weirdly, except for Airports being reduced for a short period, none of it has been reduced for months. Previous to C:S II getting released, DLC got discounted every few weeks.

 

[Jtheripper]

Its good they're adding free content to the base game as they've anounced that there's no new DLC due until 2025 now. From their comments on the pushed back console release, i'm doubting we'll see it on Xbox and PS until then either.

I just read some news that they are delaying it on console, saying unresolved issues, and that it might be pushed into 2025 yeah.

Better to wait than having an unpolished game i feel, like other post said here.

 

[Veinz]

Is it worth buying this on steam when I already own the first game on PS5 with most of the DLC?

 

[MatskiMonk]

Is it worth buying this on steam when I already own the first game on PS5 with most of the DLC?

Tough question, it's better in many ways, a step back in some, and not that different in quite a few.

Playing a modable game might be one of the bigger benefits, but its still early days on that front - especially with assets. At the moment the Devs are running to catch up, and despite lots of effort recently, there's still a few bugs to sort out.

If you're at the better end of the system requirements, I'd say performance shouldn't be a big issue.

If the price is a lot of money to you, I'd suggest it might not feel like it's worth it, but if it evolves as well as the first game did you might not regret it in the long term.

edit: as an example of something that can be frustrating...

My current city is always desperate for more ambulances, despite citizens not getting sick (e: From pollution), and there being ample healthcare coverage. It's less of a death wave, and more of a sick wave!

On the plus side, early difficulties making money are long gone, and the city is just printing money again.

 

[eran0004]

Island update: Got a little city centre going. 800 citizens. I haven't seen any private cars yet, just delivery vehicles and taxis. Will be interesting to see if the citizens can buy cars from the shops or if they have to rely on public transport.

 

[MatskiMonk]

Will be interesting to see if the citizens can buy cars from the shops

There are low density commercial units that sell cars, I'd have thought cims moving in bring their own cars though?

 

[eran0004]

There are low density commercial units that sell cars, I'd have thought cims moving in bring their own cars though?

I guess that if they drive to the city they bring their own cars, but it seems like they don’t bring a car if they arrive by ship. I might have to build a car dealership somewhere 🤔

 

[RetroJohan]

This mod!

 

[MatskiMonk]

No pollution, 1 hospital per 10,000 people and multiple local clinics, helicopters, over budget on health services... and yet this has been going on for weeks (my time, not game time)...

I need more than 8 hospitals to service demand. Something's nuhhered.