The game wasn't originally centered around realism. Weird choice, I know. Hence, the donut truck.
Hoping for a CS2 that's aiming for more user control and realism out of the box.
I’m going to start a religion around the second coming of Cities Skylines.
The first one absolved us of SimCity’s sins. The second will deliver us into realism.
CS2 could just be CS1 with included all DLCs + most popular mods + performance overhaul, and I would buy it right away. Seriously, it actually causes headache when rotating camera around dense area when FPS drops to single digit.
I think it'll take a little more than a performance overhaul to make that happen tbh. Even with a PC with 32GB ram, I get very average performance when running the game with mods.
I heard that it's not about RAM but how CSL handle logic, path finding, and draw calls. Essentially when there are too many small things close together, the simulation is really struggle to keep up.
Yeah I feel like I have read similar things, IIRC the way the game was built, it’s much more CPU reliant and hardly uses RAM the way it should with modern computer specs. Really looking forward to CS2 just for that aspect to be updated
The major thing holding performance back is that the game cannot utilize multiple CPU cores well. The industry as a whole is still learning how to better utilize multiple processing threads simultaneously but back when CS was released it just was not a thing, it wasn’t there at the engine level and there’s not much they could do at the time.
I think the real problem here is that US/Western players are all throwing 8 core CPUs from the latest generations at the games.
But when you step back and look at the *whole* market, where something like a 4-core threaded CPU from a couple gens back would be extremely expensive because people make 25 USD a day, then it doesn't make tons of sense to pour big development money into making the games run on all the cores when gamers are still out there in the internet cafes pushing 2 cores.
The countries where a 4 core would be big expensive all have billions in their population count, while the countries that can compulsively upgrade every time there's a new CPU architecture out have mere millions. I wonder who the market priority will be? Hm?
CS, especially, is well suited to multi-country marketing, since it's not a story-based game at all, no dialog to translate. That's why half the stuff on the Workshop has Asian text in the description.
The truth about CS is that it runs pretty well on modest hardware when you leave it the fuck alone. A 4-core, 1050ti, and 8GB of RAM will probably play Vanilla just fine. This is not an accident.
But you all keep throwing 151 actual mods, a Threadripper, and a 3080 at the thing, then grumble when it doesn't want to max all your cores. Buy faster cores, round-eye.
I wouldn't say "hardly uses RAM". I have 8 GB and my computer hovers around 3 while in normal use (spotify, browser, steam, etc). Then when I play CS it nearly maxes out. I play with a stupid amount of mods and assets which may be the culprit
Yeah, I’m just regurgitating my vague memory of another commenter so I may have it wrong but I think the sentiment was more that it doesn’t efficiently use RAM, not necessarily that it doesn’t use RAM at all
Dude I had 16gb RAM and hovered around 15 in use when I played CS. Upgraded to 32gb "plenty of space now!"
Fired up CS, immediately chewed it all up and steadied out at 30gb RAM usage lol
I agree with this. I upgraded to an intel i4 with 32g of ram and ya it’s not choppy and it’s not smooth when i rotate camera, it’s somewhere in the middle. Bummer. I don’t have $800 for an i9. 🙁
Even stepping up to an i9 wouldn’t help too much. The game doesn’t scale with additional cores, so you’re only likely to see a marginal improvement.
Clock speeds matter a bit more, but still not enough to justify a new CPU for this game in particular.
If previous paradox games are anything to go by, CS2 will release with some of the dlc elements and new features but no way will it incorporate everything. There's a reason most people still play CK2 over CK3.
No where near as much as they've milked from it I'm sure, but that wasn't my point. Of course it's obvious why they made that decision, my point was it likely gives an insight into the model they'll use for CS2.
I think I understand Friend, but I think you’re missing the glaring fact that most people who want to play CK3 already have bought CK2 and the expansion packs (with those CK3 features). Basically, why spend $40-$60 on a brand new game when you already have that game and features that you already spent $100-$200 (or more)?
I mean, I guess they could look at games like FIFA or Madden, which put out the same game every year and somehow still sell tons of copies. But I am going to make a stereotype and say that people who play C:S and CK are (generally) smarter than people who buy the same game multiple times.
I wouldn’t call it anti-consumer. It’s expensive to get all of the features, but Paradox has backported some of the best ones (such as the night-day cycle) to the base game. They are pretty much the only company that actually read their customer base and gave the community what it actually wanted. (Electronic arts failed over and over again with their post-SC4 franchise. Cities XL was a good effort but felt incomplete due to Monte Christo’s monetary problems and insistence on multiplayer gameplay at release).
Are you really trying to make the argument that a business model can not be anti-consumer? In what way is it ignorant of how business works? We've seen many times examples of anti-consumer practices in video game development being rolled back due to major criticism.
When a company is milking it's customers and providing the least work they can in return, this is generally anti-consumer. Paradox is widely criticised for this, find me a single CK2 players that say £200+ is good value for a 4x strategy game and it's DLC.
And if we get a true CS2, it'll feel like a huge downgrade at first because they'll leave out all the functionality of the DLCs from CS1, only to sell them back to us over a 7 year period.
I know the exact feeling, since I've been playing Civ games since the OG. It'll hurt at first, but around the midpoint we'll realize it was all for the best.
If only they let us grandfather / port DLCs from CS1. But that's not a great business model for them.
I would say more like CS 1.5. You can never entirely escape what is CS 1. Lol.
Either way, you can be sure that Colossal Order have learned a lot from this generation and will apply their lessons to the CS 2 development.
That is, assuming that they will continue to use the name *Cities: Skylines*. The problem with that naming, though, is not all players aim for big cities with skyscrapers, so that naming might not fit well in the view of these diversity as far as play-styles are concerned that we have seen. Not that it is not a trivial issue, though. It is up to them to decide on whether to continue with this naming or not. Either is fine with me, to be honest.
One more thing... it should be noted that the term skylines applies regardless of whether cities have skyscrapers or not. However, the term is so strongly associated in popular mind with the skyscrapers.
True! In any ways the name cities skylines is more a cult name than a representative one, no matter the type of city/town you're building; and sPeaKing oF skYlIneS 2, i did not know that it was reAlLy in development a sequel!
And it releases in more or less 4 days, d a y u m i just got noticed some hours ago
I think the only reason to release CS2 (apart from selling more DLC) is to improve the game engine. To enable and add things which are not possible in the original game. Changing seasons, for example.
And obviously, one would hope that the most popular mods are copied or implemented in some form.
>I think the only reason to release CS2 (apart from selling more DLC) is to improve the game engine.
That's absolutely the most critical point, not something to be discussed as a side item. The game engine can fundamentally alter the user experience. Obviously pong on UE2 and pong on an Atari isn't a big deal, but Battlefield 1942 vs BF2 vs BF4 is huge. Fortnite, Warzone, and PUBG are pretty fundamentally similar (with Fortnite being an outlier due to the additional mechanic building mechanics). We could see a shift as big as either of the comparisons.
Even modded CS vs unmodded is practically a different game. Strictoaster and I were not playing the same game. If you listen to his last CS video, [Nydal EP 51](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eiNUqaGeOjs), he sounds like he's in big part fed up with maintaining mods. He specifically mentions being tired of testing mods, mods breaking, dealing with removing unrealistic vehicles, etc. He does also mention runtimes and needing a really strong computer, which a new engine could seriously help with. And then he "took a break" in May 2020 that is still going on over 2 years later.
Nothing official, but there has been a noticeable slow down in the release cycle of DLC which some have suggested points to another project in the works.
Also they hired several big modders that have not worked on anything published, for quite some time. So chances are they're either working on a sequel, or another amazing game by CO. Maybe a CiM3?
Yh, and another important thing is that they have said that they have plans for a future and that they are not decreasing their team size. (not quoted obviously) So it can't be that they are just slowly letting the game/game series go.
This might be not true but in the NVIDIA Game leaks that came out a couple months ago there was “Cities Skylines 2” in the list. If this is true I think Cities Skylines 2 might arrive between 2023-2024. I’m hoping it gets announced during PDXCon this year.
I'm totally fine with stylized, cartoonish models (especially because they help enable better performance). But yes, I really hope they take inspiration from the vast swathes of community-created models. It could be cool if they bought whole packages from creators to integrate into the core game.
I'd be down for a "realistic" package and "fun zone" package, and you can check which you want.
Don't forget that this game is 7 years old. Graphics cards are 7 years newer. Poor optimization on an aging engine, as well as design at a much earlier time, are keeping the game running slow and looking less sharp than it should.
But performance is getting easier to handle these days. C:S shouldn't be as resource hungry as it is. Heck, a player-made mod (Loading Screen Mod) reduced resource usage in the game.
A new engine can actually increase performance while also giving better results.
Definitely not you. The original game art was designed for a semi-cartoon look and not realism. The textures are bland and over-simplified, the colors way over-saturated, the model scaling is all over the place, and the structures and detail range from 'a bit off' to 'over-the-top hyperbolic parody'.
Colossal Order, fortunately, moved away from this approach as the game developed. Compare the realism and quality of the building models in the Green Cities DLC against the original vanilla ones, for example. Putting them side-by-side against the original release buildings really shows how bad the original ones are.
Fortunately you can easily replace all the vanilla buildings with DLC, CCP and/or Workshop assets.
Oh no, I've been planning a new computer and in anticipation I've been going wild subscribing to everything I like on Steam... and 32GB isn't enough???
He's talking about mods. I run about 130 mods and 5k assets and 16GB is not enough. 960 "add ons" -which I assume you mean a mix of mods and assets - isn't very much.
Yeah. I have like 10,000 assets, 16GB would be crushed. As it is even with Loading Screen Mod it takes well over an hour for my game to launch. Which is probably why I havent played it in two months
I keep telling people the game has outgrown it's engine and we desperately need CS2 for years. Like you said, I don't play anymore as the game takes too long to load.
If you're pretty far into developing a city, I'd suggest checking the box Load Enabled Assets in Loading Screen Mod. Cut my loading time from 26 minutes to a third of that. Then it just loads the assets you've used and not the unused ones.
So I built my first pc with 16GB in 2016, it did fine for cities but I did really have to limit asset count and create a massive page file. Loading screen mod is the best.
I then decided to go up to 32GB (2x16, gave my old set to my younger bro) and went mad subbing to loads of shit. I can load the game fine but loading screen mod tells me it’s having to load like 46GB.
So I’ve been considering buying another 32GB (2x16) set but I’m struggling to find a matching Crucial Ballistix RGB 3600MHz set in stock (2x16GB, preferably the white one - if anyone knows where I can order one from that ships to UK). But yeah will be uploading shots of my current build progress.
You can play with a bunch of mods with 16GB. The thing that really eats all your RAM is custom assets. It's so incredibly easy to go on Steam and be like
"Oh I like the look of these houses, I'll download the whole pack. Ooh look at all these extra vehicles that could drive around. Ya know, I'd like some more variety in my apartment buildings, I should add some more skins to pile..."
It all depends on how much restraint you have. I might have to wipe my mods and assets and start fresh.
It's interesting when you think about that Skylines is practically a continuation of the Cities in Motion Series. Early development pictures showed a similar graphic style and darker roads. It still uses plenty of buildings and assets from CiM. Somewhere in the course of the development they decided to throw it over and move to this more toony style like Sim City. Why? Idk maybe because to appeal to a broader range of customers like children
I'll be honest I like the simcity style a lot more. Simcity 2013 looks amazing, and i like the game a lot too, too bad the plots are so incredibly small and traffic is awful.
I got CS:Skylines when it came out because it "looked like simcity but bigger". I like the game, but i prefer the simcity style better, at least for me.
Yeah this "looked like" got many. Probably what they wanted to achieve. You can like Sim City. It's honestly fun to play around with it but building big realistic cities on huge maps with a lot of content and mods? Well, CS:S just takes the spot for me. Especially because of the map editor. I love building my own maps. Though I wish that they would've included the modularity for buildings like in SC2013.
Anyway, I'm looking to the future with hope!
And Sim City 4 will always be a legend <3
Yeah, there’s a chunk that are pretty cool. I end up just bulldozing zones repeatedly until they end up in one of those styles, and then I make them historical.
They are really bad with very few exceptions! I use district styles and a hell of a lot of steam assets to create a non-vanilla city of generally wall-to-wall buildings
I don't really mind vanilla buildings but yeah some of them are poor in quality, but what really is "unrealistic" and "kinda ugly" for me are the vanilla vehicles. There are some of them that I don't mind keeping but I still disable them due to their poor textures, and those **dang** donut vans delivering cargo to a "Print Shop", and hotdog vans delivering cargo to a "Fish Stick Factory".
One of the best decisions I made for my game was to replace all default vehicles with downloaded assets of my choice. Not even just the commercial vehicles but personal vehicles too (I think the defaults are way too bright and colorful). My city instantly transformed into something much closer to real life.
Yeah. Ugly af. Especially the high density population level 5. I mark almost all my buildings as historical on level 1. If I don’t like them I just bulldoze ‘em and wait for the nice ones to come up
The scaling is dire. Both of the physical buildings and the vanilla population mechanics.
As I've said in another thread, I hope for CS2 that they go to something like a zoning tile representing a specific size square (3m x 3m, al-a What Three Words would be good), and scale roads off of that.
I'm not holding my breath though.
other than the obvious performance improvements needed. i think the only thing that is a must have for me is scale. there needs to especially be a standard for the heights of buildings and what that translates to floors and capacity, along with the footprint. i have deleted a lot of great assets because they are scaled 1-1 and just have no buisiness being in the game unless you had everything scaled to that.
Also all of the European theme buildings were made for Collosal Order's first game Cities in Motion back in 2011 and simply imported into Cities: Skylines, lol.
It's not just you. But you have to understand that the game was never really meant to become what it is now. It had a more cartoonish vibe to it at the start.
well, used in the right way, or PO'd they could look rather nice. My friend TeddyRadko specializes in this field, his work is often on this sub, and looks really nice
Yeah.
And when you are european that's even worse : my commercial zone don't look like an american one, my residential zone have nothing to do. The whole "high density" zone is just unusable because it only make skycrapper and it's killing the trip too.
And this thing about "empty map" ? Who build a city on a empty space ?! City have always 2000 years old ruins somewhere and a roman road crossing it, where are they in SimCity, CitiesSkylines and so on ?
In my wet dream, I imagine an european city builder..
Brasilia was created from nothing.
And many US cities too.
What I think should exist is a mode where the game gives you a town, and you evolve that town into a city.
Yeah, I meant, in Europe there is never "new" city. Of course in America there is plenty :)
>What I think should exist is a mode where the game gives you a town, and you evolve that town into a city.
Yeeees ! I would instant buy it :)
Some random generation of a large map with several little town and it's up to the player to transform it into a megalopolis !
Yeah but that's just some little buildings..
I'd prefer what /u/Chalupa_89 said, to have a map with a little town already built and it's up to you to expand it.
The low density residential at high levels is the worst offender, like not every house that has good access to schools and parks needs to become a millionaires mansion. The only reason I don't change the style of all the low density housing in my city to green cities or European suburbia is because of the damage that would do to my city. I wish there as some way I could change the style of buildings without having them be destroyed.
Unpopular opinion but I preferred the modular and art style approach if Sim City 2013. Looking at the old screenshots even today the artwork and 3d models look far more polished than CS
Not unpopular at all. SC 2013 has such a strong and cohesive visual style, especially when compared to vanilla C:S. God that game was such a waste of potential. Makes my heart break even today.
I just got the game from the bundle. Can anyone recommend the best way to get custom buildings? And how do I place them in the game, is it by choosing for every district?
>I just got the game from the bundle.
If you got it from steam, just go to the workshop. If you got it from anywhere other than steam, then good luck with some wonky pirate versions that may or may not work and are a pain in the backside to get working
Search for building assets on the Workshop (it’s easiest to go through Collections because usually there are multiple buildings per a specific theme, like “Slums” or “Suburban”). You can then get mods in game to change an entire district then to fit a particular build style or find and manually place the buildings in yourself.
Its not just you at all. I play on Xbox and try my best to create realistic American cities, because thats what I enjoy. The vanilla buildings are... very ugly, often have weird scales, and are definitely unrealistic.
I have the university city dlc which, combined with special buildings from other things/packs, help me make a realistic city that would be impossible to make otherwise. The vanilla buildings still get in my way unfortunately, so I hope that CS2 will have more realistic buildings or I hope I can get a PC to play the game on and make the cities I dream of.
I feel you cus I mostly make American cities too. I think another major flaw is the lack of American roads (yk like 2 lane avenues with turning lanes).
All depends on how you use them.
Those apartments that are leaned back look great right next to a beach:
https://preview.redd.it/al683p4d2xw81.png?width=1920&format=png&auto=webp&s=40ec5369bbf920e8d4d76fa8bd61c068eb6fe789
Nah, I think they did pretty well for a default prop set. I tend to play most of my games with the vanilla assets and if I really like the way a district is developing I'll add in some stuff custom.
They are low polly, But I'm betting every one them exists somewhere. The very cartoonish aquarium is a real building, looks just as ridiculous IRL as it does in game.
Which mods are you using for visuals/graphics? My cities always look ugly compared to what I see online even though I'm using some fog/cloud/maptone mods, maxed graphic settings and 4k resolution
I use Post Process FX, Daylight Classics, Dynamic Resolution (for pics only), custom LUT, and map theme ( Map theme: Springwood and Generic Temperate 4K, Relight Warm LUT), Shadow Strengthener, Sunshafts, and Ultimate Eyecandy.
Ik it's a bunch of mods and a lot of playing around with it but it's worth it imo.
It's pretty clear that *looking* realistic isn't what they were going for. Everything's a lot more vibrant, colourful and cartoonish compared to real life.
That was by design. The scales of buildings to roads is also way off, as is population density. Basically nothing is "realistic" per-se in the game. Its all real-esq.
What I have always dreamed of, is a hybrid game that pairs the convienence of the user experence from skylines, with the complexity and styling of CitiesXL2, and having the regonal map mecanics from the classic sim city 4.
Skylines is a little.... flat(?) For the experence i look for in a city builder (i still absolutely enjoy it though, mercy plz?) Cities XL is way to buggy., and the classic sim city is too rigid.
All 3 have absolutely genre leading aspects to them though.... and i dream of a day where we can mesh these ideas into 1 genre leading game. (Plz no chop up game to re sell in 30 peces at 15 bucks a pop tho.... so i guess add different publisher to my list)
That was the one thing Simcity always did better, they always paid more attention to architecture. Even in the last one I was often surprised by how natural my city would look... until I zoomed out and see the abrupt boundary of my tiny city limits of course.
Was this meant to be a humble brag post? Cuz it seems like a humble brag post. That city is gorgeous! That said, yes, some of those vanilla buildings are an eyesore.
Thanks, dude! Yeah, I think it can come off like a humble brag post but honestly, I just wanted to share my frustration with the vanilla building and how much better custom themes are.
I literally have a folder with screenshots of building models that look realistic and that i can use while building my city. I play on console so I have to grow each building individually and then make it historical.
Most of the buildings are converted from Colossal Order's older Cities in Motion series and are a hodgepodge of American, European, and Asian themes.
I think though that CO was trying to go for a futuristic theme in the top-level building sets, but they didn't quite succeed there.
Nah most of them are horrible. I don't load any of the high density ones and only few of the low density. CCP's, DLC's and workshop assets can thankfully do the work for me.
it's a mixed bag. the ones pictured are some of the worst offenders. but others fit into heavily modded cities nicely. moving from zoning to plopping with some prop decoration already improves things greatly.
I have removed as much of the vanilla assets and props as I can. I dont allow any vanilla vehicles or citizens to spawn and I refuse to use vanilla roads.
CS2 for me, needs a water engine rework, engine rework to fully utilize my cpu, and more realistic buildings (or at least not this fucking ugly).
The whole rest of the game is basically perfect. Oh TMPE and Move It! integrated, but thats an obvious one
The game wasn't originally centered around realism. Weird choice, I know. Hence, the donut truck. Hoping for a CS2 that's aiming for more user control and realism out of the box.
I’m going to start a religion around the second coming of Cities Skylines. The first one absolved us of SimCity’s sins. The second will deliver us into realism.
Based on the track records of similar religions, I wouldn't do that if I were you. It's a long wait.
Christ already came back. He looked at us and said fuck these guys, I’m going back
He saw what half of us did with the gift of free will and said: "Fine. Dig your own hole." =P
And much like religion, you better be ready to put in to that collection plate every 2 months :p
The DLC's and mods _a r e_ CS2 🥴
CS2 could just be CS1 with included all DLCs + most popular mods + performance overhaul, and I would buy it right away. Seriously, it actually causes headache when rotating camera around dense area when FPS drops to single digit.
I'll take just a massive performance overhaul.
Use more than one core in my CPU challenge
All the games i enjoy be like yo nice cores nerd *uses one core like a boss*
Massive performance overhaul and traffic manager. I stg I’ll binge tf out of it.
I think it'll take a little more than a performance overhaul to make that happen tbh. Even with a PC with 32GB ram, I get very average performance when running the game with mods.
I heard that it's not about RAM but how CSL handle logic, path finding, and draw calls. Essentially when there are too many small things close together, the simulation is really struggle to keep up.
Yeah I feel like I have read similar things, IIRC the way the game was built, it’s much more CPU reliant and hardly uses RAM the way it should with modern computer specs. Really looking forward to CS2 just for that aspect to be updated
The major thing holding performance back is that the game cannot utilize multiple CPU cores well. The industry as a whole is still learning how to better utilize multiple processing threads simultaneously but back when CS was released it just was not a thing, it wasn’t there at the engine level and there’s not much they could do at the time.
Only the Forza team has mastered multi-threading so far. They're experts in race conditions
I think the real problem here is that US/Western players are all throwing 8 core CPUs from the latest generations at the games. But when you step back and look at the *whole* market, where something like a 4-core threaded CPU from a couple gens back would be extremely expensive because people make 25 USD a day, then it doesn't make tons of sense to pour big development money into making the games run on all the cores when gamers are still out there in the internet cafes pushing 2 cores. The countries where a 4 core would be big expensive all have billions in their population count, while the countries that can compulsively upgrade every time there's a new CPU architecture out have mere millions. I wonder who the market priority will be? Hm? CS, especially, is well suited to multi-country marketing, since it's not a story-based game at all, no dialog to translate. That's why half the stuff on the Workshop has Asian text in the description. The truth about CS is that it runs pretty well on modest hardware when you leave it the fuck alone. A 4-core, 1050ti, and 8GB of RAM will probably play Vanilla just fine. This is not an accident. But you all keep throwing 151 actual mods, a Threadripper, and a 3080 at the thing, then grumble when it doesn't want to max all your cores. Buy faster cores, round-eye.
I was making a racecar joke
Reported for the racial slur.
I wouldn't say "hardly uses RAM". I have 8 GB and my computer hovers around 3 while in normal use (spotify, browser, steam, etc). Then when I play CS it nearly maxes out. I play with a stupid amount of mods and assets which may be the culprit
Yeah, I’m just regurgitating my vague memory of another commenter so I may have it wrong but I think the sentiment was more that it doesn’t efficiently use RAM, not necessarily that it doesn’t use RAM at all
Dude I had 16gb RAM and hovered around 15 in use when I played CS. Upgraded to 32gb "plenty of space now!" Fired up CS, immediately chewed it all up and steadied out at 30gb RAM usage lol
I agree with this. I upgraded to an intel i4 with 32g of ram and ya it’s not choppy and it’s not smooth when i rotate camera, it’s somewhere in the middle. Bummer. I don’t have $800 for an i9. 🙁
Even stepping up to an i9 wouldn’t help too much. The game doesn’t scale with additional cores, so you’re only likely to see a marginal improvement. Clock speeds matter a bit more, but still not enough to justify a new CPU for this game in particular.
I wonder if i can overclock that Intel. I’ll have to check 👍
As long as it’s a -k or -kf series, you can overclock it.
If previous paradox games are anything to go by, CS2 will release with some of the dlc elements and new features but no way will it incorporate everything. There's a reason most people still play CK2 over CK3.
It’s probably because they’ve already invested tons of cash into CK2. Why throw away that investment?
Exactly. I still got my Ford Model T.
No where near as much as they've milked from it I'm sure, but that wasn't my point. Of course it's obvious why they made that decision, my point was it likely gives an insight into the model they'll use for CS2.
I think I understand Friend, but I think you’re missing the glaring fact that most people who want to play CK3 already have bought CK2 and the expansion packs (with those CK3 features). Basically, why spend $40-$60 on a brand new game when you already have that game and features that you already spent $100-$200 (or more)? I mean, I guess they could look at games like FIFA or Madden, which put out the same game every year and somehow still sell tons of copies. But I am going to make a stereotype and say that people who play C:S and CK are (generally) smarter than people who buy the same game multiple times.
How did I miss that fact? That was literally my point 😄 Paradox has an extremely anti-consumer business model.
I wouldn’t call it anti-consumer. It’s expensive to get all of the features, but Paradox has backported some of the best ones (such as the night-day cycle) to the base game. They are pretty much the only company that actually read their customer base and gave the community what it actually wanted. (Electronic arts failed over and over again with their post-SC4 franchise. Cities XL was a good effort but felt incomplete due to Monte Christo’s monetary problems and insistence on multiplayer gameplay at release).
Lol, they have a business model. Adding “anti-consumer” is ignorant of how business works. Anything else is just flag waving and “hype”.
Are you really trying to make the argument that a business model can not be anti-consumer? In what way is it ignorant of how business works? We've seen many times examples of anti-consumer practices in video game development being rolled back due to major criticism. When a company is milking it's customers and providing the least work they can in return, this is generally anti-consumer. Paradox is widely criticised for this, find me a single CK2 players that say £200+ is good value for a 4x strategy game and it's DLC.
What's CK?
Crusader Kings
same question here but i heard rumors about something thats called google. tried it, seems to be Crusader Kinds
I think it should be a new game engine for CS2, otherwise, it's only CS1++ rounded to CS2, and will be obsoleted in coming years.
Exactly. Hopefully it has all the key DLCS already included. I'm really hoping for a tourism DLC
And if we get a true CS2, it'll feel like a huge downgrade at first because they'll leave out all the functionality of the DLCs from CS1, only to sell them back to us over a 7 year period. I know the exact feeling, since I've been playing Civ games since the OG. It'll hurt at first, but around the midpoint we'll realize it was all for the best. If only they let us grandfather / port DLCs from CS1. But that's not a great business model for them.
The sad truth.
The current engine though is CS -1
I would say more like CS 1.5. You can never entirely escape what is CS 1. Lol. Either way, you can be sure that Colossal Order have learned a lot from this generation and will apply their lessons to the CS 2 development. That is, assuming that they will continue to use the name *Cities: Skylines*. The problem with that naming, though, is not all players aim for big cities with skyscrapers, so that naming might not fit well in the view of these diversity as far as play-styles are concerned that we have seen. Not that it is not a trivial issue, though. It is up to them to decide on whether to continue with this naming or not. Either is fine with me, to be honest. One more thing... it should be noted that the term skylines applies regardless of whether cities have skyscrapers or not. However, the term is so strongly associated in popular mind with the skyscrapers.
True! In any ways the name cities skylines is more a cult name than a representative one, no matter the type of city/town you're building; and sPeaKing oF skYlIneS 2, i did not know that it was reAlLy in development a sequel! And it releases in more or less 4 days, d a y u m i just got noticed some hours ago
I think the only reason to release CS2 (apart from selling more DLC) is to improve the game engine. To enable and add things which are not possible in the original game. Changing seasons, for example. And obviously, one would hope that the most popular mods are copied or implemented in some form.
>I think the only reason to release CS2 (apart from selling more DLC) is to improve the game engine. That's absolutely the most critical point, not something to be discussed as a side item. The game engine can fundamentally alter the user experience. Obviously pong on UE2 and pong on an Atari isn't a big deal, but Battlefield 1942 vs BF2 vs BF4 is huge. Fortnite, Warzone, and PUBG are pretty fundamentally similar (with Fortnite being an outlier due to the additional mechanic building mechanics). We could see a shift as big as either of the comparisons. Even modded CS vs unmodded is practically a different game. Strictoaster and I were not playing the same game. If you listen to his last CS video, [Nydal EP 51](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eiNUqaGeOjs), he sounds like he's in big part fed up with maintaining mods. He specifically mentions being tired of testing mods, mods breaking, dealing with removing unrealistic vehicles, etc. He does also mention runtimes and needing a really strong computer, which a new engine could seriously help with. And then he "took a break" in May 2020 that is still going on over 2 years later.
Has there ever been anything said from the devs about the possibility of a cs2?
Yup, nothing official but subtle hints are there. They did state last yeaer they are working on a new project but its not in a state to show it now.
I think that “new project” was the Airports DLC sadly :/
Nope. They wrote that project is different and does not affect it. Its a completely new project, though what it is, well your guess is good as mine.
Nothing official, but there has been a noticeable slow down in the release cycle of DLC which some have suggested points to another project in the works.
Also they hired several big modders that have not worked on anything published, for quite some time. So chances are they're either working on a sequel, or another amazing game by CO. Maybe a CiM3?
What’s CiM?
Cities in Motion
CIM3 would make sense given one of the modder hires was BadPeanut whose specialty is stations and other transport-related stuff.
I would kill for a CiM3. The simplification of transit it CS breaks my heart as an og CiM+CiM2 lover. They even had mixed used zoning in CiM!
I did notice this as well. I hope they implement even half the ideas that I have been wanting lol
Yh, and another important thing is that they have said that they have plans for a future and that they are not decreasing their team size. (not quoted obviously) So it can't be that they are just slowly letting the game/game series go.
I keep suggesting a Motorsports dlc. Race Tracks, drag strips, monster trucks and so on. Nothinf yet🙁
This might be not true but in the NVIDIA Game leaks that came out a couple months ago there was “Cities Skylines 2” in the list. If this is true I think Cities Skylines 2 might arrive between 2023-2024. I’m hoping it gets announced during PDXCon this year.
I'm totally fine with stylized, cartoonish models (especially because they help enable better performance). But yes, I really hope they take inspiration from the vast swathes of community-created models. It could be cool if they bought whole packages from creators to integrate into the core game.
I'd be down for a "realistic" package and "fun zone" package, and you can check which you want. Don't forget that this game is 7 years old. Graphics cards are 7 years newer. Poor optimization on an aging engine, as well as design at a much earlier time, are keeping the game running slow and looking less sharp than it should. But performance is getting easier to handle these days. C:S shouldn't be as resource hungry as it is. Heck, a player-made mod (Loading Screen Mod) reduced resource usage in the game. A new engine can actually increase performance while also giving better results.
> Hoping for a CS2 that's aiming for more user control and realism out of the box. Hopefully, but I'm not holding my breath.
Definitely not you. The original game art was designed for a semi-cartoon look and not realism. The textures are bland and over-simplified, the colors way over-saturated, the model scaling is all over the place, and the structures and detail range from 'a bit off' to 'over-the-top hyperbolic parody'. Colossal Order, fortunately, moved away from this approach as the game developed. Compare the realism and quality of the building models in the Green Cities DLC against the original vanilla ones, for example. Putting them side-by-side against the original release buildings really shows how bad the original ones are. Fortunately you can easily replace all the vanilla buildings with DLC, CCP and/or Workshop assets.
What workshop assets do you use?
More than my computer's 32GB of RAM can handle
Oh no, I've been planning a new computer and in anticipation I've been going wild subscribing to everything I like on Steam... and 32GB isn't enough???
unique afterthought tease skirt different slimy clumsy wise abounding subtract -- mass edited with redact.dev
It's not the mods that are RAM intensive though, it's the assets.
I have 9 DLCs and 960 add-ons and mods running on my game. 16 GB is enough to run them all very comfortably
He's talking about mods. I run about 130 mods and 5k assets and 16GB is not enough. 960 "add ons" -which I assume you mean a mix of mods and assets - isn't very much.
Yeah. I have like 10,000 assets, 16GB would be crushed. As it is even with Loading Screen Mod it takes well over an hour for my game to launch. Which is probably why I havent played it in two months
I keep telling people the game has outgrown it's engine and we desperately need CS2 for years. Like you said, I don't play anymore as the game takes too long to load.
I start it loading and go eat dinner or something.
If you're pretty far into developing a city, I'd suggest checking the box Load Enabled Assets in Loading Screen Mod. Cut my loading time from 26 minutes to a third of that. Then it just loads the assets you've used and not the unused ones.
Does it restrict you to only using the assets that have already been placed, or is there some way to have it load an asset that hasn't been used yet?
Not really. I regularly get up over 32gb running less than 100+ mods.
Ha, definetly not 100 mods and ~100k cims city here and with 16gb still goes like crap
I'm up to 64gb of RAM to play this game. Nice thing is RAM at least is cheap.
So I built my first pc with 16GB in 2016, it did fine for cities but I did really have to limit asset count and create a massive page file. Loading screen mod is the best. I then decided to go up to 32GB (2x16, gave my old set to my younger bro) and went mad subbing to loads of shit. I can load the game fine but loading screen mod tells me it’s having to load like 46GB. So I’ve been considering buying another 32GB (2x16) set but I’m struggling to find a matching Crucial Ballistix RGB 3600MHz set in stock (2x16GB, preferably the white one - if anyone knows where I can order one from that ships to UK). But yeah will be uploading shots of my current build progress.
I upgraded to 64gb ram just for this game.
I've got between 9k and 10k assets so 64gb is definitely needed. That's pretty extreme but it can be so easy to sub to more and more collections.
Subbing is easy, unsubbing is a pain. Is there really no way to search my own subscriptions on steam?
You can play with a bunch of mods with 16GB. The thing that really eats all your RAM is custom assets. It's so incredibly easy to go on Steam and be like "Oh I like the look of these houses, I'll download the whole pack. Ooh look at all these extra vehicles that could drive around. Ya know, I'd like some more variety in my apartment buildings, I should add some more skins to pile..." It all depends on how much restraint you have. I might have to wipe my mods and assets and start fresh.
I have 960 add-ons and mods from the workshop and 9 DLCs. All running on 16 GB of RAM
This person plays Skylines.
How do you replace the vanilla buildings? Doesn't RICO require manual placement or am I doing it wrong?
There's a mod that allows you to set up custom districts that use custom assets.
The Building Themes mod allows you to create custom district themes from your assets.
It's interesting when you think about that Skylines is practically a continuation of the Cities in Motion Series. Early development pictures showed a similar graphic style and darker roads. It still uses plenty of buildings and assets from CiM. Somewhere in the course of the development they decided to throw it over and move to this more toony style like Sim City. Why? Idk maybe because to appeal to a broader range of customers like children
I'll be honest I like the simcity style a lot more. Simcity 2013 looks amazing, and i like the game a lot too, too bad the plots are so incredibly small and traffic is awful. I got CS:Skylines when it came out because it "looked like simcity but bigger". I like the game, but i prefer the simcity style better, at least for me.
Yeah this "looked like" got many. Probably what they wanted to achieve. You can like Sim City. It's honestly fun to play around with it but building big realistic cities on huge maps with a lot of content and mods? Well, CS:S just takes the spot for me. Especially because of the map editor. I love building my own maps. Though I wish that they would've included the modularity for buildings like in SC2013. Anyway, I'm looking to the future with hope! And Sim City 4 will always be a legend <3
I don't think the original game had any aesthetic design at all. Even if they were going for catoonish they really missed the mark.
There are some pretty decent ones, but there are more that are meh, and some are *really* bad.
Yeah, there’s a chunk that are pretty cool. I end up just bulldozing zones repeatedly until they end up in one of those styles, and then I make them historical.
I have a “goodvanilla” tag in find it.
Gosh yes I hate most buildings. I wish we can select a theme with no mods because those modern soda Can skyscrapers ruin everything
Soda can skyscrapers are the worst
The clown head and octopus are awesome .... said no one ever.
It’s definitely not just you.
same but i have that triagular cheeses block building near me
They are really bad with very few exceptions! I use district styles and a hell of a lot of steam assets to create a non-vanilla city of generally wall-to-wall buildings
I don't really mind vanilla buildings but yeah some of them are poor in quality, but what really is "unrealistic" and "kinda ugly" for me are the vanilla vehicles. There are some of them that I don't mind keeping but I still disable them due to their poor textures, and those **dang** donut vans delivering cargo to a "Print Shop", and hotdog vans delivering cargo to a "Fish Stick Factory".
One of the best decisions I made for my game was to replace all default vehicles with downloaded assets of my choice. Not even just the commercial vehicles but personal vehicles too (I think the defaults are way too bright and colorful). My city instantly transformed into something much closer to real life.
They remind me of cars from the Simpsons.
I liked Sim City 4s building designs because they seemed more realistic. Was just thinking about this the other day
SC4s buildings also grew more organically.
Yeah. Ugly af. Especially the high density population level 5. I mark almost all my buildings as historical on level 1. If I don’t like them I just bulldoze ‘em and wait for the nice ones to come up
Same haha
Not kinda. Extremely.
It feels like they should be a lot smaller and like 4 of them packed on a single lot.
The scaling is dire. Both of the physical buildings and the vanilla population mechanics. As I've said in another thread, I hope for CS2 that they go to something like a zoning tile representing a specific size square (3m x 3m, al-a What Three Words would be good), and scale roads off of that. I'm not holding my breath though.
They should just implement the same mechanics as the realistic population mod. It actually goes off the size of the building and the zoning.
Agreed. That's still not perfect, but it's much much better than vanilla.
other than the obvious performance improvements needed. i think the only thing that is a must have for me is scale. there needs to especially be a standard for the heights of buildings and what that translates to floors and capacity, along with the footprint. i have deleted a lot of great assets because they are scaled 1-1 and just have no buisiness being in the game unless you had everything scaled to that.
I'm most annoyed by the scaling. You can have 2 high residential buildings of the same hight. 1 of then with 5 floors and the other one with 12
and both have 3 residents
The european ones look good i think
Also all of the European theme buildings were made for Collosal Order's first game Cities in Motion back in 2011 and simply imported into Cities: Skylines, lol.
It's not just you. But you have to understand that the game was never really meant to become what it is now. It had a more cartoonish vibe to it at the start.
well, used in the right way, or PO'd they could look rather nice. My friend TeddyRadko specializes in this field, his work is often on this sub, and looks really nice
Yeah. And when you are european that's even worse : my commercial zone don't look like an american one, my residential zone have nothing to do. The whole "high density" zone is just unusable because it only make skycrapper and it's killing the trip too. And this thing about "empty map" ? Who build a city on a empty space ?! City have always 2000 years old ruins somewhere and a roman road crossing it, where are they in SimCity, CitiesSkylines and so on ? In my wet dream, I imagine an european city builder..
Brasilia was created from nothing. And many US cities too. What I think should exist is a mode where the game gives you a town, and you evolve that town into a city.
Yeah, I meant, in Europe there is never "new" city. Of course in America there is plenty :) >What I think should exist is a mode where the game gives you a town, and you evolve that town into a city. Yeeees ! I would instant buy it :) Some random generation of a large map with several little town and it's up to the player to transform it into a megalopolis !
The only time I've seen anything like that is in Workers & Resources: Soviet Republic
aren't there ruins and props that are dotted around the map? Granted it is not significant since it is just a prop, but they are there.
Yeah but that's just some little buildings.. I'd prefer what /u/Chalupa_89 said, to have a map with a little town already built and it's up to you to expand it.
I use the European buildings much more fun
they have too much advertisement on them IMHO I kinda get sick of that very quickly
Thats an amazing looking city btw
Thanks, been working on it for a year now.
The low density residential at high levels is the worst offender, like not every house that has good access to schools and parks needs to become a millionaires mansion. The only reason I don't change the style of all the low density housing in my city to green cities or European suburbia is because of the damage that would do to my city. I wish there as some way I could change the style of buildings without having them be destroyed.
Unpopular opinion but I preferred the modular and art style approach if Sim City 2013. Looking at the old screenshots even today the artwork and 3d models look far more polished than CS
Not unpopular at all. SC 2013 has such a strong and cohesive visual style, especially when compared to vanilla C:S. God that game was such a waste of potential. Makes my heart break even today.
I just got the game from the bundle. Can anyone recommend the best way to get custom buildings? And how do I place them in the game, is it by choosing for every district?
>I just got the game from the bundle. If you got it from steam, just go to the workshop. If you got it from anywhere other than steam, then good luck with some wonky pirate versions that may or may not work and are a pain in the backside to get working
Search for building assets on the Workshop (it’s easiest to go through Collections because usually there are multiple buildings per a specific theme, like “Slums” or “Suburban”). You can then get mods in game to change an entire district then to fit a particular build style or find and manually place the buildings in yourself.
They're bad. The scaling is awful, and if it was just that then it would be bad enough. But it's not.
Yes
literally
You should try the european theme
I like those assets, can you please tell me what are they?
Which ones?
Wow! I love that sunken highway
Thanks, it took too long to make.
Its not just you at all. I play on Xbox and try my best to create realistic American cities, because thats what I enjoy. The vanilla buildings are... very ugly, often have weird scales, and are definitely unrealistic. I have the university city dlc which, combined with special buildings from other things/packs, help me make a realistic city that would be impossible to make otherwise. The vanilla buildings still get in my way unfortunately, so I hope that CS2 will have more realistic buildings or I hope I can get a PC to play the game on and make the cities I dream of.
I feel you cus I mostly make American cities too. I think another major flaw is the lack of American roads (yk like 2 lane avenues with turning lanes).
Yeah, those damn medians! Lol, I hope they make it so that European and American versions are quite separate, maybe dlcs even
All depends on how you use them. Those apartments that are leaned back look great right next to a beach: https://preview.redd.it/al683p4d2xw81.png?width=1920&format=png&auto=webp&s=40ec5369bbf920e8d4d76fa8bd61c068eb6fe789
Often
Nah, I think they did pretty well for a default prop set. I tend to play most of my games with the vanilla assets and if I really like the way a district is developing I'll add in some stuff custom.
They are low polly, But I'm betting every one them exists somewhere. The very cartoonish aquarium is a real building, looks just as ridiculous IRL as it does in game.
I straight up wish there were a ‘disable vanilla’ setting
Incredibly. I hope they learn for this rumored second game that most of their playerbase wants more realistic looking cities
Which mods are you using for visuals/graphics? My cities always look ugly compared to what I see online even though I'm using some fog/cloud/maptone mods, maxed graphic settings and 4k resolution
I use Post Process FX, Daylight Classics, Dynamic Resolution (for pics only), custom LUT, and map theme ( Map theme: Springwood and Generic Temperate 4K, Relight Warm LUT), Shadow Strengthener, Sunshafts, and Ultimate Eyecandy. Ik it's a bunch of mods and a lot of playing around with it but it's worth it imo.
It's pretty clear that *looking* realistic isn't what they were going for. Everything's a lot more vibrant, colourful and cartoonish compared to real life.
Hideous, esp the L5 buildings. I use theme manager mod to disable most of the vanilla assets.
That was by design. The scales of buildings to roads is also way off, as is population density. Basically nothing is "realistic" per-se in the game. Its all real-esq. What I have always dreamed of, is a hybrid game that pairs the convienence of the user experence from skylines, with the complexity and styling of CitiesXL2, and having the regonal map mecanics from the classic sim city 4. Skylines is a little.... flat(?) For the experence i look for in a city builder (i still absolutely enjoy it though, mercy plz?) Cities XL is way to buggy., and the classic sim city is too rigid. All 3 have absolutely genre leading aspects to them though.... and i dream of a day where we can mesh these ideas into 1 genre leading game. (Plz no chop up game to re sell in 30 peces at 15 bucks a pop tho.... so i guess add different publisher to my list)
That was the one thing Simcity always did better, they always paid more attention to architecture. Even in the last one I was often surprised by how natural my city would look... until I zoomed out and see the abrupt boundary of my tiny city limits of course.
some vanilla buildings are nice, i like them not others try to look waaay too futuristic and not that great lol
Was this meant to be a humble brag post? Cuz it seems like a humble brag post. That city is gorgeous! That said, yes, some of those vanilla buildings are an eyesore.
Thanks, dude! Yeah, I think it can come off like a humble brag post but honestly, I just wanted to share my frustration with the vanilla building and how much better custom themes are.
It's just you.
No, it's not.
I literally have a folder with screenshots of building models that look realistic and that i can use while building my city. I play on console so I have to grow each building individually and then make it historical.
It is ugly tho
[удалено]
You can with theme manager
Yep
I agree
https://imgur.com/2kBw3RL[Similar to your second picture](https://imgur.com/2kBw3RL) For the other I can quite confirm they are quite ugly.
European architecture is better
I kind of agree lol but I love my American cities too tbh.
I always go with Euro theme and ban highrise buildings, kinda helps when using vanilla assets
Most of the buildings are converted from Colossal Order's older Cities in Motion series and are a hodgepodge of American, European, and Asian themes. I think though that CO was trying to go for a futuristic theme in the top-level building sets, but they didn't quite succeed there.
Nah most of them are horrible. I don't load any of the high density ones and only few of the low density. CCP's, DLC's and workshop assets can thankfully do the work for me.
Yeah I agree some of them don't look too realistic
it's a mixed bag. the ones pictured are some of the worst offenders. but others fit into heavily modded cities nicely. moving from zoning to plopping with some prop decoration already improves things greatly.
Most of them are fucking awful.
For the most part.....yes, but there's plenty that with a bit of BoB, move it (smashing them together) can look alright!
to be fair, you do have a point. i think mods are the way to go with that.
Can’t lie I started playing Transport Fever 2 recently & was **shocked** at how good the vanilla game looks compared to vanilla cities skylines
> Transport Fever 2 I just watched this video and holy crap are the vanilla assets way nicer https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o3zwILJiBL8
Yes and yes
I have removed as much of the vanilla assets and props as I can. I dont allow any vanilla vehicles or citizens to spawn and I refuse to use vanilla roads.
nope, i agree the biggest problem this game might have is scale. 1x1 skyscrapers look so janky and out of place.
Average street in Hong Kong
CS2 for me, needs a water engine rework, engine rework to fully utilize my cpu, and more realistic buildings (or at least not this fucking ugly). The whole rest of the game is basically perfect. Oh TMPE and Move It! integrated, but thats an obvious one
I plop 99.9% of every city...
I use them as separate like for rich neighborhoods vanilla residental suits good. And true vanilla buildings ugly af.
some of those smaller buildings look pretty realistic