Anyone play Cities: Skylines yet?

[vtk]

Two recently-created mods that I think are a must-have for roadgeeks are Node Controller and Intersection Marking Tool. The former lets you tweak the geometry of intersections and the road segments that lead into them, while the latter makes it easy to create pavement markings at / through intersections and transition nodes.

[jakeroot]

One of the most incredible developments has been with node controller. Intersection marking tool, definitely as well. But node controller was recently updated to allow sloped intersections. This has always been one of the major issues with the game: every intersection had to be level terrain. This update was HUGE for cities built on anything that wasn't completely flat land (image from my current city showing expressways looping through hillside):

[I-55]

It's been a couple years since I played (had a bad PC for gaming). My thoughts:

- In what real world city is a subway system required for a population of 30k people, let alone what city that size has the budget to create one?

- If I had road mods I probably would've enjoyed it more. I still want to reinstall and make one of the fictional cities I've drawn maps of over the course of my life.

- It would be cool (and quite a project) for CS to have full size states to develop. Then I would really have something to fill the hours.

[jakeroot]

^^
I can tell you with 100% certainty that the game has changed completely over the last three years. The mods have made it unrecognizable.

The game is demanding with some mods. I would not recommend using any without a decent gaming PC.

[vdeane]

It's demanding even without mods, and it seems like it gets more demanding with each DLC, even if you don't buy them.  It also seemed to get more demanding when the launcher spyware was added.  It ran decently well on my desktop four years ago.  These days I can't even load a city on it without issues.

That and the newer DLCs moving from a high-level city simulation to mini-games micro-managing things like industry have turned me away from the game.

[jakeroot]

It's demanding even without mods, and it seems like it gets more demanding with each DLC, even if you don't buy them.  It also seemed to get more demanding when the launcher spyware was added.  It ran decently well on my desktop four years ago.  These days I can't even load a city on it without issues.

That and the newer DLCs moving from a high-level city simulation to mini-games micro-managing things like industry have turned me away from the game.

In my experience, the game is tough to run because most processors aren't clocked fast enough to manage a city simulator. These games are very demanding, especially if you have mods like TM:PE or Realistic Population that micro-manage each person. A regular computer, even with a good graphics card, will not run the game super well.

I have an i7-8086k clocked at 4GHz normally, up to 5 as necessary. Without mods, my game hits the maximum FPS manageable by my screen (120Hz) but, with mods AND a big city (with mods and small city, it's still pretty damn fast), it slows way down to around 45 FPS maximum when looking just at suburban areas, to around 3-10 when looking at built-up areas like CBDs. The more zoomed in I am, the higher the FPS. As I zoom out past certain LOD limits, the game speeds up too.

The new DLCs have added a lot of functionality where there was previously little control, but you can largely overlook these. I do not choose to micro-manage my industry and choose regular industry zoning for my port areas (as an example). The only thing I do build are warehouses, and all the trash, power, water, and heating facilities. Just managing those alone can be quite the task. Similarly, you can build zoos and theme parks now, but again, I choose not to because I find those things rather boring. I just build parks and green areas.

To be fair to developers, most of the DLCs have been things people have asked for. There is a big portion of players who either (A) don't use mods, and (B) like to micro-manage a bit more than what even a mod could do. The DLCs have created a city-simulator with greater levels of detail in this regard (just look through the city policies menu these days), but you can still largely ignore many of these additions if you choose.

[Hwy 61 Revisited]

It's demanding even without mods, and it seems like it gets more demanding with each DLC, even if you don't buy them.  It also seemed to get more demanding when the launcher spyware was added.  It ran decently well on my desktop four years ago.  These days I can't even load a city on it without issues.

That and the newer DLCs moving from a high-level city simulation to mini-games micro-managing things like industry have turned me away from the game.

In my experience, the game is tough to run because most processors aren't clocked fast enough to manage a city simulator. These games are very demanding, especially if you have mods like TM:PE or Realistic Population that micro-manage each person. A regular computer, even with a good graphics card, will not run the game super well.

I have an i7-8086k clocked at 4GHz normally, up to 5 as necessary. Without mods, my game hits the maximum FPS manageable by my screen (120Hz) but, with mods AND a big city (with mods and small city, it's still pretty damn fast), it slows way down to around 45 FPS maximum when looking just at suburban areas, to around 3-10 when looking at built-up areas like CBDs. The more zoomed in I am, the higher the FPS. As I zoom out past certain LOD limits, the game speeds up too.

The new DLCs have added a lot of functionality where there was previously little control, but you can largely overlook these. I do not choose to micro-manage my industry and choose regular industry zoning for my port areas (as an example). The only thing I do build are warehouses, and all the trash, power, water, and heating facilities. Just managing those alone can be quite the task. Similarly, you can build zoos and theme parks now, but again, I choose not to because I find those things rather boring. I just build parks and green areas.

To be fair to developers, most of the DLCs have been things people have asked for. There is a big portion of players who either (A) don't use mods, and (B) like to micro-manage a bit more than what even a mod could do. The DLCs have created a city-simulator with greater levels of detail in this regard (just look through the city policies menu these days), but you can still largely ignore many of these additions if you choose.

I wonder why they had to make the DLCs paid anyway. I feel they could have worked just as well as free updates, especially the Mass Transit update with its new highway types.

[vdeane]

I think it doesn't help that the DLCs can feel grafted on rather than seamlessly integrated.  This is particularly noticeable with Snowfall, because instead of adding seasons, it instead adds winter maps (where it's always winter), with regular maps still being always summer.

I think the mini-game stuff started to feel that way around Parklife.  I can appreciate the parks (I actually once built some trails and added some rocks and trees to make a nice little park in a scenic area I wasn't going to be building in, though it was purely cosmetic), scratched my head a little with Industries, and started to think "are they just looking for ways to keep pushing out more DLC?" with Campus.  Kinda reminds me of some of the stuff that was talked about with Cities XL.

Hopefully Cities: Skylines 2 will have some of this stuff better integrated.

I wonder why they had to make the DLCs paid anyway. I feel they could have worked just as well as free updates, especially the Mass Transit update with its new highway types.

Well, they probably want to keep the money rolling in.  That said, each DLC has a corresponding free update that includes a lot of the core features (such as the day/night cycle from After Dark or the extra help with placing roads and transit lines with Mass Transit).  Part of the reason many of the DLCs feel grafted on to me is because the general features trickle down for free with the paid part basically being an "item pack" and/or mini-game (especially recently).  This is my theory as to why the de facto system requirements go up with each DLC, even if you don't buy them.

[rickmastfan67]

It also seemed to get more demanding when the launcher spyware was added.

There's a way to completely bypass it.

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1976349559

You'll have to redo it every time there's an update to the game, but since they don't happen 'that' often, it's an acceptable annoyance in redoing to get a better benefit.

[vtk]

My PC has only a mid-range graphics card, but is quite capable in terms of general computing with a hyperthreaded quad-core (effectively 8-core) 3.4GHz CPU and 32 GB of RAM. At worst, Cities:Skylines runs at maybe 5 fps – a rough estimate, as I don't use a fps counter – which is still comfortably playable for this kind of game.

[jakeroot]

Question for anyone who plays with more detailed intersection control.

I have a T-intersection where only right turns are permitted from the stem. When the pedestrian crossing is activated across the top of the T, the left and the right turns proceed, and through traffic stops. Is this how intersections with this setup IRL would operate? Took me a second to figure out proper phasing.

Ignore the red and green crosswalk lights on the right side. I disabled that crossing, so the lights are glitched:

[riiga]

Sounds perfectly reasonable to me.

[jakeroot]

Sounds perfectly reasonable to me.

Cool. I have it setup to allow that phase to last for 5 seconds. Which is insanely short IRL, but a lot of time in-game to allow overly speedy pedestrians to cross. I would normally set the phase to activate only when pushed, but that sort of realism does not exist in-game. So each phase includes the pedestrian walk phase. Luckily it works pretty well.

[X99]

Man, I wish I found this thread a year ago when I bought the game. Has anyone here tried to do a rebuild of a real life city? I'm currently working on Rapid City and Box Elder, SD (with the western cutoff at 32nd Street so I could fit I-90 exit 67 and the airport into the map). I added the full road layout with Cimtographer, but couldn't add the terrain in without my game crashing (Cimtographer) or completely misaligning the terrain (ingame heightmap tool, same coordinates as the road layout).

Here's a picture I took a few months ago of one of the few areas I have somewhat finished: Exit 61 off of I-90, looking south from the interchange. The image might seem a little dark; I'm still working on good image lighting.



The interchange itself uses Another American Highways for the Interstate mainline and ramps, and BIG Suburban Roads for the crossroad. BIG Suburban asymmetrical roads don't have a bridge mesh, so I custom-built the bridge using Metro Overhaul monorail supports and quays hiding the ground clipping around the highway below. The stoplights in the middle of the interchange (the real life location) are non-functional props, with the actual stoplights at the sides of the intersection, and the intersection itself is resized with Node Controller and marked with Intersection Marking Tool, leaving the curbs as the only inaccuracy since the ramps don't have sidewalks.

In the background, some things are hidden by the camera angle because they aren't actually finished. The hills in the background were made by hand, the Springhill Suites on the left should be a Fairfield Marriott, the IHOP on the left should be a Perkins, the Comfort Inn on the right should be a Comfort Suites, the police building on the right was supposed to be replaced with an invisible station since there isn't actually one there, and the Cheesecake Factory on the right is a placeholder for Dakotah Steakhouse. The only building on Eglin/Cheyenne with completed landscaping and parking is the McDonalds since that's where I work.

You're gonna need some mods. I currently have 85 mods installed, and I use every one of them.

I know that this comment is four years old, so how many mods do you use now? IIRC, my current cities run somewhere around 105-110 game changing mods, and around 1300 subscribed assets on the workshop translating to roughly 4000 assets in game. The recommended mod limit for my 16 GB of RAM is 1200, so I'm forced to run a 48 GB pagefile to load everything.

[jakeroot]

You're gonna need some mods. I currently have 85 mods installed, and I use every one of them.

I know that this comment is four years old, so how many mods do you use now? IIRC, my current cities run somewhere around 105-110 game changing mods, and around 1300 subscribed assets on the workshop translating to roughly 4000 assets in game. The recommended mod limit for my 16 GB of RAM is 1200, so I'm forced to run a 48 GB pagefile to load everything.

I currently have 115 mods with 5695 total assets. It definitely has taken its toll in terms of performance, although it's far from unplayable (slower than without mods but not massively). I regularly go through my mods list to make sure none are screwing with performance or are suffering from issues related to recent updates. But I also have 32GB of RAM which helps load everything in about 7-ish minutes, although I'm sure I have too many assets at this point and should start uninstalling some that I don't use, to improve performance.

[MikeTheActuary]

My PC has only a mid-range graphics card, but is quite capable in terms of general computing with a hyperthreaded quad-core (effectively 8-core) 3.4GHz CPU and 32 GB of RAM. At worst, Cities:Skylines runs at maybe 5 fps – a rough estimate, as I don't use a fps counter – which is still comfortably playable for this kind of game.

Based on my experience with my desktop and laptop, I suspect that RAM is a bigger constraint in terms of gameplay (at least the way I like to play C:S) than processing power.  Of course, I have a bad habit of wanting to play with multiple mods and too-many user assets.  Those who have the self-discipline to play a "skinnier" game  may have a different experience.

My laptop has 16GB of memory and my desktop 32GB of memory, and I can feel the added "strain" on my laptop.   Biffa, one of the C:S video makers on YouTube has the specs for his machine posted in his profile - 64GB RAM, plus high-end processor and graphics card. 

I'm considering upgrading my desktop again, and I'm thinking I might splurge and go all the way to 128GB RAM based on Biffa's experience and my other needs.   (I love the performance on my main workstation for the day job, which includes 128GB of RAM.)

[jakeroot]

I have 32GB of RAM but a really good processor and video card. So although 4600+ assets is beyond my recommended amount, it's still more than manageable.

Deleting a bunch of assets over the last couple days has significantly improved my performance. Anyone who knows the Loading Screen Mod will know that this screenshot was taken seconds before the game fully loaded:

[riiga]

I haven't played CSL for a few years and just picked up some of the newer expansions (most notably Mass Transit) and I've been trying to get up to speed on which mods to use starting with unsubscribing my entire list which was outdated to say the least. So far I've understood that Node Controller and Intersection Marking Tool is the cool new stuff, but my city is just beginning to take form, so I've had no real use for them yet. Traffic Manager is (and was) really nice. I have 16 GB of RAM and so far no problem.

[jakeroot]

One important mod that I may consider (among many others, granted) is Mesh Info. It's very useful for finding problematic assets that you might have downloaded that seem harmless, but actually are (in Cities Skylines terms) really "heavy" and cause the game to take long to load and run slow when it finally does. Using this mod (I keep it enabled to periodically check my assets, especially vehicles), I was able to locate several key assets that I've downloaded before that were taking a toll on my game.

Hopefully everyone is using Loading Screen Mod as well. In the "Asset Browser" file that it creates, sort it by "placed and size" (or something like that), and scroll down until gets to "placed: no" and look through those assets. The first listed will be the largest assets that you are subscribed to, and thus loading, but which are not placed in your city; consider, of those, which you can unsubscribe from. There are workshop links next to each asset. This also helped me remove a bunch of stuff that I wasn't using but which was making my game take forever to load.

Workshop guides often recommend certain limits based on RAM. This is good guidance, yes, but not all assets are equal. Subscribe to a million tiny assets or 100 huge assets...same effect (I believe).

[riiga]

I do have the Loading Screen Mod, but so far I have no custom assets apart from a few tools.

I've been trying out Node Controller and Intersection Marking tool a bit more and I think I'm getting the hang of it.

This was my first attempt:


Trying to mark a motorway junction:



My ugly city (yesterday and today):

[rickmastfan67]

Just as a quick reminder, try saving your images as JPG instead of PNG due to file sizes.  If you want to still let people see the high-res uncompressed PNG, then link to it after the JPG.

Only reason I'm mentioning this is in case somebody is on mobile and has limited bandwidth, those large sized PNGs can eat a lot of the bandwidth very quickly.  Especially if the user didn't know how many there were on a page.

[rickmastfan67]

I've been trying out Node Controller and Intersection Marking tool a bit more and I think I'm getting the hang of it.

Try using TM:PE V11 STABLE (Traffic Manager: President Edition) for node control instead.  It's built into the mod, and it also gives you control over speed limits, timed traffic lights, and a lot of other great stuff.

Also, the Roundabout Builder is another great mod to get for your game.

And the Broken Nodes Detector is another great mod to use to help you find roads that are broken and fix them so that your sims will use them instead of ignoring them like the plague.

One final thing, if you're wondering how to subscribe to them without searching for them inside of Steam, just log into Steam in your browser, and then click the subscribe button.  Then the next time you open Steam, they'll be automatically que'd up for download to your game files.

[jakeroot]

Node Controller is a separate mod from TM:PE, although it does require TM:PE and the "Hide Crosswalks" mod to function.

TM:PE (and its lane connectors, speed limits, etc) is best used after you've used intersection marking tool (IMT) to mark your intersections, and node controller to get the right angles and curves.

[CoreySamson]

I wish the makers of C:S would add a rudimentary version of Traffic Manager into the base game (or at least into the Mass Transit DLC), as I only play on console and have no desire to get a PC or laptop anytime soon. :sigh:

[jakeroot]

I finally made a partial cloverleaf A4 that I am happy with. I even created a sign using Photoshop specifically for one of the off-ramps:







Edit: replaced the photos after a couple of edits. You can see the originals on my Flickr.
Edit 2: added sign for the actual off-ramp split.