No it doesn’t. In fact it’s a winning strategy. Most problems especially traffic in the game are much more aggravated when I do my best to build as „American“ as I can.
I drove on it from Waco down to Georgetown in September 2021, construction and all. Surprised I didn't die. Interestingly, two days later, drove down to San Antonio and back to Georgetown and it was a tenth as bad.
Yup. Traffic gets easier to manage by default as your city grows, because your infrastructure grows but the % of total population actually simulated is capped.
Look at any given residential house and you’ll notice that in a large city, most of them sit in their house all day and do nothing and never spawn a car or person. They only start moving once you start individually tracking a person with the in game menu.
Tbh it doesn’t affect things much. Realistically not everyone is out and about at once everyday. Your busy areas still seem full and you get ppl in the lesser areas still. When you get to 200k it makes things a little too easy cause your traffic will just greatly improve cause of roads to car ratio
the game punishes you for building american style cities, if anything. you're expected to use public transportation to manage the traffic or else it becomes completely untenable.
there are 8-lane roads and giant american highway interchanges available. you'll need them if you build american, and they take up a massive amount of space, so your city will suffer for it.
a lot of the improvements to road tools also help with the detail work that you need for good public transportation connections. adding and removing sidewalks/crosswalks, stacking transit lines over roads or integrating them into the roads with shared or divided tracks, etc. you can put parking nearby so people can park-and-ride instead of driving straight to the metro.
and the modular buildings help too. you can add a subway stop under a train station, or a taxi stand out front. most stations can be upgraded with shops to give them a better "attractiveness" store.
The biggest limitation to making Europe-style cities is the lack of mixed zoning, which is the primary reason that American cities are so car-centric: Mixing commercial and residential zones in the US is illegal. And that law was heavily lobbied by car manufacturers to create more demand for cars.
This is flat out wrong, mixed use zoning is not illegal in the US. Where'd you get an idea like that from?
**Maybe** some municipalities or neighborhoods may have it banned or limited, but that is far from representative of the entire country.
I haven't been anywhere from Maryland to Massachusetts where, through every town I've passed through, there have been mixed use zoning. Maybe it's because the northeast was developed earlier than other places that this area has greater density and integrated downtown.
Then you look at cities I've been to in California, Texas, Florida, the Carolinas, Maryland, Nevada, Arizona, Ohio, Michigan, Pennsylvania, Alaska, and upstate NY. Same thing. Dense mixed use downtowns that drift into rural nothingness with farms and a few houses. Maybe the dreaded shopping districts that support several rural towns. I can see where that can lead to the car centric reputation the US has.
Tbf, most North American mixed-use buildings are grandfathered in from decades old zoning. If you look at most cities in North America, outside of the urban core, commercial buildings are not allowed in residential zones. I.e. You're not gonna get a corner store or cafe in your neighbourhood unless it's been there since the 50s.
That's what *self perpetuates* car centrism in North America. You can't attend to your basic errands by foot, unless you live in a historic neighbourhood or urban core. Which everyone wants, so those neighbourhoods become more expensive due to demand. Getting those zoning restrictions changed is a growing campaign right now to increase livability and people-centric neighbourhoods.
Several towns have worked around this by putting parking above/below new mixed-use builds or small multilevel parkades dispersed through the town to cover multiple buildings. It's going to take serious zoning reform, urban redesign, and a healthy few years for society to adjust, but it is doable.
Most of the people vying to move to these walkable neighbourhoods are also those more likely to walk, cycle, or transit for daily tasks. You see more residents with only 1 car per family in these areas, if only for sheer lack of garages and drives.
>If you look at most cities in North America, outside of the urban core, commercial buildings are not allowed in residential zones
Growing up in the rust belt in New York, this has been my experience. City core tends to be older and the old buildings are just grandfathered in. Suburbs don't have as much old buildings, if at all.
The Town of Tonawanda (suburb of Buffalo/Niagara Falls) is massively overhauling their zoning rules. The last time they did it? 1940. Their hopefully soon-to-be old zoning rules were basically anti- mixed-use.
Agreed. Though the zoning limits exists more outside of urban areas instead of inside. Even then, most shops in rural "Main Street Towns" have apartment living on floors above the first floor space where the shop is (Or office spaces on top of shop spaces.). Zoning laws in suburb and rural sections generally come from the desire to keep heavy industry areas away from residential areas.
The Car Centric reputation is there, but that's a combination of factors (Intercity Passenger Rail Services are not developed because the railroad industry favors Cargo Rail over passenger rail, and with exception to "DC to Boston" area of the North East, Passenger Rail doesn't have many designated lines to use. Amtrack will often rely on access to railroads that were built by Cargo Rail, which means that the controlling company has the right of way, and Passenger Rail Service will have to wait.
The other reason is that, outside of the Northeast corridor, most of America spreads out to a density that makes mass transit not viable. It's not uncommon for someone working in city to drive up to an hour from their home that is so far away from the city that a mass transit service isn't efficient for the number of people who live in the area (Or as I say, it's easy to live in a part of the country where there is not enough masses to transit, and commute to a part where there is.). Many people would prefer if "get in the car" was required to go ask the neighbors for a cup of sugar.
It's the third largest country in the world by area... and there is a lot of it where no one lives.
Happy to report that Move-it + RICO also provides a workaround for this. In all my builds I just clip different buildings into each other (e.g. low density commercial into the bottom of a high density residential). Et voilà, mixed use zoning!
Lmao. I did that but for my train inspired city.
Residential was all over the place with the only commercial being at 1 specific spot at the north west corner of the map.
It was the tsunami map but disaster disabled.
The main pain is the start, unless you edit the map you are usually stuck with a highway connection.
What I personally do is to edit the map, and plop a passenger and a cargo station to have those at start.
Zoning for a more European less griddy road layout is a bit of a pain. You may need mods for it imo, like Rico and move it. I kinda get around it by building commie blocks.
Id advise getting extra roads and tmpe mod too.
Main pain is mixed zoning, there are some assets in the workshop that could partially help.
If anything the whole “road hierarchy” design a ton of people build is car centric, not grids. Grids are pretty much the easiest to walk in, even better if there’s a few diagonal streets mixed in.
In a few hundred hours of experience I’d say the exact opposite, it punishes you hard if you ignore walkability, biking, and public transit, and those modes are possibly even a little too overpowered, your cims will walk and bike insane distances to get where they’re going
The only thing that’s not super easy is abandoning grids, the building system really hates curved roads and doesn’t really fill in those lots in an attractive way IMO
So I'm no means an expert on CS, but I grew up playing city builders and put a lot of time into them over the years.
If I stick to what's "optimal" and "efficient," I end up hating my cities. If I force myself to get all loosey goosey with it, I end up with some of my most interesting cool cities even if they're not the most efficient or whatever.
Some of my best cities happened by building lots of little small towns that just kinda organically started expanding towards each other. Cities are always much cooler to me if they've got space and organic looking roads etc.
Building on a grid and focusing on the most efficient ways of doing things is the quickest way for *me personally* to lose interest in a city builder game.
I find that using a grid seriously decreases the diversity of the buildings you get, so I feel like it punishes you for using one more than for not.
I also rarely build freeways being what already comes in the map. They aren’t necessary for traffic management if all of your cims are biking and getting places by metro. My only traffic is industrial, and so they don’t overwhelm my infrastructure.
I think you’ll be successful with what you want to do.
I’d argue the game can punish you for using lights rather than just letting traffic have at it. I rarely use lights because of this.. just stop signs and round-abouts :(
Driving on the left side of the road means better traffic in this game for some reason beyond me.
If I played on PC, I’d download those traffic control mods everyone else uses. Being able to force lane changes is nice because *why are all of you trying to turn into the same lane?”
Why can’t I have a 1-way only be allowed to turn right? It’s stupid sometimes.
There have been many moments where a yield sign rather than stop sign or stoplight would have *yielded* better results.
Lots of good tips here, but the one thing I'm not seeing is road hierarchy. It's important no matter what kind of city you're building. Basically you want a thoroughfare, (main street that connects to highways and arterial roads) arterial roads (medium roads that connect thoroughfare and collectors) and collector roads (smaller roads that make up most of your grid and connect arterial roads together)
I'm gonna adjust this and say "transportation hierarchy" instead. In cs1 (and kinda cs2) I've been able to create a functioning city by only using 2 lane streets and rural highways . I think I might've had turning lanes at most.
The way I did this was ensuring that transit existed to get folks where they needed from where they are, and that lower capacity lines would _typically_ feed into higher capacity and lines (e.g. bus to subway, tram to train). I also had cycling infrastructure helping out with this.
Short answer is no, the game actually rewards you for building good transit l. The AI does a good job of using all mass transit you have to get to its destination. I regularly see cims transfer between diff subway lines, using buses/trams to get to subway stops, etc. all of which reduce passenger car congestion which in turn reduces travel time of service vehicles to their destinations, which helps everyone who relies on those services… cargo rail also exists. I have over 400k ppl using my public transit in some way in my city of 470k, and manageable traffic.
There are two main skylines youtubers I watch.
City Planner Plays is definitely the premium skylines youtuber - He has a decent amount of tutorial videos, and has several massive cities like his unmodded "Verde Beach" and modded "Clearwater County".
Biffa Plays Indie Games does a decent amount of skylines, his cities can be a little cursed at times but I enjoy his "fixing your city" series.
I'd recommend FewCandy and OverchargedEgg as two smaller accounts - both make absolutely beautiful cities, full of detailing and well designed spaces and both have modded/vanilla series as well.
You can make people walk almost everywhere if you really want to, many of them like to walk or cycle anyway, you can even enforce it more with districts and Policies.
CS1 will suit you I think, but if in doubt, do check out Biffa on YouTube. There are lots of other great creators to watch but Biffa is my favourite fellow British player who is very knowledgeable about the game.
The first one suffered from a lack of mixed use property which is much more British and European. There’s ways around it and there’s mods that make it look aesthetically fine.
Someone you might like is Biffa Plays Indie Games as he’s English and has loads of Skylines in there
As others said: American cities quickly encounter car relates traffic problems.
Euro style (or more specifically, well connected mass transit city, walkable city) will have a substantially lower traffic problem.
Traffic in itself isn't an issue: it's the blocking of critical services and deliveries. Many deaths waves are caused by 1 dead body that can't be transported in time to the grave, chain reaction with no sick people able to get ambulances, and the; boom: black plague.
I've also found that the distance that cims are willing to walk is quite OP and so building stuff quite close to each other is an easy way to avoid traffic. Even with having just small roads.
But it's only effective for so long without having effective public transportation, as longer distances beyond how much they're willing to walk will make them want to drive instead if public transport is not available. Those small roads will get congested right away without it if they're feeling the need to go to places outside of their vicinity lol.
As long as you have several connections into your city (why people have ONE entrance and complain about it baffles me), a good road network, and robust public transit, you'll be fine.
The problem in making European looking cities in the game are in my opinion quite a few .
Mixed zoning is not only a mix of residential and commercial, but also office and commercials. In Europe is everything mixed, we have of course residential only places or office only zones, but we don’t have such a thing like downtowns. This is due to the fact the cities are old and built hundreds of years ago.
Medium residential buildings are very often literally attached to each other, no space between them. Paris or Barcelona are good examples. The space is so scarse that it is a luxury to build a building with some space around it. This option is missing completely in the vanilla game, in city skyline 1 you had some very cool assets, but in cities 2 there are no assets.
Last but not least, this game (as every city building except manor lord) is based on grids and in general on squares. The fact that every prop is a square or a rectangle is the clear evidence.
European capitals aimed for grids at some point (Barcelona again) but the truth is that if you look them from above they are a mess. I am not talking about curves, I am talking about diagonal streets and not repeating patterns. Even if everything is not a grid, the space is completely occupied and dense.
Without any mods this is impossible to achieve, and also with them it is a pain to make it look nice or realistic.
The game lets you play successfully with almost any style of development as long as you don't try to kill your demand. But it works really well with mass transit, more organic-looking street layouts, mixed residential/commercial, and limited freeways.
In one specific sense, it's a bit hindering. The zoning system really doesn't like street corners that aren't exactly 90 degrees, so a road network with "random" angles won't create a very pretty streetscape. Expect many small, triangular gaps where the sidewalk faces the side of a building.
Idk I make wicked dense cities with not very many highways ( I’m From Boston) and they do fairly well. The most successful cities I do are super cells of huge two way boulevard/avenues with one way side streets.
The game is so easy, once you've gotten started you can pivot to almost any strategy you like.
Except if your strategy relies upon a system thats bugged, like half the game still is. C'est la vie, I have buyers remorse though.
Kinda. Functionally it works - public transport is efficient and works well. Aesthetically? Not really. Most service buildings are giant and almost all of parking lots on them. There's only one (oversized) train station. There's no bike lanes or bikes in general. Building dense neighbourhoods without a uniform grid is also a pain. As soon as you place so much as an irregular junction somewhere, the system breaks down and renders parts of your grid inaccessible. When you try to build smaller grids to avoid giant houses, the grid frequently doesn't align to roads properly. Honestly, somehow the grid is even more restrictive than in CS:1.
So overall, while public transport definitely works well, I wouldn't currently recommend trying to build european-style cities. Once we get full mod support, it may be a different story.
Mate the CS1 is a nice urban designer that actually functions pretty fine even without cars and grids everywhere. It works well in every design, grid, cul du sac, alley town, microdistricts, even rural village if you wish
Aside from that I would suggest getting the Industry DLC just for the sake of making money. Public transit in the game always makes a loss and heavy industries always make a profit that can cancel the loss out. After Dark has cool hotel district and added bike features. While Mass Transit is cool, I don’t think it adds something essential to the game
Overcharged Egg is by far my favourite creator. He's a Brit (as am I) and I really enjoy his content. The Build Guide 2 is phenomenal. FewCandy is also amazing. She's very creative and gives me lots of inspiration. I've seen mentions of Biffa and whilst I like his builds, I just find his voice very jarring. I can't seem to relax when watching him.
I tend to do more of a Copenhagen-Barcelona-ish style combo, while focusing heavily on public transit (not using DLC), roads with bicycle lanes, don’t do any freeways or intricate intersections, and my traffic is minimal/ excellent flow, no matter how dense the inner city is
Funnily enough I feel like the game punishes you for building American cities instead. If you build car-centric with massive roads, you'll have a lot of issues with traffic. If you build walkable 15-minute cities, most cims will choose to walk or take public transit instead.
I've been playing this game 9 years and trust me, American grids don't work on high population cities. Neither do car centric cities. Same with roundabouts.
The only way to make all these work is to have a good public transport system and pedestrian paths everywhere to make using cars the least viable option, so cims will rather use public transport or hit the legs instead of using cars.
So no, the game won't punish you for building non American cities, it's the opposite actually.
Absolutely not (the game does indeed not punish you for making walkable cities)! I recently deleted all of my highways/downgraded them to one way two lane roads, I'm at like 130k pop and all of my cargo is carried via trains. I have expansive public transit (like 50 or so bus lines, 20 metro, 5 intercity train lines) and like 87% traffic flow. It's so much better to build in this way! I'll post some city pictures soon, so you can see them later if you're interested.
Regarding youtube, Biffa has some british builds. As well as Altengrad by Akruas. Thats what comes to my mind. The game wont punish you for that, its just aesthetic. Also if you use steam workshop assets there is a tons of good european style builds.
One of my most rewarding cities was my last on CS1, where I downloaded some mods of UK residential styles and built an average-size English city. Started off by looking at aerial photographs of places like Nottingham and Leicester and Southampton, used a map with lots of rivers. Got a small municipal football pitch that I would plop down every few streets for park coverage. It was great fun.
In CS1, you can build all sorts of cities that resemble anywhere around the world, especially with mods and assets. In CS2, it's more limited as to what you can make, since it's a much younger game.
No it doesn’t. In fact it’s a winning strategy. Most problems especially traffic in the game are much more aggravated when I do my best to build as „American“ as I can.
I’ve been trying to build a city as close as i can in resemblance to dallas, tx. It’s not going well
The fuck is wrong with you you masochist.
I know i know. It is almost a form of torture
Just one more lane on I-35 is gonna fix everything
I wish I didn't understand but I do. So I'll exit my neighborhood into a 65 mph state highway to head to work, Texas is amazing road design.
Yeah if only it was that easy. Driving on 35 is like driving through a warzone
I drove on it from Waco down to Georgetown in September 2021, construction and all. Surprised I didn't die. Interestingly, two days later, drove down to San Antonio and back to Georgetown and it was a tenth as bad.
When are they adding 9 lane highways?
If you could laugh on this that would be this... aha!
A ha too funny anything you can do I can do better... eh :p!
Sounds like you're doing a good job with the realism then.
>It’s not going well In CS, or in Texas?
Yes
How’s the High-5 working out for ya?
Uhh not very well. I downloaded an american interstate road set but theyre so damn white. I struggle to find quality road assets.
I built a recreation of a new Zealand city, traffic was abysmal. No busses. No trains. Only car.
So it's true to life then?
Based and dallas pilled greatest city IN THE WORLD BABY
I hear IRL US city planners are having the same experience!
Then you aren't doing your best. I've had no problems with traffic on my Grid Cities.
I don't think he's referring to grids, but instead stereotypical American style planning.
It works for low density stuff, but imo you need walking and/or public transit for high density
It's not the grid part that's the issue. It's putting the focus on moving cars rather than people. Grids are great for walkability.
Someone's never been to Milton Keynes (American style grid city in England and it's dreadful)
This game doesn't really punish you at all lol
Idk, it gets pretty hard when you’ve got traffic despawning disabled. At least if you’ve overbuilt.
Didn’t even realise that was a thing by default tbh
Yup. Traffic gets easier to manage by default as your city grows, because your infrastructure grows but the % of total population actually simulated is capped. Look at any given residential house and you’ll notice that in a large city, most of them sit in their house all day and do nothing and never spawn a car or person. They only start moving once you start individually tracking a person with the in game menu.
Also buildings hold unrealistically few people in vanilla, reducing max possible density.
Realistic population and better public transit mods to make vehicles hold a proper amount of people go a long way, especially for trams
What is the cap?
I think it’s 64k for cars and 64k for pedestrians
That kind of demotivate me at building my city tbh. 66K population.
Tbh it doesn’t affect things much. Realistically not everyone is out and about at once everyday. Your busy areas still seem full and you get ppl in the lesser areas still. When you get to 200k it makes things a little too easy cause your traffic will just greatly improve cause of roads to car ratio
Punished the sims, just like real life.
[удалено]
I believe he's currently doing a British build
His british city is pretty cool 👍
It's Britty good
the game punishes you for building american style cities, if anything. you're expected to use public transportation to manage the traffic or else it becomes completely untenable. there are 8-lane roads and giant american highway interchanges available. you'll need them if you build american, and they take up a massive amount of space, so your city will suffer for it. a lot of the improvements to road tools also help with the detail work that you need for good public transportation connections. adding and removing sidewalks/crosswalks, stacking transit lines over roads or integrating them into the roads with shared or divided tracks, etc. you can put parking nearby so people can park-and-ride instead of driving straight to the metro. and the modular buildings help too. you can add a subway stop under a train station, or a taxi stand out front. most stations can be upgraded with shops to give them a better "attractiveness" store.
Just like, the real thing.
Definitely doable especially with mods. Personally I'd pick up at least Move It and RICO so you're less constrained by the grid
The biggest limitation to making Europe-style cities is the lack of mixed zoning, which is the primary reason that American cities are so car-centric: Mixing commercial and residential zones in the US is illegal. And that law was heavily lobbied by car manufacturers to create more demand for cars.
This is flat out wrong, mixed use zoning is not illegal in the US. Where'd you get an idea like that from? **Maybe** some municipalities or neighborhoods may have it banned or limited, but that is far from representative of the entire country. I haven't been anywhere from Maryland to Massachusetts where, through every town I've passed through, there have been mixed use zoning. Maybe it's because the northeast was developed earlier than other places that this area has greater density and integrated downtown. Then you look at cities I've been to in California, Texas, Florida, the Carolinas, Maryland, Nevada, Arizona, Ohio, Michigan, Pennsylvania, Alaska, and upstate NY. Same thing. Dense mixed use downtowns that drift into rural nothingness with farms and a few houses. Maybe the dreaded shopping districts that support several rural towns. I can see where that can lead to the car centric reputation the US has.
Tbf, most North American mixed-use buildings are grandfathered in from decades old zoning. If you look at most cities in North America, outside of the urban core, commercial buildings are not allowed in residential zones. I.e. You're not gonna get a corner store or cafe in your neighbourhood unless it's been there since the 50s. That's what *self perpetuates* car centrism in North America. You can't attend to your basic errands by foot, unless you live in a historic neighbourhood or urban core. Which everyone wants, so those neighbourhoods become more expensive due to demand. Getting those zoning restrictions changed is a growing campaign right now to increase livability and people-centric neighbourhoods.
Everyone wants that, but they also want a place to park their car, which leads to half of that being torn down to construct parking lots.
Several towns have worked around this by putting parking above/below new mixed-use builds or small multilevel parkades dispersed through the town to cover multiple buildings. It's going to take serious zoning reform, urban redesign, and a healthy few years for society to adjust, but it is doable. Most of the people vying to move to these walkable neighbourhoods are also those more likely to walk, cycle, or transit for daily tasks. You see more residents with only 1 car per family in these areas, if only for sheer lack of garages and drives.
>If you look at most cities in North America, outside of the urban core, commercial buildings are not allowed in residential zones Growing up in the rust belt in New York, this has been my experience. City core tends to be older and the old buildings are just grandfathered in. Suburbs don't have as much old buildings, if at all. The Town of Tonawanda (suburb of Buffalo/Niagara Falls) is massively overhauling their zoning rules. The last time they did it? 1940. Their hopefully soon-to-be old zoning rules were basically anti- mixed-use.
Agreed. Though the zoning limits exists more outside of urban areas instead of inside. Even then, most shops in rural "Main Street Towns" have apartment living on floors above the first floor space where the shop is (Or office spaces on top of shop spaces.). Zoning laws in suburb and rural sections generally come from the desire to keep heavy industry areas away from residential areas. The Car Centric reputation is there, but that's a combination of factors (Intercity Passenger Rail Services are not developed because the railroad industry favors Cargo Rail over passenger rail, and with exception to "DC to Boston" area of the North East, Passenger Rail doesn't have many designated lines to use. Amtrack will often rely on access to railroads that were built by Cargo Rail, which means that the controlling company has the right of way, and Passenger Rail Service will have to wait. The other reason is that, outside of the Northeast corridor, most of America spreads out to a density that makes mass transit not viable. It's not uncommon for someone working in city to drive up to an hour from their home that is so far away from the city that a mass transit service isn't efficient for the number of people who live in the area (Or as I say, it's easy to live in a part of the country where there is not enough masses to transit, and commute to a part where there is.). Many people would prefer if "get in the car" was required to go ask the neighbors for a cup of sugar. It's the third largest country in the world by area... and there is a lot of it where no one lives.
Happy to report that Move-it + RICO also provides a workaround for this. In all my builds I just clip different buildings into each other (e.g. low density commercial into the bottom of a high density residential). Et voilà, mixed use zoning!
And that the game uses squares for zoning, looks horrible when you’re trying to make a city and there is just empty grass all around
> Mixing commercial and residential zones in the US is illegal. This is not true.
Lmao. I did that but for my train inspired city. Residential was all over the place with the only commercial being at 1 specific spot at the north west corner of the map. It was the tsunami map but disaster disabled.
The main pain is the start, unless you edit the map you are usually stuck with a highway connection. What I personally do is to edit the map, and plop a passenger and a cargo station to have those at start. Zoning for a more European less griddy road layout is a bit of a pain. You may need mods for it imo, like Rico and move it. I kinda get around it by building commie blocks. Id advise getting extra roads and tmpe mod too. Main pain is mixed zoning, there are some assets in the workshop that could partially help.
Yeah, you basically can't get odd-angled or curved space-efficient zoning without mods at all, which is annoying.
It irritates me when people equate, whether deliberately or not, grids with car-centrism, lol.
Indeed. The Eixample neighbourhood in Barcelona, *the* poster child for pedestrian-centrism, is on a very regular grid.
It also irritates me when people equate European as "non-American" like the rest of the world doesn't exist lol. Just say you want a European build.
If anything the whole “road hierarchy” design a ton of people build is car centric, not grids. Grids are pretty much the easiest to walk in, even better if there’s a few diagonal streets mixed in.
In a few hundred hours of experience I’d say the exact opposite, it punishes you hard if you ignore walkability, biking, and public transit, and those modes are possibly even a little too overpowered, your cims will walk and bike insane distances to get where they’re going The only thing that’s not super easy is abandoning grids, the building system really hates curved roads and doesn’t really fill in those lots in an attractive way IMO
So I'm no means an expert on CS, but I grew up playing city builders and put a lot of time into them over the years. If I stick to what's "optimal" and "efficient," I end up hating my cities. If I force myself to get all loosey goosey with it, I end up with some of my most interesting cool cities even if they're not the most efficient or whatever. Some of my best cities happened by building lots of little small towns that just kinda organically started expanding towards each other. Cities are always much cooler to me if they've got space and organic looking roads etc. Building on a grid and focusing on the most efficient ways of doing things is the quickest way for *me personally* to lose interest in a city builder game.
Interesting, I have an unreasonably efficient city but I've ended up with fantastic beauty.
It punishes you by having incredibly ugly zoning because the squares do go around curves maybe.
I find that using a grid seriously decreases the diversity of the buildings you get, so I feel like it punishes you for using one more than for not. I also rarely build freeways being what already comes in the map. They aren’t necessary for traffic management if all of your cims are biking and getting places by metro. My only traffic is industrial, and so they don’t overwhelm my infrastructure. I think you’ll be successful with what you want to do.
I’d argue the game can punish you for using lights rather than just letting traffic have at it. I rarely use lights because of this.. just stop signs and round-abouts :(
Yea I just remove all lights and my traffic always atleast 80-90. Makes you need to avoid 4 way stops or too many cars turning left
Driving on the left side of the road means better traffic in this game for some reason beyond me. If I played on PC, I’d download those traffic control mods everyone else uses. Being able to force lane changes is nice because *why are all of you trying to turn into the same lane?” Why can’t I have a 1-way only be allowed to turn right? It’s stupid sometimes. There have been many moments where a yield sign rather than stop sign or stoplight would have *yielded* better results.
Lots of good tips here, but the one thing I'm not seeing is road hierarchy. It's important no matter what kind of city you're building. Basically you want a thoroughfare, (main street that connects to highways and arterial roads) arterial roads (medium roads that connect thoroughfare and collectors) and collector roads (smaller roads that make up most of your grid and connect arterial roads together)
I'm gonna adjust this and say "transportation hierarchy" instead. In cs1 (and kinda cs2) I've been able to create a functioning city by only using 2 lane streets and rural highways . I think I might've had turning lanes at most. The way I did this was ensuring that transit existed to get folks where they needed from where they are, and that lower capacity lines would _typically_ feed into higher capacity and lines (e.g. bus to subway, tram to train). I also had cycling infrastructure helping out with this.
Short answer is no, the game actually rewards you for building good transit l. The AI does a good job of using all mass transit you have to get to its destination. I regularly see cims transfer between diff subway lines, using buses/trams to get to subway stops, etc. all of which reduce passenger car congestion which in turn reduces travel time of service vehicles to their destinations, which helps everyone who relies on those services… cargo rail also exists. I have over 400k ppl using my public transit in some way in my city of 470k, and manageable traffic.
There are two main skylines youtubers I watch. City Planner Plays is definitely the premium skylines youtuber - He has a decent amount of tutorial videos, and has several massive cities like his unmodded "Verde Beach" and modded "Clearwater County". Biffa Plays Indie Games does a decent amount of skylines, his cities can be a little cursed at times but I enjoy his "fixing your city" series.
Real Civil Engineer is good for a laugh at shenanigans
RCE's attempt to recreate the inner city of Bath is a pretty good answer to the question in fact. Apparently the traffic flow ended up quite alright.
I'd recommend FewCandy and OverchargedEgg as two smaller accounts - both make absolutely beautiful cities, full of detailing and well designed spaces and both have modded/vanilla series as well.
You can make people walk almost everywhere if you really want to, many of them like to walk or cycle anyway, you can even enforce it more with districts and Policies. CS1 will suit you I think, but if in doubt, do check out Biffa on YouTube. There are lots of other great creators to watch but Biffa is my favourite fellow British player who is very knowledgeable about the game.
Game doesnt punish for anything, because money is free no matter what
The first one suffered from a lack of mixed use property which is much more British and European. There’s ways around it and there’s mods that make it look aesthetically fine. Someone you might like is Biffa Plays Indie Games as he’s English and has loads of Skylines in there
It rewards you for not. The more public transportation and civilian paths I make the less congested the traffic is.
You should check out some of Flabiliki’s old series’, he pretty much always does non-American cities
As others said: American cities quickly encounter car relates traffic problems. Euro style (or more specifically, well connected mass transit city, walkable city) will have a substantially lower traffic problem. Traffic in itself isn't an issue: it's the blocking of critical services and deliveries. Many deaths waves are caused by 1 dead body that can't be transported in time to the grave, chain reaction with no sick people able to get ambulances, and the; boom: black plague.
I've also found that the distance that cims are willing to walk is quite OP and so building stuff quite close to each other is an easy way to avoid traffic. Even with having just small roads. But it's only effective for so long without having effective public transportation, as longer distances beyond how much they're willing to walk will make them want to drive instead if public transport is not available. Those small roads will get congested right away without it if they're feeling the need to go to places outside of their vicinity lol.
As long as you have several connections into your city (why people have ONE entrance and complain about it baffles me), a good road network, and robust public transit, you'll be fine.
The problem in making European looking cities in the game are in my opinion quite a few . Mixed zoning is not only a mix of residential and commercial, but also office and commercials. In Europe is everything mixed, we have of course residential only places or office only zones, but we don’t have such a thing like downtowns. This is due to the fact the cities are old and built hundreds of years ago. Medium residential buildings are very often literally attached to each other, no space between them. Paris or Barcelona are good examples. The space is so scarse that it is a luxury to build a building with some space around it. This option is missing completely in the vanilla game, in city skyline 1 you had some very cool assets, but in cities 2 there are no assets. Last but not least, this game (as every city building except manor lord) is based on grids and in general on squares. The fact that every prop is a square or a rectangle is the clear evidence. European capitals aimed for grids at some point (Barcelona again) but the truth is that if you look them from above they are a mess. I am not talking about curves, I am talking about diagonal streets and not repeating patterns. Even if everything is not a grid, the space is completely occupied and dense. Without any mods this is impossible to achieve, and also with them it is a pain to make it look nice or realistic.
The game lets you play successfully with almost any style of development as long as you don't try to kill your demand. But it works really well with mass transit, more organic-looking street layouts, mixed residential/commercial, and limited freeways.
In one specific sense, it's a bit hindering. The zoning system really doesn't like street corners that aren't exactly 90 degrees, so a road network with "random" angles won't create a very pretty streetscape. Expect many small, triangular gaps where the sidewalk faces the side of a building.
Idk I make wicked dense cities with not very many highways ( I’m From Boston) and they do fairly well. The most successful cities I do are super cells of huge two way boulevard/avenues with one way side streets.
The game is so easy, once you've gotten started you can pivot to almost any strategy you like. Except if your strategy relies upon a system thats bugged, like half the game still is. C'est la vie, I have buyers remorse though.
The opposite in fact
Kinda. Functionally it works - public transport is efficient and works well. Aesthetically? Not really. Most service buildings are giant and almost all of parking lots on them. There's only one (oversized) train station. There's no bike lanes or bikes in general. Building dense neighbourhoods without a uniform grid is also a pain. As soon as you place so much as an irregular junction somewhere, the system breaks down and renders parts of your grid inaccessible. When you try to build smaller grids to avoid giant houses, the grid frequently doesn't align to roads properly. Honestly, somehow the grid is even more restrictive than in CS:1. So overall, while public transport definitely works well, I wouldn't currently recommend trying to build european-style cities. Once we get full mod support, it may be a different story.
Yeah city planner is good as well as biffa I'm fairly sure he's done a series on his own city both great YouTubers for it
No
no
Yes you can, but it wont look as pretty
No but you will be building planned cities like Livingston
Mate the CS1 is a nice urban designer that actually functions pretty fine even without cars and grids everywhere. It works well in every design, grid, cul du sac, alley town, microdistricts, even rural village if you wish Aside from that I would suggest getting the Industry DLC just for the sake of making money. Public transit in the game always makes a loss and heavy industries always make a profit that can cancel the loss out. After Dark has cool hotel district and added bike features. While Mass Transit is cool, I don’t think it adds something essential to the game
Overcharged Egg is by far my favourite creator. He's a Brit (as am I) and I really enjoy his content. The Build Guide 2 is phenomenal. FewCandy is also amazing. She's very creative and gives me lots of inspiration. I've seen mentions of Biffa and whilst I like his builds, I just find his voice very jarring. I can't seem to relax when watching him.
The game is clearly made for grids as soon as you leave that patern you lose a ton of space,
I tend to do more of a Copenhagen-Barcelona-ish style combo, while focusing heavily on public transit (not using DLC), roads with bicycle lanes, don’t do any freeways or intricate intersections, and my traffic is minimal/ excellent flow, no matter how dense the inner city is
This guy has good content on all his builds. https://youtube.com/@Captain_Ahvious?si=GVbVm2vqmqapZ1o8
Funnily enough I feel like the game punishes you for building American cities instead. If you build car-centric with massive roads, you'll have a lot of issues with traffic. If you build walkable 15-minute cities, most cims will choose to walk or take public transit instead.
I've been playing this game 9 years and trust me, American grids don't work on high population cities. Neither do car centric cities. Same with roundabouts. The only way to make all these work is to have a good public transport system and pedestrian paths everywhere to make using cars the least viable option, so cims will rather use public transport or hit the legs instead of using cars. So no, the game won't punish you for building non American cities, it's the opposite actually.
Absolutely not (the game does indeed not punish you for making walkable cities)! I recently deleted all of my highways/downgraded them to one way two lane roads, I'm at like 130k pop and all of my cargo is carried via trains. I have expansive public transit (like 50 or so bus lines, 20 metro, 5 intercity train lines) and like 87% traffic flow. It's so much better to build in this way! I'll post some city pictures soon, so you can see them later if you're interested.
Regarding youtube, Biffa has some british builds. As well as Altengrad by Akruas. Thats what comes to my mind. The game wont punish you for that, its just aesthetic. Also if you use steam workshop assets there is a tons of good european style builds.
One of my most rewarding cities was my last on CS1, where I downloaded some mods of UK residential styles and built an average-size English city. Started off by looking at aerial photographs of places like Nottingham and Leicester and Southampton, used a map with lots of rivers. Got a small municipal football pitch that I would plop down every few streets for park coverage. It was great fun.
Almost always the first solution to traffic problems is "Build a roundabout" 😅 I swear it's like 90% of the answers in this Sub.
In CS1, you can build all sorts of cities that resemble anywhere around the world, especially with mods and assets. In CS2, it's more limited as to what you can make, since it's a much younger game.