So my question is, are the current 50% sales the best we can hope for, or will they be cheaper in a few weeks when the airports DLC comes out?
Also, thank you, node controller is the name I was looking for. I already have move it, TMPE, and road anarchy subscribed but I haven’t bothered enabling them yet.
Not only is there a distinction, there are endless sub-classes of mods and assets. Broadly speaking:
Mods are items that change the gameplay - influencing demand, modifying graphics, additional tools for editing or modifying, changes to the simulation, you name it. You have to be a bit cautious as some mods can break cities if they are removed or if a DLC is released and the author doesn’t update.
Assets are things like buildings, trees, props, and vehicles that can be added to your city in-game. In addition to grouping by function (residential, fire stations, vehicles, networks, etc) they can also be grouped by “growable” (appear in the designated zone) or “plopable”/“RICO” (manually placed). You also have “props” which are largely cosmetic.
There are a bunch of YouTube channels where people go into incredible detail creating realistic looking cities with thousands of mods and assets. FluxTrance, Two Dollar Twenty, Biffa, and Strictoaster are good ones.
Couldn’t say, but it’s hard to imagine the price coming down much from 50% for the “New Player Bundle”.
To be honest, I’m surprised about the new Airport DLC. Cities Skylines has been out for 6-7 years now and I think most people thought last years Sunset Harbor was the last DLC.
They’re also making a VR version of the game. Will likely be it’s own title entirely, though rather than an add-on to the base title.
That sounds awesome. I find it so soothing to attach a camera to a vehicle and follow it around the city, zoomed in close. Practically in third person view.
What I really want to do is get into the passenger seat of one of the vehicles and be able to freely look out the windows as it drives around.
Pretty sure there is a mod for that.
Definitely several first person mods that let you walk around your city at street level.
Other than modding are there many differences between this and the more modern Sim City iterations? I’ve heard of it and for 10 bucks, I’ll take a flyer. For the bundle – $110 – not so much.
The base game is a pretty full experience without any DLC required. Mods are fairly straightforward and of course free, but totally optional.
For example, I’m probably 100 hours in and have only spent that initial $10 on a similar sale like a month ago.
From what I’ve gleaned reading the occasional offhand comparison, SimCity is more about the city. There’s more control over things like pollution and whatnot. Traffic and transportation in general is more of an afterthought. For cities skylines the reverse is true, where it’s more of a traffic simulator where the other things like pollution and whatnot are afterthoughts.
I’ve never played a SimCity game before so take this with a grain of salt.
One example I read recently about bus stops: In SimCity, the game looks at how many bus lines are nearby without really caring where those bus lines or stops actually go. In city skylines, you have to figure out where each bus stop needs to go to get the most passengers. Look for crowds on the streets! heh
It’s $4.50 from the GameBillet link I posted last night. Do not start just buying all the DLC as much of it is music tracks for the in-game radio and “content creator packs” which are just building reskins and other cosmetic changes. Most of that stuff you can just get through the Steam workshop; maybe different building reskins but enough new storefronts and duplexes to keep you happy for years. The DLC actually worth buying is the stuff that adds new mechanical facets to the game but that can wait until you’ve played the base game for a while.
But it is the gold standard in city sims these days, to the point where I believe the SimCity franchise is dead.
Much like how Planet Coaster killed off Rollercoaster Tycoon World, this is the case.
Does the game stabilize, or must it always be growing? If you zone out all the areas you want, and let them fill in for game years until every zoned square is populated and fully upgraded, and then just let it run… Does everyone move out because rent becomes too expensive, or can the city survive at any given arbitrary size?
Second question: My initial industrial area isn’t that big. If I just never build any more industrial yellow, but instead fulfill all subsequent industrial demand with office buildings, does that work? Will my high density commercial buildings import any goods my industrial complex doesn’t produce themselves?
And a pro tip for compulsive redesigners like me: With the bulldozer selected, hold down the ctrl key and delete an item, like say a street. Keeping ctrl held down, you can move the mouse around to quickly delete any other objects of the same type – in this example streets – without hurting other objects like trees. Let go of the ctrl key when you’re done.
I find this technique helpful when I spend two hours designing the perfect road layout only to decide halfway through that the entire thing should be shifted three squares right.
I’ve seen both happen. One of my earlier cities hit 90K then the population suddenly crashed; another city is pretty much stable.
That’s a Riverrun map, expanded far enough north and east to incorporate the island. Had to build quays around the island to keep flooding to a minium.
The population problem may be related to my railroads – I hadn’t yet worked out optimal placement of rails so they’re all over the place!
This is called the Deathwave effect; if your city grows too quickly many people arrive at the same time so tend to die at the same time. More gradual growth is better in that respect.
I don’t think that’s what happened here.
As you can see, the death rate was actually higher before the city hit 90K.
All I know is there were a bunch of “land value decreased” icons before the population dropped.
Keep in mind, the last “good” version of SimCity was SimCity 4, which came out in 2003. SC4 also benefited from a massive community of modders as well. There was a version that came out around 2013 that was similar to Cities Skylines in that it was 3D. But it was a bit of a failure.
SC4 and CS are similar in that you have various zones that inform what can grow. If anything, CS cities are perhaps too stable in that you generally don’t see entire neighborhoods abandon or downgrade like you do in SC4. I’ve heard CS described as a “city painter”. If you watch the various YouTube channels I suggested, the authors basically just plop whatever they want, wherever they want (using mods). i.e “this neighborhood is the wealthy suburb, that neighborhood is the slums”, etc. IOW, it feels like neighborhoods are the way they are because you decided that’s how they will be, as opposed to good zoning and proper planning.
Technically CS is also a resource hog. And to be honest, without mods, the graphics and UI can sometimes feel “unfinished”. Without mods like “Road Anarchy” and “MoveIT”, making complex interchanges can feel super-tedious.
Although, I have to say that one of my favorite parts of Cities Skylines is creating ridiculous custom spaghetti junctions.
I decided screw it, I’ve been busting my hump lately, why not treat myself? I was thinking I’d pick up three for $7-ish each on the 50% off steam sale, plus maybe a fourth if it ended up less than $30.
But then of course the gamebillet sale is better, where they’re $5-ish each at 62% off, so I splurged and got 5: After Dark, Mass Transit, Industries, Green Cities and Sunset Harbor. Total price $28 and change after tax. I will finally have bicycles, woohoo! I’m also hoping to get rid of the giant poop streak coming out of my city.
If there’s an even better (or maybe only just as good) sale when Airports is released, I do still have a bunch on my wish list. Park Life, Campus Life, Concerts, etc…
I checked my steam account. 81 hours in. Still nothing compared to the ocean of time I spent in Subnautica, but ahead of the 60 hours I spent playing Control. Those are the only three games I’ve played more than a handful of hours so far with the “new” computer I go last winter. Pretty solid top 3.
Starting over is going well, though still very early. Just barely over 10k population.
In one of the videos I watched, the guy mentioned that four lane roads have a median so if you put a building on that road not at an intersection, anyone coming from the opposite way would have to go past and pull u-turn.
Except as I sit watching my traffic, mesmerized – my 14k per week profit has quickly ballooned into 600k cash on hand – I think that’s true of all roads.
Do cars not see any buildings on the left? Can they only turn right into driveways, never left, for all road types?