Sim City? No thanks, give me Cities: Skyline! New City building Sim from Paradox!

I uninstalled and reinstalled it twice, including the Cities folder in Steam. Still gives me the same result.

I’d post about it on the Paradox forum. They have instructions on how to access the log file.

Played around the map editor a bit more and was able to build a proper bridge by elevating the highway.

Still need a terrain editor to correct errors in the heightmap, especially where the heightmap reads bridges as dry land.

Neat thing: There’s a New Vegas map where you get to build your city on the city-less Fallout map.

My issue: Turns out, I had to start up the game then, as it was launching and before it crashed, pressed Alt + Enter, then Escape a few times. Next time I started up the game, it worked fine.
Also, can you build dams downriver of each other? I just built two close to each other and one has an output of about 800 while the other has 0.

OK, guys…

Complete noob here…

I have read a couple of pages of this thread and watched about 10 minutes of the video, and I have some questions based on my complete ignorance of this type of game.

I am not sure I “get” this. I understand that people are building their own cities, but watching the linked video in the OP stirred up some questions.

  1. who are the “people” in the city? Are they real people that are playing the game also, and are placed in your city at random?

  2. How long does it take to build a city the size of the one in the linked video in the OP (educated WAG, of course)?

  3. is this a pay-as-you-go game, or a one time fee?

  4. when you start the game, I assume you put your name in (real or pseudonym), and then you appear in other players towns… Do you get to buy your own car, pick where you live, your job, etc, or is this all assigned randomly?

  5. do you appear in your own city, and if so what do you do? Do you have to outline your own day, pick your place to live, where you work, how you get there, or is all of this defaulted?

  6. is there a place someone like me, who has never played SimCity or any of its dirivatives, can go and learn how to play this game?

I can see this being fun, but I can also see it sucking in vast amounts of time. For those that play it, how much time do you devote to it per day?

Thanks

Dams work on the height difference. When you build sequential dams, you’re going to end up removing the ability of one to produce power.

You don’t say. :slight_smile:

I think you’re confused on what this game is at the basics. This is not a social game at all, and it’s not multiplayer in the slightest. You’re not playing The Sims, you’re building a city for little sim people. This game is abut the high level. You’re zoning districts, not deciding where to work. The little sim people handle all of that on their own.

They are randomly generated agents with procedurally created names and lives. They are directed by a simple AI to go about their lives, buy homes and travel to work and go shopping, and annoy you via in-game messages when they aren’t happy about something.

Days, weeks maybe? I’ve been playing on and off for a week or two and my city has a population of about 70,000.

One-time fee.

You do not. You name the city. You have no connection to other player’s towns, the game is not multiplayer at all.

You are not a person in the city. You are the hand of god laying out roads and placing buildings. The people are all generated randomly.

You do not, other than as the ‘Mayor’ who the citizens complain to when their lives aren’t perfect.

It’s fairly self-explanatory once you understand the idea. The game does a fairly good job of teaching you how to use it, the various services and buildings are unlocked as you play which acts like a staged tutorial of sorts. Just understand that it’s a simulation game, like owning an ant farm, rather than a first-person or story-based game.

I’ve been putting in a few hours a night for a few days each week. It’s fun, but I don’t expect I’ll be playing it a few months from now, there’s not much depth to it once you’ve unlocked all the unique buildings.

AndrewL,

Thanks for the answers.

I really misunderstood this game, so I appreciate the detailed answers.

I actually like the idea of it NOT being social, and that the people are all computer generated. That is more appealing to me than having real people being able to pop into the town you are working on.

I guess the last question is, since this is a single person, stand alone creation… What’s the end game? Can you play it forever, or does the population/land max out at some point? I am guessing there is a limit to space, which will drive the rest of the parameters I’m thinking about.

There’s a space limit (9 tiles) which can be expanded via mods but it’s still hard-capped at something like 25 tiles. Likewise, I think I’ve heard people say that the population is capped at one million people although “one million” people in Cities: Skylines is like many times that in real life. By way of comparison, an in-game city of 20,000 people might have two or three high schools which no real town of 20k people would support.

It should take you a good while to hit the limits.

There’s no real “end game” to it beyond the increasing complexity of keeping your transportation system moving, keeping people interested in moving in, etc. On it’s standard setting it’s a fairly easy game which makes it suitable for fairly casual play or there’s an in-game option to play a hard mode for more of a challenge.

There’s also apparently a hard cap on the total amount of objects that can be placed, somewhere in the 37,000 range, based on the engine the game is using. Once that’s reached, you can’t build anything else (unless you bulldoze). It’s really hard to reach that, though.

Just to add to AndrewL’s response. City sims typically don’t have an “end game” in the sense of “winning”. Although I typically get to a point where I’ve filled up the map with whatever I plan to build and have endlessly tweaked the zones and traffic patterns and whatnot until the city is stable the way I want it. Or I just get bored of that particular city and build a new one.

Think of it like you are a God Mayor playing with a massive train set.
One thing you can do is click on an individual person or vehicle and follow them around town. That’s kind of cool.

I see there’s a mod to approximate this now. Haven’t tried Road Assistant yet but sounds like it displays a grid overlay when building roads.

I also see six new maps which appear to be official Colossal Order/Paradox creations. User name is NokturnalDemon.

They just sold a million copies!

After seeing some wacky intersections/-changes in the Workshop, I’ve started recreating the Springfield Mixing Bowl. 1960s & '80s configurations are done. Have begun the current alignment, minus the switchable express (aka HOV) lanes.

Hm. Even without the HOV lanes, the current alignment is too complicated for me to put in the game.

Massive game update coming in July or so. About the only thing known about it at this point is that tunneling will become available.

Ok, it’s been a couple months, some of you mind posting more impressions?
I’m on the low end of the specs but should be able to play it and am considering a purchase.
I liked the early SimCity games but haven’t played anything since 3

A lot of my commercial buildings are complaining that the stores don’t have enough goods to sell. How do I fix this? I already have two highway offramps, two cargo rail terminals, and two ship cargo terminals for a city of 75,000 people, and yet, the problem persists.

How’s your industry looking? As in the actual manufacturing industry, not the office building industry that doesn’t produce anything tangible.