Cities Skylines

[Richey Edwards]

Does anyone play this? I got it for Christmas. It's a city building simulator a lot like the older Sim City games but better. Good fun.

[RiG]

Yeah I've had it for a while now and got most of the expansion packs. There are definitely things that I think should have been included in the original game (more parks and recreation assets for example) but the modding community is incredible with some of the extra stuff they churn out including some absolutely essential mods to improve gameplay such as traffic manager: Presidents Edition. Managing traffic is the biggest challenge of the game and if I had any criticisms if would be that when things go wrong it's no exactly clear what you need to do to rectify things. My biggest pitfall is creating a city with lots of highly educated sims so no one works in the scabby industry sectors which always need more people to work there.

[Richey Edwards]

3 minutes ago, RiG said:

Managing traffic is the biggest challenge of the game and if I had any criticisms if would be that when things go wrong it's no exactly clear what you need to do to rectify things.

Yeah, my first ever city got abandoned because there was queues of traffic all over the place. I started again and used roads with more lanes to reduce congestion.

I have a lot of abandoned buildings (too many industrial areas) and dead bodies not being collected despite there being multiple crematoriums and cemeteries in my city. Will knock some of the industrial areas down and replace them with offices or something.

[Replays]

I am terrible at this game. Really struggle to even start up a city that can make a profit. 

[Buddist Monk]

It's a good game, there are a shit ton of workshop mods as well as lots of maps, but...

 

...there is also absolutely no challenge involved. It's a casual city builder. Probably the most impressive thing about the game is that it was developed in Unity.

[senorsoupe]

It's one of those games that are fun for a little while but I tend not to play a save for too long.  I find traffic management is the most annoying thing about it, that and the creation of bus routes makes it become tedious after a while

[Richey Edwards]

I made two bus routes and then couldn't be arsed making anymore. There should be the option for things like bus routes to be automatically generated.

[djchapsticks]

Good fun game. I've got quite a bit of mileage out of this and Planet Coaster in the last 12 months.

[RiG]

On 26/12/2017 at 15:02, Richey Edwards said:

I made two bus routes and then couldn't be arsed making anymore. There should be the option for things like bus routes to be automatically generated.

There are a few mods that make managing bus routes a bit easier although nothing that actually creates them automatically as far as I know.

[Mr Hahn]

I've had this game almost since release and absolutely love it.  I've bought all the expansions except the football stadium one which was very expensive last time I looked for what it was.

I agree that traffic was initially a problem but based on a youtube video I watched, I downloaded a mod which allowed the changing of lanes and lights etc which helped greatly. Forget it's name and if your city is still planned like shit it won't do much but I found changing some of the lanes and light set ups that the game put in when I laid the road down helped the flow immensely, particularly in the city centre.

The only criticism I would have of it, as has been mentioned, is the lack of recreational things you can put in. I think once your city gets to a certain stage there should be more facility to build more unique districts to keep your interest. I think there's always a point reached in every city you build where you can't do a whole lot more other than continue to sprawl out which isn't that fun.

[senorsoupe]

I decided to bust this out again and I'm having some good fun, built a nicely profitable city but traffic is still a pain in the arse.  Does anyone know how to add a proper junction (either cloverleaf or a three way junction) to the motorways that are there when you start?  I have a serious problem of traffic backup on the motorway for vehicles trying to enter my city and although I built some offramps I need a proper flyover junction but I can't seem to add one to the pre-existing motorways.   

[RiG]

Have a look on the workshop on Steam. There are a load of great junctions / flyovers etc especially from Timboh.

http://steamcommunity.com/workshop/browse/?appid=255710&requiredtags[0]=Intersection&actualsort=trend&browsesort=trend&p=1&days=-1

[senorsoupe]

6 hours ago, RiG said:

Have a look on the workshop on Steam. There are a load of great junctions / flyovers etc especially from Timboh.

http://steamcommunity.com/workshop/browse/?appid=255710&requiredtags[0]=Intersection&actualsort=trend&browsesort=trend&p=1&days=-1

I'll take a look but the problem is more that the game does not let me upgrade the motorways that were on the map at the start of the save as opposed to the different junction types

[perthsaint1977]

Have look at you tube. Lots of good videos on how to start your city regarding roads etc

[JamieT1314]

Anyone tried this on ps4? How does it translate to console and most importantly controller?

[Buddist Monk]

On 03/01/2018 at 14:05, senorsoupe said:

I decided to bust this out again and I'm having some good fun, built a nicely profitable city but traffic is still a pain in the arse.  Does anyone know how to add a proper junction (either cloverleaf or a three way junction) to the motorways that are there when you start?  I have a serious problem of traffic backup on the motorway for vehicles trying to enter my city and although I built some offramps I need a proper flyover junction but I can't seem to add one to the pre-existing motorways.   

This: https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=583429740

And this: https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=766190099

Are essential mods if you want to genuinely do a decent job with roads. One is the traffic manager that allows you a lot more control over the flow of the vehicles, the other is called Move It that allows pixel precision movement of objects (inc roads). When your city gets busy that can be a God send as vanilla controls can really hamper things.

As for creating new junctions to existing motorways, my tip is to save the game, delete the motorway you wish to connect to and build in the junction from scratch rather than trying to repurpose the initial motorway layout. The reason to save it is that you'll f**k it up, lots of times, and big road junctions like that can cost a lot of money. There are templates for junctions which is fine, but I tend to find they are a bit dull and never quite match what I need. Plus you'll learn far more about how the traffic flows if you create the junctions yourself.

One thing I'd say about amending the vanilla motorways is to do this only after you have unlocked the highway roads as you will need both the main highway and a highway slip road to get the best out of any large junction.

As for the type of junction, this might help...

 

 

[JamieT1314]

Got my first city to 30k but struggling to get higher, dead bodies everywhere despite cemeteries and crematoriums being nowhere near capacity. Now the brown sludge from my sewage pipes has spread over to my water pumps and even though I have put a water treatment plant at pump and sewage end people are getting unwell from the water.

[Richey Edwards]

4 hours ago, JamieT1314 said:

Got my first city to 30k but struggling to get higher, dead bodies everywhere despite cemeteries and crematoriums being nowhere near capacity. Now the brown sludge from my sewage pipes has spread over to my water pumps and even though I have put a water treatment plant at pump and sewage end people are getting unwell from the water.

The dead bodies thing is a pain in the arse, as are fires. I have loads of cemeteries and crematoriums and fire stations yet dead bodies are piling up and buildings keep burning down lol.

[JamieT1314]

I'm thinking it might the fire engines and hearses can't get to the problem due to traffic congestion, gonna do a bit of work on the roads to see of that helps, otherwise I don't have a clue.

 

 

[Dindeleux]

Bought this for Xbox, reviews seem ok and I'm hoping the fact I haven't played on PC will limit the disappointment of what will be an (undoubted) different experience on console.