Cities: Skylines (the Sim City we deserve)

[MatskiMonk]

So...

Made it over 100,000 population today... some photos to celebrate...

Mt. Corona Nature Park...

The view down the map from the top of Mt. Corona... 'Lakeside' and 'Lynch Farms' in the mid distance, with the built up area in the distance being where the Uni, the Zoo, and 'The Tip' are situated...

A view of 'Lakeside' from the top edge, with 'Cliffside' in the foreground, a small community that serves some small ore mining in the area called 'Crystal Coast'...

Some Oil making nice lots of ground pollution, train cargo and air cargo in the distance (Cargo plane pilot seemingly about to buzz the tower)...

In a distant corner of the map resides 'Shawshank Prison', with the 'Dufresne District' over the water ...

The small neighbourhood of 'Van Horne', serving a local logging area...

Many districts in this Manhattan-esque area, culminating in 'The Tip'. Zoo, Uni, Baseball, a combination of zoning types.. and no traffic jams anymore!... The Ship yard in the distance represents the southern border of the map, with a small community springing up next to it to serve local metal, glass, and crop production...

The Westdale Institute..

The Zoo...

 

[eran0004]

Focused on building residential areas, since every office is complaining about not having enough workers. I really like the result, especially the street in the third picture, it looks like a nice neighborhood.

 

[RetroJohan]

I love this game so much!

 

[eran0004]

A “proof of concept” video about making the traffic flow in an intersection with a railway crossing. When I built it I wasn’t sure if it was going to work or if it would just create a big traffic jam, so it’s nice to see it in action.

Using timed traffic lights I set it up so that traffic can flow through all three nodes without having to stop.

Some timing adjustments might be needed, and it looks like I should increase the smart AI ratio so that they use all of the available lanes.

 

[MatskiMonk]

^ brave! I find train crossings to be a third dimension in creating traffic jams, but I'm not good with the timed traffic lights yet.

 

[eran0004]

^ brave! I find train crossings to be a third dimension in creating traffic jams, but I'm not good with the timed traffic lights yet.

Yeah they can create some headache. Fortunately the timed traffic lights control the train signals too, which I wasn’t expecting. I also found out that the smart AI was disabled in this city, so once I increased it to 50% the traffic started flowing perfectly.

 

[eran0004]

Trying a new solution to cargo train terminal traffic jams: adding a toll both to the entry point of the area. Hopefully that should reduce traffic a bit. The left tunnel is the entry while the right one is exit.

The government area of the city, with some more classicist style buildings.

The city center, with the modern art museum as the center piece. I changed its colour to a glowing orange shade to immitate corten steel.

 

[MatskiMonk]

Beautiful work @eran0004 ...

FWIW, toll booths have had little effect on traffic jams for me, other than profiting from them! Do your vehicles cross on entry and exit to the cargo terminal? I find it helps to approach from the left (from this viewpoint).

edit: out of interest, how much stuff to you put in using anarchy, or moveit afterwards?

 

[redhed17]

I have continued to play the game at a basic level, rather than stunning designs. I started doing a scenario, a 'Vanilla' Fix the Traffic in Lakeside. The scenario was to get the traffic above 80%, population over 35k, and not go below 20k, in 200 game weeks. I went a bit close to losing a few times, but got it with 2 game weeks to spare.

Because it was an interesting map, I decided to carry on playing, and build the city up. It is weird trying to work out why traffic suddenly changes, what I may have done to upset any balance there was, or what was a random change by the game. Trying to understand why some bus stops get so many people waiting, and and how service the cims waiting, either by more buses, different routes or trams or monorail options. I still don't understand why they seem reluctant to use a tram line in the road in front of a bus stop.

I've bought a few more areas to expand into, and have started to come up against the rivers starting to run dry of water, which may be a thing that stops me playing this map. Shame, because there are a lot of other areas to move into.

I was watching one of Biffa Plays Indie games videos the other day, a fix the traffic vid, and someone had a lovely city, with obvious traffic problems, and their public transport was quite low. I've been happy that my public transport has been around 10% of population, and that's without getting into footpaths, which Biffa seems very good at.

 

[eran0004]

Beautiful work @eran0004 ...

FWIW, toll booths have had little effect on traffic jams for me, other than profiting from them! Do your vehicles cross on entry and exit to the cargo terminal? I find it helps to approach from the left (from this viewpoint).

edit: out of interest, how much stuff to you put in using anarchy, or moveit afterwards?

I haven’t checked if they cross, but I believe it depends on whether you have left or right traffic. I’m pretty sure I always approached from the right with right side traffic.

Every growable building is placed manually with the Plop the Growables mod, and then I adjust their position with MoveIt when I need to. Usually I move them a bit away from the road, or adjust their rotation. It takes more time than zoning, but I can pretty much build a block exactly how I want it.

Generally I want to have at least 8 meters (one grid square) between buildings, unless they are supposed to be connected wall to wall. For tall buildings I aim for 16 meters, to make it less claustrophobic for pedestrians.

 

[MatskiMonk]

@eran0004

The time taken shows. I've hit the 'it's all just more of the same' wall with my current city. Taking that level of care over neighbourhoods might alleviate that 'fatigue'.

 

[eran0004]

On this map there is a big hill just to the west of the city center. On the other side of that hill I built a low density neighbourhood. Mostly residential, but some small shops, petrol stations and offices as well.

The view from the local train station.

At the north end of the hill I placed a big church / monastery. I found a nice church in a Georgian style, it fits nicely with the mountains in the background. Good to see that it's popular with the tourists.

At the southern end I placed a telecom tower, overlooking the entire city.

Lot of empty grids to fill...

 

[eran0004]

This week's project has been to give some attention to highways and railroads. The old system was a bit too messy for my liking. For example it didn't make much sense to have a big suspension bridge for trains right next to a big highway suspension bridge, so I demolished the train bridge and let the railroad go underneath the highway bridge instead. Another thing that bugged me was that the train connection to the airport had to go in a big loop around the map to reach it, so I built a new airport in a better location and oriented it so that the train could easily reach it (while also making sure no runway was pointing towards one of the many huge mountains that surround the city). This airport overhaul lead to the rebuild of about 80% of all highway outside of the city center. One of the rebuilds I'm most satisfied with is the GTA V style gas station / rest stop in a long swooping curve.

Below is a before/after map view as well as some screenshots

 

[MatskiMonk]

BOOOOOMMMM...

New content...

 

[eran0004]

BOOOOOMMMM...

New content...

Couldn’t have asked for a better update. Those metro changes is just what my city needs, I’m going to replace my train network with an elevated metro network instead, since the elevated train station I downloaded is a bit buggy.

 

[MatskiMonk]

Couldn’t have asked for a better update. Those metro changes is just what my city needs, I’m going to replace my train network with an elevated metro network instead, since the elevated train station I downloaded is a bit buggy.

I'm happy to see new industry types. In all honesty I suck at public transport, but the more variety the city can get, the better.

I'm still short two DLC's, Snow Fall and Natural Disasters. I want the content and assets but I don't actually want snow, or disasters in my cities. You wouldn't happen to know if such functionality can be switched off?

 

[eran0004]

I'm happy to see new industry types. In all honesty I suck at public transport, but the more variety the city can get, the better.

I'm still short two DLC's, Snow Fall and Natural Disasters. I want the content and assets but I don't actually want snow, or disasters in my cities. You wouldn't happen to know if such functionality can be switched off?

Snow is only available on special maps (and those are always snowy, there is no change of season). So it has no effect on cities built on other maps.

I don’t have the disasters expansion so I don’t know about that.

 

[MatskiMonk]

Snow is only available on special maps (and those are always snowy, there is no change of season). So it has no effect on cities built on other maps.

Ah that makes sense.

I've started to rebuild my 25 tile city from scratch. There was just too many things that didn't stick to my original brief, and the train network was just band-aid over band-aid over band-aid, it was just getting too ugly. Same with a couple of the junctions... really just a mess... and the public transport too. I don't want to start again, but I'd have to 'doze so much of the existing one it just doesn't make sense. At least I've got a much better idea now of how it needs to be built before I set out.

I'll probably wait for the Sunset Harbour DLC, get the Snowfall and Disasters DLC, then crack on with it. I've got plenty I can plan out on paper first!

I really need to get a handle on district styles, and get me some assets though...

 

[redhed17]

I'm having trouble trouble with not being able to connect a couple of train stations together.

I have a city that started from one square, not sure if it was a scenario I completed, and carried on, but anyway the first few squares are pretty packed, and then I add squares to connect an outside rail link. In that square I added a cargo airport and passenger airport, the train line stopping close, and passing into the rest of the city. The trains coming in work normally. Two train stations within the main city work with each other. I opened another square beyond the airport square and had two stations off the main line that connect to each other, and receive outside trains, but I can't make a link between stations in the two halves.

I know that may be hard to understand from a description, but I can't understand why I can have trains from the outside can reach each side of the incoming train line, but not connect two stations from each side of the 'through map' line. And I have two large intersection for them to choose too.

Just putting it out there in case anyone has any ideas, but mainly to get it off my chest.

 

[eran0004]

@redhed17 Hard to say, but my best guess is that either there is no railway connection between the two stations (do you know for a fact that the two stations are visited by the same outside train, or could it be that they are visited by different ones?) or you're using one-way tracks in some location. Do you have any pictures to share?

---

Meanwhile, I built an epic downtown highway interchange.

Before:


After:




I stole the design from an interchange in Bergen, Norway, although my version is mirrored (and apparently a bit bigger).

 

[eran0004]

Pro tip: if you play with unlimited money, don’t go to city statistics and try to view city treasury. It causes the game to crash.

 

[MatskiMonk]

Just putting it out there in case anyone has any ideas, but mainly to get it off my chest.

Screen shot may help, I can't picture what you mean.

 

[redhed17]

Screen shot may help, I can't picture what you mean.

Thank you MatskiMonk. I sorted it out. I thought I had a train line going under a highway junction when I was tracing the line looking for breaks in the line, but didn't realise I hadn't actually gone under the road, the rail line just stopped either side. A Rookie mistake. Thanks again for the offer of help though.

 

[MatskiMonk]

Well, in case there was any doubt, TME crashes the new version of the game.

Got the Sunset Harbour DLC, can't really use any of it yet with my city the way it is.

Having switched off Traffic manager I have a few junctions that don't work properly, though I was building this one with lots of overhead for traffic flow, so I'm still at 89%.

 

[eran0004]

Well, in case there was any doubt, TME crashes the new version of the game.

Got the Sunset Harbour DLC, can't really use any of it yet with my city the way it is.

Having switched off Traffic manager I have a few junctions that don't work properly, though I was building this one with lots of overhead for traffic flow, so I'm still at 89%.

They had to set up a new mod file to continue the development of TMPE, so you should unsubscribe from the old one and subscribe to the new one. It’s TMPE 11: https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1637663252

As for my save game, I have a problem that keeps crashing the simulation because of some object instance that could not be found. My best guess is that it’s caused by the train station (old workshop asset) or by the mod that reduces traffic from the industry.

As a result, the electricity supply is glitchy and I get an annoying pop up error message every other second.

I also have a problem connecting underground metro stations to metro tunnels, it keeps creating tunnel exits at the connecting segment. Perhaps this issue is caused by the fine road tool?

 

[MatskiMonk]

@eran0004

The TM PE error I was getting, was missing instances of something that just left me with error boxes I couldn't get rid of. I've not noticed any other issues, but I try and keep mods to a minimum. I might leave TM 11 until I start getting big traffic issues since my network extensions is a little less glitchy at the moment too.

Not sure if it's just having Traffic Manager switched off but the game seems to be running smoother for me all round.

 

[eran0004]

@eran0004

The TM PE error I was getting, was missing instances of something that just left me with error boxes I couldn't get rid of. I've not noticed any other issues, but I try and keep mods to a minimum. I might leave TM 11 until I start getting big traffic issues since my network extensions is a little less glitchy at the moment too.

Not sure if it's just having Traffic Manager switched off but the game seems to be running smoother for me all round.

Yeah it’s pretty taxing to run the TMPE AI, so switching it off should boost the performance.

I’m considering turning most of the mods off and return to a more vanilla play style. It’s annoying to try to work out what is wrong every time the game is updated.

 

[eran0004]

Good news: I got the savefile working again! Apparently the bug was caused by some old train station, but fortunately someone made a mod that solves it. I also bought the Industries DLC since it was on sale.

Bad news: connecting metro tunnels to underground metro stations still creates a tunnel entrance. I have no idea why it does that. I also have no passenger ship or passenger plane traffic, for whatever reason.

^ The industry area by the city center got an update. I also improved the roundabout interchange and gave it a more realistic appearance.

^ I started working on a harbour. More decorations need to be added.

^ I really like how this farm turned out.

^ And this airport. Just wish it would get any flights

 

[MatskiMonk]

@eran0004

If you're new to the Industries DLC, just be careful building your storage locations, especially with farming, the vanilla mechanics can create masses of traffic around storage silos. I fully recommend the EDS mod if you're going to start integrating Industries. This allows you to select District, Local, and Outside Connection destinations for materials and goods, and therefore have greater influence over your import and export stats.

 

[eran0004]

Good news: the metro tunnels are working! Turned out that the issue was caused by Fine Road Anarchy, if building a station while anarchy is on, it incorrectly flags one end as being above the ground. With anarchy off the tunnels connect properly to the station.