Cities: Skylines 2 Now Available

webguy20

Fuckin' Goddamn.

HappylilElf

Every time I try and start a city with the understanding that curvy roads are not the enemy and that it's not imperative that The Grid be followed I end up making massive grids and then the city dies because traffic

Every single time.

Kashaar

That bloody video made me play the game again. I think I might be getting the hang of curvy layouts finally... Seems like the trick is to draw really, really large-scale curves initially.

Dignified Pauper

I still don't understand how to avoid intersections for curvy roads... Also, was the music in that video Prokofiev?

chuck steak

I haven't played this in almost a year, but have been getting the itch lately. How good is the expansion? Should I make sure to grab it before I jump back in, or would I be fine to just play vanilla and grab the expansion next time it's on sale? Also, are there any mod or mod packs that are considered essential?

WotanAnubis

The Day/Night cycle is beautiful, but other than that I don't have much of an opinion. And I think you can get the night for free anyway (though without its added gameplay twists).

Speaking of expansions. Did you ever look at the traffic situation in your city and think "There need to be a few more complications there"?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D16RJNPRFxQ

DyasAlure

That video. How do you do that? I didn't know you could replay a cities growth?

webguy20

WotanAnubis wrote: »

The Day/Night cycle is beautiful, but other than that I don't have much of an opinion. And I think you can get the night for free anyway (though without its added gameplay twists).

Speaking of expansions. Did you ever look at the traffic situation in your city and think "There need to be a few more complications there"?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D16RJNPRFxQ

Im excited for integrated light rail.

Supraluminal

DyasAlure wrote: »

That video. How do you do that? I didn't know you could replay a cities growth?

It's a time-lapse made with a series of screenshots.

That_Guy

Snow and Streetcars? Sign me up. With all these asset packs, expansions and updates, this game is more feature rich than Sim City 2013 could ever hope to be.

webguy20

What is funny is that there is a snow mod and a few snow maps right now in the workshop. I don't believe any of them actually have any falling snow or dynamic effects though.

Caedwyr

Will the snow require snowplows to clear? Dealing with traffic jams caused by heavy snow? Setting up snowplowing routes and salting/sanding the roads?

Endaro

I believe they've confirmed all of that except for salting

davidsdurions

Will I be able to put a city ordinance in that requires the citizens to shovel their walk or face heavy fines?

Art imitates life and all that?

Dignified Pauper

I love that they said: "New snowplow services will be required to prevent traffic from freezing in place,"

Excuse me... I don't need snow to ensure my traffic is frozen in place from gridlock.

HappylilElf

I, despite falling victim to it literally hundreds of times throughout the years in various city sim games, just realized where the term gridlock comes from

*commits seppuku*

jungleroomx

It took me forever to realize how to build suburban neighborhoods without massive traffic.

Once I get it rolling I'll gladly upload some stuff. I'm super excited about the sunken highways, and I love the mod community surrounding this game.

That_Guy

Looks like Snowfall is dropping on the 18th. I'm excited. It's looking really good.

https://www.paradoxplaza.com/news/Snowfall-Release-Date/

chuck steak

The DLC is out. I grabbed the first DLC last sale, and was waiting for this to jump back in after my nearly year break from the game. But apparently snow cities and non-snow cities are completely separate, so I think I'll hold off on this new DLC for a while, probably until a sale. I was really hoping one city could go through cycles of winter and summer, but I'm guessing they couldn't pull that off for one reason or another. Hopefully they can add that some time down the road.

EvmaAlsar

I'm having a tougher time of getting a city up and running on a snow map (Snowy Coast) but that may just be because I'm crap.

You'll need more power at the beginning and overall since buildings use electricity for heating, and you won't get boilers or geothermal heating options until a few milestones in. At that point though you'll get a few new city policies such as thermal insulation, which reduces heating usage from buildings but also reduces the amount of tax you get out of them after additional maintenance costs. You can also set policies to force whether buildings use only water heating for heat or only electricity for heat.

Heating pipes are way more expensive than basic water pipes - $100/cell compared to water pipes $20/cell.

There's also a snow dump which unlocks in the first milestone along with the landfill. It's pretty cheap and it is as crucial as the landfill as every time it snows, you'll get snow coverage on your roads which limits the speed vehicles can reach on them regardless of density. Snow plows will just roam around the city whenever there is snow on the roads, and snow at the dump will melt pretty quickly so you'll only need one dump for a really long time I should imagine. It's under the road construction menu.

There's also a 'road maintenance depot' that claims to boost roads, but that's a much later unlock; apparently it increases road speed limit once they've been maintained.

That_Guy

I haven't dug into the new expansion yet, but here are some shots from my last city. Got up to ~150k pop before moving on.

There's more here.
http://steamcommunity.com/id/ThatGuy3141/screenshots/?appid=0&sort=newestfirst&browsefilter=myfiles&view=imagewall

jungleroomx

Finally got a rig that can run this.

Shots forthcoming.

Nova_C

I haven't played this really since before After Dark, but I installed both the DLC packs last night and found out this game is gorgeous on a cold winter's night:

webguy20

Damn this game does look good! I'm waiting for someone to mod some ski lifts into the game.

jungleroomx

I love the fenced alleyway assets.




http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=628821058

Jealous Deva

I really like the new trams. You can do a really neat little light rail system, and if you want to get fancy you can do off road networks to reduce load. I feel like it gets overlooked with the snow stuff but its really a cool little network.

That_Guy

I'm really loving this expansion. They made early and mid game much more strategic. I found myself having to carefully budget until I hit about 25k Cims. The heat requirements add a very interesting twist to the map. I wish they could do seasons, but maybe in a future expansion.

I've made a few snow cities so far. I started a new one last night on the rivers map. If I can get it looking presentable I'll post some pics tonight.

webguy20

That_Guy wrote: »

I'm really loving this expansion. They made early and mid game much more strategic. I found myself having to carefully budget until I hit about 25k Cims. The heat requirements add a very interesting twist to the map. I wish they could do seasons, but maybe in a future expansion.

I've made a few snow cities so far. I started a new one last night on the rivers map. If I can get it looking presentable I'll post some pics tonight.

yea it would be interesting if during summer for example, electricity was up due to AC use, swimming pools and other water attractions got more business, and water levels dropped depending on the severity of the summer.

Delmain

They would need to have non-electric heating for that to make sense, since otherwise it's just high electricity use all the time.

Unless they do like, high energy use at night for winter, and during the day for summer.

That_Guy

Delmain wrote: »

They would need to have non-electric heating for that to make sense, since otherwise it's just high electricity use all the time.

Unless they do like, high energy use at night for winter, and during the day for summer.

There is non electric heating with this expansion. You can build steam boilers and upgrade your water pipes to carry heat.

Delmain

that's still electricity though, isn't it? I haven't tried.

I mean like, having to import Natural Gas to send out to homes.

That_Guy

Delmain wrote: »

that's still electricity though, isn't it? I haven't tried.

I mean like, having to import Natural Gas to send out to homes.

They offset electricity consumption by their rated power output.

Jealous Deva

Pretty sure the steam boilers use oil as fuel, and once you connect buildings they use significantly less power when it is cold. This is most useful on winter maps of course, but IIRC everything aside from tropical maps will get cool enough occasionally to need heat, though in some cases it might be cheaper to just build in extra power capacity and use electric rather than starting a whole steam system.

That_Guy

The Geothermal plant does not use oil.

That_Guy

Fresh batch of screenshots incoming. I grew my city to almost 100k Cims tonight. Sure it's grid heavy, but once it gets this big the grids don't look too bad.

Molybdenum

Ok, so after a gap of many months I watched a few series and some snowfall coverage and wanted to hop in and revisit with infinite money checked so I could actually build out something nice quickly.

I spent some time in the workshop grabbing assets, started a city on the stock Cliffside Bay map, and immediately realized two things: I had forgotten to check infinite money, and I had never really unlocked much last year.
Well, I think, no worries. I guess I'll leave money on since I probably need to unlock some stuff anyway before I could build a just-for-fun project. How bad can it be?

Well, it turns out that the starting tile on Cliffside Bay only has water access to the edge of - you guessed it, the bay. The bay with no current. You can probably guess where this is going.
I placed my water intake and outflow as far apart as the map square allowed, and quickly got to building my city up and laying out grand plans for the region. Fast forward about an hour of gameplay, and suddenly I realize I'm losing money. And people. The sewage outflow creep has caught up to my intake pipes. I can't move them any further, since they're at the edge of the map square. I can't buy a new map square yet because my city hasn't met the residency goal. Well, okay, can I place a water treatment plant or something? Nope, not unlocked yet. Um.... maybe.. more clinics?

I spam some clinics and quickly zone as much residential as I can to get people in and hit the area expansion goal, which works - I can buy a new map square! So I do...and then am out of money. So I take out a loan and begin relocating my intake pumps, laying the new pipework, and running electricity lines. By now I'm receiving so little tax income (because everyone died/moved) and am paying so much in clinic costs that before I can finish hooking up the pipes, I'm once again bankrupt.

So now I've converted the save to infini-money and 58 clinics later my average health is now back above 50. Could I have avoided this? maybe. Is it dumb that's even possible? probably. Either way, I'm likely just going to seek out an unlock-everything option and not be assed with the campaign goals anymore after this.

tl;dr accidentally roleplaying Flint

That_Guy

That_Guy wrote: »

Fresh batch of screenshots incoming. I grew my city to almost 100k Cims tonight. Sure it's grid heavy, but once it gets this big the grids don't look too bad.

Bottompage'd

Cobalt60

Molybdenum wrote: »

Ok, so after a gap of many months I watched a few series and some snowfall coverage and wanted to hop in and revisit with infinite money checked so I could actually build out something nice quickly.

I spent some time in the workshop grabbing assets, started a city on the stock Cliffside Bay map, and immediately realized two things: I had forgotten to check infinite money, and I had never really unlocked much last year.
Well, I think, no worries. I guess I'll leave money on since I probably need to unlock some stuff anyway before I could build a just-for-fun project. How bad can it be?

Well, it turns out that the starting tile on Cliffside Bay only has water access to the edge of - you guessed it, the bay. The bay with no current. You can probably guess where this is going.
I placed my water intake and outflow as far apart as the map square allowed, and quickly got to building my city up and laying out grand plans for the region. Fast forward about an hour of gameplay, and suddenly I realize I'm losing money. And people. The sewage outflow creep has caught up to my intake pipes. I can't move them any further, since they're at the edge of the map square. I can't buy a new map square yet because my city hasn't met the residency goal. Well, okay, can I place a water treatment plant or something? Nope, not unlocked yet. Um.... maybe.. more clinics?

I spam some clinics and quickly zone as much residential as I can to get people in and hit the area expansion goal, which works - I can buy a new map square! So I do...and then am out of money. So I take out a loan and begin relocating my intake pumps, laying the new pipework, and running electricity lines. By now I'm receiving so little tax income (because everyone died/moved) and am paying so much in clinic costs that before I can finish hooking up the pipes, I'm once again bankrupt.

So now I've converted the save to infini-money and 58 clinics later my average health is now back above 50. Could I have avoided this? maybe. Is it dumb that's even possible? probably. Either way, I'm likely just going to seek out an unlock-everything option and not be assed with the campaign goals anymore after this.

tl;dr accidentally roleplaying Flint

Build water towers instead of water pumps and use the bay for sewage.

Jealous Deva

I love trams so much. I have a nice little hybrid tram/elevated light rail system going now, and I think with some pedistrian path kludging I could probably make a makeshift elevated rail system that wouldn't need to hit ground at all. Only real problem is large block coverage but you can always supplement with nearby connecting busstops or just go into road median tram for commercial and industrial zoning that doesn't care much about noise.

That_Guy

I've made a couple of cities based around the tram system and didn't really like it. I don't see them doing anything different or better than busses. My personal opinion is that the subways are the best mass transit for large cities. they're much easier to work into your city since they're mostly underground and not subject to surface traffic like trams.