Cities: Skylines II

[eran0004]

I added a church made by Titan, it's a beautiful asset. The clock is working as well, so that's a nice detail.

 

[eran0004]

I made some modifications to this intersection to improve traffic flow. I like the spaghetti going on here.

I also appreciate the simplicity of a clean diamond interchange. This one connects to a new industrial area.

Here's an overview of the new industry. Unemployment was at 50% so I wanted to create a ton of jobs. Was a bit surprised to find that the signature industry buildings only employ a handful of people each, I believe the car factory for example has around 30 people working there. But I also made my own factories by splicing together a bunch of vanilla industry buildings, so the total job count of the area is around 1300. It made a dent in the unemployment figures, now it's down to 47%...

A close-up of one of the custom factories.

And another one. Had a lot of fun building these.

 

[eran0004]

Cooked some more spaghetti.

 

[eran0004]

I started building up a hillside near the city centre, using mainly the old town buildings. It's quickly becoming my favourite district of the city, got some nice street views. Parking is tricky to solve, but I'm trying to be creative with the parking lot roads, as well as using the one-way lanes with parking on the sides.

 

[eran0004]

Due to increased traffic, I upgraded one of the collectors to an arterial road. The new arterial runs down the middle of the picture below. I straightened out the road and removed all local road access from it. Now it only connects to collectors and other arterials via the three roundabouts. Once it reaches the neighbourhood in the far distance it goes back to a collector again. The new layout turned out really nice!

I also upgraded this neighbourhood with some UK highrises. Very happy with these too. Parking was tricky to solve but I think the demand has been satisfied now.

A view of the neighbourhood from the football field.

 

[eran0004]

I noticed that my Paper Mill factory only had 5 employees, pretty sure it used to have a lot more before (like, hundreds). With unemployment sitting at 45% I figured it was time to do something about that. I noticed that the factory had pretty much no timber in storage and that virtually all of my imported timber went to building upkeep. Concluded that the low employment of the factory was linked to the lack of resources and started planning for a big timber factory to solve that problem.

So I started plopping industry buildings and only keeping those that spawned a timber producing company. Then arranged the buildings in a cluster, painted them in the same colour scheme, added some props and lastly an office building to act as the factory headquarters.

The result is 500 jobs at this new factory and around 500 tons of timber produced per month, meeting about half of the total demand. The job count at the Paper Mill improved as well, at the present it has 25 employees. Still far from what it used to have, but it's going in the right direction.

 

[ScottPuss20]

This is Devintown - a city with over half a million people! After several failed attempts, I've finally been able to create something akin to my Decentralised Model on this new computer. Let's see if I can crack a million again.

 

[eran0004]

Well, well, well.

Iceflake Studio's first patch has been released and with it global illumination has been disabled. While it was glitchy (especially at sunset and sunrise), it did make the lighting more photorealistic. Now that it has been switched off, I feel the game looks more like Cities Skylines 1 (and not in a good way).

However, I found that with some tweaking I could get a pretty nice retro look, with Sim City 2000 style pixelation and a very narrow - nearly parallel projection - field of view.

For the record, I do like the changes to fog and cloudiness. Hopefully they can sort out the global illumination issue soon.

Here are some birds-eye views of the city.

 

[eran0004]

Some new development at the waterfront. Added a marina, the Maritime Museum, a ferris wheel and a couple of restaurants. Also demolished an old residential block and built a high density mixed block using some Urban Promenades buildings and a couple of office highrises.

The level of detail on these boat props is pretty insane by the way.

 

[ScottPuss20]

Some new development at the waterfront. Added a marina, the Maritime Museum, a ferris wheel and a couple of restaurants. Also demolished an old residential block and built a high density mixed block using some Urban Promenades buildings and a couple of office highrises.

View attachment 1516650View attachment 1516665View attachment 1516651View attachment 1516652View attachment 1516654View attachment 1516656View attachment 1516655View attachment 1516660

The level of detail on these boat props is pretty insane by the way.
View attachment 1516659

How did you get the marina?

 

[eran0004]

How did you get the marina?

I built it using the leasure piers included in the Bridges and Ports DLC. The boats are props, some are from the DLC and some from an asset mod. The boat trailers are from the mod.

 

[ScottPuss20]

I built it using the leasure piers included in the Bridges and Ports DLC. The boats are props, some are from the DLC and some from an asset mod. The boat trailers are from the mod.

Does the DLC have ANY boat props? If so, I can't find them.

 

[eran0004]

Does the DLC have ANY boat props? If so, I can't find them.

It does (they are quite big though), they are located in the nature section of props, same place where you find rocks.

 

[eran0004]

The big industrial area got a cargo train terminal.

 

[eran0004]

I worked a bit on the surroundings, adding farm fields and other details. It makes a big difference when you open up the landscape a little.

 

[eran0004]

I got the Office Evolution content creator pack and I think it's fantastic! Added the buildings to some key locations around the city.

I also spliced together some vanilla office highrises and commercial buildings to create this complex inspired by the Hötorget highrises in Stockholm:

 

[eran0004]

I played around with the Carto mod (https://mods.paradoxplaza.com/mods/87428/Windows) and rendered some maps in QGIS. Really beautiful stuff!

 

[eran0004]

I wanted to find a place for the ice hockey arena as well as two of the Office Evolution signature buildings, so I built a new district set in an old port area that has been redeveloped. I took inspiration from Västra Hamnen in Malmö for this.

 

[eran0004]

Made a few expansions and changes here and there. Added some buildings from the French region pack, which I hadn't used that much in the city before. Recorded a first person view tram ride as well.

 

[eran0004]

I did some more work on the tram lines for example building this tram stop plaza below in order to separate the tram stop from the traffic and improve the pedestrian environment. The pedestrian path up the hill from the plaza snakes its way through a little botanical garden.

A view from the tram stop. In the background is a new high density residential area on the hill.

A bird's-eye view of the residential area. I found a nice layout from Gothenburg that I took inspiration from.

A QGIS map view with the residential area and the tram stop marked.

 

[eran0004]

I made some changes to the area in front of the train station in the city centre. I made it a pedestrianised area with tram access and created an open area across the canal to improve the sightlines towards the station.

 

[eran0004]

The city centre got a bit too high density for my liking so I've been pruning it a bit and removed a bunch of towers.

I also built this little bike/pedestrian underpass. Not because the intersection was too busy, but more to manage the height differences between the blocks.

The game seems to run a little better since the latest update. I noticed I have a problem with some of the German pack buildings where the pathfinding fails for some reason, not sure what that's about.

 

[eran0004]

Some street views and detailing.

 

[eran0004]

I worked a bit on the area around the old city hall. I did an overhaul of the square, added a bus street and changed some of the buildings.

My favourite detail is this little market on the square.

A birdseye view of the square. I used the grid to create a symmetric shape of the surfaces.

View along the pedestrian street cutting between the city hall and the square.

One end of the pedestrian street. Shops on both sides. In the background is the police headquarters.

A view of some of the shops.

A view from the square.

The tram stop behind city hall, right next to the bus street.

A view towards the square.

Another view towards the square with the city hall in the background.

A birdseye view with the bus street on the right.

 

[eran0004]

I was planning to build a new suburban neighbourhood to satisfy the demand for single-family housing. I found a good piece of land which was occupied by a farm, so I just had to relocate the farm before I could start building. So I went looking for a new location for the farm and found one nearby the coast. I plopped the farm and then as I took a closer look at the surroundings I realised that the nearby hill would be a great location for a manor. So then of course I had to build the manor.

In the end the suburban neighbourhood had to be postponed, but the manor turned out great. I used the Breamor House by Macwelshman as the main building and the French police station as a secondary building. The UK village school fits right in as some auxilliary buildings and the Haunted House is a great gardener's house. Plopped some greenhouses and a tennis court as well.

 

[ScottPuss20]

View attachment 1542905

Goodness me this actually looks real.

 

[eran0004]

The Summer Solstice update has just been released. I went in quickly to check the new textures and the sand looks fantastic! I like the small rocks along the water's edge as well.

 

[eran0004]

I used to have my university and medical research center in the middle of the city, taking up quite a bit of valuable space.
So I decided to build a campus on the outskirts of the city and move those uses there. I added a bunch of signature buildings that would fit in as well.

The space previously occupied by the medical research center became a bunch of medium density Netherlands apartments blocks.

Spoiler: Map view and QGIS

Map view of the new campus, courtesy of QGIS and the Carto mod:

I also figured out how to render smooth water and terrain contours in QGIS. Technically it doesn't actually render the water, rather it renders terrain below sea level in blue. Here's the city center with this smooth rendering:

For comparison, this is what the water used to look like:

 

[eran0004]

Painting with the new textures is awesome! I made this little dry riverbed surrounded by farmland. The farm field textures are from a mod, but you can use the texture paint to give them some variation.

 

[eran0004]

The city expanded up the hills by redeveloping some old farmland. One of the farm fields and an adjacent forest preserve was turned into a park and recreational area. A TV tower with a viewing platform was built in one of the corners of the park. The hillside directly beneath the tower was turned into a botanical garden, with inspiration from the hanging gardens of Babylon.

I used bushes and ground texture paint to create some dirt paths through the garden and then added an invisible pedestrian path on top of it to make the path useable by the cims. From the top of the garden you have a spectacular view of the bay and the city centre.

Another farm field was redeveloped into a public broadcasting HQ. I took some inspiration from the radio house in Stockholm and spliced together a couple of office signature buildings from the Eastern European region pack. Another building was created by splicing together office buildings from the Chinese region pack. Added the TV studio (from the production chain DLC I think), a radio mast and a bit of parking as well. As the public broadcasting is critical infrastructure I built a wall with checkpoints around the perimetre.

The remaining land was developed into a grid. I would like to create a modern district there without highrises. I've filled in a handful of lots but it's hard to find the right assets for it.

Some panoramic views of the city. I like how organic the road layout is and that it's mostly medium density with some pockets of denser development. I do need to add a ton of single family housing though, got way too little of that. The population count is currently around 120,000.

Another new development is an expansion of the port. Previously it was almost exclusively an oil port, now I built a cargo terminal with train access and added a post sorting facility to it.

The new side entrance. I created a little turnaround area next to the gate, not sure what the purpose is but it looks fun.

A bunch of cars ready for export.