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

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spiritfox

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Genre: Simulation, City Builder
Developer: Colossal Order
Publisher: Paradox Interactive
Plaforms: PC, Mac, Linux (Steam)
Price: US$29.99 (Standard) / US$39.99 (Deluxe)
Release Date: March 10, 2015
Llamas: No, sadly.

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Cities: Skylines is the first foray into the city building genre by Finnish developer Colossal Order. They were previously responsible for the transport management simulation franchise Cities in Motion, but have experimented with city building elements in their second game.

Cities: Skylines is heavily inspired by the SimCity model, with RCI (Residental, Commercial, and Industrial) zoning, a focus on transportation infrastructure, and no resource chain management. Your job as a mayor is to provide for your citizens, not manage a mining company. The game uses an agent-based simulation system similar to SimCity (2013), but only for things that actually need that level of simulation, i.e. not power and poop. The citizens are smarter, will take multiple routes to their destination, and will remember their own home and workplace. Cities: Skylines also features a city progression system, where new buildings, infrastructure, and services unlock when your city reaches a population threshold. The game will ship with unlimited money and all progression unlocked mods if you want to play it in sandbox, and there is a hard mode mod if things are getting too easy.

Maps start at a single 4km² tile, but adjacent map tiles can be bought in game, bringing it to a non-modded maximum of 9 tiles in any direction. This can be further expanded via modding to a theoretical maximum of 25 tiles, or 100km². Maps cannot be terraformed once in game due to the water simulation, and can be created or imported via heightmaps through the built in map editor. Here is a neat tool to create real world heightmaps, created by some Redditors.

Other Features:
  • Extensive water simulation with different water levels, so you can flood your cities with poorly placed dams
  • District creation and individual district policies, so you can divide your citizens into neat little parcels
  • Natural resources and industry specializations, so you can exploit the land to your own advantage
  • Actual public transportation lines with customization, so you can keep your citizens in motion
  • 3 distinct terrain themes, so you can place your cities in various parts of the world
  • Left hand drive option, so you can make your citizens drive on the proper side of the road


Cities: Skylines is made with player freedom in mind. It will ship with fully functional modding tools, including an asset editor, a map editor, and a in-game content manager. The editors will allow modders to create and modify in-game buildings, assets, and maps as they see fit. The game is also built with as many variables exposed as possible to facilitate modding, and has built-in APIs to compile and run mods installed in the game's mod folder. Steam Workshop is integrated with the game, and modders can share their creations though the Workshop or other external sites. Colossal Order actively encourages modding and will continuously work with modders to make the process easier and better.

Cities: Skylines Modding Thread: There's a Mod for That


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Preorder & Deluxe Edition Bonuses:
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Five In-game Custom Items:
  • A Carousel
  • Dog Park
  • Bouncy Castle
  • Basketball Court
  • Botanical Garden
Concept Book: A concept book featuring commentary from the developers on their sources of inspiration. Also provides a sneak peak at the and gives you an sneak peak behind the scenes during the games creation.
Postcards: A batch of five building blue-print inspired postcards.

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Five In-game Historical Monuments from Around the World:
  • Statue of Liberty
  • Eiffel Tower
  • Brandenburg Gate
  • Arc de Triomphe
  • Grand Central Terminal
Original Soundtrack: Includes 14 unique tracks mixed from the ambient music of the game, allowing you to enjoy the wonderful music whenever you want.
Digital Art book: See the concepts behind the buildings! The book features almost a 32 hand drawn concepts of the game various buildings and the story behind each.

Cities: Skylines - After Dark

Utilize the Day and Night Cycle:
The city changes during the hours of the day and affects citizen schedules. Traffic is visibly slower at night and some zoned areas do not work with full efficiency. This expansion will put you in control of managing the different aspects of the day and night cycles.
Leisure specialization:
Commercial areas can specialize in leisure activities. Leisure areas are especially active during the night, but work like regular commercial areas during the day.
Tourist specialization:
Commercial areas such as bars and restaurants, small marina and fishing tours on the shoreline can specialize in beach activities.
Expanded City Services:
  • Criminals will now be taken to Prison from Police buildings.
  • Taxi service will help citizens and tourists travel around the city.
  • Cargo hubs are harbors that accept cargo trains straight to the terminal.
  • International airport is a huge airport, allowing much more traffic than the previous airport and has a metro station attached to it.
  • Bus terminal allows citizens to transfer to other bus lines in the terminal building.

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Start here for an extensive FAQ from the developers themselves!

Q: Is this game related to SimCity / Cities XL?
A: Not in any way. SimCity is developed by EA Maxis, previously great developer of the SimCity franchise, now a shadow of its former self. Cities XL, on the other hand, was first developed by Monte Cristo, and then bought by Focus Home Interactive after the former studio shuttered due to bankruptcy. Focus then spent the last few years releasing the same game over and over again while adding nothing new and fixing little.
RIP Maxis Emeryville.

Q: Are there any multiplayer features?
A: No, it is designed from the ground up as a single player experience, with no servers to phone home or players to ruin your perfect city. However, the developers are not adverse to adding a multiplayer mode if there really is a demand for it.

Q: Can you edit / remove the starting highways / rails?
A: Yes you can, as long as they fall within your city boundries. You can also change them in the map editor.

Q: What's with the low population numbers?
A: Due to the agent simulation taking a lot of CPU processing capacity, Colossal Order has decided to lower the general population of residental buildings. There will be a hard limit of 1 millions citizens, but most people will not hit that cap through normal play.

Q: Can you disable Chirpy?
A: No, but you can disable the sound and animation. He will stay on the screen but you need to click him to see the #totallyrelevantnews.
Edit: There are now mods to move or totally remove Chirpy!

Q: Help! All my citizens are dying!
A: Pollution is the number one cause of sick citizens. Check your water supply and make sure your pumps are not drawing polluted water, and make sure your hearses can reach the dead people before they start to smell. If in doubt, it's your water.

Q: What are the system requirements?

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Toma

Let me show you through these halls, my friend, where treasures of indie gaming await...
It is heeeeeeeeeeere.
The anticipation for tomorrow knows no bounds.

Reposting this roundabout walkway above a roundabout street with a park in the middle from GSY Miguel for the first page because its just too awesome:
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XiaNaphryz

LATIN, MATRIPEDICABUS, DO YOU SPEAK IT
Can't wait!

When does GMG send out Steam codes? Day of release?

Also, I want to highlight this awesome pedestrian walkway from the older thread made by GSY Miguel:

I have seen really few streamers using walkways, sips uses them in his tiny town and people use them. Should help with traffic problems in tighter cities also, just remember to build enough of those.

Yeah, I have an intersection where the traffic only stops to let pedestrians pass. Never even thought about walkways. I'll be making a note to fix that tonight.

I made that last night to let them walk across my "highway roundabout" (as there's no sidewalk on highway roads), I even put a park in the middle :D

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Toma

Let me show you through these halls, my friend, where treasures of indie gaming await...
Can't wait!

When does GMG send out Steam codes? Day of release?

Also, I want to highlight this awesome pedestrian walkway from the older thread:



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I was quicker :p
 

krpiper

Member
But is there reticulating splines?

RIP Maxis but this looks great. Anyone have any word on a laptop performance?
 

Mengy

wishes it were bannable to say mean things about Marvel
SUBSCRIBED!!!!!!

Great OT, only 24 more hours to go!!!! This is going to be one hell of a great thread!
 

Shahadan

Member
I CAN'T STAND WAITING ANYMORE GAAAAH I'M DROOLING ON MY DESK.

*ahem* what I meant was, I'm cautiously optimistic.
 

Mik2121

Member
Can't believe it's still 24 hours away... it's 1:30am here already, come on, I should be able to play this! :(
 

afroguy10

Member
Got a copy each for me and my younger brother from GMG, we're so excited for tomorrow.

We've been watching videos and streams of it being played for the past few days now, Tuesday can't come quick enough.
 

Lehow

Member
I am more a lurker here on GAF, but I need to comment that you guys made me preorder this game and I'm not this excited for game in a loooooong time. I just need my key, pls GMG.

A warning, please be careful where you place your dam:

Places not to build a dam.

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Source
 

XiaNaphryz

LATIN, MATRIPEDICABUS, DO YOU SPEAK IT
For those of you who haven't been following the game, there are a number of streamers who have been playing and posting videos:

Skye: Gameplay/Tips https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLbCLzFKeiWkPKe53RM24qh1vzhn9PBXuf / Asset Editor Builds: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLbCLzFKeiWkPTHFGurMUPeK6G2TVy4i2p

quill18: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLs3acGYgI1-vDE-_LldxgPAAOQrVR3onu

Some specific overview vids from quill:

Road tutorial/overview: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vKEWpof6xho
Map editor tutorial/overview: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SB73-h1vHCM
Asset editor tutorial/overview: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9JCnda6l0ec
Intersection tutorial/overview: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e1yNaa83I2E

Arumba: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLH-huzMEgGWD0Ag1pb_BaH568BaKkjm7w

Gamersyde has some vids up too:

http://www.gamersyde.com/news_our_videos_of_cities_skylines-16343_en.html

Here's one going over cims using public transports: http://www.gamersyde.com/hqstream_cities_skylines_commuting-34219_en.html

If you set it up properly, cims will take different transit options to get to their destinations (take one bus line, transfer to another one, then the metro, etc):

I love following my Cims to see how they use my public transports.

I made several bus and metro lines, and most of my Cims now use them instead of taking their car.

I'm preparing a little video for Gamersyde showing this.

I could find a Cim that wanted to take the Red Bus line, but the Yellow one came first to the stop, so she took it instead and left at the next stop to pick the Red line, as the Yellow one does not go where she wanted to.
Another example is an elder, he took the metro to cross the river, then took another line in the same station, and then walked a little bit to take the bus.


I also have a metro line going from residentials to industries, traffic is now low on roads as it has a 100% efficiency.

This game is incredible, I love it.
 
After the disappointment that was the latest Sim City, I've been staying away from city-builders. Not anymore! As a Finn, getting this game was a no-brainer. Can't wait!
 

Matty8787

Member
Had this pre-purchased since 20th feb!

So hyped... Can't wait to delve in and make a terrible city as my creativity and planning are so bad.

Hope the modding community is quick and gets on with building variety and more colours as that is the only thing lacking imo.
 

Seanspeed

Banned
It is heeeeeeeeeeere.
The anticipation for tomorrow knows no bounds.

Reposting this roundabout walkway above a roundabout street with a park in the middle from GSY Miguel for the first page because its just too awesome:
9O5F6RZ.png
So cool.

This picture will sell copies.
 
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