I played a lot of CS1. It took a while to get used to playing this game, but it is starting to feel more comfortable. While there are certainly things I don’t like about it (don’t get me started on mods being relocated from Steam to Paradox), but there are some things I like. I love that power and water are part of the roads now. I always hated having to draw all of those plumbing pipes. I also appreciate that things like cemeteries and nuclear power plants are more appropriately sized. Being able to buy power, rather than produce it is nice as well. I haven’t encountered rain and snow yet, but I suspect, I’ll be wishing you could toggle weather effects on and off. While I like that it snows now, I suspect it will get old quickly.
Having played a good bit more, I’m confident saying that its various economics systems are vestigial and can be ignored almost entirely. My city has a nonsense layout, no industry whatsoever, around 60k people, and I’ve never been close to broke. If I were playing with unlimited money and everything unlocked from the start (both are options when you begin your map), my interactions with those systems would have been no different.
Like the last game, it’s a traffic simulator combined with a set of building blocks.
The last game actually used your economy more than the new one, but that’s only because the new one is bugged. They are working on it, though I don’t know if they’re working on it yet. They may still be focused on performance.
My understanding is that currently, just about all economic and industrial aspects of the game are decorative. Running out of anything is ignored; businesses keep chugging along as if they didn’t run out. Imports and exports are ignored, etc…
And teeth! 
Characters feature a lot of details that, while seemingly unnecessary now, will become relevant in the future of the project
Can’t wait for the big Dentist Clinic DLC
I do have a general question for vets of the game.
Is it feasible to design your first section of city in a way that it can scale with increased traffic demands, or do you basically have to resign yourself to at some point bulldozing vast tracts to make room for larger roads and traffic solutions that don’t unlock until later?
I always end up with massive bottlenecks centered around the initial sections of my build.
In the original, you had to make sure to keep the intersections near the city entrance to a minimum. I’m guessing that still applies.
I like to build frontage roads, leaving enough empty space between them to be occupied by highways later.
Yeah, I’ve tried it but it seems like the AI often treats the first opportunity to leave the freeway as the only opportunity to leave the freeway.
I only played a bit of the original right when it came out, so I don’t know if this is flaws in my layouts (almost certainly) or bugs that need to be worked out in the new game (probably a bit of that, too).
How’s your road hierarchy? I’m still on Cities Skylines 1, but I’ve found that I need to make a conscious effort to avoid linking neighborhoods directly. If side streets are too convenient, people will swarm and clog them.
Probably garbage. I try to form enclaves connected to larger road systems by feeders, but it doesn’t seem to work.
On my next city I’m going to unlock everything from jump so that I can plan a little more deliberately.
It’s kind of like a real city. If you start with narrow roads and haphazard road placement, you end up with Downtown Boston or Tribeca. Maybe make that your “historic district” and pick a new location for your modern central business district with highways and wide streets when you get more cash.
The performance seems to have improved (at least on my PC), and I find I’m getting sucked into building my first sprawling metropolis. I’m just sandboxing it on “unlimited money” and “all shit unlocked” just to get the hang of the new dynamics.
Couple of things I’m waiting for in DLCs or eventual mods:
- Obviously more custom buildings and other assets
- Set the weather, season, time of day. I know you can turn day/night cycles off, but sometimes I just want to build without rain and snow every five minutes.
- Detailed road node control. Like I want to move or change the elevation of that one stretch of road without terraforming.
- Better and more detailed intersection control. It’s not bad now, but I miss being able to get super-detailed down to individual lane rules, stoplight timing, painting custom lines, etc.
- Moving cars probably shouldn’t have 6 inches of snow covering them
- CS1 had better road info where you could click on a segment and it would show the routes for all the traffic passing through that segment. If CS2 does that, I haven’t figured it out yet.
I have to say, CS2 does feel kind of monochromatic and grey. Which almost feels like an overcorrection of the garish and unnatural colors of vanilla CS1.
Been still playing a fair bit, continually starting new cities because it’s easier than trying to fix big ones that I’ve screwed up.
Came back to this thread because I thought this screenshot was funny. I clearly need to invest in some public transportation, because I don’t think I have enough taxis to support demand.
Did a theater just let everyone out?
I don’t know if that would help.
Yeah now I mostly have huge crowds at bus stops AND taxi lines.
I think this is an artifact of trying for very distinct “neighborhoods” to mitigate traffic snarling at important junctions. It was working fine until it was time to start zoning high density stuff. Seems like I still haven’t figured out how to smoothly get cars on and off the interstate and into smaller roads.
Whoa!
Creator says this took two days to construct. I wonder how well it would handle vehicle & pedestrian traffic.
I got bored with CSII, unfortunately. The economy and other simulation aspects are completely nonfunctional, to the point that it’s basically impossible to not make money hand over fist.
Somebody in a review described the game as a very pretty “city painter” and I think that’s accurate.
From what I understand, it is effectively like playing the first game with unlimited money. Which I never found satisfying.
I love Cities: Skylines but I am waiting a year or two on this one to (hopefully) get fleshed out with mods and DLC.