Cities: Skylines - Paradox Interactive Makes A SimCity

BirraImperial said:

I just love this game...It's just everything that Sim City 5 should have been...just gorgeous...

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I think the overwhelming majority of players who've put in enough time agree with that more or less. Heck, apparently it's even somehow managing to draw in people who've never played city builders before, that's how crazy the hype is. Only thing really missing is the trademark Maxis humor, but while sad, that's a small sacrifice to pay for getting SC4's true successor.

Leonel said:

Try playing the SimCity 3000 soundtrack in the background while playing. It's really magical.

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Once I get my new rig set up I'll be using my entire old SC4 custom music folder, which sports I think around several GB worth of music (inclding some SC 3000 tracks).

*sigh*

I'm not short on games to play so I was going to just put this on my wishlist and wait for a sale. Unfortunately, I'm getting more and more tempted and I have a distinct feeling I might be buying it this evening when I get home...

PhroX said:

*sigh*

I'm not short on games to play so I was going to just put this on my wishlist and wait for a sale. Unfortunately, I'm getting more and more tempted and I have a distinct feeling I might be buying it this evening when I get home...

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If you do end up falling to temptation, I'd recommend buying it on Greenmangaming since it'll be on sale at around ~$21 (though you can only see it if you have an account GMG as its a so-called VIP deal).

If you don't end up falling to temptation, GMG may still likely have some of the better deals for it later on.

cybrxkhan said:

I think the overwhelming majority of players who've put in enough time agree with that more or less. Heck, apparently it's even somehow managing to draw in people who've never played city builders before, that's how crazy the hype is. Only thing really missing is the trademark Maxis humor, but while sad, that's a small sacrifice to pay for getting SC4's true successor.



Once I get my new rig set up I'll be using my entire old SC4 custom music folder, which sports I think around several GB worth of music (inclding some SC 3000 tracks).

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I actually think it has a lot of Maxis-ish humour buried in the chirper feed. It certainly feels like a 2015 version of the newsticker/newspapers the old SimCity games had (because who actually follows newstickers or regularly buys newspapers in this day and age?).

And using some custom music would be a really good call, the game's soundtrack is alright but definitely a spot where you can see that it's a smaller company without the same budget as Maxis.

Though, while the game is great, I feel it's still a bit lacking in two areas: difficulty needs tweaking, once you got over the initial "bump" to get all services established, the city more or less runs itself, bringing in the second area: random events/disasters to break up the routine a bit.

Still, considering the price and the size of the team and how strong the overall game is, this feels a little like nitpicking.

Lord Tirian said:

Still, considering the price and the size of the team and how strong the overall game is

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I haven't picked up the game yet, haven't had time to play.. but based on what I've been seeing and reading, I think I want this dev studio to make all my sim games from now on.

Maybe simEarth or simAnt next?

Game sold a quarter million copies through preorders and day one sales.

Pretty much expansion bait now.

After playing the game for over 12 hours now, I think I can safely say it is worth the (rather low) price!

This game is what Sim City wanted to be. It looks good, has powerful tools that allow the player to create very nice looking cities and offers a neat mix between city building and traffic management.

I love that basic water physics simulation. Districts are a great idea. The "Tchirp" thing is a hillarious way to implement twitterin a meaningful way in the game.

The engine works well and offers decent speed even for large cities. I had some odd problems that forced me to play in DX9 mode (screen turning black), but no crashes outside of that.

That being said, the game does cheat quite a bit to pull that amount of fidelity off. Reflections are just a static texture put on all the reflective surfaces, cars and people have no collission and vehicles will "respawn" at their starting location if there is a deadlock. Finally people only have to exist for workplaces to stay in business, they don't actually have to be able to reach it (goods, however, have to be moved to and from C and I areas!).

And if you are a hardcore simulationist, you probably won't like that they capped the number of active agents to 65k. The game still simulates more people, but they can't use pathfinding (and are thus stuck inside buildings until a simulation spot is free). I think that is an acceptable way to balance out simulation and performance, but I know some hardcore Sim City 4 guys may disagree.

It also isn't very challenging. Getting your start right is the biggest issue, after that you are usually stuck with a decent money surplus that keeps growing as your city expands. There are no natural disasters (apart from occassional fires), so the player has to screw up in order to cause a crisis (hint: do not build a dam next to your populated areas. The water WILL find some sneaky way out of the reservoir).

All in all, though, I'd say the game is a great example on how to pull off a good City Sim with limited money and manpower (9-13 man team!). If you like the Sim City series there is no reason to NOT to get the game.

Some screenshots from one of my cities:



And here a nice picture from reddit - a city that actually looks like a european town:

Found out from the Paradox forums that someone on Reddit created a neat little mapping app that will autogenerate real world heightmaps. You have to manually drag the squaring tool to where you want to get data from but it works!

http://terrain.party/

Lord Tirian said:

I actually think it has a lot of Maxis-ish humour buried in the chirper feed. It certainly feels like a 2015 version of the newsticker/newspapers the old SimCity games had (because who actually follows newstickers or regularly buys newspapers in this day and age?).

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Yeah, I'm actually alright with the Chirper (although a lot of people aren't), and there is quite a bit of humor in the game if you know where to look - however it still doesn't feel as much as Maxis. But, that said, this is just a really, really minor thing, I'm fine with it otherwise.

Lord Tirian said:

Though, while the game is great, I feel it's still a bit lacking in two areas: difficulty needs tweaking, once you got over the initial "bump" to get all services established, the city more or less runs itself, bringing in the second area: random events/disasters to break up the routine a bit.

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Personally I'm happy with the current difficulty, but I'm more of those types that prefer the creative/sandboxy/playing-with-legos style of play, rather than the more hardcore simulation types. I'd say it's around SC4's difficulty, with some differences. My main issue is that apparently if you do screw up bad enough sometimes, it's really hard or impossible to fix things.

Also, there's a Hard Mode that's a default mod shipped into the game, you might want to try that out. I'm sure someone will also make an even harder mode mod if that ends up too easy for your tastes.

Scarlet_King said:

Game sold a quarter million copies through preorders and day one sales.

Pretty much expansion bait now.

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For a mid-tier company like PI/CO that's a best seller!

Leonel said:

Found out from the Paradox forums that someone on Reddit created a neat little mapping app that will autogenerate real world heightmaps. You have to manually drag the squaring tool to where you want to get data from but it works!

http://terrain.party/

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Thanks for the link! I wanna see what I can make of this...

Leonel said:

Found out from the Paradox forums that someone on Reddit created a neat little mapping app that will autogenerate real world heightmaps. You have to manually drag the squaring tool to where you want to get data from but it works!

http://terrain.party/

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Oh my god one of my gaming dreams has finally come true!

That first-person mod looks pretty cool. It's definitely tempting to go out and buy it now, and if I had no near-term plans I probably would. The districts is also a really nice touch. Back in our Sim City 4 Succession Session here, we created our own districts of the city of CivFanatics, but there was no in-game way to do it, so it was limited to adding it to our screenshots/maps with MSPaint. Having it in-game is a very nice improvement, especially since you can apply different policies by district.

A quarter-million sales is pretty impressive, too. Sim City 5 sold 1.1 million units in the first two weeks (source) with a much bigger brand name and marketing budget, so Skylines is already all but assured 25% of the two-week sales. With the more positive reception, they could be in a pretty favorable position long-term.

Well, my heightmap is eventually turning into... something.


Building the highways while trying to replicate every small turn from real life is quite the task, and I see why almost every official map is so flat, those highways glitch out of the terrain extremely easily so a lot of terraforming is involved. Not to mention the prospect of building all the custom interchanges... The way you have to construct opposite directions makes symmetry with winding roads quite difficult at least when new to it. Quite neat seeing the way the real highways wind through the terrain in a logical way though.


You cound fit a pretty big looking city here right? I think an central city that covers 3-4 tiles will be decent and I have 9 tiles to be heavily built up with the possibility of then unlocking the full 25 for for a full region without a computer-killing population.


Still haven't got very far in the main game, but having a blast with it. I've about doubled the size since these screenshots. Just tinkering with little suburbias is way too fun.

Lord Tirian said:

(because who actually follows newstickers or regularly buys newspapers in this day and age?).

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Forgot to mention it in my last post, but I subscribe to the newspaper and have been for almost two months now. I enjoy having print news to read with breakfast in the morning or during downtimes, and it gives me a wider perspective than the tech-centric sites I tend to frequent on the Internet. But maybe I'm old-school; I'm not a member of the real Chirper site, either.

Newstickers, though? Haven't read one of those since the last time I played SC3K.

Edit: Any helicopter mods for this yet? This sounds like the perfect platform for a successor to SimCopter.

cybrxkhan said:

If you do end up falling to temptation, I'd recommend buying it on Greenmangaming since it'll be on sale at around ~$21 (though you can only see it if you have an account GMG as its a so-called VIP deal)..

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Thanks a lot for this tip

Installing now.

Found this pretty bloody useful PSA on the subreddit:

http://www.reddit.com/r/CitiesSkyli...ed_by_overlapping_zones_from_roads_cut_off_a/

EDIT: I found this beautiful screenshot on reddit, holy crap.

My will to resist has finally crumbled and I went and bought the game XD.

Maniacal said:

EDIT: I found this beautiful screenshot on reddit, holy crap.

Spoiler :

http://www.reddit.com/r/CitiesSkyli....imgur.com/tZd4ppn.jpg&already_submitted=true

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Honestly some of these screenshots are absolutely gorgeous.

Woo, I officially have my first item on the workshop!



http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=407512677

rate comment and subscribe plox!!11

To add something else; lacking in the humor of maxis?

Link to video.

Has anyone who hasn't played a city-builder since the original Simcity, picked it up? Looks good, but I'm not sure I'd play it.

By Azura, by Azura, by Azura! It's the Mayor! I can't believe it's you! Standing here! Next to me!



Apparently someone is adding TES into Cities Skylines. (Link for anyone interested) Instant download for me.

trader/warrior said:

To add something else; lacking in the humor of maxis?

Link to video.

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That reminds me of a kid playing with legos and doing silly things.

Loppan Torkel said:

Has anyone who hasn't played a city-builder since the original Simcity, picked it up? Looks good, but I'm not sure I'd play it.

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I'm not new to city-builders per se, but from what I've heard the game seems alright for city-building noobs; like the good old SimCity it appeals to a lot of different people regardless of age/gender/interests/whatever and is sort of like one of those "easy to learn, hard to master" things. It might take you a couple of failed cities but if you aren't that stupid you should get the basics down pretty quickly (for instance keeping residential areas away from pollution, making sure your water system isn't clogged with sewage, etc.). There isn't much a tutorial (there are pop-ups and tooltips at the start of the game to help you, but it isn't a true tutorial per se), but there's already plenty of guides and youtube videos that should help you out if you can't figure things out.