Cities: Skylines (the Sim City we deserve)

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I feel i've reached an impasse with C:S on the PS4. I've developed two cities now, the first with 145k and the second with about 80k and the thought of building up a new one doesn't seem like much of a challenge. The DLC i added more recently has helped extend its shelf life. I downloaded it midway through developing my second city so could still quite easily incorporate it (Industries, Park Life and Mass Transit) but once i'd maxed out each of the industries and the unique factories you can unlock, restructured the transit routes and maxed the various parks available, i couldn't think of anything else i wanted to achieve.

I've gone back to my first map - 9 tiles fully built up, and redeveloped the existing industrial areas with the DLC and squeezed in a few small parks where the odd packet of virgin land still existed, but i'm now running out of inspiration on this one too. I guess i could totally redevelop the transport infrastructure. The roads are not too bad but the rails are gridlocked and the harbors look more like the D-day landings (will defunding them help cut down the amount of trains and boats?) I've not explored the interchanges, monorails or airships yet, so i guess there's that, but given the lack of success i've had with ferries i'm not sure it's worthwhile.

I'm hoping they decide to port it to the PS5 with some fresh DLC based on some of the PC mods you guys talk about.
 
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@TheCracker

If you're not fussed about dealing with scenarios, then the campus DLC combined with using a different map might provide enough challenge for a new city. Fitting all the industry in as well as maxing the 3 university campuses might take a bit of planning.

As far as the PS5 goes, I wouldn't hold your breath. I've no idea what Colossal Order are planning, but I'd imagine at best you'll get a port with more DLC bundled - content creator packs maybe, but I'd be surprised if they bought in third party mods for the console. C:S2 integrating some of those features into the vanilla game might (hopefully) happen.
 
@TheCracker The D-day landing syndrome is because your ports access routes to several outside connections. Each port spawns one ship per outside connection per x units of time, so a port with 4 outside connections will spawn 4 times as many ships as a port with one outside connection. Same with airports and probably train stations as well.

In vanilla you can’t really do anything about the ships and planes, they depend on how the map creator has laid out the paths. You can probably do something about the trains though if you make sure that each train station only have access to one outside connection.
 
PJTierney
That's what I'm hoping happens eventually, as it seems every YouTuber who does Skylines content is using some form of traffic manager.
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Traffic manager is a mod you can enable and basically never use, it'll help with the traffic problems inherent in the vanilla AI even if you never use any of its other functions, but it slows the game down, and I believe CO wanted the game to run on a fairly modest spec computer. The features would be great in C:S2, but really, better AI would solve many of the problems vanilla players have. Same kind of idea with Industries rebalancing, population aging etc. etc.

When it comes to mods included in the next game, IMHO, they need to allow finer placement and movement of things (along with a tonne more assets). Stuff like Anarchy and MoveIt! effectively disable checking for collision/location, which effectively allows you to break the environment - I get they'd rather not let players do that, but it really needs finer adjustment, and readjustment, than we have now.

...

anyhow, C:S2 wishlists... that's an interesting topic.
 
MatskiMonk
anyhow, C:S2 wishlists... that's an interesting topic.
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*Rubs his hands with glee*

My only encounter with 'mods' on console games has been with Fallout 4 and even with Sony keeping a tight grip on what they'd let through i found them to ultimately cause more issues and clashes then the issues they tried to solve, so i'd be happy for a future console version of C:S to be mod-free.

I would however like to see: (on the vanilla game as i assume most of this is already available on PC via mods)

• A wider selection of assets in general, including much wider variety of older style buildings of differing eras for all residential, commercial and industrial areas so we can build cities that realistically appear to have grown organically over time rather than a Milton Keynes-style 'built overnight' city. Bridges of differing age-related styles too.

• The ability to place objects that require road access without having to build a road first. So annoying.

• A better selection of pre-made road junctions with built in intelligent traffic management, rather than the standard 3 and 4 way freeway junctions and small and large roundabouts that we have now. I'm sure this would solve a lot of the traffic issues that the current game experiences. It seems that the current game's roads have no communication between segments - lane discipline is like a free for all knee jerk reaction where traffic suddenly realizes it must come off at this next junction and swings across lanes rather than getting in lane well in advance. Although to be fair, as a British road user, this is fairly accurate IRL.

• A landscaping option that allows plain, undeveloped land to be not just grass. Sand, dirt, scrub land, marshes, rocky etc.

• The ability to place bodies of water for small streams and rivers or lakes and ponds rather than having them tied to coastal sea levels.

• Better management of ports and airports as well as finer tuning of buses and trains etc. A overhaul of the bus route system would be nice too. Something a bit more dynamic. I have so many unfinished line symbols on my maps from areas that i've gone back to tweak and somehow inexplicably broken a route...

• A finer level of adjustability when it comes to road, rail and path heights. Maybe some more delicate looking pre-rendered path walkways/bridges instead of the ones it creates currently. If they could just take up pavement space instead of eating into real estate blocks either side of the road. That would be great. They look fine in heavily urban areas when you're crossing a six-lane road, but in more rural/housing areas they just look clunky and heavy handed.
 
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I think part of what we see in terms of the visual of C:S, is a reflection of popular city builders of the past. The vanilla assets are a strange mix of surreal and functional, in no small part I'm sure due to games like SimCity. I think CO had a great base simulation but struggled for a 'look' initially, it should be clear that a lot of players seem to favour the more realistic and contemporary look - I hope this is something they embrace, simply looking at locale and time period gives an almost never ending set of assets and themes alone. Stuff like the game's Eden project building, and farms that look like they belong better in Blade Runner than the real world don't seem to be what the long term players embrace. Looking at the official C:S Instagram page, it's worth noting that they tend to showcase good clean realistic builds, both modded and vanilla.

Part of this look to the game, I think is due to the size of the developer when the game was launced. It's reported that modding was core to the design brief and was to be catered for and embraced. My opinion on this is that with a fairly small team, allowing the userbase to create the content they wanted would not only take care of a lot of the leg work for more assets, but also allow the developers to sit back and see what people added, because that would indicate what people wanted in future. Small team, big community can really pay off for them. But at launch they had something that look familiar to SimCity players.

I think there are a different types of player for the game;

The Functional Sandbox player (Biffa)
The Visual Sandbox player ($2.20, CWCW (in extremis))
The Progression player (wants to level-up, hear this bings, get rewarded with unlocks...)
The Scenario player (I love pressure, I eat it for breakfast...)
The Casual

I'd say I'm 60%/30%/9%/1%/0% in that order... the needs of all should be better addressed in the next game. And I'd say they can look at the current modding situation for ideas... there are different types of mod;

Improvements (life cycle balancer, industries balance etc.)
Base functionality extension (TM, EDS, Better Public Transport etc.)
Base visual extension (Node Controller, Lane Marking Tool etc.)
Anarchy/MoveIt/No Pillars (stop collision checks - allows you to 'break' the game -)
Heavy mods (Procedural Ojects)
UI mods (FindIt)

The improvements and UI mods should just be worked into the next game as better 'World AI'/'UI' to improve the simulation and the experience. Base functionality can be improved, but, it should be done in a fashion that doesn't make progression, or dealing with scenarios too laborious. Base visual extensions should be included as part of ingame functionality and people can use them or not. Anarchy and such like... well... in inexperienced or casual hands, they give you a glitchy mess... there really should be more control in the vanilla game, but I doubt we'd see full Anarchy going on. As for stuff like procedural objects - I'd take that as a DLC plug-in.

Really, my wishes for the next game, is broader, deeper, more detailed, with a structure around asset creation that very much sits within a "Function"/"Locale"/"Time" structure. Particular focus should be given to expanding the functionality of commercial, office and industry far beyond what we have now. The 'resolution' for the map should go from 8m to 4m or even 2m (a footpath being 2m, and everything scaled from there), and one specific thing... lots, and lots, and lots, and lots of networks!


... but that's just like, my two cents, man.
 
Yeah they really need to understand that a lot of people want realism. I'm not sure they've totally got it even with the late DLC when they're adding blimp lines and some of the wacky unique buildings.

Given that the majority of any realistic city will be dominated by low density housing that definitely needs a LOT more variety. Even after all the DLC you've only got two distinct options, vanilla and green cities. The latter is very nice looking, but an entire city with modern futuristic green buildings isn't realistic. The vanilla stuff ranges from OK to absurd looking.

You need extreme patience of deleting and waiting if you don't want your neighbourhood to be full of the one on the left here, which always seems to happen to me.

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Or the square house on the far right, usually in bright red or blue.

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Oh, and these things.

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Wherein the world did they get those designs from?

I think one major thing they could change for the future/sequel is the ability to build an entirely inland city, with the ability to get water from outside the map. Having to design every city around some sort of coastline is quite restricting, especially when so many of the vanilla maps makes the river/sea a major feature you can't ignore.
 
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Well I started on the new highway project. It’s going to take a while to complete it, didn’t realise how many things I’d have to move around or redesign :boggled:

The actual highway and the three new junctions are finished, most of the main roads are complete as well. I have one huge farm area to redesign plus a small village to relocate.

And then I imagine I will have a bus line spaghetti to untangle :D
 
Samus
I think one major thing they could change for the future/sequel is the ability to build an entirely inland city, with the ability to get water from outside the map. Having to design every city around some sort of coastline is quite restricting, especially when so many of the vanilla maps makes the river/sea a major feature you can't ignore.
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I think it would be possible in the vanilla game with DLC's, theoretically at least. Water towers can provide water... sewage I think needs Green Cities or Sunset Harbour to get an inland water treatment facility.
 
MatskiMonk
I think it would be possible in the vanilla game with DLC's, theoretically at least. Water towers can provide water... sewage I think needs Green Cities or Sunset Harbour to get an inland water treatment facility.
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Probably, but that would be...a lot of towers. Could just do with an off map river and pipes bringing it in. Same with an option for bringing in oil by pipeline, not 4000 lorries.
 
Samus
Probably, but that would be...a lot of towers. Could just do with an off map river and pipes bringing it in.
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Yup, I hear you on that. Water towers were my favoured option as I really don't like the vanilla water pumping station, but you do end up with a lot of them. I'd often just chuck them in the middle of roundabouts as decoration! There's obviously more options on the workshop though. The sewage issue bugged me even more, always ending up with a literal river of **** somewhere in your city is downer!
 
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MatskiMonk
Yup, I hear you on that. Water towers were my favoured option as I really don't like the vanilla water pumping station, but you do end up with a lot of them. I'd often just chuck them in the middle of roundabouts as decoration! There's obviously more options on the workshop though. The sewage issue bugged me even more, always ending up with a literal river of **** somewhere in your city is downer!
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Same here. For my island project I’m only using the water towers and the inland water treatment facilities. The three biggest towns/cities have one big water tower each, while the smaller towns and villages just have the small water tower.

I try to place the water towers near the highest point of each town, it seems like the most realistic location. I guess by extension the water treatment facilities should be located near the lowest point, but I usually just place them where I think they fit visually.
 
Yeah I don't really get why they never introduced a more expensive but more efficient and compact water pump at later milestones, like other aspects. Having to just keep introducing more and more of the original one until you end up with 10 to 20 of them filling your shoreline is not ideal. Imagine if power was that way, and you had 50 coal power plants by the end!
 
MatskiMonk
@eran0004 did you ever consider block services assets to solve your 'smaller island' issue?
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I haven't, but I think that even if it works, it would look weird to constantly have garbage trucks and hearses driving around in such a small space.

What I need is some kind of ferry that can take service vehicles from the main island. Hoping it will come in the next expansion :D

Edit: I saw a suggestion that service vehicles could be given a secret tunnel to the island (hiding the tunnel exit inside a building), so I’m giving that a try now. I built up a tiny community on the island and will let it run for a while to see if it works properly.
 
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So I returned to the smaller island to try out the tunnel "ferry" system. In the screenshot below you can see how it works. The tunnel entrance is placed inside an industrial warehouse building that I've converted to a procedural object. The tunnel is only open for service vehicles, emergency vehicles and cargo vehicles. Apparently it's also open for pedestrians, at least I assume that's the reason why I found an old demented man wandering around in the darkness, all by himself.

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So far the tunnel works pretty good. The only flaw is that the water pumping trucks have found an exploit where they can create infinite business opportunities for themselves. If they go to the tunnel entrance and start their pumps, the suction is so strong that as soon as they leave the area, the tunnel is instantly flooded from the momentum of the sea water, which means that more pumping trucks are being spawned, and the vicious circle goes on and on. After deleting pumping trucks for a while the ocean now seems to have calmed down,

One peculiar thing seems to be that taxi cars can go through the tunnel if they don't carry any passengers, which lead to this world record of unnecessary taxi journeys. Instead of crossing the road by foot, this tourist called a taxi from the main island to pick him up and drive him across the road. Although to be fair they did take the scenic route around the car park...

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Not had much time.. but;

Started a new low density residential area in Cooper County (or Coopershire as it maybe will be called) using UK style assets. These don't come with any props, which is handy in one respect, but means until I go through and add hedges, fences, trees and garden furniture it looks a bit sparse. The 3-story blocks of flats look a lot like a place I once lived. They're designed for the RICO mod I think, so they're not residential here, but each one conceals 8-10 low density residential block service cubes. Still trying to bump up the population so I can expand Commercial and Industry. Think I'm at about 1800 now.

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Built a multiplex. I'm wanting to fill space, but I had this awkward area so I kept messing with this until it fit with no gaps. Vanilla Cinema (Functional), the additional 'wings' housing the additional screen as PO version of a vanilla Mall shrunk down, with a wall network around the edge to conceal all the windows.

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Slowly tidying up the industrial area. Going slowly because of worker issues.
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Here is the island again, with some more details added to it. The small chapel is actually an asset that's supposed to go together with a palace, but I think it looks great on its own as well. The island has become pretty popular, the ferry takes 20 passengers per trip on average.

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I found a version of the European suburbia buildings with alternative decorations, and since I'm not subscribed to those props they show up in the game without them. Great for placing them more freely, without the hedges that they normally come with. I took advantage of this by putting the houses closer together on the small island (looking at reference pictures, at places like these the houses tend to almost sit on top of each other). I also spent some time detailing the gardens in between the houses, imagining where trees and bushes would be planted to achieve at least some level of privacy.

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I especially enjoyed making this little terrace, shared between two housholds.
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I'm a bit disappointed about the lack of good power lines on the workshop. There's a handful of nice pylons, but only one content creator has made the wires thin enough. The rest of the them are so thick that you can see the wires from miles away. Sadly, the ones with the thin wires are too tall for me, ranging from 70 meters to 130, so in the end I had to settle for a version with the thick wires. It's still an upgrade from the vanilla lines, but it would be so much better with thinner wires.

I also subscribed to the Node Spacer mod. It makes it possible to edit the distance between nodes when building power lines (and roads, or other networks). So with the new power line asset and that mod I rebuild my power transmission lines with 240 meters between the pylons (the vanilla setting is 96 meters). It looks a lot better I think.

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I also tested to load the save with the winter theme enabled. In general it looks pretty good, but the performance was quite bad. Not sure if it's because of all the sprites covering the ground or if it's because of the snowfall effects. I'll probably return to my normal map theme, but I'm thinking that my next project should be a winter city.
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Edit: This channel is quickly becoming a favourite of mine. A city planner playing Cities Skylines. I find the road layouts interesting, plus all the comments about it. And things like “oh we need to reorient this high school, that would never happen” :lol:

 
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eran0004
Edit: This channel is quickly becoming a favourite of mine. A city planner playing Cities Skylines. I find the road layouts interesting, plus all the comments about it. And things like “oh we need to reorient this high school, that would never happen” :lol:

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I started watching some of his videos a couple of weeks ago. I think I am about 5-6 videos into one of his first cities so far. :)
 

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