Cities: Skylines - Paradox Interactive Makes A SimCity

[Kan' Sharuminar]

I have been building my first city in Skylines.

Which is to say I'm putting roads down incorrectly, zoning wrongly and generally being a terrible city planner.

In which I create a happy farming community on the other side of the river:

Spoiler :

In which my actual city tries to be a modern Dickensian London

Spoiler :

In which my garbage lorries are determined to take the same, single-lane road:

Spoiler :

In which my city is where it's at now:

Spoiler :

 

[Leonel]

I've been attempting to build an accurate Eugene, OR using terrain.party, OpenStreetMap and the GIS for the county Eugene is in.

Spoiler :

The zoning is pretty straight forward but there are mixed-use zones around downtown which I just put a mixture of high-density residential and commercial.

Spoiler :

And now the secret to making the accurate road layout! There's a plugin that let's you overlay an image over the game map and there's actually an online program that does it for you but it didn't suit my needs so before I build the map, I set up the files using Adobe Illustrator to edit an SVG file I exported from OpenStreetMap to isolate the roads and make a good quality overlay for me to build from.

Spoiler :

 

[Evie]

Do you have a link to that image plugin?

 

[Leonel]

http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=413748580

 

[Evie]

Excellent, thanks muchly!

 

[cybrxkhan]

New Cities Skylines expansion announced, name is After Dark.

Features summary based on trailer and PI website, courtesy of someone from reddit:

Spoiler :

Day and Night Cycle: Day and night changes in the city and affects citizen schedules. Traffic is visibly slower at night and some zoned areas do not work with full efficiency, further easing the traffic. Service vehicles move around as usual. A free update for all users.

Leisure specialization: Commercial areas can specialize in leisure activities. Leisure areas are especially active during the night, but work like regular commercial areas during the day.
Beach specialization: Commercial areas such as beach bars and restaurants, small marina and fishing tours on the shoreline can specialize in beach activities.

Expanded City Services: Criminals will now be taken to Prison from Police buildings. Taxi service will help citizens and tourists travel around the city. Cargo hubs are harbors that accept cargo trains straight to the terminal. International airport is a huge airport, allowing much more traffic than the previous airport. It has a metro station attached to it. Bus terminal allows citizens to transfer to other bus lines in the terminal building.

New transportation options: Bikes and dedicated bike lanes and bike ways let citizens opt for a faster alternative to walking. Bus lanes can be used to help the public transportation run smoother.

TL;DR
Day & Night Cycle (part of free patch)
Leisure & Beach commcercial specializations
Jails
Taxis
International Airport
Cargo hubs
Bicycles

Edit:

And the trailer:


Link to video.

 

[trader/warrior]

 

[Antilogic]

I'm mad because my city, which I thought had a really effective transit network, is currently in a death spiral. Too many dead bodies laying around, I apparently have the capacity but the roads are too clogged.

Oh well.

 

[SouthernKing]

I'm most interested in the crime/police overhaul, it's something (possibly the only thing) the vanilla game is really missing. Excited overall, and I'm probably getting it on release if it's cheap enough.

 

[cybrxkhan]

Personally besides the day and night cycle I'm most interested in the leisure and beach specializations. I'm guessing they will work similarly to how the industry specializations work, except now with commercial zones. I think there's a lot of potential for other types of zones in the future - a ski resort zone, anyone?

It also seems quite interesting that they're going to be adding a lot of new transportation options. I hope this means they'll be adding even more in future expansions as well. Trams, for instance, have been oft requested.

Actually seasons have been a popular request as well, I hope now that they have day and night they'd figure out a way to do seasons in the future.

 

[cybrxkhan]

Yay double post




Here's a RPS preview of After Dark: http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2015/08/06/cities-skylines-after-dark-preview/


New info from the article not mentioned elsewhere:

• Price is comparable to a CKII or EUIV expansion, so given PI's past record that could be anywhere between $5-15. I'm gonna guess either $10 or $15.
• Leisure zones are a commercial district specialization that will receive a boom in business at night.
• Leisure zones will attract different flows of traffic at night, and people are more likely to use public transport at night while traveling to and from leisure zones.
• Bicycles can be restricted to dedicated cycle lanes
• Beach zones will fit in naturally with the shoreline so it won't look weird like in vanilla
• Police will travel to a crime scene to apprehend criminals and take them to jail
• Jails will fill up

 

[Maniacal]

I am disappointed there are no improvements to agriculture, such as having actually properly sized farms.

 

[trader/warrior]

I do wonder how they will implement the day/night cycle, the passage of time and the issues with time compression this causes.

Will they go the CiM2 route and have each day take so long you can go from small town to metropolis in a couple of months without slowing the pace of the game extremely, or go with a more abstracted one month/one year equals one day/night cycle.

Also wether they will go with full daily schedules for the cims with to/from work rush hours, weekend traffick and so on or just a basic system to have more citizens on average doing a certain activity at night versus day and vice versa.

I would guess it will be the simpler more abstracted methods they have gone with or they would probably have said more about it with the announcement.

 

[Dell19]

The mod that tries to mimick a day night cycle is configured to run for x number of real life minutes. I guess the expansion will use something similar.

Not sure that the mod offers enough new content if its going to cost £10 as it feels like they will introduce lots more specialisations in the future. Interested to see how bike lanes work, would quite to build a city that relies far less on cars.

 

[Leonel]

I am disappointed there are no improvements to agriculture, such as having actually properly sized farms.

That and I want to see light industry like manufacturing.

 

[GoodSarmatian]

Will they go the CiM2 route and have each day take so long you can go from small town to metropolis in a couple of months without slowing the pace of the game extremely, or go with a more abstracted one month/one year equals one day/night cycle.

Well, the devs are based in Finland where a "night" can last from November to January...

 

[Silv Something]

I'm mad because my city, which I thought had a really effective transit network, is currently in a death spiral. Too many dead bodies laying around, I apparently have the capacity but the roads are too clogged.

Oh well.

Once you are out of this death spiral, might I recommend an Early Death mod? It evens out the spikes a bit. Don't forget it also requires Skylines Overwatch.

 

[Antilogic]

Once you are out of this death spiral, might I recommend an Early Death mod? It evens out the spikes a bit. Don't forget it also requires Skylines Overwatch.

I haven't done any modding yet, but I think I'll take a look at it.

I think it's due to how I have done building spurts, and recently I dropped a ton of money building a massive 4-line subway network with 46 (?) stations. My population has fallen from 52k to around 47k and it's continuing.

 

[Sonereal]

I'm trying to enjoy this game but after reading this Guardian article I simply can't so sad.

 

[Dell19]

There is another article about building a green city as well... I'm not sure where they expected people to get clothing from or petrol if there are no retail areas. Also no pubs, cafes or restaurants...