Cities: Skylines (the Sim City we deserve)

I can recommend watching the entire series, it’s really nice

 

So, this may demonstrate my current demand issue...



To maintain steady growth I'm having to slash taxes.

If the peasants keep on like this, I'm gonna smack 'em with a meteorite and a Tsunami!

edit:

Also, despite habitually hitting F1 to quicksave every 20 minutes or so, I seem to have lost yesterdays expansion to my industrial rail export network, an entire Ore industrial zone, and a bunch of local fishing industry, plus a bunch of new roads. Bugger.

 

I set the Tax at 12%, the highest they will take without complaining, and mostly leave it there. Occasionally I may ramp up to max Tax if I am close to running out of money in a Scenario, or need cash quickly to buy something.

I have just built two huge areas and may see if lowering the Taxes will stimulate some building. I'm in no hurry really though, but still worth seeing what effect changing the Tax may have. I have won the Scenario I was on, and have 2m+ in the bank, so now just expanding.

 

I'm at 6% for residential, 9% for everything else.

 

I have been working on improving the mountain. I came up with a polygon-based workflow where I basically draw triangles with the road tool to define the faces of the mountain, then use the smooth terrain tool to morph the terrain into the face of the polygon. The last step is to demolish the roads so that just the terrain remains. It gives a sharp and well-defined appearance which can be hard to achieve by just using the vanilla terrain brush.

The Fine Road Tool and Fine Road Anarchy mods are probably needed to allow the road to form straight lines between the endpoints. MoveIt can be used as well, but it takes a bit more time to select all the nodes.

 

Interesting technique @eran0004. I thought I'd try something similar to build a hill/mountain for the 'Castle of Lord Chirpwick' to sit atop... seemed to work, but didn't look as good as yours, which looks very 'natural'... but then I do lack patience to tweak these things.

 

I add some creases to the mountains, that makes them look more realistic. It's basically the same method, I draw some "valleys" by letting the road carve into the hillside and some ridges by letting the road extend. Then using the soften terrain tool to apply these elevations to the terrain.

Drawing the roads and adjusting the elevation with MoveIt:


The result after applying the soften terrain tool and removing the roads:

 

Disaster strikes as St Priaulx Port oil depot catches fire. The political opposition accuses the government of neglecting fire safety.


To distract the voters, the government decided to build a little seaside resort town, with inspiration mainly taken from Mallorca.


The map.

 

Priaulx is absolutely on fire!

I miss the WTCC days

 

How's the demand looking on the demand meter? Could try reducing Light Residential tax for a bit, if demand looks low.

I've occasionally had to put power-lines into an area before anything will start spawning, but I think that was a glitch.

 

Prog rock must be good for land value

Once buildings have spawned you can obviously 'doze the power lines for more space and a better look.

 

Yep all the old people have the money.

 

I've just been looking to see if there are anything new worth adding and found this. I'm tempted to use it.

 

Interestingly, the style fits very well together with some of the unique buildings from the base game, like the High Interest Tower

 

I found some really good roads on the workshop! I only tried the country roads so far, but they are just what I have been looking for. Really well made, blends perfectly with the vanilla roads. No zebra crossings, sidewalks or streetlights, people can walk on the side. Bus stops are modelled as well.

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2056021436

 

Playing with limited funds is so much better than just building in sandbox mode. The island map has made me realise how closely linked the economy is to the infrastructure. All my external trade goes via the port and when the traffic backs up there the economy quickly grinds to a halt. The current configuration works pretty nicely, there are two one-way loops - one for each cargo terminal. The weak point is the intersection at the bottom of the picture below, I had to make sure to set up the timed traffic lights (TMPE mod) so that the inflow of trucks is roughly equal to the outflow of trucks.



I had to set up a timed traffic light (TMPE mod) in the intersection to make sure the inflow of trucks is roughly equal to the outflow of trucks.

The roundabout below is another bottleneck. The port basically has three different areas and the roundabout is the link between all of them plus the main entrance into the port. I should probably build a road so that traffic within the port can bypass this roundabout, not sure if I have the space for that though. If nothing else works I guess I could just build a tunnel from one end to the other.


There is a new custom-built bus terminal next to the passenger ship terminals. For the bus lanes I used the country lane road I downloaded from the workshop yesterday (in the top picture you can also see them being used in the container area).


The island now has an airport as well. I haven't spent any time decorating it yet, apart from an approach landing system I got from the workshop. Since the runway is rather short I opted for the STOL-capable Avro RJ to operate these flights. There is a metro line from the airport to the city center via the university campus. Last stop is the beach resort. I didn't realise how expensive it was to build metro tunnels and ran out of cash about 100 meters short of completing the line.

 

I've been doing my usual thing of starting with a Scenario, and then carrying on when I've won the Scenario if it is a good map that inspires me. Everything has been going great, got the city up 100k+ and 6m credits. I have rail cargo and sea cargo, which have been working perfectly, and then all of a sudden, both start getting backed up even when they are on opposite sides of the map. I think it seems to happen around the same time, population wise, on every map I have done recently. I've had to disable both cargo depots. Thankfully the money is still coming in at a healthy rate.

Something positive on this map has been a lack of death waves. Not sure if it is because I am building districts in a better and more measured way, or just something the game is doing. But hope it lasts. I'm at a point where I am running out of inspiration for new districts, but I now have 8m credits so anything is possible.

A shout out for a nice little Bamboo covered station I saw in someone's YT video recently, maybe Biffa's. It looks really sharp and nice, and I love that you can see through the Bamboo roof. Well done to christinayan for designing and creating it.

 

Try building a second rail cargo in another part of the map to spread out the traffic a bit. If you have one big industrial area you could build cargo stations at each end.

Same with the sea cargo, but just keep in mind that it solves truck traffic rather than ship traffic. Ship spawning seems to be controlled by the number of ports and the number of outside ship connections rather than the demand for goods so if you have a maritime traffic jam then it won’t help the situation.

For example, I have two cargo ports, two passenger ports and four outside ship connections and the sea is so crowded that it looks like an invasion is imminent. Thinking about letting the coastal artillery open fire on them.

 

I'm not worried about the number of ships, I would prefer them not to overlap with each other, but that is another thing, it is the vehicles which suddenly becomes a problem, and it is weird that you would think with two cargo hubs, one may get busy before the other because I may build around one of them, but both seem to have got busy at the same time. And again, the number of trucks seemingly increased to both hubs at the same time, so the number of total trucks increased massively for what looks like no obvious reason. The trains especially seem to start leaving without being filled, with some 20% and below, and sometimes single figures. Don't fully fill the trains, and more traffic seem inevitable. I will probably play about with adding other hubs, but if the game keeps not filling trains, I may just get traffic problems somewhere else. I'll have to see. It depends in what direction I go in with regards to buying new squares to fill.

As you can see below, the hubs are spread out, and atm nowhere clear to put any new hubs. The hub at the sea, has had two areas either side of it recently, but that wouldn't explain the other hub getting saturated with traffic, as there is a lot of space around it as it is at the edge of an oil field and at the edge of the map.


I've really liked this map though, and in the open areas there are subtle changes in elevation which look great at street level with the roads rising and falling as you move around some districts.

Just as an aside, with regards to oil reserves, why does the oil get used up so quickly. If oil run out so quickly anywhere near real life at that speed, and it would not be financially viable to build. It seems out of step with the forest and farming, though obviously a renewable resources, but even so, there have been small oil . I've had to resort to manually putting the oil back into the ground to keep it going, which doesn't feel right, but there you go.

 

Try separating the tracks so that the cargo train terminals connect to one neighbouring city each. That should reduce the incoming traffic at least.

The rapidly depleting resources is a problem. I would prefer if it took like 100 years or so, that would feel more realistic. The game comes with a mod that allows you to have permanent resources, I have that toggled on in my current city.

 

I don't think it is the traffic coming in that is the problem, more suddenly having a lot of stuff that needs to go out, and trains leaving virtually empty most of the time. Trains and boats are coming into the city full. It seems to happen at some point in every city I have done, so it must be something in the game. I'll have to have a think what to do next, as there are a few directions I can expand into, but it is what to build when I expand.

Thanks for the suggestions though. I will try various things to combat the problem and see what, if anything works. Atm I'm making money and could leave the cargo hubs turned off to 'fix' the problem that way.

I want to try and play within a vanilla game, though with mods, which is why I start with a Scenario atm, and then carry it on, so there are rules in place, but try and have it work logically as much as possible. The oil just runs out too quickly though, and the only way out for me is to put it back.

 

@redhed17

I assume you're playing with your traffic driving on the left?

 

No, I stick with the traffic on the right because most assets are designed for that if there is a preference by the designer. I like to get different interesting road junctions.

In my mind none of the maps I have worked on has resembled the UK in any way, so it is easier to see them as foreign country's with the vehicles driving on the 'wrong' side of the road.

 

Lol, I can't get junctions right unless the traffic is on the 'proper' side of the road!

It's always worth checking that traffic doesn't have to cross itself to get in or out of Cargo terminals. I'm not sure if the assets account for the difference or not. The other thing to check is to try and figure out why there's so much stuff. Is it imports or exports, and if it's imports, is it stuff you could be making in your city.

Anyway, Rockwood is mostly self-sufficient, only 256 tonnes import versus 24,000 tonnes export - to service that, I have road, rail, sea and air links...

Most of my cargo terminals have some form of traffic sponge (i.e. a windy bit of road to allow for a bit of a tail-back without blocking a junction, and they're nearly always one way.

TSO-RYO Railfreight handles two stations on an internal only loop around my map, and one that links to the outside. The roadway has no links, so even when it's rammed it causes no other tailbacks! I added to the road underground on the left, the road's now long enough to keep a silly amount of traffic moving:



This Air Cargo terminal was designed to alleviate some of the traffic from the Train Cargo next to a local oil field:



... and the rail cargo down and to the left abit:



This cargo station is in the middle of some unique factories, the 'sponge' is underground...





Metro and helicopter depot serving a passenger airport, opposite Air/Rail Cargo... this area gets pretty busy, but even with junctions close together it never really backs up any worse than this:




The least favourite part of my map... it needs detailing since it's supposed to be farm and agriculture, but it looks pretty bad at the moment... The grain silo asset makes a ridiculous amount of traffic, keep it set to empty unless you've really planned for it!




Again, all roads feeding into this one are one way, and go through a 'sponge'...




This one's probably more complex than it needs to be, the train tracks enable trains to come and go in either directions without crossing the path of another train, didn't help that there was a road and different railway line between the terminal and the correct track:




Again, a 'sponge' and dedicated tracks for either direction in a forestry zone:



.and the same in at 'ole Henge Mountain Ore...




McEwans Sea Freight doesn't need a sponge since it mostly gets its stuff by rail...




So that's how I export 24,000 tonnes with very few traffic jams...

edit: forgot this one, it doesn't have dedicated tracks for each direction and has been a pain in the ass because of it...





... and yes... Ships overlapping is rubbish... 5 ships at once...

 

I switched on my inland cargo hub to try and see where the traffic was coming from, and this time the traffic backed up even more and quicker, and it seemed that nearly all traffic was coming from outside of the map from the opposite side. Not much I can do to combat that.

I spent last night adding a large Metro loop under a couple of districts, and linking a few loops in a more efficient way to lessen the overall traffic a bit.

And speaking of Metro, I normally use this Metro Station just for the look of it by rawberth. When I want to link metro loops I use some stations with multiple lines below by Cyterion. They can sometimes be a little tricky with some lines being a bit funny with not taking some lines, but when they work they are very efficient in getting people between the different metro lines. Just a pity they are a bit boring above ground. Just seen he has new versions, so I don't know if they are different above ground.

 

A truck heading towards that cargo station in that case would show as "Exporting goods from (other town name)", I guess this would be fairly unusual. You could perhaps build a dedicated area in the far right tile on the middle row, and connect the cargo station to the line that comes down to the passenger station... then join it it to the main highway via it's own junction.... you could also connect the cargo port to the main highway directly too. edit: both these dedicated connections could also have tolls too.

 

The intersection marking tool mod just got a great update! Now it’s possible to use it to create stop lines, as well as filling areas between lines to created forbidden areas. With some creativity you could also use it to create crosswalks.

 

@eran0004 Any particular mods, assets or tools you'd recommended for texturing the ground differently in general?