Cities: Skylines

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

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Is there a next-level "serious" city simulation? (media.kbin.social)

submitted 1 year ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (3 children)

I like CS and the CS2 hype so far is really exciting. But I can tell CO has made the right decision to balance realism with aesthetics, simplicity, and gamification.

I'm curious if there is another city simulation that emphasizes realism. For analogy, there are "serious" flight simulations like MS Flight Sim and DCS. Is there a "serious" simulation for cities?

I'm especially interested in an aesthetic that is more like an architectural site plan and rendering like the picture I posted. (Source is here, but not really on topic.)

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I think it may be too niche? I'm not aware of anything that does what you're suggesting. But this is the sort of thing that would make sense through mods for CS. CS1 is very different when modded, but the core game mechanics I suppose are unchanged - the mods make it into the ultimate sandbox but it's difficult to bring in the "serious" realism elements if you're looking for challenge. A modded "hard mode" for ultimate realism would be great though.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago

I'm quite sure that what I have in mind will not be possible with modded CS. I'm going to keep searching for people with a similar desire for realism.

[–] bighi 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Can you define what serious would even mean in this case?

Because deeper simulational realism would demand more computational power, in this case.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago

It's hard for me to express what I mean, and that's why I put "serious" in quotes. There are different ways to do simulation. Like with aircraft you can do full Navier-Stokes CFD with a very fine grid and you need a supercomputer for that. But you can also do simplified forces and moments with state-space equations for PC simulation like Microsoft Flight Simulator.

I don't think it's necessary to simulate every resident in every house in a city. I would rather that whole neighborhoods or districts get computed as a single module. There's no need to simulate every air molecule for a flight sim.

I want the simulated city to look like Google Earth in 3D mode. I want campuses of related buildings to fill irregular parcels. I want the distances to be 1:1 with real cities, infrastructure project costs to be millions of dollars, and aggregated population numbers in the dozens of millions.

I think a serious sim would let the user import GIS data from a real city and then do what-if scenarios and get a rough idea of how changes would affect the real city.

I'd also like to pick a role for the player that is a real kind of organization. Like the player can act as a city government, or as a developer, or as a transportation agency.

I have more thoughts but not time right now...

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

The closest I can think of is Workers and Resources, where you have to handle constructing buildings and roads, as well as manufacturing and delivering goods yourself. Though it's a lot more complex and has more micromanagement than Cities: Skylines - there are no "zones", instead you plop all buildings yourself.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago

Yeah, I think it'd be sick if when you go to build roads or buildings, you get some sort of planning view. And the roads take time to build and if you did it at too extreme an elevation change, they have to add or remove dirt and it takes longer, and they have to pay to dispose of or bring it in.

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