Anyone play Cities: Skylines yet?

[hobsini2]

There's a new trailer out!  Looks like the game is getting normal-looking ramp merges and tools to more easily make seamless freeways and interchanges (such as being able to draw both directions at the same time).  We also have a release date of October 24.

https://www.gameinformer.com/xbox-games-showcase/2023/06/11/cities-skylines-ii-launches-in-october

From some of the YouTube players I watch who player CS1, they have pointed out certain things confirmed in the recent trailer for actual game play.
I love the more realistic look to the interchanges. Trams, Speed Limits and Seasons are all confirmed in the gameplay without needing a MOD.

I haven't been looking forward to a game release like this since Railroad Tycoon 3: Coast to Coast.

[ET21]

Free for GamePass users 
I'll still probably get it for PC as well

[IowaTraveler]

The Paradox Interactive website has a page showing that they're going to be releasing more in-depth information about various game mechanics every Monday from now until mid-September, so it looks like we're going to continue to get a steady stream of new information from this point forward.

Each week's feature highlight is going to be about a different topic, with this week's topic being the one that's probably the most relevant one for us: Road tools!

A lot of the information in the video and associated blog post is stuff that we already know from the trailers, but there's some really cool new stuff, too. The things that I'm most excited about are two things that I was really hoping for but never actually expected to get: Roads that deteriorate over time and have to be maintained, and traffic accidents! I was already really excited for Cities: Skylines 2, but now I'm even more hyped!

As a side note, it seems that the new feature highlights are posted at 9:00 AM central time, because the video was in the middle of live streaming when I checked the page a few minutes after 9:00 AM.

[X99]

The things that I'm most excited about are two things that I was really hoping for but never actually expected to get: Roads that deteriorate over time and have to be maintained, and traffic accidents!

time to get the steam version so i can mod out the road maintenance

[ET21]

Probably gonna try and get as much done as possible in the couple cities I've built on the console version. PC I only have a modded city added so far, could do one final city

[jakeroot]

Here is a video rundown of all the new road tools announced today, including some stuff only mentioned on the Paradox website:

https://youtu.be/TfuYcAkC_Oo

It is indeed very impressive the number of features being included right out of the gate that previously were only available to those who modded the PC version of the game. Once again, this game looks to really be huge for console players, and those who played PC without mods.

One of the features that was shown last week was how the new road building tool will automatically create intersections when dragging long distances over multiple conflicting roads. I am curious to see if this can be turned off so that you can more easily build roads that you can elevate afterwards. As an example, I recently built a new railway line, and I just dragged it over a really long distance, and then went back and elevated or sunk the roads that it conflicted with; I think the new tool would have automatically created intersections, which is understandable but not always desirable.

Anyways, this game is looking absolutely incredible. Couple weeks from now is the video/diary about the new traffic AI; very interested to see what they've changed.

[skluth]

We're up to four dev diaries now. I'm curious what others think. Here's some of my impressions.

• First, the game just looks beautiful. The water, the sky, the buildings, and everything else all look more realistic. I think this is the minimum we should expect from any version two of a game when you go from bare-bones startup to a bunch of money on your second version. I'm really loving almost everything I'm seeing. My only real complaint on the visual aspect is I'm not liking the business signing as much as others and think many will look even tackier once we've seen them several dozen times. Most businesses only put one sign on their buildings, not one on top and another halfway down. One review mentioned that they hadn't seen any buildings under construction but frankly I wouldn't miss it.
• The learning curve will be much steeper. There is tons more going on with coordinating the different zones and the individual businesses. Some of it is just normal game dynamics being explained but some of it is definitely different and more complex. Part of it is incorporating a lot of the Industries DLC and even making it better with the ability to zone large areas for production in farm fields and strip mining. There is even a large irregular area landfill in Diary #4 as pointed out by City Planner Plays. Most look to be created by fencing an area for production. Warehousing is more automatic and just part of the industrial area rather than needing to build them for each new industry. I've heard some don't like the loss of control in what may be the ultimate ADHD control freak city planning game, but businesses normally build warehousing as they need it so I'd prefer the game handle that. Plus it's cool that cargo terminals and harbors also act as storage facilities like in real life. 
• I love that they've incorporated some of the more popular mods like Traffic Manager. It appears the cims are using all the lanes more intelligently in the videos but it remains to be seen if they've just changed one bad driving dynamic for another. Parking is also a dynamic in CS2 so we'll get to see just how important parking garages really are; at least in game play.
• They've added much of the best mass transport for the base game. I've seen buses, trains, trams, metros, and taxis. I don't remember if I've seen local passenger ferries, monorails, or trolley buses but I really don't use them so I don't care. Yet to be seen are gondolas which I've only found useful with the Park Life DLC  or bicycles. As much as I use trams, I'd prefer bicycles over trams if I could only have one. But there are interesting possibilities with bicycles like bike share rentals, bike delivery services, and even bike parking garages if you go full Dutch.    I do think we can look forward to a more fleshed out bicycle infrastructure in a future DLC or maybe even built into an Amsterdam city set.
• I love being able to do mixed use zoning. I kind of fudge it by building a couple 2X3 or 3X4 light commercial. I also love being able to predetermine property size so I can lay down an area and force all property to be (for example) 3X4. At least that's how I'm interpreting the paint zone tool. It's probably needed for the rowhouse look.
• The residential description makes more sense if you remember the first city pack is San Francisco. I know it's technically true everywhere but I get my laughs where I can.
  

  If the citizens are not able and willing to pay higher rent, the rent decreases which also affects the Land Value around the building. Residents will move out if the living costs are too high and they don't feel like their needs are met in the area where they live, and some will even move out of the city. However, if the residents continue to not be able to meet the rent costs, the building will start to deteriorate as no money is used for the building's basic upkeep. The residents then move out in greater numbers and the building becomes abandoned. This further decreases the Land Value. Abandoned buildings can become occupied by homeless citizens but due to the constant disrepair, the building will eventually collapse.
  

• Finally, I'm loving the modular nature of some buildings. (Why don't we have a heart emoji to go with all the smileys?) Transportation terminals (cargo train, bus, taxi, etc) are growable as are universities which is more true to real life where institutions expand with more capability rather than build a full second equivalent next to the first. I'm guessing the nature of many DLCs will be to really make businesses growable like universities adding a medical complex that then can add a cancer research center, rehab center, etc. Just thought of rehab center and now I really want one. Perfect if your city gets an entertainment specialty. (Will one exist?)
• Speaking of which, cities can have specialties. I heard tech communications specialty and there's a European-style city comm tower in the first few seconds of the latest dev diary that I think may need to be built to attain that.

Sorry for being so wordy but I had hernia surgery today and the drugs have kicked in so this is very stream-of-consciousness.

[MikeTheActuary]

Interested folks probably already noticed, but just in case....a few days ago, 40-ish content creators posted ~30 minute videos on YouTube featuring gameplay from Cities Skylines 2, as part of the hype-building for the upcoming release.

The conclusion seems to be that the road construction is MUCH better than CS1.  In other respects....there's both some good and some bad, and presumably the bad will be addressed with mods and/or future DLC.

[SoDakInterstateEnthusiast]

For anyone still thinking about getting it... here's my take

Base CS2 > Base CS1

Modded + DLC CS1 > Base CS2 (by a lot)

CS2 in 1 - 5 years > modded + DLC CS1 (?)

Basically, it'll probably be way better in the long run, given the far superior tools in many aspects, but it will take some good, long mod development to get CS2 to that point.

[bm7]

Having watched a few videos of CS2, I quite like the more realistic art style and the new features, but it seems like it needs a lot more work. Performance issues, balance issues, all kinds of bugs, but worst of all, no mod support. Really? With how popular mods are in the first game, it seems insane to me they wouldn't have official support for modding at launch.

[jakeroot]

Having watched a few videos of CS2, I quite like the more realistic art style and the new features, but it seems like it needs a lot more work. Performance issues, balance issues, all kinds of bugs, but worst of all, no mod support. Really? With how popular mods are in the first game, it seems insane to me they wouldn't have official support for modding at launch.

Mod support is coming, probably quite soon. When CS:1 launched, there wasn't hardly any mods, and the code limited how far mods could potentially go. So far as I know, there are no hard limits with the code this time around, and they are working with mod developers already so that when modding launches, there will already be a lot of things to start playing with. Don't hold me to that, but that's the impression I have at the moment.

For anyone still thinking about getting it... here's my take

Base CS2 > Base CS1

Modded + DLC CS1 > Base CS2 (by a lot)

CS2 in 1 - 5 years > modded + DLC CS1 (?)

Basically, it'll probably be way better in the long run, given the far superior tools in many aspects, but it will take some good, long mod development to get CS2 to that point.

The addition of multi-core support already makes CS:2 far superior. There is a lot of work to do to bring it up to the standards of CS:1 in terms of features, especially mods. But the potential is massive, especially map size.

[JoePCool14]

Potential is the key word still with C:S 2. There's a lot to like about the new game, but there's so many other gripes missing from the first game, ultimately leading to it feeling unfinished and taken out of the oven too soon. Just like almost every other modern video game these days sadly. sigh

At least I'm confident in the developers to make a great game. It will just take more time. For now, at least the new lane management and merge functionality is beautiful.

[paulthemapguy]

At least I'm confident in the developers to make a great game. It will just take more time. For now, at least the new lane management and merge functionality is beautiful.

I hear that the second game allows offramp splits and onramp merges to occur at a deflection angle of under 45 degrees...something I've been dying to see.  That alone might put me over the edge to prefer the new game all in itself.

[JREwing78]

I think I definitely found my new time suck. I bought CS2 a couple weeks ago (just the base game) and have already racked up 78 hours of gameplay between two cities, one a "European" island archipelago map, and one "North American" general landmass map. The graphics are beautiful on a 4K display and can definitely get my PC roasting hot; after an extended session it becomes quite the space heater!

Coming to this relatively cold (I never played the original), only a few things truly frustrate me about CS2:
- Connecting windmills in the lake/ocean to the grid can be really maddening. I eventually figured out how to get the game to "find" the connection point for the power lines, but they could have either made it more visible (an "underwater" mode like the similar "underground" mode) or simply auto-magically made the connection when you touch the power line tool to the windmill base.
- Underground things are kind of a pain in the ass in general. When I have to reroute a roadway I put underground, I generally find it much easier to completely obliterate the roadway and start from scratch. If I only obliterate part of it, it's really difficult to view how to connect the new portion to the old one, and inevitably I end up with my new roadway a few meters above or below the original.
- Elevation changes are less confusing, but still kind of maddening. Changing the slope in the tool changes it relative to the change in ground slope, which is logical. But the various callouts for slope, angle, etc tend to get in each other's way, and I can't zoom out or in, or rotate the view without moving the position of the thing I'm trying to build.
- Speaking of positioning, there's several different ways to generate curves, but I haven't quite figured out how to make them consistent, or to put parallel lines cleanly and straight next to each other. I wish I could define various points in space and "lock" the shape to them, and then nudge the shape in various directions without changing the shape. It's mainly cosmetic stuff - the game largely doesn't care, but it's the kind of attention to detail that the game tends to "fight".

I'm sure some of this is my relative ignorance of the gameplay in CS2 (again, never played the original). But at least some of this are bugs or poor design choices that can stand some additional polish. From the comments I read before committing to buy the game, it does sound like Colossal Order has made a lot of strides in fixing problems in CS2 since launch. I wanted to make sure before going down the rabbit hole of mods and such that I spent quality time playing the game as "stock".

Speaking of mods, I definitely want to try out "Road Builder", which promises to solve several gameplay issues with building and designing roads. More: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sh6YNul0-9w

[jakeroot]

[clipped]

Welcome to the CS:2 bandwagon. I've been playing it regularly since release; even with the early technical issues I pushed through. After official modding support launched, it really changed the game. Recent updates have made it really great, too. It's on its way to being a truly great game.

Your issues with elevation (just in general) echo my main issue with the game right now. CS:1 with modding had incredible manipulation tools for working with elevation, you could basically make a road perfectly sloped, perfectly parallel to other roads, etc... This game has very fiddly elevation tools, and creating perfect slopes is very difficult. Even Move It has issues creating perfectly sloped roads, but I'm sure that will improve in time.

As with the original, the game is totally different without mods. Those who play without mods are free to do so, but the game just completely changes with mods. And CS:2 was built much better than CS:1 was when it comes to supporting mods; that new road builder mod is a great example, something like that doesn't need to be in the base game, it's too complicated for most people, especially on console, but it makes for an amazing mod for those that want it.

Speaking of, I tried out Road Builder (early access via Buy Me a Coffee) and so far it's really incredible! I have been a long time user of the Mio road assets, which were great but not being updated anymore, so being able to finally replace those roads without losing their functionality is great. And the interface, being kind of Street Mix style, is just great. So much functionality and flexibility, and lots of potential going into the future.

[CoreySamson]

I've been a console player of C:S1. I've been thinking about getting Steam so I can get either C:S1 or C:S2 on a Mac. Which do y'all think would be the better buy if I were to get around to it? I have an M1 chip on my MacBook, which I suppose matters greatly.

[jakeroot]

I've been a console player of C:S1. I've been thinking about getting Steam so I can get either C:S1 or C:S2 on a Mac. Which do y'all think would be the better buy if I were to get around to it? I have an M1 chip on my MacBook, which I suppose matters greatly.

I have an M1 Pro MacBook Pro as my primary portable machine; CS:1 is playable, but CS:2 is not compatible with M1. Not tried to run it with Parallels, but I've heard those that have tried have not been successful. You'll need a Windows machine for CS:2, and definitely something near-to-new with dedicated graphics.

[CoreySamson]

I've been a console player of C:S1. I've been thinking about getting Steam so I can get either C:S1 or C:S2 on a Mac. Which do y'all think would be the better buy if I were to get around to it? I have an M1 chip on my MacBook, which I suppose matters greatly.

I have an M1 Pro MacBook Pro as my primary portable machine; CS:1 is playable, but CS:2 is not compatible with M1. Not tried to run it with Parallels, but I've heard those that have tried have not been successful. You'll need a Windows machine for CS:2, and definitely something near-to-new with dedicated graphics.

Thanks for that! I assume that CS:1 with mods is just as good a game as CS:2?

[jakeroot]

I've been a console player of C:S1. I've been thinking about getting Steam so I can get either C:S1 or C:S2 on a Mac. Which do y'all think would be the better buy if I were to get around to it? I have an M1 chip on my MacBook, which I suppose matters greatly.

I have an M1 Pro MacBook Pro as my primary portable machine; CS:1 is playable, but CS:2 is not compatible with M1. Not tried to run it with Parallels, but I've heard those that have tried have not been successful. You'll need a Windows machine for CS:2, and definitely something near-to-new with dedicated graphics.

Thanks for that! I assume that CS:1 with mods is just as good a game as CS:2?

Depends a bit. CS:1 with mods is much less stable than CS:2 with mods, crashes are far more frequent than CS:2 (CS:2 was designed for mod support from the beginning). Personally, I never intend to touch CS:1 again, with or without mods. But if you play CS:1 with mods, it can be fun with just a few mods and some assets. I think CS:2 with mods is more enjoyable, though perhaps a bit simpler right now without all of the extra DCLs (some players prefer CS:1's complexity, but then it has 9+ years of DLC...)

I've personally never played vanilla versions of either game, so I can't comment on that specifically .

[X99]

I've personally not even considered getting CS2 yet, given how its launch went about as well as Cyberpunk's launch. They also changed the mod support structure- I understand moving it from the Steam Workshop to allow more people to access it, but it's still going to be quite a while until CS2's available modlist matches my 4,500+ asset list currently active in CS1.

[jakeroot]

I've personally not even considered getting CS2 yet, given how its launch went about as well as Cyberpunk's launch. They also changed the mod support structure- I understand moving it from the Steam Workshop to allow more people to access it, but it's still going to be quite a while until CS2's available modlist matches my 4,500+ asset list currently active in CS1.

I would try it out. The current game bares little resemblance to the game that launched last October. Dozens of patches and new content have been added. About the only thing missing is asset support, but that should be coming very soon.

Paradox Mods is not perfect, but it has the potential to be much better than Steam Workshop, which had flaws of its own. Paradox Mods also supports console modding, unlike Steam Workshop.

[Rothman]

If there's one thing that keeps me away from Cities: Skylines, it's the evident need to install a plethora of mods to make it enjoyable.

[paulthemapguy]

Cities:Skylines 1 was plenty enjoyable on its own before I installed mods.  But the mods make everything so much more customizable.

In terms of your ability to customize roadway options and other design options, CS1 with mods > CS1 without mods > any other city simulator to date.  There are only a few mods you need to monumentally improve the traffic movement and traffic design options.  Those few mods are the only ones I typically use.

[jakeroot]

If there's one thing that keeps me away from Cities: Skylines, it's the evident need to install a plethora of mods to make it enjoyable.

You're not alone in this opinion, but it's still not one I understand. The game (particularly #2) was specifically engineered for user-created content. If you don't like that, fine, but you're just missing the point of the game, which is essentially just a foundation for people to create what they want.

Personally, based on how CS:2 launched, the last thing I'd want is to rely on Colossal Order to create any more features. Just make the game and code stable so we can do what we want.

[hobsini2]

I'm still waiting for it to come out on console. I am getting a PS 5 when the console version is out.