Cities: Skylines (the Sim City we deserve)

[Dobermann92]

Yeah I like those too

As I was watching DLC reviews of Cities:Skylines, the Mass Transit DLC seemed mandatory for my taste, although I heard that mods can substitute for most of it. It would be over my budget (10 euros), but only a little bit (13,48 euros for both).

 

[RodSk8Dude]

Played this game quite a bit. I have to say, if one day it was possible for there to be a "Streets of Cities Skylines", we would be set. (I mean, to truly be "set", I guess it would have to be "Streets of Cities Skylines" + Beam.NG-like physics + Automation car imports)

 

[raven214]

Well, I managed to make it through the weekend, telling myself not to get this game. But I finally convinced myself last night to get it on XBox. I don't know when I'll get a computer, so why not enjoy all this building goodness in the meantime!?

The game looks great. I'm sure it looks even better on PC, but considering my first builder was SimCity 2000 in the '90's the graphics and options on console are still staggering! I couldn't have imagined a builder looking this good way back then.

A problem I always have is being too much of a perfectionist and never being happy with my city. Now that I can place curved roads it's even worse lol! I have to relearn how to design things because curves change everything (to play off the tagline 'seasons change everything' of Forza Horizon 4).

There are so many maps and so many options! I went with a temperate map and just "flew" around the camera for a while before getting to work. I've already re-layed my main road once, and after about 3 hours of play last night I'm thinking of restarting the whole thing lol. Too many ideas and wanting it to be too perfect. I can't help myself.

Watching the first residents move into my city - seeing them drive up, get out of their cars and walk into the houses - that was really cool. The first sunset was breathtaking!! I'll try to share some pics once I settle on my layout better (if I ever do!).

 

[RodSk8Dude]

[...]I'm sure it looks even better on PC[...]

On a good one it does I guess. Mine is a dual-core with 1gb of vram, so not the optimal setup for the game.

Still, I can't complain. It looks decent (although I never got a very big city so I don't know how it would run then)

 

[eran0004]

Came back home yesterday after a month away, decided to make some spaghetti.

 

[R55NA]

Such a chill game, loved my time with it.

Planet Coaster was fantastic too, cant wait for Planet Zoo!

 

[eran0004]

I noticed that there was a bit of a traffic jam with the trains, so I had to build a second track to the central station, and I also added a track bypassing the station so that cargo trains wouldn't have to wait there.

Below, some street-level views and an overview of the entire city:


Edit: Oh, and I had to rotate the airport around 10 degrees clockwise, because I noticed that the runway was pointing straight at a mountain...

 

[Populuxe]

I noticed that there was a bit of a traffic jam with the trains, so I had to build a second track to the central station, and I also added a track bypassing the station so that cargo trains wouldn't have to wait there.

View attachment 841400

Below, some street-level views and an overview of the entire city:
View attachment 841401 View attachment 841402 View attachment 841403

Edit: Oh, and I had to rotate the airport around 10 degrees clockwise, because I noticed that the runway was pointing straight at a mountain...

I would live there.

 

[Dobermann92]

I noticed that there was a bit of a traffic jam with the trains, so I had to build a second track to the central station, and I also added a track bypassing the station so that cargo trains wouldn't have to wait there.

View attachment 841400

Below, some street-level views and an overview of the entire city:
View attachment 841401 View attachment 841402 View attachment 841403

Edit: Oh, and I had to rotate the airport around 10 degrees clockwise, because I noticed that the runway was pointing straight at a mountain...

Also you can't have enough roundabouts

 

[eran0004]

Also you can't have enough roundabouts

It almost feels like a cheat to use them, because they can cope with so much traffic. But on the other hand, I guess that’s why they are so popular in the real world too

Anyway, I saw a video where Biffa Plays Indie Games did some experiments with a diverging diamond intersection, so I decided to convert one of my dumbbell interchanges to a diverging diamond. So that's two fewer roundabouts in my city now

My divering diamond is pretty compact though, because as I was sketching the intersection I realised it could be simplified quite a lot while retaining the same functionality.

It works pretty well, it's fun to play around with the timed traffic lights, and it looks cool

 

[AlvaroF]

@eran0004 your cities look fantastic!

 

[eran0004]

I wasn't too happy with the port, so I demolished a great chunk of it and rebuilt it with a new layout. I noticed that the highway was mostly used by trucks going to the port or to the nearby industrial area, so rather than just having an off-ramp I wanted to integrate the highway with the port in a more dynamic way. I swapped places with the cruise ship terminal and the cargo ship terminal, moved the cargo train station right next to the cargo ship terminal, moved the monorail line over to the cruise ship terminal, raised the highway on top of it all and then split it so that two lanes go straight down to the cargo area, where it branches off in four separate directions. On the far end of the harbor I raised one highway over the other so that I could add on-ramps from both sides. I will add some more decorations to the port in the future, taking inspiration from the port area in GTA V.

Over at the other industry area I noticed a quite severe traffic jam... of trains. Everything was completely blocked and I realised that the reason was that I had tracks from five or six different locations meeting up right at the spot where I also had my busiest cargo train terminal. So I had to increase the bandwidth a little bit, and in the process of doing so I also built the city's second passenger train station. I'm going to develop this area a bit more in the future and turn it into a district center with commercial and office buildings. There is a lot of free space to use, but I might have to move the cemetery and the tram depot somewhere else.

Below is a map view of these two areas. The port in the top left and the new grand train station of massive bandwidth in the bottom right.

 

[eran0004]

The new district center is complete! I like how it turned out, looks like something that could have been built in the 1960's.

Below are some beauty shots from all over the city.

 

[eran0004]

Installed the Daylight Classic mod, I think it made the game look a lot better. The contrast is not too sharp anymore and colours seem a bit more natural.

Some other changes:

• I downloaded some custom cemetery assets and props to build my own cemeteries. It takes more time than to just plop the vanilla cemetery, but I like the results.
• The dumbbell interchange by the port was demolished and replaced by something with a bit more flow. Not because the traffic is particularly intense there, but because it simply looks more interesting
• I have started building a university/technology/expo area in the western part of the city. It's going to be a very modern district. Will show some pictures once it has seen some more progress.
• A nuclear power plant was constructed near the port.
• Rebuilt the subway network again. Sorry, taxpayers.

 

[eran0004]

Some interchanges and intersections in action (recorded off-screen)

 

[Dobermann92]

Some interchanges and intersections in action (recorded off-screen)

Biffa would be proud of you!

 

[maxi25]

What's the tool that people use to be able to move roads around? It's not "Move It" is it? My roads could use some help since I'm stuck with what the game allows me to have.

 

[eran0004]

What's the tool that people use to be able to move roads around? It's not "Move It" is it? My roads could use some help since I'm stuck with what the game allows me to have.

Yeah, it's Move It. I can recommend using Fine Road Tool and Fine Road Anarchy as well, to give you some more options when building roads.

---

Meanwhile, over at the city of Portmont. I wasn't happy about the way the highway just ended in a roundabout, so I decided to put the roundabout on a separate level and extend the highway underneath it. It was quite a headache to build, because there was also the train tracks, the monorail line and the 4-lane tram road to keep in mind... In the end I was happy with the result.

In the GIF below you can see a map view comparison before and after the build.



And some random screenshots of the city:

 

[eran0004]

Filled in one of the last empty spots of the city by building a big university area there.

First of all I built an area for student apartments and dormitories, I found a pair of matching vanilla high residency buildings that looked perfect for building these kind of blocks. The low/mid-rise look makes more sense in this area than highrise buildings would. Using the PaintIt mod I gave some colours to some of the buildings to make the district pop out a bit and look more interesting. In the center of the neighbourhood and with good access to a main road I plopped a supermarket so that the students can get all the cheap food they need

On the other side of the tram line I built the actual university area (not using the Campus expansion pack). It has a stadium, some administration buildings, a big monument and a pond, some faculty buildings, a big university hospital, a science center and an expo hall. To the right you can see the botanical garden, which extends down to the canal. As you can see it's a relatively modern campus, probably started construction in the 1950's or 1960's and then gradually expanded from there.

Below is a screenshot of the two districts together.

I recorded a video going with the tram from Poplar Hill to the new campus area. The campus appears at 5:50 in the video.

 

[eran0004]

I started on a new project! This time I'm creating my own map from scratch. The plan is that it's going to be a relatively small town, so there is not a lot of need for flat land. I sampled a heightmap from Veles, North Macedonia, for some amazing mountains and valleys. The map is still work in progress, hopefully it will be complete within a few weeks.

 

[eran0004]

All the road and railroad connections are complete. The rivers are mostly done. It's going to take a long time to get rid of all the heightmap noise though, I'll be surprised if I manage to finish this project before the end of the year.

Below, some new screenshots:

 

[eran0004]

Weekly update: The terrain is slowly but surely getting smoother.

 

[eran0004]

The terrain is done! Now I just need to do some small adjustments to the roads and decide on a theme to use. Right now I'm leaning towards the winter theme.

 

[Populuxe]

Ski resort or mining town are good options. Maybe a mix of both?

 

[eran0004]

Ski resort or mining town are good options. Maybe a mix of both?

Good idea! I might do that.

I started building the town, just basing the road network on Google Maps. Although Google Maps shows one of the main streets as a one-way street, not quite sure how that works. It kind of makes sense, because that street is already the busiest street in the town (and I haven't even started placing any buildings yet), but I need to figure out how to make the traffic flow in the other direction as well.

 

[eran0004]

I started building a military base and the town center, using Google Maps for inspiration. The road network is progressing well, I'd say it's about 50% complete now.

 

[eran0004]

Quite a bit of progress since the last update. Traffic is still flowing nicely. The army base got a helicopter and some trucks.

 

[eran0004]

Update: The town has expanded a bit more. I started building the older parts of the town as well as the commercial center. During this work I ran into a few issues.

1. Traffic was starting to get kind of wild, so I downloaded a mod to cut down on the excessive commercial and industrial traffic.

2. This caused about 70% of the import traffic on the highway to turn around to go back to their hometowns.

3. That caused a railway crossing to clog up.

4. That caused the trains to clog up.

5. That caused every single railway crossing to clog up.

6. That caused all traffic to grind to a halt.

I tried to fix it by deleting the cars that seemed to be the worst offenders, but soon realised that the only thing that would help would be to wipe all traffic and let it start over. And indeed that did solve the problem.

The next issue was due to the fact that in the beginning I built a lot of the city while the simulation was paused, and now a few years later this gave me a massive death wave as thousands of people died all at the same time. Had to build about half a dozen crematoriums to deal with it.

Another issue I've had is that low density commercials are complaining about not enough educated staff. I have no idea how to fix this, I think part of the problem is that these shops are too dumb to fire their uneducated staff so what's happening instead is a chicken race where the shop is hoping that their uneducated staff will die of old age before the shop goes out of business. It almost always ends with the shop going out of business. I might have to get a mod to stop abandonment...

The screenshots below show some of the new areas.

 

[raven214]

View attachment 872495

Update: The town has expanded a bit more. I started building the older parts of the town as well as the commercial center. During this work I ran into a few issues.

1. Traffic was starting to get kind of wild, so I downloaded a mod to cut down on the excessive commercial and industrial traffic.

2. This caused about 70% of the import traffic on the highway to turn around to go back to their hometowns.

3. That caused a railway crossing to clog up.

4. That caused the trains to clog up.

5. That caused every single railway crossing to clog up.

6. That caused all traffic to grind to a halt.

I tried to fix it by deleting the cars that seemed to be the worst offenders, but soon realised that the only thing that would help would be to wipe all traffic and let it start over. And indeed that did solve the problem.

The next issue was due to the fact that in the beginning I built a lot of the city while the simulation was paused, and now a few years later this gave me a massive death wave as thousands of people died all at the same time. Had to build about half a dozen crematoriums to deal with it.

Another issue I've had is that low density commercials are complaining about not enough educated staff. I have no idea how to fix this, I think part of the problem is that these shops are too dumb to fire their uneducated staff so what's happening instead is a chicken race where the shop is hoping that their uneducated staff will die of old age before the shop goes out of business. It almost always ends with the shop going out of business. I might have to get a mod to stop abandonment...

The screenshots below show some of the new areas.

View attachment 872496 View attachment 872497 View attachment 872498 View attachment 872499 View attachment 872500 View attachment 872501

Thank you for sharing these updates! I love following your progress.

 

[eran0004]

Unfortunately it seems like the "no abandonment" mod is broken, so instead I put plan B into action: building libraries and more schools to try to get more citizens educated. In the top right corner you can see a high school that I found in the workshop, it looks pretty cool sitting at the top of the hill!