Cities: Skylines (the Sim City we deserve)

  • Thread starter Akira AC
  • 1,530 comments
  • 129,967 views
I really want Mass Transit for the two lane highways more than anything, it's tricky trying to create a realistic Nordic city with only a dual carriageway running through/around it, not motorways, because the only option is the regular two lane road with a 40mph limit the cims all try to ignore it and take the 60mph roads branching off them because they're faster.

The one-way industry road is pretty nice highway substitute, although not very Nordic in style. Not sure what the speed limit is on those.
 
The one-way industry road is pretty nice highway substitute, although not very Nordic in style. Not sure what the speed limit is on those.
The small two lane roads are all only 40, every kind. I really need those two lane highways but I'm holding out for a sale.

https://skylines.paradoxwikis.com/Roads#List_of_road_types

It's actually doing ok at the moment, no major traffic issues, just slow moving obviously.

It also means I can't use the single lane highway exits to get off the dual carriageway because then the silly cims ALL exit and re-enter via it because it's faster in terms of speed than just staying on. A fun quirk I soon discovered.
 
Last edited:
It also means I can't use the single lane highway exits to get off the dual carriageway because then the silly cims ALL exit and re-enter via it because it's faster in terms of speed than just staying on. A fun quirk I soon discovered.

In vanilla you can still have stop signs if you set whatever road the single lane highway exits onto as a priority road. This might slow it down enough to stop the cims from using the exits in preference to the highway.
 
In vanilla you can still have stop signs if you set whatever road the single lane highway exits onto as a priority road. This might slow it down enough to stop the cims from using the exits in preference to the highway.

Yeah I tried that, didn't work and just created a huge backed up line.

BTW I know there is the unlimited oil cheat but without that is it normal that the oil deposits are depleted in about 45 minutes real time!? I'm fine with them being a finite resource but I didn't expect it to disappear that quickly!
 
BTW I know there is the unlimited oil cheat but without that is it normal that the oil deposits are depleted in about 45 minutes real time!? I'm fine with them being a finite resource but I didn't expect it to disappear that quickly!
It does deplete very quickly, and unrealistically on the PC too. I didn't want to use a Mod to overcome that, but otherwise it is virtually not worth the time taken to create the Oil industrial area. :guilty: :rolleyes: I used to go back and 'paint' the Oil back in occasionally, but found a setting that does not let resources deplete. I think that was part of the Mod, and not the game settings, but not 100% sure, and can't check atm. I'm sure someone will have said if it were a default in game option though.
 
Yeah, oil (and ore I think has the same issue?) is a bit of a mess. Don't know if it's actually possible to make a profit from oil industry without using the unlimited resources cheat?

Over at the island of Atlandia, the metro line had an upgrade. I found a nice metro track with rendered tunnels on the workshop and decided to rebuild about half of the line. I wasn't happy about having a tunnel all the way to the airport so I built a new track on ground level where the track leaves the city. I also found a rendered underground metro station that I decided to use in the city. It has a pretty big footprint compared to the vanilla underground station, and it more or less requires a 32 m wide road, but in the end I managed to find two good locations for it.

I recorded a metro ride between the end stations. It starts at the "industry town" that doesn't have a name yet, the first stop is in the beach resort town that I can't remember the name of. Second stop is the city center of St Priaulx Port and the third stop is the university/government/hospital area in that same city. Final stop is next to the airport.



Thinking of building one more town on the north-east coast of the island and extend the metro line there but I haven't made up my mind about that yet.

Here is a link to the metro station:
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2223920974

And to the track:
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2101024883
 
I like the station under the bridge eran. Very good use of space. :)

I'm still loving the Pedestrian Bridge Builder mod. It occasionally does some mad things depending on the size and inputs to a round about, but sometimes it does something great. I don't think I could have done this path looping under the road. :)
Cities_ Skylines 18_09_2020 15_30_11 edit resize.jpg


Not sure if I have shown this one, but I liked the way the centre of this city looked. :) This is triangular junction bridges linked together a plaza in a round about.

Screenshot resize.jpg


I am doing my usual thing of playing a Scenario, and then carrying on after I won, and the map I'm on had a lot of small districts/industrial areas. Part of the scenario was to get 1m Cims travel by public transport.

I built up some areas, but because of the way the some of the original areas were designed, and what I did, there was space behind the buildings. The money was trickling in though. So I filled the spaces with trees to make it look a bit better, and the income increased by a huge amount. :eek: In no time at all I went from a steady 150k to 2.5m. The rate eased off after that, but I couldn't believe the effect because I did a load of areas with trees in one go. :)
 
@redhed17 Wow, that pedestrian loop is really cool! And the city centre is nice with all the green areas. If you spend some time detailing the empty areas (i.e. adding paths and trees) it will be a great contrast to all the skyscrapers surrounding it :) If I remember correctly it should be possible to connect a path to the paths in a park.
 
I had a big roundabout handling all the traffic along the highway and to the port. It worked okay-ish but I figured I could do better so I demolished it and started building an intersection instead. I say started, because it took a long time and I didn't get to finish it yet...

Skärmbild (970).png

This is how it looks at the moment:

Skärmbild (977).png


The game was still on pause, which is why some trucks were parked where the old roundabout used to be. At the center of the intersection there is a segment with reversed lanes, not sure if it's the most efficient configuration but it makes some sense in my mind at least. The main road connects to the harbor, because that's where most traffic wants to go. The southern highway connection makes a little loop and joins the intersection at an angle.

During the construction I learned that the Node Controller mod is actually way more powerful than I though. You can basically customize each radius of an intersection independently and you can also shift roads to the side to make them connect better in complex intersections (you can even scale the roads and make them wider or narrower!). This discovery is pretty much why the construction is taking so long, because I ended up finetuning each connection. I'm still not done, I want to replace one segment of the six-lane road with an assymetrical 2+3 lane and I have one or two more turns that I want to make a bit smoother.
 
It's fair to say that getting the best out of some of these more powerful tools is very time consuming.

I've stared on Version 3 of the city I've been working on, which I've decided to call Cooper County, since I never liked the default Rockwood name. In the last hour, I've built half of the first junction to provide an off-ramp into a Logging area (I'm starting with an industry and a small local town).

Creating a junction:
Vanilla -> Click, Click. Click, Click. Click, Click. Click, Click. Click, Click. Done, about 20 seconds.
with MoveIt mod -> about a minute.
with MoveIt, Procedural Objects -> 15 minutes.
With MoveIt, Procedural Objects, Node Tools -> 25 minutes
With MoveIt, Procedural Objects, Node Tools, Junction markings -> 45 minutes
With MoveIt, Procedural Objects, Node Tools, Junction markings, and a bunch of props, decals and assets you can't find -> 60 minutes

Going to order my new PC next week so I'm going big and detailed with Cooper County... I think I may have been underestimating how long that will take!
 
Creating a junction:
Vanilla -> Click, Click. Click, Click. Click, Click. Click, Click. Click, Click. Done, about 20 seconds.
with MoveIt mod -> about a minute.
with MoveIt, Procedural Objects -> 15 minutes.
With MoveIt, Procedural Objects, Node Tools -> 25 minutes
With MoveIt, Procedural Objects, Node Tools, Junction markings -> 45 minutes
With MoveIt, Procedural Objects, Node Tools, Junction markings, and a bunch of props, decals and assets you can't find -> 60 minutes

That is so true! Add Traffic Manager into the mix with timed traffic lights as well :D

The end result is pretty nice though, definitely worth the time.

Here is the intersection, pretty much finished now. Just going to add some detailing to it. The flow is pretty nice and I like the organic shape of it.



I also figured out a new method of building small roundabouts with the Node Controller mod. It's basically just a square with a one-lane road from the workshop and then I have used the Node Controller mod to make the corners a bit smoother. I couldn't make it perfectly round since the road segments don't work properly if they are too short but I think it's round enough to fool the eye.

Skärmbild (979).png


Looking at the map of the city I also remembered that I renamed one of the forest industries to Chapman's Dysfunctional Logging Co. The reason being that all of their timber went straight to export while the timber they needed for their own sawmill they simply imported. I think the situation has improved since then, but the name remains. Oh, and Chapman was the name of the cim that worked as a manager there at the time :D

Skärmbild (980).png
 
So @eran0004 based on those images I take it there is a mod on PC to remove the crosswalks, visually? Could really do with that on PS4, European cities look silly with crosswalks on every single junction.
 
That is so true! Add Traffic Manager into the mix with timed traffic lights as well :D

The end result is pretty nice though, definitely worth the time.

Here is the intersection, pretty much finished now. Just going to add some detailing to it. The flow is pretty nice and I like the organic shape of it.
I like the traffic going through, but I'm not sure about the bottom junction where traffic has to do a larger than 90 degree turn right, or even do a u-turn right. Seems to be working for you though, and all looks like a more real looking intersection. :)
 
Last edited:
So @eran0004 based on those images I take it there is a mod on PC to remove the crosswalks, visually? Could really do with that on PS4, European cities look silly with crosswalks on every single junction.

Yes, both visually and functionally. You can also add crosswalks in the middle of the road which is very useful.
 
So...

Trying to get stuck into Cooper County. I'm noticing though, that manually placing everything appears to be causing far more headaches in regards of demand and employment than via zoning. I've also noticed quite a few glitches with the lane marking mod, the fillers don't seem to show up all the time. Neither carriageway on this junction would display them on this side of the bridge, but both worked going the other way. It says it's there, but it's not visible.

Screenshot 116.png





Anyhow..

I have a thing for logging yards.... must be the Twin Peaks fan in me...

Screenshot 117.png
 
Downloaded a crane from the workshop and created a construction site. It's actually a small ore industry area, because I wanted the workers and the equipment plus the occasional truck driving to the site. Placed some props over it to create the foundation of a building and then scattered some materials, containers and sheds around it.

Skärmbild (993).png


I've also noticed quite a few glitches with the lane marking mod, the fillers don't seem to show up all the time. Neither carriageway on this junction would display them on this side of the bridge, but both worked going the other way. It says it's there, but it's not visible.

Did you use the Node Controller on this junction by any chance? I noticed that sometimes when I have disabled flat junctions the texture kind of sinks through the road, but the chevron pattern always seem to display properly.

The logging yard looks great!
 
Did you use the Node Controller on this junction by any chance? I noticed that sometimes when I have disabled flat junctions the texture kind of sinks through the road, but the chevron pattern always seem to display properly.

I think I may have done, the whole junction is on a slope (actually the whole map is, which is a pain sometimes), so the road is very uneven anyway... I'm pretty sure I did all the exits/entrances the same though.

The logging yard looks great!
Totally agree. 👍 :)

Ta. It's alright, I'm getting there with navigating the mods and assets etc. so I expect things will get better. So far pretty much everything I've put down has been customised in some way. Garbage, Police, Schools, Water processing etc.
 
Watching Overcharged Egg detailing his vanilla PC city I've noticed that for some reason even that is different on console. He can easily stick the ground foliage around trees and rocks, directly over them, whereas on console you get the 'space already occupied' error. Same for merging/placing two different rocks or bushes together. Everything has to be distanced apart.

For instance:



On console once those trees and bushes are down there is no way you'd get any of the undergrowth in.

Sucks, he had some nice ideas to take inspiration from. Areas just have to be a little more sparse on console.
 
Skärmbild (1009).png


The island of Atlandia has now gone oval, with the construction of a Daytona-style racetrack. A lot of editing with the Node Controller mod to achieve the banked corners and the shape of the pit lane.

Skärmbild (1008).png
Skärmbild (1007).png

Skärmbild (1010).png

Skärmbild (1004).png

^ Added some windmills as a nod to Route X.

Skärmbild (1011).png

^ I enjoy walking around the track in first-person view and watch the cars go around. The formula cars is technically a bus line.

Skärmbild (1012).png
Skärmbild (1013).png

^ Behind the pitlane there's a small amusement park. Fun for the whole family :D
 
Can you get cars to actually drive on it?

The F1 cars on the pictures go around it. Technically it's a bus line with an F1 car replacing the bus model.

There is also an access road connecting to the pit lane so theoretically any car in the city can enter the track. There is a restaurant next to the access road and anyone who visits that would then do a lap around the circuit before going home. So far I have only seen two garbage trucks and a police car do it.

I knew you'd build a race track as soon as I saw you mention camber control @eran0004 :lol:

I have been missing the course maker of GT6 for too long :lol:
 
Increased the acceleration and braking values of the F1 bus line and found that it made them take more of a racing line around the bends :gtpflag:

Skärmbild (1016).png
Skärmbild (1014).png
 
Well, with no word on GT7 and it not looking like there's any launch titles I want for the PS5, I've just ordered £2k's worth of new PC... basically for playing Cities: Skylines (for now at least).

Pressure is now on to produce something a cut above what I have been doing! I'm looking forward to having a frame rate in the double figures, and not having to listen to the system fans trying their hardest to propel the tower off my desk! The goal, a detailed 25 tile fully functional county area comprising multiple towns, villages etc. I'd go 81 tile since that's what a lot of people seem to do, but the 81 tile causes functionality problems with outside connections and industry demands.

PC is a Ryzen 9 3900 with Geforce 2080 Super GPU, X570 Gaming Board, 32 Gb of RAM (it's only 3200MHz, but stock of 3600MHz seems to be sparse - I may upgrade next year) and a 512 M2 SSD, with 6TB of other storage across two drives. Decided not to wait for the 3000 series cards, I started looking in to them and it reminded me why I hate looking into PC stuff! so sod it, 2080 is better than what I was looking at...

 
I started building the new town on the northern point of the island. It's situated on a hillside overlooking the sea so even though the buildings are relatively low the elevation of the terrain will create an interesting skyline. I like the curves of the road network here. At the northernmost point of the map I placed a castle ruin, imagining that this used to be the main settlement on the island before the industrial era. The train (metro) line also terminates here.

Skärmbild (1027).png
Skärmbild (1026).png
Skärmbild (1024).png
Skärmbild (1023).png
Skärmbild (1020).png
 
Back