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Cities: Skylines |OT| Not Related to Cities XL.

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Mayjaplaya

Neo Member
Don't mean to be a broken record, but my biggest gripe is definitely the difficulty and lack of micromanagement/financial metagame.

I kept seeing horror stories of people's cities violently going down in flames, but it only took me an hour or so to get the budget >20% into the green and I haven't looked back since. I guess it may have been my experience with vanilla, pre-Rush Hour SimCity 4.

I never figured out how to solve traffic in SC4 though; I'll see if I can wrangle it in this game.
 

Grief.exe

Member
Have my first functional city.

20K population, massively expanding downtown and just built a highway system for both downtown and my new huge forestry industry.
 

Danlord

Member
Aw yes. The dynamic resolution mod is awesome.

I'm experiencing a problem I think with it.

Anything above the internal resolution makes things blurry and with the lack of AA there's a lot of aliasing pixel crawl. I have a 560Ti so I'm not cranking it up stupid amounts, but 125% and 150% just make most things blurrier.
I also experience a bug in that after a bit shadows completely dissappear and I try refresh them by disabling them and reenabling them but to no avail.


Also for anyone to try to get more performance without any visual difference (it seems), force the game into DirectX9 mode, I could do nVidia's Dynamic Super Resolution in that and I did manage to launch into 4K -> 1080p downsampling through the driver whereas normally it just reverted to 1920x1080. To do so, follow this;
Right click on the game in your Steam library. At the bottom of the pop up menu you should see Properties. in the General tab you should see a button labeled SET LAUNCH OPTIONS. Click it and add the "-force-d3d9" text in the text box.
 
Gah, I would love to use that tree brush if it didn't disable the achievement. Hopefully there's an official update for that and quickly.
Don't mean to be a broken record, but my biggest gripe is definitely the difficulty and lack of micromanagement/financial metagame.

Is it easy for mods to make new rules/logic for this game? I know people love to build cities, but I think playing the role of a mayor and doing paperwork is half the fun of a city builder.

Does colossal make DLC that supports new gameplay content like this?

Agreed, need some micromanaging, I imagine they've gotten a lot of request at this point, I've asked them about it too.
 
I kept seeing horror stories of people's cities violently going down in flames, but it only took me an hour or so to get the budget >20% into the green and I haven't looked back since. I guess it may have been my experience with vanilla, pre-Rush Hour SimCity 4.

I never figured out how to solve traffic in SC4 though; I'll see if I can wrangle it in this game.

Biggest issues seemed to be garbage, sewage drinking water, dam floods, dead people... these are all easy issues. Traffic is the biggest thing to worry about, but sewage, dam floods and dead people resulting from said sewage are easily avoidable.

.. not much outside of that but to grow. It's more like a sandbox builder now to me.

I have to try hard mode, but Im waiting and hoping for more complex mods.

Have you played Rush Hour Sim City? I've been thinking of buying SC4 again to play around with, as I want to compare the challenge/difficulty
 
Gah, I would love to use that tree brush if it didn't disable the achievement. Hopefully there's an official update for that and quickly.


Agreed, need some micromanaging, I imagine they've gotten a lot of request at this point, I've asked them about it too.

Are you on their forum/in contact with them?

I made a Reddit thread of ideas I'd have liked to see to show a feel of how the game ought to offer more management for mid-end stage gameplay.

There should always be a constant threat of using emergency funds. It's not like that though. You can easily stock millions without having anything to spend.

It bothers me so much that I've stopped playing, actually. I'll get back on it I'm sure, but I feel like I'm cheating if I'm not being held back by my budget/spending. I want to feel like an actual mayor here, look at graphs, plan ahead, invest, strategize...it's why I enjoy these sim games.
 

manfestival

Member
I am about to pull the trigger on this game.... I could wait 5 months or I can buy it now and not play it for probably another week but I would have the game....FFFFFF
 
Not sure if this has been asked, but is education by disctrict? Will schools serve residents outside of their districts? If not, it would be great if that was a policy - maybe it is?
 

Ainsz

Member
Seriously amazing work and attention gone into this recreation. I'm sure at some point, most of LA's major landmarks will be available as mods to!

bandicam_2015_03_13_02_21_16_861.jpg


trailer-2-los-santos-from-the-observatory.jpg
 

McNum

Member
Say, are there any airports in the game?

That used to be my indicator that this city was doing well. That I needed one of those. And it was fun to have planes flying above town in the old SimCity games.

Still not really on the fence, just need to wait a bit with getting this due to budget and a now fixed computer failure.
 

DEO3

Member

I've just been playing with these two mods for the past hour or so - they're absolute must haves - in my opinion.

The Dynamic Resolution mod cleans up the game so much, and the first person camera is suuuuuuuuper fun when you set it's height and walking speed to their lowest settings.

I also really like this color correction: http://steamcommunity.com/profiles/76561198103161799/myworkshopfiles/?appid=255710
 

cHinzo

Member
Say, are there any airports in the game?

That used to be my indicator that this city was doing well. That I needed one of those. And it was fun to have planes flying above town in the old SimCity games.

Still not really on the fence, just need to wait a bit with getting this due to budget and a now fixed computer failure.
Yeah u unlock the airports at like 64-65k citizens. Havent made use of em yet. Still need to find a way to get more goods to the commercial areas. They seems to always be out of goods to sell and abandon the stores. City can't grow like this until it's fixed. I only had a cargo connection using ships. Anyone know if the cargo station using the trains work well to get goods into the city?
 

Mik2121

Member
This is a few days old, but in case someone didn't see it...

http://www.pcgamer.com/the-strange-...s_source=steam&ns_linkname=0&ns_fee=0

The strange tale of a Cities: Skylines town with only one house

zA3x_uOw5zSt.840x0.Vdef9Kkm.jpg


Surreal estate
In Cities: Skylines (read our review here), you can follow around the various NPCs who move into your city. However, when there's tens of thousands of citizens, and you're swamped with the tasks related to building and managing a metropolis, it can be hard to keep tabs on a single person's life for very long, and difficult to find them again later.
I thought I'd fix this problem by creating a city in which only a single home could be built. Then I'd see who moved in and keep track of their lives. Here's what happened.

Click on the arrows to continue reading (there's a bit of the story update on every image). I thought the concept of the one house city was pretty cool! I wanna try to do something similar but just trying to get a small little town and see how the people interact with each other.
 

MattyG

Banned
I'm having a ton of trouble getting a good start on a city. I need to get a handle on the basics, but I also have no idea how I should layout my roads, my zones and everything else.
 

Jintor

Member
Say, are there any airports in the game?

That used to be my indicator that this city was doing well. That I needed one of those. And it was fun to have planes flying above town in the old SimCity games.

Still not really on the fence, just need to wait a bit with getting this due to budget and a now fixed computer failure.

I'm really enjoying my time with it even though I don't know a goddamn thing about highways

seriously

highways

what do?!?!?!?
 

Mik2121

Member
I'm having a ton of trouble getting a good start on a city. I need to get a handle on the basics, but I also have no idea how I should layout my roads, my zones and everything else.

Couple things that work for me:

- Try to separate the residential and industrial areas as the industrial area gets lots of pollution.
- Try to at least plan out where your sewage is going to be and where you want to place your main areas and then do some road work to match it. I'm not good either, but what I try to do is keep the one-way roads near the entrance and then one path that goes to the industrial area (and connects back to the main one-way roads) and another path to the residential that does the same.

Other than that, I think it's fairly straightforward. Just try to make it so that most of the public stuff is closest to the center of your residential areas so you can affect the largest amount of population possible.
 
15k citizens and growing, though my city seems to keep having an unsatiable appetite for industry.
Half of my second tile city is office buildings + I have some regular industry connected to it as well. Still got industry demand out the wazoo.

It's pretty funny to hear the dingdingding spam and watch dozens of buildings upgrade at the same time after placing a few extra parks and an extra firestation or clinic if you had some buildings without ideal cover.

My new road system in the second tile is way better, got a heavy industry twice as large without any traffic issues and got a dense town core that is 3x bigger than the first tile one again with zero traffic issues.
This game is sooooo satisfying, it feels really good to redo some roads, intersections and reroute some traffic after learning from old mistakes, and then watching how much more efficient it is.

 
I'm having a ton of trouble getting a good start on a city. I need to get a handle on the basics, but I also have no idea how I should layout my roads, my zones and everything else.

Okay, here's how I start my cities: from your first connection, build a roundabout with 2 road unit curves*. On one side of it, build your first industrial area; on the other, a mixed commercial/residential one, with your commercial closer to your central roundabout. This allows your traffic to move much more freely than a conventional interchange. If you're feeling adventureous, construct a second roundabout inside the first one, connected with 4 branches at 45 degree angles. This one should be going the opposite direction, allowing for cars to shortcut the main roundabout, which is useful for stuff like shipping.

For power, use a coal power plant plopped into your industrial area.

Make sure your sewage dump is downstream from your water pump.

Connect everything up with power lines and piping, and you're good to go!

*Not sure what else to call them; they're the little demarcating marks that show up when you draw roads.
 

Mik2121

Member
The lack of jobs that offices provide is very odd. Also their size evolution to tier 3 is disappointing.

Yep. Their tier 3 buildings are so small for office buildings. I was expecting some high rise towers like the Bank of China Tower in Hong Kong, or any of the office skyscrapers you'd see in a city like New York.

Oh well. I guess that could be added later on!
 

Jintor

Member
So what's a good connection type for a beginning city anyway? Without unlocks/unlimited funds.

So far I've been using two one-way connectors to a roundabout and from there everything goes out, but scaling has been a MASSIVE issue. I recently replaced it with a highway but my offramps are getting clogged as shit, especially because my planning was terrible so it's far too close to the rest of my city. It's going to be a huge issue if this city gets beyond its current pop of 4k.
 

Spl1nter

Member
Actually, I partially lied. 95% of my offices are tier 2. It seems you need to have max land value to create tier 3 offices. But still the tier 3 offices are not a massive improvement with only 13-20 jobs.

Has anyone figured out how to achieve max land value? In the areas I have it seems to be related to having a tier 5 residential with high tech housing.
 

Corgi

Banned
So what's a good connection type for a beginning city anyway? Without unlocks/unlimited funds.

So far I've been using two one-way connectors to a roundabout and from there everything goes out, but scaling has been a MASSIVE issue. I recently replaced it with a highway but my offramps are getting clogged as shit, especially because my planning was terrible so it's far too close to the rest of my city. It's going to be a huge issue if this city gets beyond its current pop of 4k.

same. While I love the beautiful 50k population pics yall posting here. Would love for some of ya to post 'timelapse' of how your town evolved :3
 
So what's a good connection type for a beginning city anyway? Without unlocks/unlimited funds.

So far I've been using two one-way connectors to a roundabout and from there everything goes out, but scaling has been a MASSIVE issue. I recently replaced it with a highway but my offramps are getting clogged as shit, especially because my planning was terrible so it's far too close to the rest of my city. It's going to be a huge issue if this city gets beyond its current pop of 4k.

Roundabouts are definitely the right way to go, but you're thinking too small. Start out with a double, and build your commercial/residential zones in circles as well. Then, when your central roundabout connection starts to get clogged, which shouldn't be until you start to unlock highways, raze it and build a central "spin" that connects to each residential roundabout. Give your industrial area its own connection to the main highway. This keeps traffic along the main route fairly low, since except for delivery vans and whatever services you couldn't fit into your residential areas, it should be fairly contained.

Space is eventually gonna be a problem, though. Haven't figured out how to deal with that, yet.
 

Realyn

Member
So what's a good connection type for a beginning city anyway? Without unlocks/unlimited funds.
.

Two lane streets are all you need really. The most important part is to not tunnel traffic over one street or junction when coming off the initial highway. Don't forget, you can build bridges from the start! Use arrow up/down.

Example:

Without the additional way into the street the green junction would be completly red.
 

AJLma

Member
This is a few days old, but in case someone didn't see it...

http://www.pcgamer.com/the-strange-...s_source=steam&ns_linkname=0&ns_fee=0

The strange tale of a Cities: Skylines town with only one house



Click on the arrows to continue reading (there's a bit of the story update on every image). I thought the concept of the one house city was pretty cool! I wanna try to do something similar but just trying to get a small little town and see how the people interact with each other.

Lol, this was great. I didn't know the simulation was this detailed. Seeing this actually makes me think a bit differently about how I play the game.

I also really want to try to run a small town now.
 
And a mistake I noticed I've been making is leaving way too much space when I'm plotting down zones need to fix that later on.

Yeah, I abandoned my first city because of that. I was trying too hard to not have a boring grid, and I just ended up with a lot of inefficient space that wasn't really working. I've come to realize that the true art of this game is creating pleasing looking grids.
 

Rentahamster

Rodent Whores
So what's a good connection type for a beginning city anyway? Without unlocks/unlimited funds.

So far I've been using two one-way connectors to a roundabout and from there everything goes out, but scaling has been a MASSIVE issue. I recently replaced it with a highway but my offramps are getting clogged as shit, especially because my planning was terrible so it's far too close to the rest of my city. It's going to be a huge issue if this city gets beyond its current pop of 4k.

This is a pretty good starting city layout:

Use a one way road, and make one big loop to being with. This is your main boulevard.

Use a two lane street to make one side street, then from there, create one city block off of that side street. Think of the main boulevard as a branch, and the city block like a fruit.

Further away, make another fruit (city block) consisting of industrial. You can then either make one more for commercial, or mix the commercial zones in with your residential.

You might want to put a one way street somewhere in town that completes the main boulevard loop so that cars can turn around if they need to. Add in shortcuts or detours to taste.
 

Easy_D

never left the stone age
Apologies if this has already been pointed out before, but I found this guy in my game;
5P8q3GK.jpg


which is from this meme;



I'm really enjoying the game. Downloaded the Dynamic resolution scaler, parking lots, good roundabouts etc. Everyone should use these mods. So good.

Dynamic Resolution: http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=406629464
First-person Camera: http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=406255342&searchtext= (Not tried it myself yet)
Los Santos from GTA:V save : http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=406684124

This game is amazing. I can't wait to see how well the developers take note of feedback and implement them.

He's wearing a blue shirt too, so it could also be a reference to
The_Simpsons-Jeff_Albertson.png
 

XiaNaphryz

LATIN, MATRIPEDICABUS, DO YOU SPEAK IT
Yeah, I abandoned my first city because of that. I was trying too hard to not have a boring grid, and I just ended up with a lot of inefficient space that wasn't really working. I've come to realize that the true art of this game is creating pleasing looking grids.

That said, you should still leave some space for future expansion. If you plan on making pedestrian paths to go through neighborhoods or upgrading smaller roads to the wider ones, leave space in between zones for those walkway paths and don't zone the edge right next to the road as upgrading will bulldoze existing buildings if too close to the road edge.
 

Theandrin

Member
That said, you should still leave some space for future expansion. If you plan on making pedestrian paths to go through neighborhoods or upgrading smaller roads to the wider ones, leave space in between zones for those walkway paths and don't zone the edge right next to the road as upgrading will bulldoze existing buildings if too close to the road edge.

This is how I am city building. I am purposely leaving a bit of extra space in between my grids for future expansion. It's been working out quite well.
 
This is a few days old, but in case someone didn't see it...

http://www.pcgamer.com/the-strange-...s_source=steam&ns_linkname=0&ns_fee=0

The strange tale of a Cities: Skylines town with only one house



Click on the arrows to continue reading (there's a bit of the story update on every image). I thought the concept of the one house city was pretty cool! I wanna try to do something similar but just trying to get a small little town and see how the people interact with each other.

WOW that is detailed

I wonder if it is the same for a city of 50k
 

GReeeeN

Member
I need some help!!

My city is sitting at around 30-35k population, but all of a sudden my roads became conjested. This has caused a massive pile up of dead bodies and heaps of ambulance congestion. I've spent 4 hours trying to alter the roads or knocking down entire suburbs to build 4 lane roads, but no matter what I do my population dips down to 15k and continuously drops. I'm getting dead bodies everywhere, commercial zones becoming abandoned due to no raw materials being harvested (I've made industrial and zoned to that specific mineral), basically everything going to hell and I'm about 12 hours in on this city...

How do I fix basic two lane roads with a bunch of apartments and houses around it? :(

How do I mine natural resources more effectively to fill my stores?, is it done through zoning?
 

Rentahamster

Rodent Whores
What the heck, I'm trying to unlock the cathedral of plentitude (place all 30 city service buildings), but for the life of me I can't figure out the one building I haven't placed yet.


edit: does it have something to do with the dam? For some reason when I build it, it doesn't count towards the total, unlike the other power buildings.

edit: oh lol it was the hospital. I forgot that I deleted them all after I built the medical center.
 

Skel1ingt0n

I can't *believe* these lazy developers keep making file sizes so damn large. Btw, how does technology work?
Well fuck me, I guess.

My internet has been BALLS SLOW today for some reason. Hulu stuttering bad. Took me like 3 hours to download this game. Whatever... excuse for a good workout.

Gets stuck on the splash screen. Music plays. I can hear myself clicking some things, but it doesn't matter.... just the splash screen with the Cities logo.

i7 3820
Titan
16GB
SSD

... so I tried on my Macbook Pro. Won't even launch.

So I boot to Windows on my Macbook Pro. Luckily internet runs a bit faster - takes about 30 minutes. Same issue on my MBP w/ 750m on windows as my desktop - just stuck on the main screen.

Waited 10 minutes, thinking it needed to load to no avail.

Am I just cursed? That's 0 for 3. I guess I'll request my first refund? Meh, not too mad, need to go to bed, anyway. This was a blind buy... gives me time for Hotline Miami 2, instead.
 

Jintor

Member
Roundabouts are definitely the right way to go, but you're thinking too small. Start out with a double, and build your commercial/residential zones in circles as well. Then, when your central roundabout connection starts to get clogged, which shouldn't be until you start to unlock highways, raze it and build a central "spin" that connects to each residential roundabout. Give your industrial area its own connection to the main highway. This keeps traffic along the main route fairly low, since except for delivery vans and whatever services you couldn't fit into your residential areas, it should be fairly contained.

Space is eventually gonna be a problem, though. Haven't figured out how to deal with that, yet.

A double? Like, a double roundabout just generated out of one-way streets?
 
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