Cities: Skylines (the Sim City we deserve)

[eran0004]

@Samus From what I have observed about the traffic AI is that they kind of act like racing drivers in some situation, taking the fastest line through some corners if they get the opportunity. That’s often the case with highway ramps if they connect at a small angle, instead of taking the outer lane into the ramp they take the inner lane and then cut across just as they reach the node in order to get a wider corner. You can get a pretty good indication of the behaviour by checking the lane arrows, if the arrows point straight the AI will go for the racing line, but if the arrow points to the side they will use the correct lane.

The method doesn’t work as well when you have a ramp going into a two-lane road (exhibit A) because their choice of lane will also be influenced by where they want to go next, but I think that a greater angle might be of some use at least since they won’t seek the wrong lane by default.

 

[eran0004]

The city finally got enough cash to construct an airport. The only land flat and large enough to accommodate a runway was to be found across the water. Fortunately the path with the shortest bridge length gave a pretty direct route. I'm thinking this road will make a sharp left turn after the airport and go back up along the water on the other side. There's some ore resources in the area that might be exploited in the future.

Originally I planned for the runway to be 2 km long, but it made all the airport buildings look too small by comparison so I settled for 1.5 km. Connected the airport to the road with a simple intersection, I've got a metro line running parallel to the road so I don't think the traffic will be too bad.

Here's an early morning drive from the airport to the city. The skylines is starting to take shape, it's missing some church towers though.

 

[Samus]

The most frustrating thing about traffic at airports and train stations is how the cars all just spawn at the entrance, all at once, at that one point. Whereas in reality of course the cars would come from a car park and all at staggered times, from different areas.

Same with sea ports and how all the traffic has to enter and exit at one point, single file. It's why I rarely place them, as useful as they are. Looks silly with a row of single file lorries all waiting to drive in.

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On a different note, does anyone know what the building is in this video, 1:10 if it doesn't auto start there



It's a console based video so shouldn't be a mod but I've never seen it before. It looks like the Campus style but I've used all of those buildings, none like that. I also looked through all the unique buildings on the wiki, no match.

 

[eran0004]

On a different note, does anyone know what the building is in this video, 1:10 if it doesn't auto start there

Took me a long time to figure it out, but it’s the European style university

 

[MatskiMonk]

@Samus despite what some creators are doing do make CSL look incredible, I don't think the base game ever really lent itself to a realistic look or feel... What's the obstacle to using a PC for you? I mean playing modded games isn't a silver bullet and brings its own frustrations, but it sounds like it's where you really need to be to fully enjoy the game.

 

[Samus]

Took me a long time to figure it out, but it’s the European style university

Oh, just the regular single building one. That'll be why, I haven't plopped one of those down for a long time. Guess I forgot what they look like!

@Samus despite what some creators are doing do make CSL look incredible, I don't think the base game ever really lent itself to a realistic look or feel... What's the obstacle to using a PC for you? I mean playing modded games isn't a silver bullet and brings its own frustrations, but it sounds like it's where you really need to be to fully enjoy the game.

Just personal circumstances right now make it rather inconvenient. I do absolutely enjoy the game, it's still the only thing I play most nights and I do really enjoy finding all the little tricks and 'hacks' to make things better on console. Just gotta air my minor frustrations somewhere.

I'll play it on PC one day, I'm sure.

I think I do need to move away from trying to do realistic European cities that I've been fixed on for the last few months though. As you say, it's just not going to be possible on console to get it really close to realistic, so I think after my current city I might try a tropical fantasy city. Never really done those maps much.

 

[eran0004]

Oh, just the regular single building one. That'll be why, I haven't plopped one of those down for a long time. Guess I forgot what they look like!

Yeah, same. It looks pretty good actually so I’m thinking about just plopping it somewhere in the city and turning it off.

 

[eran0004]

I've been looking for a building to fit into this spot here. The university turned out to be perfect for it

Added some church spires to the skyline as well. I was surprised at how few churches there are on the workshop, especially if you want an asset with a reasonable texture size and tris count. In the end I found two nice churches and in the background you can see the vanilla cathedral as well.

 

[Samus]

Nice fit @eran0004, and it can easily pass as some sort of local government building. I assume on PC there is a mod to hide the turned off building icon?

 

[eran0004]

Nice fit @eran0004, and it can easily pass as some sort of local government building. I assume on PC there is a mod to hide the turned off building icon?

Yeah, there are mods to turn off building icons. I don’t use them though, instead I take the screenshots with either cinematic camera (which I believe is a feature in the vanilla game?) or with the first person camera mod, which hides all the UI.

 

[MatskiMonk]

Yeah, there are mods to turn off building icons. I don’t use them though, instead I take the screenshots with either cinematic camera (which I believe is a feature in the vanilla game?) or with the first person camera mod, which hides all the UI.

I make them procedural objects to avoid the icons anyway, it bugs me when they're there in game too.

 

[eran0004]

I make them procedural objects to avoid the icons anyway, it bugs me when they're there in game too.

I don’t think procedural objects have an LOD model, I think it’s just the main model. So using PO too much could lead to performance issues (especially on my poor laptop). I’m using it a lot on small objects though, like road signs.

 

[MatskiMonk]

I don’t think procedural objects have an LOD model, I think it’s just the main model. So using PO too much could lead to performance issues (especially on my poor laptop). I’m using it a lot on small objects though, like road signs.

Fair point. I've not noticed it being a problem, but I use custom LOD ranges, and whenever I take a screenshot I flick Ulitmate LOD on, which basically maximises everything (and reduce the game to 1fps!).

 

[Samus]

Yeah, there are mods to turn off building icons. I don’t use them though, instead I take the screenshots with either cinematic camera (which I believe is a feature in the vanilla game?) or with the first person camera mod, which hides all the UI.

Yeah cinematic camera hides all icons but you're stuck with them in normal gameplay of course.

The DLC is half price on Playstation again, debating whether I should spend another £15.95 to get all of the remaining items I don't have (other than radio stations).....

 

[MatskiMonk]

It's amusing watching Biffa play a no mods vanilla game with his new snow map

 

[Samus]

This is a pretty broad question but what are you guys approach regarding pre-planning or not? When I first started playing naturally I just played as I went with no long-term ideas and plans for my cities. Then as I got more into it I would start planning out broadly what I wanted to do on each map in an image editing program, basically mapping out where I want highways and major arterials, and maybe trains and subway, and where I'll locate big unique buildings.

For instance, this is what I ended up with for my latest (final) attempt at a fairly realistic Euro city. Pink highways, yellow arterials, black trains. Would decide where to place stuff next.

I don't ever stick to them 100%, of course when you build for real things the landscape and what you've already built change things, but that's a broad outline of what I plan to build, and I decided the order of the tiles I'll unlock. Maybe this is limiting my creativity though, and perhaps why I have a whole bunch of unfinished cities. I feel like my best ideas come naturally but on the flip-side without planning you also end up with big mistakes.

Or maybe my approach is wrong to start with roads, and it'd be a better idea to decide roughly where major buildings will go, and then design the roads afterwards to suit? Certainly I realised that's what you need to do with city centers, it's no good building a nice but random road network and then try to fit in all the unique buildings. It's better to first decide where the buildings will be and then place roads around them.

Just wondering what approach others go for. Total freestyle with just a few ideas in your head, hardcore planning or something in between?

 

[Darla Starch]

I'm in the "rough gameplan but otherwise wing it" camp in city planning.

 

[redhed17]

It depends on the map I start with, and if anything is on there already. If someone has taken the time to put some nice highways or rail routes, I'll work around them. I tend to work in sections, get a self contained area and look for where another would make sense. And then account for industry areas as I go along.

Sometimes I start with a Scenario, and that may determine a lot on the direction it goes in too.

That's what I love about this game, so many ways to play it.

 

[Samus]

I'm thinking for my next map I'm just going to go nuts, fantasy tropical city, maybe an island, with no regard for reality other than basic physics/geometry. Go wild with things that would never be built in real life due to costs/logistics.

Probably a lot of my recent maps have been limited by trying to be realistic whereas as @MatskiMonk points out, the base game isn't really set towards that.

 

[eran0004]

I have a rough idea about where I want things to go or how I want the roads to connect on a wider scale, but it often changes once it's time to build it. I think I do most of the planning with the road tool already selected and ready to go.

If I run into some bigger issues with my road network and need a major overhaul I find it useful to take a screenshot of the map and make some sketches in Illustrator.

 

[Darla Starch]

I'm thinking for my next map I'm just going to go nuts, fantasy tropical city, maybe an island, with no regard for reality other than basic physics/geometry. Go wild with things that would never be built in real life due to costs/logistics.

Probably a lot of my recent maps have been limited by trying to be realistic whereas as @MatskiMonk points out, the base game isn't really set towards that.

Like "the same road doing four flyovers on itself" unrealistic?


...not that I would know...

 

[eran0004]

I scrapped the big hexagon roundabout by the train station, it was hard to make it look good and it just occupied too much space. Replaced it with a simple pair of intersections and a traffic light (oh the horror!). On the plus side, I got some space for a fancy pedestrian bridge. The slope is around 4%, so hopefully it will be walkable even during icy conditions.

The city has reached the waterfront. Mostly residential, but some high density commercial blocks as well. Next I would like to find a space for a financial district, I'm thinking that perhaps it would be interesting to put it on the hills overlooking the train station.

Financially, the city is doing great. Got around 2 million credits in the bank at the moment.

 

[Touring Mars]

I've not played this since the end of the first lockdown in July 2020 (and since my PS Plus subscription expired), but I found it on sale on PS Store this week only for just £6.99 Will be good to see the old town again, but there is some serious work to do!!

 

[Samus]

Like "the same road doing four flyovers on itself" unrealistic?


...not that I would know...

Ok I have to see this.

 

[Samus]

@Samus From what I have observed about the traffic AI is that they kind of act like racing drivers in some situation, taking the fastest line through some corners if they get the opportunity. That’s often the case with highway ramps if they connect at a small angle, instead of taking the outer lane into the ramp they take the inner lane and then cut across just as they reach the node in order to get a wider corner. You can get a pretty good indication of the behaviour by checking the lane arrows, if the arrows point straight the AI will go for the racing line, but if the arrow points to the side they will use the correct lane.

I think there is certainly some truth in this, but I still can't quite work them out exactly. I made the below junction on my new city, it is only meant to be temporary until I have money to build something better but anyway, after building it I observed the traffic. 100% of cars in this lane cut across as illustrated. Every single one. It's definitely not because they want to get in lane for an exit, there isn't one for miles. As you can see it does have the right arrows, so that's not a hard rule.

The fact it's every one though suggests to me it is about the line, and they prefer that to the every so slightly more acute route to the logical lane. I'm not sure if I can minimize that angle any further in vanilla though, I'll have to try. There was no traffic coming from the bottom route yet so I couldn't observe their behaviour.

 

[eran0004]

Interesting 🤔
Maybe they always aim for the fastest route?

 

[Samus]

So that GeForce leak doing the rounds includes CS 2. Far from a confirmation of course, but promising.

 

[Samus]

Pretty happy with how this highway exit turned out, not sure what they're called? Had to make all the usual concessions for vanilla, primarily with joining the two roads to one and the highway on the right is wonky because it's on the tile boundary but I did find a way to make the slip roads much tighter to the highway as you can see.

Don't know if there is a better way but what I did is lay down the three lane highway, marked the edge with a fence, changed the highway into a dirt path so it's out of the way with no "space already occupied" or unwanted snapping and then laid the slip road along the other edge of the fence as best I could. Upgrade back to highway, add the actual curved join at a point it's happy and hey presto.

Hoping it works well as a low/mid demand exit primarily for my forestry, a little on the highway before the major exit into the city.

 

[eran0004]

In preparation for the new financial district, the city created a new hub for green energy and waste management. It's the geothermal power plant, the geothermal heating plant and the ultimate recycling plant, plus plenty of space for future additions.

It annoyed me how the cargo trains reversed out of the cargo hub, so I built a balloon loop using the one-way track. That required some changes to the road network, so what used to be a T-junction is now just a sharp 90 degree turn. I was thinking about changing it, but then thought that it's kind of realistic, you wouldn’t rebuild the road unless you had a really good reason.

An overview of the road network.

not sure what they're called?

That's a partial cloverleaf, or parclo

 

[VXR]

Project Indus sounds promising if it is a city builder of some ilk for the Xbox.