Cities: Skylines (AKA "the best city builder in a decade")
So, Cities: Skylinesis a hit. (Relatively speaking obviously, but half a million units sold in the first week is nothing to sneeze at. Biggest seller on Steam right now, or so I've heard, with concurrent player numbers in the tens of thousands.)
Lots to like about this story:
- Apparently it's a really good game. (Good reviews and great fan response.)
- A good game becoming almost an overnight hit without a massive marketing budget
- A small team essentially one-upping the Evil Corporate Overlords at EA with their AAA development teams
- It was made by Finns
- It's also pretty cheap for a new game these days. (About 30$.)
It was published by Paradox (Crusader Kings, Europa Universalis) and developed by Colossal Order (Cities in Motion), both who I am told have a pretty good track record for patches and updates. The modding community is also buzzing with already.
I'll personally wait until the weekend to waste my life away with this, but I thought that since this is kind a Thing right now, why wait?
Besides, this game doesn't have massive marketing behind it, so I'm guessing there's people here who might have missed it coming out.
Anybody played this yet? Comments?
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I've put 25 hours into it, loving it so far. That's already more hours than I put into the crap that was Sim City.
Building the road system is my favorite part. I do have some issues balancing certain things, but unlike Sim City, it's responsive and fixable. And the mods, oh god the mods. So much potential.
Yes and I am really enjoying it so far. Haven't put a huge amount of time into the game yet but I spent a good chunk recently redesigning the highway interchange into my city. I am looking forward to designing my own map so my highways will be set right from the get go. I find the game somewhat overwhelming simply because there is so much space to build in. I am trying really hard to break away from designing square grid cities.
I saw an article on PC Gamer that mentioned a former Sim City modeller producing building mods in the Steam Workshop. I thought that was kind of cool.
I'm not going to lie. I am hopelessly addicted to this game right now. I am on the Paradox forums, on fansites, and watching youtube videos whenever I can, just learning knew ideas and how other players solve issues. The game is seriously fun and the potential is huge. There are already thousands of player created buildings on Steam and dozens of awesome mods.
The only gripe I have with the game at this point is that it starts out with the primary challenge being just surviving the financial crunch. Balancing growth and budget is hard, but fun. After a while, however, the focus shifts to managing traffic, garbage, and services (primarily traffic though). Still lots of fun. At some point though, you get traffic under control and there isn't much of a challenge left. It would be cool if the player had to deal with sprawl issues, or gentrification, or decaying neighbourhoods. None of those issues really exist yet, but the game is only a couple of weeks old. Maybe that's a prime target for DLC?
Either way, I can't recommend this game enough as it is a ton of fun for the money. It really is everything that SimCity wasn't. My list of must-have mods:
- Mod that lets you change 2-way streets to one-way streets.
- Mod that allows you to lay large clumps of trees at once instead of individually.
- Mod that adjusts the amount of office space being requested (it gets a little silly)
- pre-made intersections. All of them.
It's getting really had to follow my "wait for a Steam sale" rule for this game. The city builder urge is rising, and I'm really happy about how open the developers are to mods (I think they have their full C+ compiler open to modders, which is nuts). The spring Steam sale is so close though...
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It's getting really had to follow my "wait for a Steam sale" rule for this game. The city builder urge is rising, and I'm really happy about how open the developers are to mods (I think they have their full C+ compiler open to modders, which is nuts). The spring Steam sale is so close though...
This is one of those games that I was happy to pay full price. They're a small development team that created a superior city building game for a fraction of the price. And it worked at launch. Companies like this deserve to be rewarded for doing something right.
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I'm about 12-13 hours into it, and while the game a) works, b) has traffic that isn't ####, c) city size rules, it still has bugs and isn't flawless.
Abandoned buildings are ridiculously random.
Not having building upgrades feels like a missed opportunity.
Roadway gridding is a bit dodgy.
There are a multitude of things that feel directly stolen (UI and gameplay related) from SimCity 2013.
Pipelining is just busywork and doesn't add anything to the game.
Raised roadways only kind of work, and there is no "undo" so you end up wasting a lot of money experimenting with road systems.
I dunno I give them maybe half-credit. They did most of the game correctly, but I wish there was more connectivity (I liked the MP neighbour system in SimCity 2013), and I wish the engine was less garbage (zooming in with a OCd GTX 980 lags it out).
I am terrible at this game. I cannot get a working base off the ground (citizens, electricity, water, commercial, industry) before the bank account just goes horribly broke and I have to restart. I think my game copy was shipped with Allison Redford AI
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The Following User Says Thank You to saillias For This Useful Post:
I am terrible at this game. I cannot get a working base off the ground (citizens, electricity, water, commercial, industry) before the bank account just goes horribly broke and I have to restart. I think my game copy was shipped with Allison Redford AI
Start off using 2 lane one way roads to connect to your highway. 4 lane roads don't seem to be very efficient because every intersection they form has lights and 6 lane roads are extremely expensive.
Build your industrial slightly away from any residential. In my current city I am looking at relocating it to the opposite side of the highway to clear up congestion.
This is a big one. Open your services menu and turn power & water down to 50% until your city requires more. I've noticed this chews up my money quickly at the start if it stays at 100%.
Best advice I can give overall for the game, is don't be afraid to re-zone and/or destroy existing buildings. Sometimes you need to rebuild roads (elevation, cloverleafs, etc.) because traffic is garbage, and destroying everything in the area is the only way to do it with any efficiency.
Also, use One-way streets when it makes sense to use them. They help immensely.
I am terrible at this game. I cannot get a working base off the ground (citizens, electricity, water, commercial, industry) before the bank account just goes horribly broke and I have to restart. I think my game copy was shipped with Allison Redford AI
Couple tips:
-Pause the game so you don't lose daily money while planning your city
-In your budget, drop the Power/Water to around 50% immediately so you can start saving money, then adjust as you need to
-Power just needs to connect to the "grid", not to each individual building or section, so group your residential and commercial together and have your power connect on the edge of that grouping - to start with power you should have 4 main connection points - one to your industrial zone edge, one to your comm/residential edge, one to your sewage, one to your water pump
-After I build a few grids of road + zone a few areas, I usually have around 10,000 left. Lots of times I dip into the negative especially early on, but once you reach some milestones you'll get a nice cash top up
-Roads are really expensive, so I wouldn't use 2 lane roads to start and don't lay down much more than you need to start
My biggest issue is the garbage trucks are really terrible. I have 4 landfills, an incinerator, maxed out garbage budget and there are areas that the garbage never gets picked up and people get sick.
It doesn't have accurate rivers and roads, but it has the right height map, and I was just playing around to see how the editor actually worked. The rivers and their flow calculations were kind of irritating in some places....
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My biggest issue is the garbage trucks are really terrible. I have 4 landfills, an incinerator, maxed out garbage budget and there are areas that the garbage never gets picked up and people get sick.
This is usually caused by traffic issues. I found that having garbage collection in two areas really helped.
My biggest issue is the garbage trucks are really terrible. I have 4 landfills, an incinerator, maxed out garbage budget and there are areas that the garbage never gets picked up and people get sick.
My biggest city is ~50,000 people right now. Each neighbourhood has it's own incinerator with a hospital beside it. It's working out pretty good.
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