# Cities Skylines - The Simcity we should've got



## Crispy (Mar 10, 2015)

While EA licks the blood from the knife still warm from the beating heart of Maxis, a tiny Finnish developer is about to release a city building game the likes of which we haven't seen in years and years. It's getting very good reviews.



It's only £23 on Steam and is available for download later today.

I can't wait


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## Crispy (Mar 10, 2015)

Available now. Downloading


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## Citizen66 (Mar 10, 2015)

This is Paradox isn't it? I'm not sure I trust their non historical strategy titles .


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## Crispy (Mar 10, 2015)

Citizen66 said:


> This is Paradox isn't it? I'm not sure I trust their non historical strategy titles .


Paradox are publishing. Colossal Order are the developers. They did Cities In Motion (and its sequel). This means that Skylines has excellent transit tools 

Trains! Subways! Bus Routes! Oh My!


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## DotCommunist (Mar 10, 2015)

I might have to look up those cities in motion titles they did before now. Running a city transport simulator sounds well fun.


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## Citizen66 (Mar 10, 2015)

Crispy said:


> Paradox are publishing. Colossal Order are the developers. They did Cities In Motion (and its sequel). This means that Skylines has excellent transit tools
> 
> Trains! Subways! Bus Routes! Oh My!



Didn't Cities in Motion get bad reviews? I hope this is good. Could do with getting what Sim City 5 should have been.


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## bi0boy (Mar 10, 2015)

DotCommunist said:


> I might have to look up those cities in motion titles they did before now. Running a city transport simulator sounds well fun.



My dream game is called Integrated Transport Policy and is basically Sim City 4 with accurate and extremely adjustable transport routing/demand/pricing simulation.


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## Crispy (Mar 10, 2015)

bi0boy said:


> My dream game is called Integrated Transport Policy and is basically Sim City 4 with accurate and extremely adjustable transport routing/demand/pricing simulation.


That's basically what CiM is all about, but you don't do much city design, just routing, timetabling, fares etc.


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## lazythursday (Mar 10, 2015)

This looks ace and makes me want to play games again for the first time in about a decade and a half. But I'm not going to be able to with crappy integrated graphics card am I? S'not fair.


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## Citizen66 (Mar 10, 2015)

I might pull the trigger next week if crispy says all is well.


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## Crispy (Mar 10, 2015)

Citizen66 said:


> I might pull the trigger next week if crispy says all is well.


Wife and baby are away for three days and nights, so I should be able to make a decent enquiry


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## Citizen66 (Mar 10, 2015)

Heh, nice timing


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## mrsfran (Mar 10, 2015)

Oooooh. Two questions: will it hold my hand a lot? It's been an age since I've played a city builder. And will it work on my 5yo Vista laptop? It won't, will it?


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## Citizen66 (Mar 10, 2015)

Almost certainly no to the second question.


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## mrsfran (Mar 10, 2015)




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## Citizen66 (Mar 10, 2015)

Unless it was a top of range gaming laptop in which case it might work with the settings dialed right down.


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## DotCommunist (Mar 10, 2015)

much as I like the idea of this game I'm going to have to settle for a torrent of simcity 2000 with expansion mods. Either that or try it out on the old imac


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## yield (Mar 10, 2015)

Thanks Crispy. Can't decide whether to get this or Sunless Sea.

This is cheaper through cdkeys

http://www.hotukdeals.com/deals/steam-cities-skylines-pc-14-99-facebook-code-cdkeys-2161758


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## Crispy (Mar 10, 2015)

1st impressions: it's mint


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## DotCommunist (Mar 10, 2015)

mrsfran said:


>


I've just downloaded simcity 3000 and run it in win 98 compatibility mode. It helps sate the city building urge this thread has given me, should work on your vista lappy too


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## dessiato (Mar 10, 2015)

Will it run on my i5, 6gig ram laptop? It sounds like a game I'd love. Especially if I put it on my projector.


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## Crispy (Mar 10, 2015)

dessiato said:


> Will it run on my i5, 6gig ram laptop? It sounds like a game I'd love. Especially if I put it on my projector.


As long as it's got dedicated graphics, you'll be fine. What make and model?


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## Bernie Gunther (Mar 10, 2015)

Hmm, can I populate this with eco-villages and create a sadistic gulag for Jeremy Clarkson fans?


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## dessiato (Mar 10, 2015)

It's a Toshiba Satellite L750/L755 according to the label. Crispy


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## Citizen66 (Mar 10, 2015)

What's the gpu?


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## Crispy (Mar 10, 2015)

dessiato said:


> It's a Toshiba Satellite L750/L755 according to the label. Crispy






dessiato said:


> It's a Toshiba Satellite L750/L755 according to the label. Crispy


Ah, I'm afraid you're out of luck. Integrated Intel graphics in that machine aren't up to it


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## souljacker (Mar 10, 2015)

dessiato mrsfran http://www.systemrequirementslab.com/cyri


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## mauvais (Mar 10, 2015)

I knew there'd be a thread on this, and I knew it'd be by Crispy.

A short while back I tried an offline version of SimCity, thought 'I don't know _quite _what the negativity is about', and then a few hours later discovered all the things that are still broken (fucking workers!), and gave up.

On the back of the early reviews, I bought this before release today. So far this seems excellent, everything SC should be, with modding out of the box.

In terms of accessibility, it holds your hand a tiny bit, not a lot. The UI's quite clear. Anyone who's a dab hand at any SimCity game will pick it up - better than the Cities in Motion game that I couldn't figure out after a quick play.


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## Crispy (Mar 11, 2015)

I just made my first bus route, and it unlocked a primal feeling deep within my soul.


I'm late for work.


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## Crispy (Mar 11, 2015)

I played it all lunch break too.
It's intoxicating.

My central avenue is beginning to get a bit clogged with buses. Need to make some alternative routes. Why did I build that school there?! Aargh!


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## DotCommunist (Mar 11, 2015)

do the bus workers unionise


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## Crispy (Mar 11, 2015)

DotCommunist said:


> do the bus workers unionise


There are no labour relations or grassroots politics in the game at all AFAIK.
I'm sure there will be a mod for it down the road


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## Vintage Paw (Mar 12, 2015)

I just bought this. I have little experience with city builders past a short horrific experience with a very old Sim City game. I expect to do terribly, but it looks very cool


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## mauvais (Mar 12, 2015)

I'm quite enjoying this, with a few caveats - not necessarily the game's fault.

One is it's a bit slow to get moving - e.g. you have to build a load of landfills to deal with the trash, because the game keeps you from accessing incinerators until a later stage, despite having loads of money. So then you have to spend a while getting rid of the landfills again, which requires extra capacity.

Tunnels as well as bridges would make my life much easier. Apparently they'll be added.

So would a universal grid as I end up with an almost grid like system that after a while ends up on the piss.

I'm struggling to know what to do with the enormous highway that runs through the territory and will ultimately run through the middle of my city. It might need some regional level rerouting.

Building highway junctions is an enormous pain, if a kind of guilty pleasure as well.


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## Citizen66 (Mar 12, 2015)

On the video in the op it says things can go wrong very quickly. If someone dies and a hearse isn't available to collect the body, their home becomes derelict. This happens whether the home is a bungalow or a high rise. Then the home attracts criminals and can catch fire. The fire engine and cops have to fight with the hearses to get there quick enough. Apparently there is no way of knowing which houses have become derelict in the UI so either you have to spot it, which might prove tricky in a sprawling metropolis, or the first time you know there was a problem is when half a neighbourhood is on fire.

So don't cheap out on the road building and make sure there's plenty of cemeteries. Looking forward to buying this next week.


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## mauvais (Mar 12, 2015)

I don't know about that, it seems like you can be fairly neglectful in one respect provided you don't have layers of it - so you can forget to build enough cemeteries as long as you have good fire coverage - but I don't know how it scales up.


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## Crispy (Mar 12, 2015)

Derelict buildings get a little bubble hovering over them, so it's worth scanning over ever now and then and getting rid with the bulldozer.

Last night I obliterated several blocks of downtown in order to put a railway in. Felt good man 

EDIT: In a way, this is one of the good things about the unlocking of the various options. If I'd had all the toys from the start, I'd have spent ages laying out everything just so, putting railways and metro and highways etc. in the "right" place. With the steady unlocks, I have to adjust my plans all the time, which makes it feel much more like organic growth.


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## Citizen66 (Mar 12, 2015)

That's one of the things that used to irk me about Sim City. Grow the city and get everything balanced nicely then have to start bulldozing because the infrastructure you laid when you were skint is no longer fit for purpose.  

Although I guess that's closer to realism.


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## lazythursday (Mar 12, 2015)

Oh I *really* want to play this. Can I possibly justify buying a whole new computer just for one game?


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## Citizen66 (Mar 12, 2015)

I believe you can.


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## Crispy (Mar 12, 2015)

lazythursday said:


> Oh I *really* want to play this. Can I possibly justify buying a whole new computer just for one game?


This is the traditional way of buying a new computer.


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## mauvais (Mar 12, 2015)

I planned on upgrading my PC, but I bought more RAM and a GTX970 first, and now everything's so good that I can't justify buying anything more.

There's some good stuff on the CS Reddit, including this: http://www.reddit.com/r/CitiesSkyli..._strange_tale_of_a_cities_skylines_town_with/


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## lazythursday (Mar 12, 2015)

Crispy said:


> This is the traditional way of buying a new computer.


But it would be an *extra* computer rather than an upgrade as I have an cheap ultrabook for worky stuff... and that takes more complex justification logic. Possibly I should have an extra computer in case of emergencies or leaving laptop drunkenly on train etc.


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## Crispy (Mar 12, 2015)

mauvais said:


> I planned on upgrading my PC, but I bought more RAM and a GTX970 first, and now everything's so good that I can't justify buying anything more.
> 
> There's some good stuff on the CS Reddit, including this: http://www.reddit.com/r/CitiesSkyli..._strange_tale_of_a_cities_skylines_town_with/


And this, which just makes me feel inadequate


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## Citizen66 (Mar 12, 2015)

So how does this compare with Sim City 4, superior graphics aside?


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## Crispy (Mar 12, 2015)

Citizen66 said:


> So how does this compare with Sim City 4, superior graphics aside?


I never got deep into SC4, but the big differences are:

No Regions - you build one city and that's it. Import/export is abstracted.
Less fine-grained control -  in SC4 you could zoom in and set the budget for individual buildings. CS has one budget slider per service.

In general, it's a little simpler, but that's a good thing IMO. SC4 was intimidating in its complexity.


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## Crispy (Mar 12, 2015)

From a simulation POV, they're very different. SimCity games up to SC4 used statistical methods to calculate the population, traffic etc. CS (and SC5) uses agents, so each citizen has a home, a job, a car etc. It makes problems and solutions feel much more real. When the queues at the bus stop are really long, you can actually pause the game, count the people and work out roughly how many extra bus routes you need to lay on.


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## Citizen66 (Mar 12, 2015)

I like that you can buy more land and keep building. It's also a third of the price of what I paid for CS5 (Deluxe).


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## Crispy (Mar 12, 2015)

Yeah the buildable area is pretty big. The maximum is 10x10km, of which you can build in 9 2x2km squares of your choosing. But there's already a mod that allows you to unlock all 25 squares. By comparison, the largest single city you could build in SC4 was 4x4km.


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## Crispy (Mar 12, 2015)

Downtown Crispyville, population 15,000






That train line goes to my new commuter town on the coast


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## mauvais (Mar 12, 2015)

SC4 was pretty amazing for its time in terms of modelling, especially once you added all the hideous dependency web of mods like NAM. It was always somehow a bit hard to trust it though, when trying to solve particular problems, especially because of certain things being abstracted or bodged (regional population movement rings a bell I think).

I liked some SC5 things, to be honest. Industrial specialisms were cool - ore mines and chip fabs etc, as was detailed trade. In fact the modular block approach to buildings was good too, if maybe a bit novelty. Unfortunately there were so many other things wrong with it that it never added up - so again in terms of specialist cities, you were forced to do it by the constrained size, but it never meant anything as regional flows were totally fucked.

I hope CS evolves to take a few of those things in, but I'm happy enough as it is - it's its own game, after all.


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## Vintage Paw (Mar 12, 2015)

Not having played city builders before, I ticked the unlimited money mod. My justification: let's start off nice and easy learning how laying water pipes etc works without having to worry about money, and go back and restart normally later.

Probably a good thing, because I really do have no idea what I'm doing. I think I'm ready to try again now though.

I played for a couple of hours last night. I got the first person mod, and a few LUT mods (which are great). I love the Old Time LUT, which makes it feel like I'm presiding over The Truman Show.






I got the dx11 bug where the screen flashes with overlayed info and generally just glitches out to the point of giving you a seizure. So I've had to force dx9, but apparently they're looking into it. But now steam overlay won't work. Not sure if that's related. But whatever.

I like it. I'm terrible at it. I like it.


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## Vintage Paw (Mar 12, 2015)

Someone added dynamic resolution scaling so you can downsample (if you have the power) or upsample (if you don't and want to free up more performance) ON THE FLY OMG.

http://www.reddit.com/r/CitiesSkylinesModding/comments/2ys1lh/dynamic_resolution_proof_of_concept/


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## Citizen66 (Mar 12, 2015)

The main problem with using infinite money cheats, for me at least, is that I  become bored with the game a lot quicker because I've already discovered all of the rewards etc without learning the game and aiming for them. It's like the diamond making machines on Minecraft and the lazer guns to take down the terrain. Where do you go from there? You can do everything too easily.


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## Vintage Paw (Mar 12, 2015)

Citizen66 said:


> The main problem with using infinite money cheats, for me at least, is that I  become bored with the game a lot quicker because I've already discovered all of the rewards etc without learning the game and aiming for them. It's like the diamond making machines on Minecraft and the lazer guns to take down the terrain. Where do you go from there? You can do everything too easily.



I can understand that. In a lot of games I've tended to go through a similar pattern - playing while only cheating a little (more money, or something); then playing again with ALL the cheats; then going back and playing again with no cheats at all and enjoying the process all the more for it. I suppose it lets me learn about the game and experience all it has to offer in terms of the rewards I can aim for, and then going back and enjoying a more 'pure' experience. I can see how it would ruin it for a lot of people though, there is that risk.


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## Citizen66 (Mar 12, 2015)

That does make some logical sense actually because people may also drop a game because the learning curve isn't giving them any fun. I'm a fan of Paradox grand strategies but I found Hearts of Iron III impenetrable.


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## mauvais (Mar 12, 2015)

The thing with CS is it's quite easy to make money once the ball is rolling - I've accrued 3 million very easily with not that big a city,
 which is enough to build major infrastructure.

If anything, though, that makes the unlimited money/space cheats make even more sense - you get the layout you want from the start rather than having an interim, organic mess that you have to demolish or reshape once you can afford it.


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## Citizen66 (Mar 12, 2015)

It's watching a hamlet grow into a metropolis organically vs a city planning simulator. Some want the latter and throttling funds from the outset prevents that.


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## Citizen66 (Mar 12, 2015)

But then having too much money shields you from the problems you've dug yourself into.


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## J Ed (Mar 12, 2015)

*adds to list of games to buy when he gets a new computer/laptop...*


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## Fez909 (Mar 12, 2015)

This looks amazing. 

I'm gonna buy a new computer for it.


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## Crispy (Mar 12, 2015)

Fez909 said:


> This looks amazing.
> 
> I'm gonna buy a new computer for it.


Attaboy


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## paolo (Mar 12, 2015)

OMG OMG OMG

I've waited aaaaages for a decent SC replacement.

I wonder if this will work ok on my MacBook - under VMWare? Gonna have to try it.


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## Citizen66 (Mar 12, 2015)

I remember twenty odd years ago with SC3000 or whatever it was called: my money cheat was to build a small town that was making a profit, put the game on cheetah speed and fuck off to the pub then come back and if the power station hadn't had a meltdown you were quids in.


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## paolo (Mar 12, 2015)

I lost sooo many hours to whichever version.

I took glee in seeing posh hi-rises appear by attractive waterside settings, whilst trying - flailingly - to fix the city's fundamental problems. All amid my rapacious lust for growth.

I was, basically, Boris Johnson.


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## Crispy (Mar 12, 2015)

paolo said:


> I wonder if this will work ok on my MacBook - under VMWare? Gonna have to try it.


Native Mac version mate  Just make sure you have a machine with dedicated GFX.


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## paolo (Mar 12, 2015)

Crispy said:


> Native Mac version mate  Just make sure you have a machine with dedicated GFX.



Ooh. 

MBP 13 from a year or so ago.


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## Crispy (Mar 12, 2015)

paolo said:


> Ooh.
> 
> MBP 13 from a year or so ago.


Should be ok. Reports of decent performance. Get ready for your fans to get a workout


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## Vintage Paw (Mar 13, 2015)

I'm playing without cheats now. Loving it so much.

This is the lead designer (left) and CEO of the dev company:







Here's hoping no GG types are playing and enjoying the game, considering how they feel about women with dyed hair.


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## DotCommunist (Mar 13, 2015)

the problem with not cheating oneself money to keep building is that you have to keep the city running which invariably means cutting education, police, fire and so on. I refuse to be that sort of god*

*playing simcity3000 because


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## Vintage Paw (Mar 13, 2015)

Of course, I bet you can't guess what I'm doing in between hiking taxes...











This is using the SinCity LUT mod, along with one of the camera mods, hide HUD mod, and the dynamic resolution mod (maxed out at 250% which works out as 4800x2700px downsampled to 1920x1080).

And this one with some cinematic LUT or another...






Loving it.


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## paolo (Mar 13, 2015)

Vintage Paw said:


> I'm playing without cheats now. Loving it so much.
> 
> This is the lead designer (left) and CEO of the dev company:
> 
> ...



In your face GG  This game is getting cooler before I've even bought it. About to press that button.


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## Citizen66 (Mar 13, 2015)

How comes there's loads of mods when it's just been released.


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## mauvais (Mar 13, 2015)

Citizen66 said:


> How comes there's loads of mods when it's just been released.


It's been in beta/early access for a while, I think, which has given people a headstart. Plus it's more open from the start, so modders don't have to find ways of breaking into it in order to integrate.


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## Buddy Bradley (Mar 13, 2015)

Think I might be buying this at the weekend, despite knowing that I also need to reinstall Elder Scrolls Online next week... RIP my spare time.


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## Crispy (Mar 13, 2015)

A very convenenient cold has left me just about well enough to play cities skylines all day.

I started a new city, now I know what all the bits do. It's more of a region, with little towns connected by railways and roads. Eventually it'll all merge into one like London:
 

Downtown:
 

Inner City:
 

TRAINS:
 

Seaside Town:
 

Commuter Town:
 

Rural Scene:
 

Hang on lads, I've got an idea:


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## Citizen66 (Mar 13, 2015)

I'm very jealous. looks marvelous.


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## Crispy (Mar 13, 2015)

Train jam 
I'm having to redesign my railway junctions to seperate commuter, long distance and freight routes.

Heaven.


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## treelover (Mar 13, 2015)

Crispy said:


> *There are no labour relations or grassroots politics in the game at all AFAIK.*
> I'm sure there will be a mod for it down the road




in the interviews it would seem they made a conscious decision not to have any politics, etc, they are a very small team, 8 at one point, It is getting superb reviews, especially those who have bought it, its sold over 250'000 copies already, its certainly is impressive, one million citizens! But is not my thing, didn't like CIM and the graphics are basic, very time consuming as well.


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## treelover (Mar 13, 2015)

mauvais said:


> I planned on upgrading my PC, but I bought more RAM and a GTX970 first, and now everything's so good that I can't justify buying anything more.
> 
> There's some good stuff on the CS Reddit, including this: http://www.reddit.com/r/CitiesSkylines/comments/2ypo6x/the_strange_tale_of_a_cities_skylines_town_with/




How much ram do you have? I have 8gb and I'm not sure that will be enough for next gen games, Witcher 3, etc, I have a HD6990 4gb card, still very powerful but crossfire(card is dual gpu) is rubbish


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## mauvais (Mar 13, 2015)

16GB, but it's probably overkill for most stuff. I had 8 before and I don't think it was really the limiting factor.


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## ddraig (Mar 13, 2015)

would this spec run it please?

ProcessorIntel Core i3-4005U
Processor Core CountDual-Core
Processor Model Number i3-4005U
Processor Speed (GHz)1.7
12GB DDR3 L Memory

ta


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## Crispy (Mar 13, 2015)

ddraig said:


> would this spec run it please?
> 
> ProcessorIntel Core i3-4005U
> Processor Core CountDual-Core
> ...



That CPU will choke on it I'm afraid


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## ddraig (Mar 13, 2015)

booo! only got it recently
cheers tho


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## Vintage Paw (Mar 13, 2015)

This is how they've celebrated the release:






Really pleased for them.


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## Buddy Bradley (Mar 13, 2015)

Installing it now.


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## Vintage Paw (Mar 13, 2015)

http://www.reddit.com/r/CitiesSkylines/ <-- definitely a must for checking out some tips, and feeling woefully inadequate when looking at other people's cities.


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## Buddy Bradley (Mar 13, 2015)

First stumbling block - how do you hook up the sewerage system? I laid pipes below all the streets, but still everyone is complaining. 

Edit: Never mind, I figured it out - hadn't extended any power out to the water stations.


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## Crispy (Mar 13, 2015)

Ok, so if you want your commuter rail to not get completely jammed, make sure you don't hook it up to the outside world. Tourist trains just keep on coming and they will turn your entire network into a static mass of trains.


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## Vintage Paw (Mar 14, 2015)

I have 13k population now. Starting to feel the traffic pain.


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## mk12 (Mar 14, 2015)

Do you have to keep people happy?


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## Crispy (Mar 14, 2015)

mk12 said:


> Do you have to keep people happy?


Yes, but it's not hard


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## mauvais (Mar 14, 2015)

What starting map are you playing?


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## paolo (Mar 14, 2015)

Crispy said:


> Train jam
> I'm having to redesign my railway junctions to seperate commuter, long distance and freight routes.
> 
> Heaven.



Oddly enough I've been taken out by a cold have been playing every waking hour, and am also having to rework railways to avoid cargo - passenger conflicts.

I've also managed to inadvertantly create a train deadlock scenario. A kind of S junction thingy crossing the main line.


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## Buddy Bradley (Mar 14, 2015)

My trouble seems to be mostly financial. I get to a few hundred residents, but after that I'm permanently in negative income; no matter how much industry I try to encourage, it always ends up costing more than it brings in.


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## mauvais (Mar 14, 2015)

paolo said:


> Oddly enough I've been taken out by a cold have been playing every waking hour, and am also having to rework railways to avoid cargo - passenger conflicts.
> 
> I've also managed to inadvertantly create a train deadlock scenario. A kind of S junction thingy crossing the main line.


So, I'm building a new city from scratch in paused mode.

This railway malarkey - are we saying you need separate dedicated lines rather than using a sort of universal mesh network? Presumably then you need separate stations too? I don't quite get it.


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## Vintage Paw (Mar 14, 2015)

Buddy Bradley said:


> My trouble seems to be mostly financial. I get to a few hundred residents, but after that I'm permanently in negative income; no matter how much industry I try to encourage, it always ends up costing more than it brings in.



Weirdly I've had no problem with money so far. I hovered between 2k and 35k for a while as I kept buying an expensive building here and there once I was able, but during that time I was making around 1.5-2.5k per whatever-it-is. Now I have over 250k bringing in between 4-5k per thingy, and 13k people.

To start off, a little bit of residential on one side, a little bit of industry, a tiny smattering of commercial, not too much too soon, relying on the demand bars getting nearly full before I build more of whichever zone type. Building one of each type of the early buildings - police, fire, landfill, elementary school, medical centre - leaving it to slowly grow. Unless there are major problems, let it look after itself, just adding whatever zone type the people are demanding. Don't expand too fast. Make sure people can get where they need to go. Put your taxes up once you're able. You'll find a sweet spot, which for me early on was about 13%, but now they're getting ornery and I've had to reduce it a bit  I recommend for taxes either sticking with one city-wide policy or doing it on a region-by-region basis rather than mixing the two, if you're going to be doing different things for industry, commercial, residential, otherwise I found myself getting muddled. That could be because I'm not used to this sort of thing though.

I'm thinking of starting again. It'd be satisfying to be able to get this town to work, but I didn't give myself enough space right off the highway to upgrade my roads, and there's so much of my connecting infrastructure right there it'd be the equivalent of demolishing the lot and starting over anyway. Still, I've learned a lot getting to 13k, and it'll be interesting to see if it being relative plain sailing to here was a fluke or not.

I've been having some VERY late nights since this released


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## Crispy (Mar 14, 2015)

mauvais said:


> So, I'm building a new city from scratch in paused mode.
> 
> This railway malarkey - are we saying you need separate dedicated lines rather than using a sort of universal mesh network? Presumably then you need separate stations too? I don't quite get it.


Any railway you connect to the outside world will attract a lot of cargo and tourism. If you try and run a commuter train on the same tracks, they end up interfering with each other and you end up with huge queues.

So I have two commuter lines, each completely seperate, with their own terminii downtown. The tracks just run through each station to the ends of the lines. The line from the outside world goes through each of my cargo terminals, with a passing loop for each one so that tourist trains can get past while a cargo train is un/loading. I then have tourist passenger stations on that line (one downtown and another on the lakefront).

I feel an urge to draw a map.



Blue and Red are commuter lines, Green is cargo/tourist. The town at the top left has cargo _and_ tourist stations.


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## mauvais (Mar 14, 2015)

Cool, I get it. I guess as long aa you separate internal & external networks, anything will work well to an extent.

Another question then, roads this time. How clever is the traffic, have we noticed? If I built two roughly-but-not-quite equal length routes from A to B, is the traffic smart enough to split itself in half over the two, or does it just sit in a jam on one because it's shorter?

Ditto trains I guess - does the passing loop have to be shorter? I'm setting my city out up front otherwise I'd experiment for myself a bit more.


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## Crispy (Mar 14, 2015)

mauvais said:


> Cool, I get it. I guess as long aa you separate internal & external networks, anything will work well to an extent.
> 
> Another question then, roads this time. How clever is the traffic, have we noticed? If I built two roughly-but-not-quite equal length routes from A to B, is the traffic smart enough to split itself in half over the two, or does it just sit in a jam on one because it's shorter?


I've found it to be quite dumb, being quite happy to join a jammed road when there's an alternative barely any longer just round the corner


> Ditto trains I guess - does the passing loop have to be shorter? I'm setting my city out up front otherwise I'd experiment for myself a bit more.


Passing loops should allow enough space for two trains, one in the station and one waiting behind it. You can have faster turnaround times at terminii by continuing the track in a little loop, but it's not really worth the space it takes up in a crowded city centre.

I can't wait for tunnels.


----------



## Crispy (Mar 14, 2015)

This changes everything


----------



## Vintage Paw (Mar 14, 2015)

Crispy said:


> This changes everything



That is fiendishly clever.

I saw a tip on the workshop. When planning your streets, leave the first few spaces after a turn off a major road clear (use footpath or a park or something). Otherwise the traffic at the intersection/turn will back up as goods vehicles, hearses, garbage trucks etc stop just round the corner to service the building that's there. This way your other traffic has room to overtake the goods/service vehicles.


----------



## Crispy (Mar 14, 2015)

Vintage Paw said:


> That is fiendishly clever.


To be fair, it's a very clever solution for a problem that shouldn't exist - ie. a single lane of a 6 lane road being backed up for miles while the other 5 lanes remain empty.


----------



## Kid_Eternity (Mar 15, 2015)

Crispy said:


> Downtown Crispyville, population 15,000
> 
> 
> 
> ...



Very cool!


----------



## Vintage Paw (Mar 15, 2015)

Oh god. What have I done by buying this game?

I'm searching through the discussions on Steam, and I come across someone saying no one wants to work in industry in their city, and it's having knock-on effects for their commercial sector, etc.

Then someone replies:



> Sounds like an Aristocracy problem. Rich people don't wanna work. Highly Educated people don't wanna push broom and run machinery at factories.
> 
> You need to zone a new area in your town that you keep low education. If your whole town has only highest education, every worker will be underemployed! So you need some people to be poor, and to achieve that you need them to be stupid.
> 
> ...



1) games like this should be mandatory in the classroom as a tool for teaching about the evils of capitalism, because I don't think there's a single person who would dispute the above makes sense in a standard capitalist scenario, but simply explain it to them and they'll cry "stupid marxist" at you and laugh.

2) I'm going to become an evil capitalist pig dog, aren't I?


----------



## Crispy (Mar 15, 2015)

Build offices instead of industry. They fill the same need but have much more space for educated workers. Your commercial zones will reply on imports instead. Doesn't make you any less of a capitalist bastard of course, because that industry is just shifted to whatever the CS equivalent of China is.


----------



## magneze (Mar 15, 2015)

This is great fun. Need to sort my finances out though as I need a new power station.


----------



## Crispy (Mar 15, 2015)

magneze said:


> This is great fun. Need to sort my finances out though as I need a new power station.


You can take out loans from the budget screen


----------



## magneze (Mar 15, 2015)

Crispy said:


> You can take out loans from the budget screen


I've been trying to avoid that but the looming power crisis is probably forcing my hand.


----------



## magneze (Mar 15, 2015)

Is there any use in creating a Paradox account btw?


----------



## Citizen66 (Mar 15, 2015)

With other titles you got access to stuff on the forums when you registered your game such as guides and the mod forums etc.


----------



## magneze (Mar 15, 2015)

I need to stop for a bit otherwise ...

"How are the Mother's Day preparations going?"

I built a small city. Err ...


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## Vintage Paw (Mar 15, 2015)

I have something like 800k in money now. Traffic gets a bit backed up, but I can buy all the crematoriums and fire stations and incinerators I want so I can place enough close to population centres that it's really just heavy goods vehicles and people going to work that cause the backlog. My biggest problem now is that I'm not expanding my population fast enough, so I'm running out of new tiles to buy in order to give myself more space to avoid fucking up the traffic even more, but I don't have the tile space to expand my high-rise population area because I don't have enough population to reach the milestone to unlock another tile 

I haven't got any buses. I've invested in metro instead. I wonder if this has eased my traffic woes? I've unlocked trains and ships now but I really don't want to fuck everything up by trying to create something there. 

The mod in the workshop that unlocks all the tiles and makes them buyable from the beginning is starting to seem mighty appealing. I don't want to give in, though


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## paolo (Mar 15, 2015)

I'm up to 71k, with 3m in cash. Good subway coverage, all my roads are tree lined apart from industrial. All green energy. A few rail routes , including a pleasing double cargo terminal with passing loops.  Have done some serious reworking of roads to get one way gyratories going to fix traffic hot spots.

But... Am now left with a load of unfinished bus routes after remodelling the roads. Anyone know if you can delete them? Does deleting the bus station reset them all?


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## mauvais (Mar 15, 2015)

Right click the routes or possibly each point on the route and it'll kill it off.


----------



## paolo (Mar 15, 2015)

mauvais said:


> Right click the routes or possibly each point on the route and it'll kill it off.



Aha - thanks. All sorted now, relaid bus routes to run crossways from my Manhattan-esque run of subway lines.

Citizens levelling up


----------



## yield (Mar 15, 2015)

My PC wont run this or elite and I can't afford to upgrade. Woe is me. /first world problems


----------



## Vintage Paw (Mar 15, 2015)

I love the influx of levelling sounds when you place something impressive. Makes me feel like such a good mayor. Then I try to build some kind of intersection and end up nearly resigning in disrepute.


----------



## paolo (Mar 15, 2015)

Crispy said:


> This changes everything



That's neat. 

Annoyingly the inverse doesn't produce the desired result.

Three two lane one ways, making a six lane one way, still has problems because the drivers don't merge, but instead try to cut straight to their intended lane on the six laner. Grr.


----------



## Crispy (Mar 16, 2015)

paolo said:


> I'm up to 71k, with 3m in cash. Good subway coverage, all my roads are tree lined apart from industrial. All green energy. A few rail routes , including a pleasing double cargo terminal with passing loops.  Have done some serious reworking of roads to get one way gyratories going to fix traffic hot spots.
> 
> But... Am now left with a load of unfinished bus routes after remodelling the roads. Anyone know if you can delete them? Does deleting the bus station reset them all?


Go into the transit view via the icons in top left. From there you can rename, re-colour and delete transit routes of all types.


----------



## mauvais (Mar 16, 2015)

Traffic is annoying me, industrial traffic in particular. There's something not quite right.

I have two freight ports, two cargo stations and a highway in fairly close proximity, all amongst industrial zones. This generates a lot of round trip traffic, and I'm not even sure it's possible to handle it at all. To boot, one of the cargo ports is almost entirely unused. I'm hoping they improve the logic a little.


----------



## Crispy (Mar 16, 2015)

mauvais said:


> Traffic is annoying me, industrial traffic in particular. There's something not quite right.
> 
> I have two freight ports, two cargo stations and a highway in fairly close proximity, all amongst industrial zones. This generates a lot of round trip traffic, and I'm not even sure it's possible to handle it at all. To boot, one of the cargo ports is almost entirely unused. I'm hoping they improve the logic a little.



Sounds like too much in one place maybe? I have a bunch of 4-6 block industrial estates around the edge of my city(ies), each with a cargo station. No traffic issues.


----------



## paolo (Mar 16, 2015)

Ringing an industrial estate with a decent one way is useful. And then don't make all the internal roads connect to both sides of the loop. Cargo rail / ship on the edges of the loop.


----------



## Buddy Bradley (Mar 16, 2015)

Vintage Paw said:


> Weirdly I've had no problem with money so far. I hovered between 2k and 35k for a while as I kept buying an expensive building here and there once I was able, but during that time I was making around 1.5-2.5k per whatever-it-is. Now I have over 250k bringing in between 4-5k per thingy, and 13k people.


I think I figured out what my problem was; I was starting off too small, so the small amount of residential and industry wasn't enough to attract enough people/taxes to build funds. I started again and zoned a much larger area to start with, and now it's all good.

Is there an easy way to lay roads so you get nice neat layouts of buildings? I always seem to end up with weirdly shaped outposts.


----------



## paolo (Mar 16, 2015)

Crispy said:


> Go into the transit view via the icons in top left. From there you can rename, re-colour and delete transit routes of all types.



Aaah. I found my way to the line properties by clicking on a bus, but didn't know there was proper summary view. Cheers


----------



## mauvais (Mar 16, 2015)

Crispy said:


> Sounds like too much in one place maybe? I have a bunch of 4-6 block industrial estates around the edge of my city(ies), each with a cargo station. No traffic issues.


Possibly. Here's a pic:

http://crap.wapoc.com/cs_1001.png

Traffic in this picture is a bit knocked down because I just redeveloped, but it'll be back.

The roads leading off the highway are one-way, as are some of the other main thoroughfares. They drive on the left.

The cargo ports & stations actually seem to own trucks that go bimbling about the place. The port in the back left gets lots of traffic; the one in the right, almost none - not altogether surprising, but when you put the two together, it seems wrong.


----------



## Crispy (Mar 16, 2015)

mauvais said:


> Possibly. Here's a pic:
> 
> http://crap.wapoc.com/cs_1001.png
> 
> ...


That looks like overkill to me. I'd cut your ports and stations in half. That's a huge industrial area too. The pollution must be incredible


----------



## Crispy (Mar 16, 2015)

Once you've got enough citizens, and a suitable geography, you can power the entire city on scatoelectric power. That's right, a reservoir and damn system filled with sewage.

http://imgur.com/a/inXja


----------



## Vintage Paw (Mar 16, 2015)

Footpaths. The way forward is footpaths.


----------



## Citizen66 (Mar 16, 2015)

Are you running a gfx mod there, VP, or is that vanilla gfx?


----------



## Crispy (Mar 16, 2015)

Vintage Paw said:


> Footpaths. The way forward is footpaths.


The way left, right, up and down is also footpaths by the look of it!


----------



## Vintage Paw (Mar 16, 2015)

Citizen66 said:


> Are you running a gfx mod there, VP, or is that vanilla gfx?



There are a couple of mods for graphics.

Dynamic Resolution lets you increase (or decrease) the resolution to make everything crisper and cleaner, and to help with aliasing since no matter what I do I can't get aliasing (including driver based) to work.

There are a bunch of colour correction LUTs (look-up tables) that you can add via the workshop, and then you can change them whenever you want via the colour correction tab in the options menu. I have way too many. They're great.

Then of course there is a camera mod to let you get down to floor level, etc, and a mod to hide hud since you can't use the in-game camera button while using the camera mod (since it activates free mouse-look).

Everythings on the workshop.


----------



## Vintage Paw (Mar 16, 2015)

https://www.reddit.com/r/chirpit

Well this is just brilliant. There's a mod on Steam Workshop that will connect to any reddit sub you want and change the damned annoying chirp messages to the headlines from that sub. The default is this sub ^ which users are adding to in character so it fits with the game. If they can moderate it so it stays in character and with no abuse etc that's going to be just excellent.

Here's the mod: http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=408705348


----------



## paolo (Mar 17, 2015)

Now *this* is a cool interchange.



Aaaand, yep, someone has made one in CS.


----------



## Crispy (Mar 18, 2015)

Vintage Paw said:


> https://www.reddit.com/r/chirpit
> 
> Well this is just brilliant. There's a mod on Steam Workshop that will connect to any reddit sub you want and change the damned annoying chirp messages to the headlines from that sub. The default is this sub ^ which users are adding to in character so it fits with the game. If they can moderate it so it stays in character and with no abuse etc that's going to be just excellent.
> 
> Here's the mod: http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=408705348


WARNING: This mod has been shown to corrupt savegames. 

I've uploaded my first custom map. Feedback very welcome 

http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=409670953

It's the shoreline and valleys around Santa Cruz, California. I've included the local highways and railway in as accurate a location as I could manage. Lots of fast flowing rivers in this one, so the potential for hydrodynamic mishaps is high. Enjoy!

















(I have no connection with the area whatsoever - I just thought the geography was interesting)


----------



## Vintage Paw (Mar 18, 2015)

They've fixed the reddit mod now. It corrupted my save. I'm about to download the fix. They're waiting for it to be delisted as incompatible, but in the meantime the source is on github.

Lovely map, crispy. I've not downloaded any custom ones yet. I'll download yours and take a look


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## Vintage Paw (Mar 18, 2015)

None of your waterways have currents. Everyone is going to die of poo-death


----------



## Crispy (Mar 18, 2015)

Vintage Paw said:


> None of your waterways have currents. Everyone is going to die of poo-death


Huh. Lots of flowing water comes down the hills. I will see what I can do...


----------



## BigTom (Mar 18, 2015)

I got this on Saturday evening, played a little to get a feel for it then started a new game and played solidly on Sunday and Tuesday and built this city over those two days.. this is the middle bit of it:






Great game... I know how great it is because on Sunday I got up and started playing, then felt hungry and thought it must be time for breakfast... went downstairs and realised it was actually time for lunch!

Haven't really done anything with trains and only a couple of bus lines but loads of metro stops. I'm appreciating the lack of natural disaster type events and how generally it's not a game where everything is on the knife edge of falling apart all the time - you can build up the city and then spend time trying to work out how the fuck to sort out a particular junction/set of junctions so the traffic flows better.

Traffic logic is bloody annoying at times - the junction at the south end of the office district that is in the top right segment in that picture, the one that connects to the highway - that had traffic queueing back into the residential district, all the way along to the unique building roughly parallel with the north end of the office district, because everyone needed to be in the RH lane to enter the highway and refused to use either of the other three lanes that would taken them all the way to the on ramp! I sorted this out by making those bits of roads into highways with off ramps into the office district and then using the trick of compressing down the number of lanes after a junction that Crispy posted earlier to create proper merge lanes - as soon as I did that, the traffic jams just vanished. 

I'm going to have to spend some time in the asset manager to try to create some road junctions I think are missing - in particular a Y shaped piece to merge together two one way roads - every time I try to do this, I get a junction where none is needed (see the southern end of the cloverleaf junction north of the Butler district for an example - both ways should just flow but give way to each other instead). In general, they don't seem to have handled merging lanes at all, and I don't understand why there isn't a 4 lane one way road, and also a 5 lane one would be useful for forcing merge lanes. There are times at junctions where I want to give people a free right turn and it'd be great to have a way to set that up without mashing up a district with highway on ramps which don't quite work as free right turns anyway. Also when you have two one way streets / highways running next to each other, it should be possible to setup a crossroads/t junction which would be treated as a single junction, not as two junctions - I'm thinking in the asset editor I could make a 12 lane road to achieve this.

I failed to set it to left hand drive which was a mistake as at least one of my one way systems runs the wrong way.. I've spotted a mod that lets you turn one way streets around which I'm going to add into my games but I've already cross connected this one and I cba to change that when I know I'm basically done with this and once I've got over my cold I'm going to start anew.

Tempted to go for some kind of 1960s technocratic utopic grade seperation dream as I suspect this game will reward that even though it failed so badly in real life. Can't wait for someone to do a cycling mod which adds bikes and different types of bike lanes in.

Anyway, brilliant, and was £23 which is a great price, was expecting it to be £40 and would have waited for a price drop/sale to buy it if it had of been.


----------



## Crispy (Mar 18, 2015)

BigTom said:


> Tempted to go for some kind of 1960s technocratic utopic grade seperation dream as I suspect this game will reward that even though it failed so badly in real life. Can't wait for someone to do a cycling mod which adds bikes and different types of bike lanes in.



It works really well. It turns out people will be happy to walk for miles if they don't have to cross any roads.


----------



## Crispy (Mar 18, 2015)

Huh. So the modding interface allows the execution of completely arbitrary code. If you run as admin (which many windows users do), this means a malicious mod can happily delete or modify any file on your system. Be careful what you download.


----------



## paolo (Mar 18, 2015)

Or read a file and phone home, presumably. Eek.


----------



## magneze (Mar 18, 2015)

Crispy said:


> Huh. So the modding interface allows the execution of completely arbitrary code. If you run as admin (which many windows users do), this means a malicious mod can happily delete or modify any file on your system. Be careful what you download.


----------



## mauvais (Mar 18, 2015)

That's not that unusual - a lot of architectures work like that with no sandbox. It's just normally oriented towards a more involved, hands-on install, rather than 'click a button and get this'.


----------



## Vintage Paw (Mar 18, 2015)

Crispy said:


> Huh. Lots of flowing water comes down the hills. I will see what I can do...



I have no idea how it works. Certainly, in the starting tile there's no flowing water at all, so if all the currents are further up in the hills you'd have to start with everything unlocked to buy up those tiles first.


----------



## Crispy (Mar 18, 2015)

Vintage Paw said:


> I have no idea how it works. Certainly, in the starting tile there's no flowing water at all, so if all the currents are further up in the hills you'd have to start with everything unlocked to buy up those tiles first.


Turns out the rivers have to be deeper and wider to get enough "flow" for the arrows to show up. Also, you can't dam the mouth of a valley and fill it up with a lake - it just gets about 1/4 of the way up the dam and then stops


----------



## Vintage Paw (Mar 20, 2015)

First proper patch today. They've added in a few things that had been covered by mods, like a film grain slider, volume for that fucking chirpy thing, the ability to swap between 2way and 1way roads and change direction, etc. Supposed to be a bit more stable too.


----------



## Vintage Paw (Mar 20, 2015)

I made a thing.






Park'n'Grill. Off-road parking combined with everybody's favourite pastime, grilling! 

I like little car parks that I can put at the end of streets to stop on-road parking building up too much, and to fill in the space I leave so trucks/ambulances etc don't block the way when they stop. This combines some of that parking with a nice little park area for people to hang around.

The name and description are borked, not showing up properly. And I need to move the hang around marker because people go and stand in the bushes . Also need to check the regular in-game park values for radius, cost, etc. Once I've got that ironed out I'll put it on the workshop. How exciting!


----------



## Vintage Paw (Mar 22, 2015)

Creating or modifying assets is so much fun. I've modified all the service buildings to make them a bit more interesting, with parking and benches and bushes and so on. I'm embarking on making a few different versions of all of the residential, commercial and industrial buildings too, just so everything doesn't look identical when you end up having 10 4x4 buildings in a row.

I don't think I'll upload them, because it's nothing people can't do for themselves very easily, plus there's no way to create a package with all of them together, so the workshop would be swamped with 200 listings of "L1 2x3 Detatched03" etc.

Once I've exhausted my interest in Cherry Town, I'm going to play on your Santa Cruz map, Crispy


----------



## Crispy (Mar 22, 2015)

Oh terraforming mod, how do I love thee?


----------



## Vintage Paw (Mar 22, 2015)

That's ace, Crispy - I've seen it on the workshop but haven't installed it yet. I think I'll give it a try!


----------



## Crispy (Mar 22, 2015)

Vintage Paw said:


> That's ace, Crispy - I've seen it on the workshop but haven't installed it yet. I think I'll give it a try!


It costs a fortune. That cutting set me back several hundred thousand, but it was worth every cent


----------



## Vintage Paw (Mar 22, 2015)

Have you played around much with the taxation and budgetary options?

I tend to increase everything to about 12-13% tax early on, and leave it there. I reduce a few services (like the police, they're utterly pointless ime ), but leave most at 100%. I have a pop of ~55k and I'm making between 2-9k per week atm. I haven't really felt the need to micromanage my money, it seems to sort itself out after that initial tweaking early on. I'm wondering if I could raise more money to continue to make more comprehensive improvements to my road systems and with that terraforming tool to just the general environment.


----------



## Vintage Paw (Mar 22, 2015)

Also, have you had a look at any of the maps on Steam (other than your own)? Any that you'd recommend? I downloaded the Cologne map, it looks nice. Which vanilla maps have you used? I've only used the first in the list so far. I think I want to create some nice lake/beach-side districts at some point.


----------



## magneze (Mar 22, 2015)

Anyone seen a weird bug if you try and reconfigure the highway? I'm trying to upgrade the junction that the game gave me in a map. Trouble is that it's telling me that various bits of it are now completely disconnected even if they're not. It seems like I can get a few of the disconnections to go away by just disconnecting, reconnecting and upgrading the roads but most of the junction always says it's disconnected even when it clearly isn't at all.


----------



## Vintage Paw (Mar 22, 2015)

Are you trying to connect opposite direction one-way roads? It'll tell you it's disconnected if you do that by accident.


----------



## Vintage Paw (Mar 22, 2015)

In the recent patch, there's new functionality to change 1-way direction, but I haven't used it yet. I was using a mod that did it, by dragging your cursor in the direction you wanted to change it to.

But if you accidentally have a stretch of road that goes something like:

-->-->--><---->-->-->

it'll tell you you're disconnected in that middle section even though the road itself is physically all in one.


----------



## magneze (Mar 22, 2015)

Vintage Paw said:


> Are you trying to connect opposite direction one-way roads? It'll tell you it's disconnected if you do that by accident.


I don't think so. I've demolished the three way junction that the highway had and tried to replace it with a cloverleaf junction. Reconnecting everything with highways. Seems like a bug unless I'm missing something about cloverleaf junctions.

I don't think I have any one way roads yet.


----------



## Vintage Paw (Mar 22, 2015)

Well your highway is one-way. Make sure the cloverleaf you're plopping down is made with the same right/left-hand driving in mind. Most on Steam are right-hand. If you're using one of those while having ticked left-hand in your game set-up you'll be trying to connect your highway to an intersection template that is all the wrong way around.


----------



## Vintage Paw (Mar 22, 2015)

Like this cloverleaf:







The 8 roads leading into and out of it from either direction are all highway 1-way roads. In fact, everything there is 1-way - the smaller roads too because they're the highway off-ramp roads from the look of it.

(That's the most popular cloverleaf on Steam, btw, by Timboh.)


----------



## Crispy (Mar 23, 2015)

Are you using LH driving? I think there's an issue with pre-made intersections not mirroring themselves properly for LH drive.


----------



## BigTom (Mar 23, 2015)

I've not had a problem with that in my current LH drive game.
To change the direction of one way roads, select the upgrade road tool and right click on the sections you want to change direction.

I'm still hankering after a Y shaped road piece for making the highway exits join into a 6 lane road by merging, but it always creates a junction. Roundabouts are ok for at a highway exit but they are huge, and off ramps are low capacity with only a single lane. Maybe I could make a 2 lane highway off ramp in the asset editor, didn't think of that. Also want to make 3/4/5 lane one way roads.


----------



## Vintage Paw (Mar 23, 2015)

This is so useful for a simple-headed person like me:

How to traffic.

Of course, by some feat of sheer luck I have zero traffic problems in my city of 55k. I'm sure that is a fluke and won't happen next time.

I have no buses, having plumped for nothing but metro lines to ferry people around. And footpaths. Footpaths are amazing.

I do have trains now. Mostly a cargo train and a tourist train, but I also have one loop around the whole city. That's a recent development though, and I had no problems before then. I was at a loss what to do with my money so I built a trainline.

I also have a harbour for tourists and one for cargo. And an airport, which is really cool.


----------



## magneze (Mar 23, 2015)

Vintage Paw said:


> Well your highway is one-way. Make sure the cloverleaf you're plopping down is made with the same right/left-hand driving in mind. Most on Steam are right-hand. If you're using one of those while having ticked left-hand in your game set-up you'll be trying to connect your highway to an intersection template that is all the wrong way around.


I'm just using the built in one.


----------



## magneze (Mar 23, 2015)

Crispy said:


> Are you using LH driving? I think there's an issue with pre-made intersections not mirroring themselves properly for LH drive.


Ah, that'll be it.


----------



## Vintage Paw (Mar 23, 2015)

Mod author has made the terraform tool free because lots of people complained lol.


----------



## magneze (Mar 23, 2015)

Aha, it WAS to do with one way roads. You have to connect the junction to the high way one way on one side of the road and then the other way! Okay, this means I can site the airport where I want!


----------



## Vintage Paw (Mar 23, 2015)




----------



## Crispy (Mar 24, 2015)

mmmmm axes






lovely axes






You lose, Paris


----------



## Crispy (Mar 24, 2015)

Vintage Paw said:


> Mod author has made the terraform tool free because lots of people complained lol.


I wondered what happened there  It should be expensive damnit!


----------



## Vintage Paw (Mar 24, 2015)

One of the Paradox devs commented on one of my pictures and said it was "amazing" and I fangirled myself to death.

brb, coming back down to earth


----------



## Vintage Paw (Mar 24, 2015)

Crispy said:


> I wondered what happened there  It should be expensive damnit!



Yeah. I mean, maybe they could have done a version where you can set how much it costs yourself? Have the default be mega-expensive, and then levels below that: "cheap skate" "Scrooge" etc.


----------



## Fez909 (Mar 24, 2015)

Vintage Paw said:


> One of the Paradox devs commented on one of my pictures and said it was "amazing" and I fangirled myself to death.
> 
> brb, coming back down to earth


Is it on here yet? Post it if not.


----------



## Jackobi (Mar 24, 2015)

I've been playing around with the amazing map editor using this tool that can capture a terrain heightmap from anywhere in the world:

http://terrain.party/

Just move the blue box around or type in any location and export. Extract the .png files from the zip into C:\Users\*USERNAME*\AppData\Local\Colossal Order\Cities_Skylines\Addons\MapEditor\Heightmaps in W7 then open one in the map editor.

I've been wokring on Death Valley and the Grand Canyon.


----------



## Vintage Paw (Mar 24, 2015)

Fez909 said:


> Is it on here yet? Post it if not.



This is the one they like:






Made it look arty, like. Nothing special. It's the filter that should get all the recognition


----------



## Vintage Paw (Mar 24, 2015)

YOU GUISE! The Bordercities mod is amazing. 

In-game screenshot:


----------



## BigTom (Mar 24, 2015)

How do you get detailed information up about the public transport lines? In the traffic article VP posted the author has different coloured lines and knows how many journeys each line saves, but I can't find this menu.


----------



## Lazy Llama (Mar 24, 2015)

Crispy said:


> It's only £23 on Steam and is available for download later today.
> 
> I can't wait


it's going for £12.59 or £15.90 for the deluxe version on CDKeys at the moment. 
http://www.cdkeys.com/pc/games/cities-skylines-pc-cd-key?mw_aref=4589656


----------



## Crispy (Mar 24, 2015)

BigTom said:


> How do you get detailed information up about the public transport lines? In the traffic article VP posted the author has different coloured lines and knows how many journeys each line saves, but I can't find this menu.


There's a load of info views hiding behind a circle icon at the top left of the screen, one of which is transit


----------



## BigTom (Mar 24, 2015)

Crispy said:


> There's a load of info views hiding behind a circle icon at the top left of the screen, one of which is transit


Yeah, but that's just an overview, it tells me how many people/tourists use public transport but no detail on each line, which the author of VPs article apparently has.


----------



## mauvais (Mar 24, 2015)

BigTom said:


> Yeah, but that's just an overview, it tells me how many people/tourists use public transport but no detail on each line, which the author of VPs article apparently has.


In that view, you just click on a line.


----------



## BigTom (Mar 24, 2015)

mauvais said:


> In that view, you just click on a line.


I'm sure I tried that and it was just letting me add/move stops? I'll have another go tonight.


----------



## magneze (Mar 24, 2015)

Just unlocked everything now. However, I now have a bit of a traffic problem. Zooming in to look at how the traffic is moving helped as there were places where lots of three point turns were being made. The main result of the traffic appears to be a backlog of dead bodies because the hearses can't get through!


----------



## Citizen66 (Mar 24, 2015)

The winter of discontent.


----------



## Crispy (Mar 24, 2015)

BigTom said:


> I'm sure I tried that and it was just letting me add/move stops? I'll have another go tonight.


There's also this mod: http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=411164732


----------



## Crispy (Mar 24, 2015)

You want roads? HERE, HAVE ALL THE ROADS.


----------



## magneze (Mar 24, 2015)

That's like some dystopian vision of the future as envisioned by Ford.


----------



## Artaxerxes (Mar 24, 2015)

It'd be interesting to see how that holds up to a nice long period of rain.

Would like to see this game have you take hold of historic cities, full of narrow streets and protected buildings (I'm thinking City of London, Florence sort of thing) and try to modernise them rather than the blank canvas/americana approach.


----------



## Citizen66 (Mar 24, 2015)

Paradox is the publisher so I'm guessing there'll be lots of dlc.


----------



## Vintage Paw (Mar 24, 2015)

BigTom said:


> I'm sure I tried that and it was just letting me add/move stops? I'll have another go tonight.



You can only click on the line to get info in that way when you're in the 'info' view via the left hand icon. If you click on the line while in the normal metro/train/bus view via the buttons at the bottom it'll try to modify the line. Both views visually look the same, so you can think you're in one while you're actually in the other.


----------



## Vintage Paw (Mar 24, 2015)

People are making some great stuff now.

Look at this fire station:


----------



## Fez909 (Mar 24, 2015)

I'm so jealous of you all playing this 

I was actually just thinking the other day, "I've missed the Minecraft era, the Kerbal era, etc. I wonder what the next nerdy/sandboxy game will be to capture everyone's imagination...even thinking that Crispy has probably already discovered it. Then this thread popped up and just look at it :drool:

*drums fingers until payday....May  *


----------



## Citizen66 (Mar 24, 2015)

Fez909 said:


> I'm so jealous of you all playing this
> 
> I was actually just thinking the other day, "I've missed the Minecraft era, the Kerbal era, etc. I wonder what the next nerdy/sandboxy game will be to capture everyone's imagination...even thinking that Crispy has probably already discovered it. Then this thread popped up and just look at it :drool:
> 
> *drums fingers until payday....May  *



By which point it'll be on sale


----------



## BigTom (Mar 25, 2015)

Thanks Crispy, Mauvais and VP, I have successfully managed to interrogate my public transport lines and have scrapped one line that had 13-15 buses on it, carrying 27 passengers a week (but saving 100% of car trips, because none of them were adults)... whilst all my other lines had 8-10 buses and carrying 1-200 passengers/week. Very odd.

I'm really enjoying this game, in the same way I did with the old simcities, I think 3000 was the last one I played, it's really good, just making a pretty city. I might spend some time in the asset maker tonight and see if I can make the multi-lane roads that I want, and a "tree" that is actually a load of trees for infilling areas.
Also I want to be able designate junctions with no right turns and free left turns... there's no way of doing this is there, except for the trick with one way roads that Crispy posted up earlier? Being able to do similar things with 2 way roads would be really useful for helping traffic flow properly.


----------



## Crispy (Mar 25, 2015)

There's already a "tree brush" mod in the Workshop that lets you paint whole forests at once


----------



## Enviro (Mar 26, 2015)

I took the plunge last night and bought the game from CD Keys (thanks Lazy Llama  ).

Then I agreed to go and see the second divergent movie with the mrs and only got to play for an hour or so afterwards  oh well at least it was warm and dark in the cinema and no-one kicked my chair...


----------



## Chilli.s (Mar 26, 2015)

Kinda pleased my 'puter wont run this. Wouldn't get any work done.


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## Vintage Paw (Mar 26, 2015)

So I extended part of my residential area last night. Some people moved in. I was taking a look at how it was going, and I noticed hundreds of people standing by the curb. I zoomed in, and sure enough, they're waiting for a bus.

I don't have any bus stations or bus lines.



And yet, the game has for some reason recessed the road and put in a bus stop, and hundreds of people are stood there, waiting for a bus that will never come.

I deleted the road and rebuilt it, and there it is again. 

There is a metro station one road across, so I built a path going directly from where they are standing to that station. The path is only about the length of one house. It's not very far away. Not a single one of these morons will take the metro instead. They just stand, in their hundreds, at the bus stop. I click on them, to see who they are, where they want to go. Some want to go to the university, some want to go to the park, some to work, some to shop. All, invariably, eventually become "confused." But they never go away.

So I built a bus station in my commercial area, which isn't too far away and has more metro links to the main city and industry areas, and I made the one and only service travel to that bus stop. 8 buses immediately dispatched to it. No one got on. The buses, one by one, drove away again. They all just stood there. Waiting. For something.

I deleted the line and the station, thinking maybe it would cause the bus stop to finally go away. No. It's still there, with no service, no buses, no bus station, and 300 people stood, waiting, for the journey that will never come.


----------



## mauvais (Mar 26, 2015)

That sort of thing happens to me a lot.

For example on Crispy 's suggestion I built a tourist-only station. Loads of my Cims stand there waiting for a train to take them to work, again a train that will never come.

There seem to be a few logical cockups going on. Hopefully a patch will sort it soon enough.


----------



## Vintage Paw (Mar 26, 2015)

Ah, it seems that if you delete a metro station or a road that a metro station was on, without deleting the line first, a bus stop will appear and all the people who would have used that metro station will stand at the bus stop for the rest of their lives (maybe I should leave them there and see if they all eventually die ).

I guess I have to find out what components of that original metro line still exist and delete them. That should fix it, apparently. Not going to be an easy task.

Also, apparently, if you have a subway tunnel that crosses underneath a road, the cars and trains will yield for each other, causing traffic problems. Crazy!


----------



## BigTom (Mar 26, 2015)

Vintage Paw said:


> So I extended part of my residential area last night. Some people moved in. I was taking a look at how it was going, and I noticed hundreds of people standing by the curb. I zoomed in, and sure enough, they're waiting for a bus.
> 
> I don't have any bus stations or bus lines.
> 
> ...



Sounds like a Philip K Dick short story


----------



## Crispy (Mar 26, 2015)

The transport UI mod also lets you delete those "phantom" lines


----------



## Enviro (Mar 27, 2015)

So what are the best mods then? Can you only load three at a time?


----------



## Crispy (Mar 27, 2015)

Enviro said:


> So what are the best mods then? Can you only load three at a time?


You can have loads at the same time, so long as they don't conflict (some do).

Here's a good list to get started: http://www.neogaf.com/forum/showthread.php?t=1012042


----------



## Chemical needs (Mar 29, 2015)

On my 2nd city, I spent quite some time getting it up and running (until about 4AM last night  ) and left it going for a bit today, and now I have millions to play around with 

It seems that only 64 people visited the stadium last week? Are they not that into sport or do I need to enhance the connections to it? Or are the number of visitors related directly to the total population - I think I'm at about 15,000 at the moment.

My computer can't really handle the dynamic resolution mod  maybe time to get a new graphics card in the near future ...


----------



## Vintage Paw (Mar 29, 2015)

Chemical needs - Post-Process FX has several different options for AA that actually work. I use DLAA and it's better than the game's own in-built AA, but not as nice as downsampling to 200% obviously. I just use DR for screenshots - 200% drops me down to about 8fps (I could manage 250% before I got the ambient occlusion and sun shafts mods), but I notice no real difference in performance at 100% with DLAA.

As for tourists, I never seem to get massive numbers reported per week, and I've got 98k population now. It might be transport, it might be if there are a lot of competing tourist attractions, I don't really understand how it works. I seem to get plenty coming via the Space Elevator (aliens?) and I have an endless stream of planes and trains coming in from outside, but the numbers are never quite what you'd expect.

Tbh though, my transport connections are dire.


----------



## Crispy (Mar 29, 2015)

Tourists are rubbish, and so are the Unique Buildings (apart from looking fancy)


----------



## BigTom (Mar 30, 2015)

Agreed, I built a tourist trap area in my last city, with an airport, railway and highway connections and more or less all the unique buildings and get fuck all tourist income, was going to have a look into it this week to see what was being said online about tourist revenue.

Yesterday decided to see how big population I could cram into a single 2kmx2km square, got up to about 45k before stalling, seems like if you're not actively building then your population falls rather than remaining stable.

Gonna have another go with everything accessible from the start, I want to squeeze 80k in there.


----------



## Crispy (Mar 31, 2015)

http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=416064574

The Magic Mapper tool looks fantastic. It does two things - import Open Streetmap data, aligned with terrain.party elevation data, to recreate real road/rail layouts.

Also, you can export your city to Open Streetmap and make propper maps:






I'll give it a whirl at lunchtime...


----------



## Crispy (Mar 31, 2015)

Argh it's amazing

Downtown Crispopolis


----------



## magneze (Mar 31, 2015)

Attachment missing?


----------



## Crispy (Mar 31, 2015)

magneze said:


> Attachment missing?


Should be an imgur image?


----------



## Crispy (Mar 31, 2015)

The reverse process is not exactly smooth, especially with the wiggly roads in a British city. Attempted to load Bristol's roads and hit the node limit before it completed, and the stuff that made it through was very mangled. Recognisable, but incomplete. I imagine it would work well for sparsely populated areas.


----------



## magneze (Mar 31, 2015)

Crispy said:


> Should be an imgur image?


I don't see it in your post..


----------



## Lazy Llama (Mar 31, 2015)

Shows up fine here.


----------



## mauvais (Mar 31, 2015)

Works for me.


----------



## Vintage Paw (Mar 31, 2015)

Crispy said:


> The reverse process is not exactly smooth, especially with the wiggly roads in a British city. Attempted to load Bristol's roads and hit the node limit before it completed, and the stuff that made it through was very mangled. Recognisable, but incomplete. I imagine it would work well for sparsely populated areas.



That looks like an absolute nightmare


----------



## Crispy (Apr 2, 2015)

I've started a new game on the Santa Cruz map I made. I'm playing with Stricter Slopes and Fine Road Heights. This makes the Slope Too Steep! limits much harsher, while allowing more subtle control over the elevation of road segments. It makes highway intersections much more challenging, especially in hilly terrain.

This took *hours*






So worth it 

(Note: My main city on the coast backed up with poop and I didn't realise cos I was too absorbed in this little mountain town. Still, so worth it.)


----------



## mauvais (Apr 2, 2015)

It's RPS' first Game of the Month: http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2015/04/01/cities-skylines-rps-verdict/


----------



## The Boy (Apr 2, 2015)

I bought this on stream yesterday too celebrate passing an exam on Monday/start of Easter holidays. I may as well give up all hope of passing any more exams, mightn't I ?


----------



## Crispy (Apr 2, 2015)

The Boy said:


> I bought this on stream yesterday too celebrate passing an exam on Monday/start of Easter holidays. I may as well give up all hope of passing any more exams, mightn't I ?


Yes.
Also, eating, sleeping, washing etc.


----------



## The Boy (Apr 2, 2015)

Crispy said:


> Yes.
> Also, eating, sleeping, washing etc.


I gave up on at least two of those years ago....


----------



## Barking_Mad (Apr 2, 2015)

I must not go NEAR this game. I must not go NEAR this game. I must not go NEAR this game. I must not go NEAR this game. I must not go NEAR this game. I must not go NEAR this game. I must not go NEAR this game. 

Well, maybe just a little go then....


----------



## ddraig (Apr 2, 2015)

told my 10 yr old nephew about this last night, he watched the video in the OP and likes it
his mum looked quite concerned! apparently heavily into minecraft


----------



## Barking_Mad (Apr 2, 2015)

ddraig said:


> told my 10 yr old nephew about this last night, he watched the video in the OP and likes it
> his mum looked quite concerned! apparently heavily into minecraft



Tell his Mum that it's useful for a career as a city planner.


----------



## ddraig (Apr 2, 2015)

i did mention practical skills


----------



## mauvais (Apr 2, 2015)

What am I supposed to do with these people again?


----------



## ddraig (Apr 2, 2015)

run em over with a bus!


----------



## Crispy (Apr 2, 2015)

God, if I thought getting roads working in hilly terrain was hard, I hadn't tried railways! 5% maximum incline!


----------



## Crispy (Apr 2, 2015)

mauvais said:


> What am I supposed to do with these people again?


Move the bus stop 40m down the block and watch them swarm around to the new location.
Repeat.


----------



## Supine (Apr 2, 2015)

ddraig said:


> run em over with a bus!



Somebody has done a version of the GTA5 opening sequence in this game


----------



## Crispy (Apr 2, 2015)

You mean the trailer?


----------



## BigTom (Apr 2, 2015)

peaked around 43.8k in a 2x2 grid, main problem is that the shops don't have enough goods to sell, presumably because there's only one outside connection, I dunno if you could replace most/all the shops with offices, that's what I was gradually doing but didn't seem to do anything to population either way. does leave me wondering what the potential maximum is, and the balance between using space for parks/services to upgrade buildings and having more buildings. I could also have got rid of my metro and bus systems to make a little more space, and reduce all the roads down to two lane roads but I wanted to keep at least some semblance of an actual city. Possibly if you made a map with a narrow river on one edge, just enough space for hydro dam and fresh/sewarage, a highway connection and a railway just cutting a corner for a cargo station to bring more goods in, you might get higher especially if you don't care about traffic. I reckon there's a little efficiency maximising to be done by grouping all the residential together for minimal number of schools and other services.

I like this game


----------



## Supine (Apr 2, 2015)

^ don't give up your day job!!! I'd hate to live in a square city


----------



## Crispy (Apr 2, 2015)

You need industry or beefed up regional connections to get enough good for your shops


----------



## Nine Bob Note (Apr 2, 2015)

My case and PSU arrived today, my components will be here Saturday. Assuming everything works, me and a couple of bottles of Jacobs Creek pink fizz will be enjoying this over the BHOL weekend


----------



## BigTom (Apr 3, 2015)

Crispy said:


> You need industry or beefed up regional connections to get enough good for your shops


Yeah, I tested this by buying land to the left of that image and adding in a cargo train station, problem solved.
But putting a station/tracks into a 2x2km sq takes up valuable space, and industry needs uneducated people which means you need residential areas that won't be maxed out cos there's no schools, so won't house as many people.
I think housing and offices only would be the way to go. Even then I don't think you'd get much over 50k, so I'm not going to try again, back to building a normal(ish) city


----------



## Vintage Paw (Apr 3, 2015)

I've taken a break from this while I've been absorbed by Diablo 3 (sometimes I'm a late adopter). I'm just starting my Hell playthrough. I plan on going through on Inferno afterwards, then back to this and also DAI.


----------



## The Boy (Apr 3, 2015)

Fuck you all, btw.   I've basically been sat here since Wednesday, and I've had to restart *so* many times due to my planning going waaay wrong.  And still i keep doing things badly.  

And now people are moving out.  The cunts.

I miss outside.


----------



## BigTom (Apr 3, 2015)

The Boy said:


> Fuck you all, btw.   I've basically been sat here since Wednesday, and I've had to restart *so* many times due to my planning going waaay wrong.  And still i keep doing things badly.
> 
> And now people are moving out.  The cunts.
> 
> I miss outside.



Build some parks and then a forest. It won't stop anyone leaving but you can install various mods and walk around the parks and forest you've created and it'll be like you're outside but you'll still be playing the game


----------



## Crispy (Apr 3, 2015)

BigTom said:


> Yeah, I tested this by buying land to the left of that image and adding in a cargo train station, problem solved.
> But putting a station/tracks into a 2x2km sq takes up valuable space, and industry needs uneducated people which means you need residential areas that won't be maxed out cos there's no schools, so won't house as many people.
> I think housing and offices only would be the way to go. Even then I don't think you'd get much over 50k, so I'm not going to try again, back to building a normal(ish) city


Industry doesn't require uneducated workers, it's just that the citizens would rather work elsewhere. If they have no other options, highly educated cims will work at factories and won't complain.


----------



## The Boy (Apr 4, 2015)

I went to bed with my cities humming along nice.  Everything well served by fire, police, schools etc.  Woke up with half the city burned down and/or abandoned and only half the population left. Spent an hour fixing things to get it back up and running.  All good. 

Went out and came back to the population back to where it was, but all my money had been pissed away by my bin men and no space left in any of thelandfill. 

Is *just about* back on an even keel now.


----------



## The Boy (Apr 4, 2015)

Traffic is still something i can't quite get right though.


----------



## magneze (Apr 4, 2015)

Had been stuck around 85K and reducing all the time but went a bit nuts on the facilities and got it over 100K now. 

Traffic is difficult. Although massive one way roads seem to really help if placed well.


----------



## Nine Bob Note (Apr 4, 2015)

Nine Bob Note said:


> My case and PSU arrived today, my components will be here Saturday. Assuming everything works, me and a couple of bottles of Jacobs Creek pink fizz will be enjoying this over the BHOL weekend



Seven hours, a great deal of sweat and one sliced finger later, I'm up and running and downloading CS on Steam.

Photos will follow once I've bought a couple of lighting kits


----------



## The Boy (Apr 5, 2015)

One-way streets will only go so far if the peeps in my city are going to insist on doing this:


So that's five lanes which will let them turn left, but they insist on veering into the left-most lane and causing massive tailbacks.  the dicks.


----------



## magneze (Apr 5, 2015)

Just removed all my crap bus lines and redid them. Seems to be working a lot better. However, whilst amongst the traffic I noticed that garbage trucks are everywhere - like 40% of the traffic or something?!?! WTF


----------



## magneze (Apr 5, 2015)

150K  The buses have really solved one big traffic issue, but more are popping up with each new neighbourhood!


----------



## paolo (Apr 5, 2015)

The Boy said:


> One-way streets will only go so far if the peeps in my city are going to insist on doing this:
> 
> View attachment 69731
> So that's five lanes which will let them turn left, but they insist on veering into the left-most lane and causing massive tailbacks.  the dicks.



Cim lane selection & merging is a continual issue.

Check one of Crispy's posts early on in the thread - it shows a technique to get lanes working better. There are various combinations of pinch points that can work wonders. A key thing is to eliminate traffic lights. I have to experiment a bit to get the desired flow at a given junction. Doesn't cost much but patience to try different options. Very satisfying when you nail it for a given problem.


----------



## The Boy (Apr 6, 2015)

paolo said:


> A key thing is to eliminate traffic lights.



I'm obviously being stupid, cos every junction I build involves them.


----------



## Vintage Paw (Apr 6, 2015)

The Boy said:


> I'm obviously being stupid, cos every junction I build involves them.



Some junctions make them, some don't, it depends on the type of roads involved, and the direction of the junction. For example, going from a main road into a 1-way side road you won't have lights (I think), but coming back from a 1-way to a main road you will (but highway ramp into highway won't - there may be other exceptions too).

There is, however, a mod to toggle lights at whichever junction you so choose.


----------



## magneze (Apr 8, 2015)

Wahey! Flying tractors!


----------



## Enviro (Apr 9, 2015)

Where they're going, they don't need roads


----------



## magneze (Apr 9, 2015)

It all happened when I relocated the cargo train terminal to ease traffic issues. Trucks and tractors kept being spawned from the old location as well as the new one! The ones spawning from the old location occasionally took to the air.

Removing the road and then creating it again fixed it.


----------



## Crispy (Apr 9, 2015)

My current city is completely disconnected from the highway. All trains, all the time


----------



## magneze (Apr 9, 2015)

Crispy said:


> My current city is completely disconnected from the highway. All trains, all the time


No cars at all?


----------



## Enviro (Apr 9, 2015)

I'd imagine the Cims have cars, and there are trucks and things? Unless Crispy is going for a utopian ideal of no personal motorised vehicles  ?


----------



## Crispy (Apr 9, 2015)

magneze said:


> No cars at all?


Oh plenty of cars and trucks, but none from out of town.

In theory it should be possible to design a city that only uses roads for buses, deliveries and service vehicles, while the Cims walk and take public transport everywhere. They do like to walk, so ped paths are everywhere in my new city.


----------



## BigTom (Apr 9, 2015)

Crispy said:


> Oh plenty of cars and trucks, but none from out of town.
> 
> In theory it should be possible to design a city that only uses roads for buses, deliveries and service vehicles, while the Cims walk and take public transport everywhere. They do like to walk, so ped paths are everywhere in my new city.


 
This is my plan next city I build. I also see there's a mod for zoneable pedestrian paths (which let service vehicles along them), so could be residential areas (and maybe office areas?) without any roads at all


----------



## Vintage Paw (Apr 9, 2015)

Will people move in without early outside access? Or did you have road access to begin with, and then take it away once you unlocked rail? Is that how people move in? They bring all their suitcases and sofas and beds on the train?


----------



## Crispy (Apr 9, 2015)

Vintage Paw said:


> Will people move in without early outside access? Or did you have road access to begin with, and then take it away once you unlocked rail? Is that how people move in? They bring all their suitcases and sofas and beds on the train?


Yep exactly that. I also disconnected my remote mountain town from the highway. It just has 1 cargo and 1 passenger station. It's actually much more efficient, because garbage trucks, fire engines, hearses etc. don't drive 8km across the map just because that address was top of the queue.


----------



## paolo (Apr 12, 2015)

http://arstechnica.com/gaming/2015/...ed-community-generosity-into-a-full-time-job/

Crispy's new career.


----------



## Crispy (Apr 13, 2015)

Life in the mountains. Mining, man-made lake, city in the distance.


----------



## Vintage Paw (Apr 13, 2015)

Is that your Santa Cruz map?

I haven't played for a while, but taking a look at the workshop it seems there is a bunch of really nice stuff that's been released recently. Am subbing to a lot of it.


----------



## Crispy (Apr 14, 2015)

Vintage Paw said:


> Is that your Santa Cruz map?



It is 

Only getting 48MW out of that dam, which is annoying cos the lake is bloody huge and took ages to fill up.


----------



## magneze (Apr 14, 2015)

Had more issues with dead people. So much that over 40,000 people moved out. Now gradually they are returning....


----------



## magneze (Apr 14, 2015)

Thing is I quite like it. SimCity had these disasters that happened occasionally which you had no control over, whereas the inability of pick up dead people is something that is basically your fault and you can do something about. It's quite satisfying to handle the situation, stop the rot and then coax people back into your dead body free city.


----------



## Fez909 (Apr 14, 2015)




----------



## Crispy (Apr 14, 2015)

What's the opposite of shame?
Pride?
No, not that far...


----------



## Vintage Paw (Apr 14, 2015)

I loaded this up briefly before going to bed last night, after not having played for a while. I promptly managed to poison my entire population and lost 10k out of 98k in minutes. It said the water was polluted, but it blates wasn't. Then I realised I placed a water tower (I'd downloaded a new one off the workshop and wanted to see what it looked like) and I think I'd placed it in an industrial area, so the ground would have been polluted. I didn't realise that would affect the water quality.

I didn't save.


----------



## Vintage Paw (Apr 14, 2015)

Incidentally:


----------



## Vintage Paw (Apr 14, 2015)

Oh, and in other news, after downloading some more LUTs last night, every single one of them in my drop-down list now has the same name, making it impossible to pick the right one  Shall have to investigate.


----------



## Chemical needs (Apr 14, 2015)

I've played for a mere 60 hours


----------



## Vintage Paw (Apr 14, 2015)

Found a colour LUT I really like:


----------



## Vintage Paw (Apr 14, 2015)

I feel a bit sentimental about Cherry Town (not least because of its awesome name), and don't want to abandon it, but as my first real attempt with any city builder I think it's probably done its job and taught me a few things. I've been very lucky with it, in that I've had few real problems with traffic (I've had to redo a very small handful of intersections, but only because the tailbacks were a bit tailbacky - everyone was still getting where they needed to get to), I've been able to manage expansion well (I went pretty slowly, focusing on mostly low density housing for a long time, waiting until I had about 60k before I put in a larger high density res area, and now I sit at about 98k), and even the patch that fixed commercial demand didn't break anything. I'm spread out over a largish area, and I'm wary of expanding too much more incase I start having performance issues (at 2.4ghz of processor, even though it's i7 quad core etc, the more people I have the more it'll start to wobble). But I'm thinking, if I'm not doing any more massive expansions, there's not a great deal more I can do to fuck it up in order to need to fix it, and I don't think I'll learn any more about how city builders work unless I have to fix some problems. I doubt a second city would be so smooth - it must have been a fluke considering I haven't played anything like this before. So, I'm wondering if I should start a new one. But I'm attached to this one! And starting is hard. But starting is fun. 

pfft


----------



## Fez909 (Apr 14, 2015)

Vintage Paw said:


> I feel a bit sentimental about Cherry Town (not least because of its awesome name), and don't want to abandon it, but as my first real attempt with any city builder I think it's probably done its job and taught me a few things. I've been very lucky with it, in that I've had few real problems with traffic (I've had to redo a very small handful of intersections, but only because the tailbacks were a bit tailbacky - everyone was still getting where they needed to get to), I've been able to manage expansion well (I went pretty slowly, focusing on mostly low density housing for a long time, waiting until I had about 60k before I put in a larger high density res area, and now I sit at about 98k), and even the patch that fixed commercial demand didn't break anything. I'm spread out over a largish area, and I'm wary of expanding too much more incase I start having performance issues (at 2.4ghz of processor, even though it's i7 quad core etc, the more people I have the more it'll start to wobble). But I'm thinking, if I'm not doing any more massive expansions, there's not a great deal more I can do to fuck it up in order to need to fix it, and I don't think I'll learn any more about how city builders work unless I have to fix some problems. I doubt a second city would be so smooth - it must have been a fluke considering I haven't played anything like this before. So, I'm wondering if I should start a new one. But I'm attached to this one! And starting is hard. But starting is fun.
> 
> pfft


Redeveloping is harder. Turn Cherry Town into something else


----------



## Crispy (Apr 14, 2015)

Get a custom map - you'll find inspiration in the geography


----------



## Vintage Paw (Apr 14, 2015)

Part of it is I suffer from chronic restartitis, and I kind of do want to play with a new map. I have your Santa Cruz, one based on Cologne, one based on the Netherlands (totally flat, lol), and a couple of others. I think a tropical one might be nice, since this is boreal (temperate feels boring).

I do worry I'm not proficient enough to deal with difficult terrain, but at the same time that challenge will likely help me learn a lot of things.

One thing I struggle with is non-highway intersections. My brain isn't sufficiently wired to straight away understand traffic planning (unlike you nerds ) so, for example, when you, Crispy, posted that example of narrowing the lanes to make sure traffic filtered into all the lanes afterwards, I had to look at it for _ages_ before I could work out what was going on, and even now I can't remember the theory behind it. And, like, I see people with highway going right through their zones, with all sorts of off and on ramps here there and everywhere, and I just have the highways that came with the map and everything else is other roads. I mean, they've clearly done their job what with my lack of major traffic problems, but I don't know if I'm 'doing it right'. I have a couple of massive roundabouts a short way off the highways, that feed into my major built-up areas. They seem to keep traffic moving. But beyond them, since I do 'organic' planning, which tbh is no planning at all, instead of grids, all my other intersections are haphazardly placed as and when I decide to place a road to build more shit.

How it hasn't all melted down yet idk. Fluke.

At my cargo train terminal, good god, I had to make the road leading up to that a massive long loop because it would just get ridiculously backed up. tbh, that could be a good project - moving it somewhere else.

The most important thing, however, is getting the road colour changer mod up and running so I can have all my roads be a slightly darker shade of grey than what they are now


----------



## Fez909 (Apr 15, 2015)

Vintage Paw said:


> Part of it is I suffer from chronic restartitis, and I kind of do want to play with a new map. I have your Santa Cruz, one based on Cologne, one based on the Netherlands (totally flat, lol), and a couple of others. I think a tropical one might be nice, since this is boreal (temperate feels boring).
> 
> I do worry I'm not proficient enough to deal with difficult terrain, but at the same time that challenge will likely help me learn a lot of things.
> 
> ...


Your pics you've posted up so far look like you're doing great to me.

Thing about these games is that they're ultimately creative: there is no "right way". You'll get the nerds, like you said, with meticulous planning and attention to realism and detail.
















Then others just want to make something pretty.
















It's all good.


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## Vintage Paw (Apr 15, 2015)

I want to do it all 

That's always my biggest problem. If I do x, it means I'm not doing y, but what if I'd have more fun doing y? So I'll do y instead, but what if x would have been better?

I'm the sort of person for whom choice is a tool of torture.


----------



## Enviro (Apr 15, 2015)

Has anyone come across a mod which allows you to unlock any map tile at any time?

I've been building my current city on a custom flat map, but with the tiles I've unlocked so far, and the currently available tiles to purchase, I can't choose the tiles I want  There's one I want which would allow better train connections and one that would allow better highway connections - my city is generating a lot of incoming traffic but there's only one off ramp feeding the main highways through my city, resulting in a huuuuuuuuuuge tail back of incoming traffic ...


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## Crispy (Apr 15, 2015)

Enviro said:


> Has anyone come across a mod which allows you to unlock any map tile at any time?


http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=406451121


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## Enviro (Apr 15, 2015)

Can't view the link at work, but I trust it's just the ticket!  Thanks Crispy.


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## Barking_Mad (Apr 15, 2015)

Vintage Paw said:


> I want to do it all
> 
> That's always my biggest problem. If I do x, it means I'm not doing y, but what if I'd have more fun doing y? So I'll do y instead, but what if x would have been better?
> 
> I'm the sort of person for whom choice is a tool of torture.



Oh i hear you there sister.


----------



## Barking_Mad (Apr 15, 2015)

Ive still not played this. 10/10 for me.


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## tiki (Apr 16, 2015)

I've just bought this but I've never played a city builder before and it's quite daunting. Are there and good resources for newbies of the genre?


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## Enviro (Apr 16, 2015)

You can't go tooo far wrong just by starting to whack down a few roads and filling some of the squares with green/ blue/ yellow.

Green - residential area
Blue - commercial area
Yellow - industrial area.

Of course these areas will need fresh water, sewage water removal, and a power supply.

And that's the basics  Apologies if that was obvious or you've figured that out already, I'm sure someone will come along with some more/ better advice and/ or links to some good resources


----------



## Vintage Paw (Apr 16, 2015)

tiki said:


> I've just bought this but I've never played a city builder before and it's quite daunting. Are there and good resources for newbies of the genre?



I'd not played one before. It's easy to get the hang of. It leads you through the basics.

It'll tell you that you need to lay some roads. It'll tell you that you need to put in some water and sewage facilities, and something to make electricity. The icons are easy to find, there are descriptions of what each building and utility does. 

You 'paint' the little grid squares next to roads with the green/blue/yellow that Enviro described, and buildings will magically appear in those places. You have to place services (fire, schools, cemeteries, landfill etc) yourself, but it'll tell you more or less when you need to do this the first time, and then you judge for yourself later on if you need more. 

There are plenty of handy little info panels and different overlays and map views that spell out simply what is going on, and highlight potential problem areas.

You'll see 3 little upright bar graph-style bars at the bottom, green, blue and yellow/orange, and as they fill up it means you need more of that type of zone/building, so you just go ahead and paint a few more areas with that colour and more will come.

You can pause at any point, while you're building, when you get a notification, or whatever, so you'll not be forced to try and fix a problem while more problems are building up. 

Just take it slowly. You'll probably make some mistakes, but that's how you learn!


----------



## Crispy (Apr 16, 2015)

Enviro said:


> Has anyone come across a mod which allows you to unlock any map tile at any time?


Actually, this one is better suited - it just gives you all the terrain, but leaves the services etc. locked behind the population milestones as usual.

http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=425057208


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## tiki (Apr 16, 2015)

OK. Thanks for the tips. I'll have a go at some of the basics today. Seems like a good relaxing game. I'm playing Bloôdborne at the moment and I need some stress relief between plays and Cities looks perfect for this.


----------



## Nine Bob Note (Apr 22, 2015)

I've just reached the magical 7 500 population goal for the first time without going bankrupt, but my roads - two lanes all connected to freeway roundabouts - ain't standing up to the pressure. Then, my districts just don't feel like semi-independant mini cities, more intricate one-way housing estates. I'm pleased with myself for calling one (the first one) 'The Blah,' and will likely continue to do so in the fifty-seven games that will undoubtedly follow.


----------



## Nine Bob Note (Apr 24, 2015)

I'm up to 16 000 pop now and am raking it in. Not bad going, I've bought up a new region, but I maintain this is more a traffic sim than a city builder.


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## Crispy (Apr 29, 2015)

Hmm. A quiet afternoon at work, what shall I do? I know, a 60 image guided tour of my 100k population, zero highways city:

http://imgur.com/a/LKRX2#0


----------



## Bonfirelight (Apr 29, 2015)

Crispy said:


> Hmm. A quiet afternoon at work, what shall I do? I know, a 60 image guided tour of my 100k population, zero highways city:
> 
> http://imgur.com/a/LKRX2#0


I want to move there


----------



## Fez909 (Apr 29, 2015)

Crispy said:


> Hmm. A quiet afternoon at work, what shall I do? I know, a 60 image guided tour of my 100k population, zero highways city:
> 
> http://imgur.com/a/LKRX2#0


Lovely city and a great write up. Good work


----------



## Fez909 (Apr 29, 2015)

Submit to Reddit for mad karma, yo


----------



## Vintage Paw (Apr 29, 2015)

Crispy, that is absolutely  amazing.


----------



## Crispy (Apr 29, 2015)

Fez909 said:


> Submit to Reddit for mad karma, yo


Way ahead of you


----------



## Vintage Paw (Apr 29, 2015)

You're top of the hot list 

I know a famous person.


----------



## Crispy (Apr 29, 2015)

Reddit fame!


----------



## Fez909 (Apr 29, 2015)

Crispy - how much knocking down and rebuilding do you do? I mean, you can't get it right straight away, so there must be _some _reconstruction work, but that's the bit I always find hard. I've downloaded a dodgy copy of CS as I can't justify buying it yet until I've got a machine that can run it properly, but already it seems easier to do this than in Sim City for some reason. But it's still hard.

Your city looks like it's been meticulously planned, which is clearly not the case - I don't think it's possible over such a large distance, and you've said it grew organically. That seems to imply a LOT of redesigning?


----------



## Crispy (Apr 29, 2015)

Fez909 said:


> Crispy - how much knocking down and rebuilding do you do? I mean, you can't get it right straight away, so there must be _some _reconstruction work, but that's the bit I always find hard. I've downloaded a dodgy copy of CS as I can't justify buying it yet until I've got a machine that can run it properly, but already it seems easier to do this than in Sim City for some reason. But it's still hard.
> 
> Your city looks like it's been meticulously planned, which is clearly not the case - I don't think it's possible over such a large distance, and you've said it grew organically. That seems to imply a LOT of redesigning?


Bulldozing is not such a big deal in this game. Buildings level up pretty quickly, and the only real downside is the loss of tax income while the site is rebuilt. So yeah there was lots of bulldozing. But I tried my best to leave things in place and work around obstacles. That's the way to make those idiosyncratic details that are impossible to pre-plan


----------



## Crispy (May 19, 2015)

Big update out - tunnels and terraced euro-style buildings


----------



## Vintage Paw (May 19, 2015)

I'll have to fire it up and take a look. That looks great!


----------



## Crispy (May 19, 2015)

Vintage Paw said:


> I'll have to fire it up and take a look. That looks great!


Be sure to turn all your mods off - reports are that most mods break with the update and will need to be fixed by the mod authors.


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## Vintage Paw (May 19, 2015)

> Many mods and (some) custom assets will not work with 1.1.0 and will need updating by their author. We have worked hard to cause as few conflicts as possible with popular mods, yet this is a substantial update and with the code & functionality changes some issues have been impossible to avoid. Going forward we aim to find a solution where we can work with our core modders pre-launch to give them ample time to adjust their creations before the public have access.



What fucking dev does this? I couldn't love CO more. <3


----------



## Crispy (May 27, 2015)

What do you get when you use the Trafic++ mod to increase the speed limit on dirt roads to 140km/h?

Cities: Rally!


----------



## Vintage Paw (May 27, 2015)

omfg


----------



## Vintage Paw (May 27, 2015)

This guy seems to have loads of interesting videos. Really useful for someone like me, who really, really sucks at planning any of this stuff or knowing the theory behind why on earth you should do X instead of Y.


----------



## Vintage Paw (May 27, 2015)

OMG what is that little icon thing? Have we had a board upgrade? That's nifty !!!


----------



## Lazy Llama (May 27, 2015)

Vintage Paw said:


> OMG what is that little icon thing? Have we had a board upgrade? That's nifty !!!


That's related to this change


----------



## SE25 (Jun 5, 2015)

Trying to decide whether to get this having never played a city sim that isn't Tropico 3-5. Having watched a load of youtube videos I have a strong feeling that once I get past the learning curve it'll be as addictive as Football Manager.

For those who still play it, what keeps you hooked?


----------



## Vintage Paw (Aug 25, 2015)

There's an expansion coming next month: After Dark.

Includes a day-night cycle, and new nighttime services, differences in traffic patterns, a nighttime budget, and you can have service vehicles do more at night to take advantage of fewer citizen cars on the roads.


----------



## Citizen66 (Sep 1, 2015)

Was just about to post about the DLC. I still haven't bought the main game. Are people still playing it or did it get boring a bit quickly?


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## Vintage Paw (Sep 2, 2015)

I haven't played it for a while, but that's because I tend to play a game for a couple of months then move on. I intend to go back to it though, and will get the After Dark dlc at some point.


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## Crispy (Sep 2, 2015)

Citizen66 said:


> Was just about to post about the DLC. I still haven't bought the main game. Are people still playing it or did it get boring a bit quickly?


I went all-in on it and burned out, but will be going back for the DLC (but will wait a bit for all the plugins to adjust to it)


----------



## bi0boy (Oct 27, 2015)

I'm hovering over the £22.99 button on Steam atm. Are there any annoying bugs that haven't been fixed yet?


----------



## wreckhead (Oct 27, 2015)

bi0boy said:


> I'm hovering over the £22.99 button on Steam atm. Are there any annoying bugs that haven't been fixed yet?


I got it from cdkeys for £8 a while back (I assume they're trustworthy - the game works!), fired it up and played it for a while but haven't gone back to it for fear of it sucking up all of my spare time...   ...it was good though, easy to pick up but also lots to learn, can't comment on bugs but it does need a pretty good spec PC to run well....

Cities: Skylines PC CD Key - cdkeys.com


----------



## bi0boy (Oct 27, 2015)

wreckhead said:


> I got it from cdkeys for £8 a while back (I assume they're trustworthy - the game works!), fired it up and played it for a while but haven't gone back to it for fear of it sucking up all of my spare time...   ...it was good though, easy to pick up but also lots to learn, can't comment on bugs but it does need a pretty good spec PC to run well....
> 
> Cities: Skylines PC CD Key - cdkeys.com








  Thanks for that, just bought it


----------



## bi0boy (Oct 29, 2015)

Good so far, but the anti-aliasing doesn't seem to work which is giving me a headache.


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## bi0boy (Oct 29, 2015)

Managed to kill a bunch of people because my single medical centre couldn't cope with a sewerage crisis. All sorted now though and I've ended up with considerable excess medical capacity - might have to institute a closure program. I hope they don't have street protests like in Sim City 4...


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## Vintage Paw (Oct 29, 2015)

bi0boy said:


> Good so far, but the anti-aliasing doesn't seem to work which is giving me a headache.



I don't think it ever has worked. There's a mod to increase resolution. 150% should eliminate the worst.


----------



## dervish (Oct 29, 2015)

Realised I had a bit of money in my paypal account so I've just bought it for £5.99 cost me £1.97 in real money.

And there goes any productivity for this week.


----------



## wreckhead (Oct 29, 2015)

dervish said:


> Realised I had a bit of money in my paypal account so I've just bought it for £5.99 cost me £1.97 in real money.
> 
> And there goes any productivity for this week.


That's a proper bargain!  ...well I would have saved £2 if I'd have waited so there we go...

This thread popping up again has convinced me to have another go at it.  Cleaning my flat can wait....


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## dervish (Oct 30, 2015)

Yeah, it is very good. Only thing I would change is for the view to zoom into where the mouse pointer is when zooming. It's a pain zooming in, panning across, losing where you are, zooming back out again, etc.


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## Crispy (Oct 30, 2015)

dervish said:


> Yeah, it is very good. Only thing I would change is for the view to zoom into where the mouse pointer is when zooming. It's a pain zooming in, panning across, losing where you are, zooming back out again, etc.


As with every problem you might have with CS, there's a mod for that
Steam Workshop :: Enhanced Zoom


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## dervish (Oct 30, 2015)

Cool, thanks for that.


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## bi0boy (Nov 4, 2015)

Spent the whole morning repeatedly rebuilding my single highway to city streets junction to no avail.


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## bi0boy (Nov 9, 2015)

ok first impressions.

It's too easy! On my first attempt I've got more money coming than I need, I haven't adjusted the tax levels at all and there is always demand for all zones. In Sim City 4 I would be accepting offers of casinos, toxic waste dumps, military bases etc just to get some cash. 

Pollution doesn't seem to be much of a problem. It doesn't seem to spread around much in the wind and as long as I don't build houses right next to incinerators the citizens don't seem to care. Road congestion and pollution doesn't seem to affect anything. I have high value residential buildings next to busy three lane roads. An occasional park seems to be all that's needed.

However I can build pedestrian bridges and watch people queuing at bus stops, so that's good enough for me. It would be good if they fixed the difficulty though, as there's whole areas of the game that can't really be played with.


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## Crispy (Nov 9, 2015)

There are plenty of mods to make things harder if you want.


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## bi0boy (Nov 9, 2015)

Crispy said:


> There are plenty of mods to make things harder if you want.



I'm sure there are, it's just a criticism of the game as it is. I guess it's due to being made by Scandinavians rather than Americans.


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## bi0boy (Nov 21, 2015)

Crispy said:


> As with every problem you might have with CS, there's a mod for that
> Steam Workshop :: Enhanced Zoom



Not for road tolls and congestion charges there isn't. I wonder how easy it is to write a mod.


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## bi0boy (Nov 21, 2015)

Some people are driving on my pedestrian bridges according to this mod. I wonder if I need more police funding...


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## Vintage Paw (Dec 18, 2015)

Reinstalling this atm, just got the After Dark dlc too.

Crispy (or anyone else) - haven't played it for a while, what are the must-have quality of life mods now? And any others you can recommend.


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## Crispy (Dec 19, 2015)

Iirc, the subreddit has a good must-have mod selection in the sidebar.


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## Vintage Paw (Dec 22, 2015)

Trying to learn more about roads, I come across this guy's stuff.



There's more, of course, but this one... those roads.

Compare and contrast to my level of competence:







(Not my picture, but displays my ability.)


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## Vintage Paw (Dec 27, 2015)

I am "planning."

 

Exact placement and size of various districts subject to change of course, but that's the rough idea.

Airport is in; cargo hub (rail and sea) at the top on the river is in, with rail that links to all three external connections; tourist port is in, with a small road to a nice bay-side hotel (tourist attraction) that overlooks the bay bridge.

Cargo hub will link to a smaller cargo rail station (or two) somewhere near downtown to try and avoid too much cross traffic, and hopefully if my road skills are up to it there will be a ring road to get goods where they need to be. Top 'villages' residential will feed the industrial area with workers hopefully, and no goods vehicles will be allowed in. There might be a secondary touristy commercial area in the south, to the right of the lower 'villages' area. 'Downtown' and 'offices' will likely flip to be horizontal rather than vertical as I have represented them here, so offices are in the north along the highway, and downtown is in the south with the prime coastal real estate. 

I'm going to attempt more internal rail connections this time, but will likely lean heavily on metro systems since they're the simplest to deal with. Buses freak me out, I can never work out where they are best used - probably a loop or direct service to get people from one side of a district to another, rather than to go between districts? I'm not sure what the deal with the new taxi ranks is, I guess within the downtown area to let tourists visit different attractions? I like that when you put in bike lanes you see a considerable increase in bike traffic. I wish there were roads that still had nice greenery as well as the bike lanes (I have that extended network connections thing with extra roads but there aren't any included in that).

I wonder, if I extended that larger island out in the sea would it push a load of water inland or will it disperse into the sea? I'd love to have one or two nice tourist attractions on there and have it as a little island retreat. I generally don't like using the terraforming tools anywhere near water because the knock-on effects are usually disastrous, but maybe it's not as bad out in the ocean?


----------



## stdP (Dec 31, 2015)

So after my latest AI-enhanced Rimworld colony fell prey to a tantrum spiral I've finally pulled the trigger on Cities Skylines after seeing it for under a tenner in the steam chrimbo sale - only one small town under my belt so far but seeing as the last city sim I played was _Sim City 4_ I'm pretty damned impressed by both the gameplay and the rather splendiferous graphics. It's nicely relaxing.

So... n00b question that was probably covered in the tutorial but think I missed it when repeatedly going "Argh! Why can't I make you drive on the left?!" and I've not yet read the whole thread yet; what's the benefit of setting up different districts like you've done in the map above? What makes this different from just zoning different bits...?


----------



## bi0boy (Dec 31, 2015)

stdP said:


> what's the benefit of setting up different districts like you've done in the map above? What makes this different from just zoning different bits...?



You can apply polices to districts e.g. tax breaks, heavy traffic bans etc. Also it's important for industrial areas as you can designate industry as forestry, farming, oil etc if it's located on top of that type of resource (check the resource view).


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## stdP (Dec 31, 2015)

Aha, thank you,so you can tune policies more specifically... interesting. Presumably you could do things like have a low-tax housing area near to things like farms (which seem to prefer uneducated employees? Not sure I agree with that but ho hum...) so that poorer families will tend to congregate there? Is the metagame advanced enough for that sorta thing?

Looks like I'm not getting much sleep tonight trying all this out; I don't think I've ever set HGV restriction policies whilst simultaneously designing a tube system and heroically trying to prevent the gin leaking out of the bottle with my mouth before so this will be a novel way to usher in the new year.

<speaking as an ex-brixtonian insert obligatory snark about a policy to replace all low-rent commercial with high-density chain stores>


----------



## Vintage Paw (Jan 2, 2016)

I haven't focused on policies too much so far because honestly I find the game quite easy - as long as you don't rush ahead of yourself and you add what it tells you it needs it's not too long before you start making a profit. I can't remember what size my first city got to (I probably mention it on here somewhere), but it never collapsed or did anything terrible.

This time I'm turning all the cheats on so I can plan an entire city from scratch, to give me some practice at making roads that don't look like ass and that actually work properly - I figure once I work out how to connect things together in a way that works, I'll be better placed to start my future cities without unlocks and let them develop naturally while actually knowing what I'm doing.

But yeah, stuff like HGV bans are useful to stop clogging some of your roads. I'll have no lorries in my villages, for example, so I'll have to ensure they have alternative routes to get stuff where it needs to go. Some policies will give you more tourism, some reduce crime, some reduce garbage production, and I've seen some (possibly new ones that came with the game update because I don't remember them from before) that prioritise certain types of education. It can get pretty in-depth if you're designing specific districts to funnel workers to specific industries - I always seem to end up with not enough workers _and_ not enough goods, despite there still being unemployment. It usually works itself out, but I think it's one of the drawbacks to the way things happen in waves - like you'll have a mass die-off as everyone who lives in that suburb you created die all together (incidentally there's a retirement home mod that's meant to help with that, I haven't tried it).


----------



## Vintage Paw (Jan 2, 2016)

I can't get Fine Road Heights to work with Traffic ++, which is mildly annoying because I really hate the steep slopes.

However, tunnels are a fucking godsend. I love them. Hide all your awkward shit underground


----------



## Buddy Bradley (Jan 15, 2016)

I'm trying to get back into this after only playing it a little when I first bought it. My problem is a general lack of forward-planning; I get carried away at the beginning, and then find it really hard to expand in a sensible fashion - I end up with stuff just shoved in anywhere it fits.


----------



## Crispy (Jan 15, 2016)

I'm currently building a city in phases as if I started in the 1750s. Got a tight dense city-walled core surrounded by fields and villages. But here comes industry! And railways! Oh my! Aiming for a realistic jumble of development patterns like London.

Later on, I will drop bombs on it 

(infinite money and everything unlocked. there's no real "challenge" to the regular game so I may as well indulge my creative urges)


----------



## Shippou-Sensei (Feb 16, 2016)

I'm finding watching letsplays  of  this  on youtube  to be  quite relaxing  but intresting  to see  people  though process.

also sometimes  just	asking the question   what the fuck is  that   one way system about


----------



## Shippou-Sensei (Feb 17, 2016)

also i got a copy.

Will seee if i ever actually play it


----------



## Shippou-Sensei (Feb 19, 2016)

It's currently on sale right now. steam and the paradox store.


----------



## Lazy Llama (Sep 2, 2016)

On sale on Steam - £5.74 for standard, £7.49 for deluxe


----------



## Fez909 (Oct 21, 2016)




----------



## paolo (Oct 21, 2016)

Ooh


----------



## Shippou-Sensei (Oct 21, 2016)

Shippou-Sensei said:


> also i got a copy.
> 
> Will seee if i ever actually play it



I did play it for a fair while.   I'm not good at management games it seems.  Did still enjoy making a no budget city though.


----------



## Vintage Paw (Oct 21, 2016)

Fez909 said:


>




Bastard shitting creative fuckers


----------



## souljacker (May 22, 2017)

Just bought this for £5.74 on the humble bundle sale.


----------



## paolo (May 29, 2017)

Mass Transit - official add on - is out.

(And yes, that's why I'm up and wide awake)

Ranges from practical and realistic things like ferries, through to the silly - blimps. Lots of fun things that aren't too crazy - canals, new transport hubs, and ah, yeah, monorails with unfeasible points (aka switches).

And there's a couple of whopping twelve track stations. One's a terminus, the other one through.


----------



## Artaxerxes (Jun 2, 2017)

How is this at creating a more UK flavoured city? With odd twists and turns in layout from years of bad decisions.  

How about the pre built cities? Bringing sanity to London or redeveloping it after the great fire or WW2 appeals to me...


----------



## Crispy (Jun 2, 2017)

You can definitely do a windy wonky european city with flyovers to nowhere etc. What it can't do is buildings with non-square corners, so you end up with wedge-shaped gaps everywhere.


----------



## Kid_Eternity (Jun 17, 2017)

Quick question: is this on the Mac?


.


----------



## Shippou-Sensei (Jun 17, 2017)

Aparently it is.
released in March 2015 for Microsoft Windows, OS X, and Linux; an Xbox One version, which is ported by Tantalus Media, was released in April 2017.


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## Vintage Paw (Jun 17, 2017)

Re: the European city thing up-thread, I've just started watching this:


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## Vintage Paw (Jun 17, 2017)

Vintage Paw said:


> Re: the European city thing up-thread, I've just started watching this:




Holy crap, you can adjust the curve etc of roads and stuff now after you've laid them? Did that come with a patch? I don't remember being able to do that last time I played (which was ages ago).


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## Kid_Eternity (Aug 24, 2017)

Just picked this up for £7.50 for the Mac! Any tips for a new player?


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## Magnus McGinty (Aug 24, 2017)

I bought it a few weeks back. Haven't played it yet.


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## Vintage Paw (Aug 24, 2017)

Kid_Eternity said:


> Just picked this up for £7.50 for the Mac! Any tips for a new player?



Tip 1: Carefully plan out where you're going to put your various districts, leaving plenty of room for expansion if problems arise, then throw those plans out the window and furiously throw down a tangled mass of roads and train tracks and prepare yourself for the first great die-off.


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## Vintage Paw (Aug 24, 2017)

Tip 2: Look lovingly at the intersections and roundabouts that other people create, and get in a decent stock of tissues for the inevitable tears of disappointment when yours look like a 4-year old made them.


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## Vintage Paw (Aug 24, 2017)

Tip 3: Don't look at anything Crispy made because you'll just get angry. Instead take the time to console yourself and remember you're worthwhile, you matter. Well-planned cities are for losers, anyway.


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## Kid_Eternity (Aug 24, 2017)

Haha cheers VP! Appreciate it.[emoji6]


.


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## Wookey (Aug 24, 2017)

I can't play this on my old laptop, and it was _made for me_ too.


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## Vintage Paw (Aug 24, 2017)

Didn't they release it on console too? Or am I making that up? My memory isn't what it used to be.


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## Tankus (Aug 24, 2017)

...bought it , cheap on steam , over two months ago  ...its Icon is looking at me on my desktop ..winking at me ...even....

but my subconscious is forcing my hand ...NO  ...
DO not  click it  ...and I haven't  ...

I checked Steam ...and  its telling me that I've played "Banished " for  over 1125 hrs  ...feck ...1125 hrs   ...thats like  ...over 28 equivilent weeks at work  !!!...over half a working year   ....!!!!! feck !!!!

Houston ...I may have a problem ......

this was made for me too 

if I click on it ...well  ... _Adiós muchachos 

"I may be gone for some time "
_


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## D'wards (Aug 24, 2017)

Vintage Paw said:


> Didn't they release it on console too? Or am I making that up? My memory isn't what it used to be.


Just out on ps4. Picking my copy up tomorrow


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## Tankus (Aug 25, 2017)

way to munted last night


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## Fez909 (Oct 20, 2017)

£5.50 on Steam for the next week.

I've just bought it


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## Nine Bob Note (Oct 20, 2017)

Prolly should give this another go when I'm done with my current Prison Architect playthrough seeing as how I bought all the DLC in the last Steam sale and haven't even installed it


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## NoXion (Oct 21, 2017)

Last night I saw a friend play a bit of this on his Xbox One.

I've never played any of the Sim City games before, but this definitely looks interesting. It's going on the Steam wishlist because I might not have the cash to buy it after sorting out my new computer.


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## Crispy (Oct 21, 2017)

NoXion said:


> Last night I saw a friend play a bit of this on his Xbox One.
> 
> I've never played any of the Sim City games before, but this definitely looks interesting. It's going on the Steam wishlist because I might not have the cash to buy it after sorting out my new computer.


It's on sale right now! only £5.74!


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## DotCommunist (Oct 21, 2017)

Nine Bob Note said:


> Prolly should give this another go when I'm done with my current Prison Architect playthrough seeing as how I bought all the DLC in the last Steam sale and haven't even installed it


Sim City 2000 is ideologically opposed to you running a high tax high spend municipality. So you cheat 

at a fiver I am tempted by CS


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## NoXion (Oct 21, 2017)

Crispy said:


> It's on sale right now! only £5.74!



I don't even have that much in my current account right now! Also my computer is fucked, which is why I've been scrimping and saving for the past few months filling up my savings account. And posting a lot more on Urban to make up for my lack of gaming.

I don't know how long it will take for my new PC to be built and delivered (they say 5 to 7 working days for construction, no idea about delivery), but hopefully it will be less than two weeks from the 25th when I get paid.


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## Fez909 (Jan 6, 2018)

This guy...


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## iamwithnail (Jan 8, 2018)

Tankus said:


> I checked Steam ...and  its telling me that I've played "Banished " for  over 1125 hrs  ...feck ...1125 hrs   ...thats like  ...over 28 equivilent weeks at work  !!!...over half a working year   ....!!!!! feck !!!!



Yeah, i've played Kerbal for about 900 hours.  I console myself that I've had it for 3 years, and will often sit playing it while watching TV and hanging out with my wife, so it's *less* bad...

I need to get Skylines, I think, will wait till it's reduced again though.


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## Sea Star (Jan 8, 2018)

I've clocked up over a hundred hours on this over December and early January. I'm still rubbish


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## dervish (Feb 8, 2018)

If you haven't had a chance to play this it's free on steam for the next three days. 

Save 75% on Cities: Skylines on Steam


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## Magnus McGinty (Nov 5, 2018)

I’ve started getting into this over a year after I bought it. I assume everyone else has stopped playing? Didn’t realise the buildings upgraded individually. My biggest issue is garbage and the amount of trucks that are used to service it. Have started buying the inevitable recycling plants. There’s some interesting new DLC for it too.


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## iamwithnail (Nov 5, 2018)

Make sure you turn all the tax bonuses for buildings once they're unlocked.  It makes the buildings nicer - more high end so you get more tax from them.  it's 2c per building or something, ut's always been a massive net win for me.  I got the transport and green dlcs (monorails! less garbage!), well worth it.


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## Magnus McGinty (Nov 5, 2018)

Where do I find tax bonuses? In the budget panel? That isn’t something that would have occurred to me without prompting.


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## iamwithnail (Nov 5, 2018)

Had to look it up - i mean policies, couldn't remember the word for it.  Policies - Cities: Skylines Wiki So big business benefactor, you pay 4c per building, but every high density commercial business doubles its sales.  Industrial space planning doubles the numbers of goods from industry, etc.


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## Magnus McGinty (Nov 5, 2018)

Ah ok. I’ve already adopted the recycling policy to help ease all those garbage trucks whilst waiting for recycling plants to unlock.


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## Magnus McGinty (Nov 5, 2018)

Fez909 said:


> This guy...




Is that some mod?


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## BristolEcho (Nov 5, 2018)

When I see some of the things people have built on Reddit I get very jealous.


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## Fez909 (Nov 5, 2018)

Magnus McGinty said:


> Is that some mod?


I think it's _all _the mods 

CS plus some DLC is on Humble Bundle right now, btw. For anyone who doesn't have it and wants it...


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## Kid_Eternity (Nov 8, 2018)

They really should release this for the iPad, it'd be great to play on the go!


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## Magnus McGinty (Dec 2, 2018)

I'm liking the British post-war semis (mixed with more modern detached) that are in the workshop.


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## Crispy (Jan 20, 2019)

Want to learn the history of american urbanism from a radical left POV? IWW member donoteat1 has this great youtube series on the development of a fictional East-coast city. Episode 7 is 20 minutes of how much he hates liberals  Get past the *extremely* dry narration style and find some wickedly sharp humour too.



Also, this review of the Industries DLC, or as he calls it "Chinese State Capitalism Simulator"


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## Fez909 (Jul 23, 2019)

Cities: Skylines is Turing Complete - Daniel Bali - Medium


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## Fez909 (Jul 23, 2019)

Crispy said:


> Want to learn the history of american urbanism from a radical left POV? IWW member donoteat1 has this great youtube series on the development of a fictional East-coast city. Episode 7 is 20 minutes of how much he hates liberals  Get past the *extremely* dry narration style and find some wickedly sharp humour too.


This is amazing. I've binged 6 episodes while 'working' this afternoon.

Cheers!


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## Artaxerxes (Jul 23, 2019)

"Mike shops here, with his dad Mike and his brother Mike" was the best bit of YouTube I've seen in years.


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## Kid_Eternity (Oct 8, 2019)

Anyone subscribe to Biffa on YouTube?


.


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## Fez909 (Jan 28, 2020)

(write up in the comments is worth a read)


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## Nine Bob Note (Feb 1, 2020)

Kid_Eternity said:


> Anyone subscribe to Biffa on YouTube?
> 
> 
> .



I do, and I've always enjoyed his content, but I haven't really watched over the past year as he has specialised as a CS channel.


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## Lazy Llama (Jan 16, 2021)

Cities Skylines Deluxe edition - PC/Mac version going for £3.69 on CDkeys today - Cities Skylines Deluxe Edition PC/Mac


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