Cities: Skylines

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A community for the city builder game Cities: Skylines, and its sequel Cities: Skylines II

founded 1 year ago
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#citiesskylines2 I think I figured out how to satisfy low density residential demand in the game. It basically operates on the concept of Induced Demand. Just like adding a lane to a highway incentivizes people to use the highway more, leading to the same congestion problems. If you constantly zone low density residential in an attempt to "chase the demand bar," what you're doing is increasing the supply of houses. Meaning, driving down the COST of housing. Meaning more citizens can afford a house, meaning they buy up that supply, so they demand more... it's a feedback loop, like acquiescing to a child who only ever wants to eat chocolate.

So, counterintuitively, you need to IGNORE their demand. By keeping the supply constant, and with demand increasing, the cost of the housing goes up. This prices out some of your citizens, and so they will begin demanding lower-cost options. Enter, medium density housing. You start with row housing, then medium density, then mixed-use. This doesn't happen fast, let alone instantly, so you kind of have to plan this strategy from the founding of your city. At one point I had a 15k pop with almost exclusive demand for medium density housing.

As your citizens get more educated through college and university levels, they'll be able to afford those suburbs again, and the demand will return. But they'll also be young enough that living "in the big city" will be desirable and they'll start demanding high density apartments close to shops and offices. Beware the Low Rent zoning type! Despite being high density, if your citizens are too well educated and make too much money, they'll abandon these buildings the moment they can afford nicer places. But I guess they're a good stopgap measure between medium density and regular high density.

So Induced Demand is a double edged sword: you want to avoid inducing demand for low density suburbs, and purposely induce demand for higher densities.

#citiesskylines

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Covering 8 regions, with more than 2500 assets, we present the free Region Packs!

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Cities Skylines II release is in 28 days, do you think it worth to buy the ultimate edition right now? At this point there's only one map unlocking from buying it, but wouldn't there be users maps anyways?

Yes, there will be some other stuff, but most of this stuff seems pretty useless, yes there will be DLC but it will be only in half a year

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It's been a while since I've really dug into the modding scene and I probably should clean out my steam workshop subscriptions list. Here's a few of the big mods that I have, am I missing anything new?

  • TMPE
  • Node Controller Renewed
  • Intersection Marking Tool
  • Network Anarchy
  • Metro Overhaul Mod
  • Real Time
  • Lifecycle Rebalance Revisited
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🚧We're back with another episode of Dev Insights!🚇From trams & taxi's to planes & cargo, watch what the Devs have to say about all the Public & Cargo trans...

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🚧 Roads, Roundabouts & all things traffic AI! 🛵Get more insights from the developers at Colossal Order on new features that differentiate how traffic simul...

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Go behind the scenes into the feature highlight of the week, with the Developers from Colossal Order.👨‍💻🚧The first episode of Developer Insights highlight...

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Thanks @Atticulus for the suggestions! I decided to implement both of them, so now there's a nature reserve north of the city, and a city park on the southern side.

Keep the suggestions rolling in! I'll add all of them that I can

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So many great questions! I'll answer as many as I can now but some will be answered by future development diaries. We have lots to come still! :D

Lucretius said:
Will there be any type of right-of-way system for the roads, so you can start with small roads, but have the right-of-way setting so you can easily upgrade the roads to larger sizes later without demolishing everything?
Larger roads take up more space, but you control how they upgrade so you only need to demolish things on one side to make room for the larger road.

ristosal said:
Roundabouts aside, there are some pretty elaborate at-grade intersections shown in both trailers. How are these generated?
You have a lot of freedom in how roads connect to each other, the snapping and collision you're used to in Cities: Skylines which usually prevent these intersections (at least without mods) don't apply in Cities: Skylines II. Of course, there are some limits, but you can split and merge roads much more freely and add slip lanes if you want.

backface said:
3. I haven't seen anything related to tunnels. We know they exist, but will be modeled or will be a black hole like the ones in CS1?
And finally, not related with this one:
4. When will recomendable specs be released on Paradox web? They are set to be announced, so I don't know if the ones on Steam are right. I have to update my Graphic Card and I want to start looking into it and know which model I would need.
Tunnels are modelled, no black holes. I'm not sure when the specs will be added to the official website, but the ones on Steam are up-to-date.

Karpaj said:
Hope I still will be able to do routabout by myself, in case if build-in won't work for 6/8 road crossing intersections.
You can still build roundabouts using one-way roads if you prefer or need something even larger than the built-in options. They can handle 6 and 8 lane roads crossing each other though I would not recommend using the smallest one for those.

ScorpTA said:
What we’ve seen so far looks great. Is there an option for traffic to drive on the left-hand side of the road, instead of the right-hand side, or is this locked to the region e.g. in the US theme traffic will drive on the right?
Left-hand traffic is selected when you start a map, so there are no limitations on which maps you can play if you prefer left-hand traffic.

backface said:
Also, what worries me more than left or right and drive (at least I think this is "easy" to change), the look of the roads it's too american, so... If we have european buildings (as it looks like at the zoning options in the trailer), our roads and street would look like american? Or we can change the look of the roads?
We'll get into themes on the 31st of July, but I can reveal that American roads are not the only option you have.

kenratboy said:
Want to learn more about parking, are the parking lots all fixed sizes, or can they be scaled? Could a surface lot be upgraded to a parking garage? Maybe underground parking for downtowns. Either way, this mechanic being built in and actually functional is HUGE for making more realistic cities.
We have a bunch of different parking lot sizes and structures to choose from, including multistory and underground options.

Joe The Dragon said:
can do you multi lane ramps with good looking merges?

full speed local / express setups aka C/D setup that don't have cars useing the locals with out takeing an exit? (more of an traffic ai thing)

ramps that can be at the same speed as the main highway?

Will cars not do the something dumb like exit and reenter the same hiway at an ramp just due to the path being not as long?
Speeds are tied to the road itself, however, you can set them up with a lot more freedom than you're used to from Cities: Skylines. How they merge depends on how you connect them. We'll get into how the AI works next week.

Xain said:
Also, will it be possible to build big, monumental roundabouts (Place de l'Etoile in Paris, for example), with a monument at the centre with the roundabout tool?
Not using the built-in roundabout tool, they aren't quite big enough. But you can build roundabouts using one-way roads and decorate the center how you'd like.

VirtusIncognita said:
Since we can build roads over roads (given enough clearance) and pedastrian roads were announced (with them being open to service vehicles); will it be possible to build pedestrian roads over normal roads? Some pictures as inspiration:
https://eportfolios.macaulay.cuny.edu/nycpublicspaces/files/2015/05/article-2139899-12EF2F80000005DC-992_964x1437.jpg
https://files.structurae.net/files/photos/1/nesenbach05.jpg
Yes, pedestrian streets can also be stacked on top of other roads as long as the road below has space for the road pillars.

Danbyization said:

  • Can crosswalks be added anywhere on roads or can they only be added at junctions?
    Crosswalks can be added anywhere by intersecting pedestrian paths with a road.

PixelPolygonal said:
And also, when will we have 6-lane roads too? I looked over the trailer and there doesn't seem to be any 6 lane roads, which is disappointing considering that there's plenty of cities that have these roads. It would be also quite nice if we can add more lanes above 5 for certain uses, such as airport, cargo and heavy traffic areas.

And lastly, will there be presets that allows us to create roads without needing to manually set "upgrades/additions/set auto parallel lanes" each time? Having more control over the roads is great, but it would be nice to have the repetitive tasks streamlined.
We have both 6, 7, and 8 lane roads. Upgrades/additions can be added to long sections of road, similar to upgrading to a different road type, so it's quite quick to add once your road is built. Parallel mode is enabled or disabled as you build, so if you're building a lot of parallel roads, you just set it up and build until you want just one road again.

Marov84 said:
2. By the way, speaking of cars, buses, trams and any other wheeled vehicles, will the windows be tinted or will you be able to see drivers and passengers in them (something similar can be seen in Transport Fever 2)?
Vehicles have tinted windows so your citizens get a little privacy.

rackiew said:
Also, about the grid tool, can we control the grid size and shape? that wasnt clear.
The grid essentially fills in a square and you control the size of that square. Roads are evenly spaced out in the grid, so how tight you want them depends on the size. But as you are dragging it out you get a preview of the roads and zoning so you can determine what works best for your city.

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Welcome to the very first episode of the Feature Highlights for Cities: Skylines II!Roads are the backbone of your city and our first episode focuses on just...

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MINIMUM:

Requires a 64-bit processor and operating system
OS: Windows® 10 Home 64 Bit
Processor: Intel® Core™ i7-4790K / AMD® Ryzen™ 5 1600X
Memory: 8 GB RAM
Graphics: Nvidia® GeForce™ GTX 780 (3GB) or AMD® Radeon™ RX 470 (4GB)
Sound Card: TBC

RECOMMENDED:

Requires a 64-bit processor and operating system
OS: Windows® 10 Home 64 Bit | Windows® 11
Processor: Intel® Core™ i7-9700K | AMD® Ryzen™ 5 5600X
Memory: 16 GB RAM
Graphics: Nvidia® GeForce™ RTX 2080 Ti (11GB) | AMD® Radeon™ RX 6800 XT (16GB)
Sound Card: TBC

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We speak to the developers behind Cities: Skylines II to talk about building the ultimate sequel

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Coming October 24 2023

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Figured I'd get the ball rolling in this magazine