Cities: Skylines - Paradox Interactive Makes A SimCity

[Antilogic]

This seems kind of gimmicky to me, since in most cities there are very few businesses open at night (ie past 9-11pm) and even then most cities force them to close at 1, 2 or 3 am. Most of them are pubs (not nearly as common in NA as in EU), bars (still only so many), clubs (even fewer) and strip joints (pretty rare, you're lucky if you're city has one or two usually). Everything else is usually closed after the evening is done.

I've been kinda assuming that the day cycle is the normal 8-5 workday while the night cycle is actually dinner to around 2 AM, if that makes sense.

 

[cybrxkhan]

Final dev diary, I think, basically just an overview of what's coming with the expansion and the free patch; nothing really new if yuo've been keeping up:

Spoiler :

In March, our main goal was to release a solid, as bug free as possible, versatile base game that can be expanded on. You have already seen the tunnels and European buildings, but now it's time for something else. After Dark is the first major expansion and we are excited to see how you, our players, receive it. Having both a free update and paid content pack was something we aimed for from the beginning. We want the expansions to be something players can choose, a way to customize your game, rather than being something you have to buy no matter what. This is one of the reasons we wanted the day and night cycle to be free, so that it can be used with mods without shutting out a portion of players, so that we can later build features that utilize the cycle.



Rest assured that we are not forcing you to use the cycle: it can be easily turned off if you wish to play only during the day, as the game has been before. For modders the day and night cycle means lots of new possibilities. Not only are there the dual function buildings, but also the new district styles, day and night AI and new specializations. When playing the game, the experience is different from the base game. The traffic has an ebb and flow, which makes the city feel even more alive and ever changing, as real life cities are.



The free update gives everyone the day and night cycle, but it comes with some extra features. To get the most out of day and night, you can use the separate day and night budget sliders. The sliders allow you to adjust how big a budget services have in the night and day. Having separate sliders means that it is possible to for example have more police patrol the streets during the night than day, or to have hospitals working harder during one than the other.



But there’s lots of content on the paid pack too! Bikes, bike lanes, bike pathways, bus lanes, dual function buildings like the new Bus Station that many lines can stop on at the same time, the International Airport with its metro station and the Cargo Hub that allows cargo trains to deliver good directly to the harbor. The new Prison adds another layer to the police system for more meaningful choices you can make for your city. The new commercial specializations allow you to fine-tune your city and make it really come alive during the night. There are also new landmark buildings, props, parks and so much more!


We have put lots of effort into balancing the night and day and to make sure all new things work just the way they should. This is an expansion we can easily be proud of. We hope you will enjoy it too.

Link: https://forum.paradoxplaza.com/foru...s-after-dark-dev-diary-5-almost-there.882177/

 

[Maniacal]

As I kind of expected, the night mode's effect upon your city and the "night businesses" is really gimmicky and inconsistent. You end up losing a tonne of income during the night time (which no city anywhere except maybe Vegas can ever realistically make up from night entrainment), as afaik all of your industry only operates during the day too. Solar power plants only operate during the day as well, which is dumb since they are all designed to keep supplying power during the night as they store extra during the day. Schools also don't stop working at night for some bizarre reason.

It looks really pretty though, but for an expansion that is half the price of the game they could have done better...

 

[Antilogic]

I've started experimenting with a new city built around the AD mechanics, since my prior city of 100,000 was nearly all solar-powered. I like the idea of commercial specialization, but my "Life's a Beach" area nearly failed because I built three piers and couldn't figure out how to connect them to a road, so now it looks very ugly with a jagged road path connecting the three (I thought I could use pedestrian pathways, and I can't). I'm also experimenting with taxis but I don't really have the population to support that system yet. I like the new leisure buildings, just put in a riding stable and I have a couple farms along the edges so it has that small-town feel.

I do think schools should shut down at night so that your income isn't devastated by it, and some industry (maybe not farming, but yes on general manufacturing) should have night shift work. The TL/DR version is that the ideas are good, but I would like some tweaking which I figure they will do in a patch.

 

[cybrxkhan]

So far I'm liking the new expansion. Nights are really beautiful, though there doesn't seem to be like a lot of new LUTs out that have been adpated to the new day/night cycle. One other problem in vanilla it seems is that during the day there's way too much yellow.

The solar power not working during the night is kind of stupid in my opinion. But other than that and the weird yellow during the day those are my only real complaints so far - I'm more of an aesethics/roleplay/laid-back sandbox playstyle guy so I'm more or less satisfied with the new mechanics so far.

One other minor little thing they seem to have added but didn't mention was that citizens now have more variety in looks - that is, there don't seem to be new models per se but the people now have more variety in colors, both clothing and in skin tone, so it's a nice touch.

Hopefully I'll post some good screenshots in the screenshot thread later, this is a really good looking expansion. I'm a little impressed they managed to integrate the day/night cycle into the existing game without having to bend over backwards changing things too much.

 

[GAGA Extrem]

I got the addon with the GMG discount and it's okay for 10 bucks. Not great, could have used a bit more substantial content, but hey - it makes a good city builder even better.

What I like a lot is the reduced traffic during night time - that helps a lot to resolve some traffic issues that can semi-randomly develope during the day when cars get stuck in each others or a big shipsment from a container harbour clogs up a certain road backing up traffic in connected areas.

Bicycles and Taxis are also a neat addition. I love some of the details like people cycling with their dogs.

The Solar Power thingy is indeed silly. Especially since electricity usage doesn't seem to go down during the night (from what I noticed it even increases?). Thankfully I usually rely on these Advanced Wind Turbines, so it didn't affect me too much.

Sadly, tourism seems still broken (getting 30 tourists a week in a 100k city ).

Oh and: The lighting effects at night look great. They really know how to get the most out of their limited ressources without completely killing off the performance.

Oh and, her are two screens from my current city:

Spoiler :

 

[Dell19]

They seem to have improved the rendering of buildings in the distance as zoomed out areas used to go foggy whilst now its easier to make out details. At the moment I've left the workshop lots in that haven't been updated as I don't mind not havng every building lit up at night.

Here are two screenshots of an old city:

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And one from my current city:

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[cybrxkhan]

Nice screenshots!

Here's a few of mine:

View of most of my current main Residential/Commercial area:

Spoiler :

Same view at sunrise:

Spoiler :

Japanese high school at sunset:

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I've more or less unsubscribed to all my old workshop items and am starting with a fresh new mod/asset list, which was sorely needed I guess since I had a gazillion subscriptions on steam.

 

[Dell19]

Its an unfortunate consequence of having no night phase in the original game. Presumably less people are playing the game now which means that less assets will be created that work in night and day. Its not a huge issue as neighbouring buildings help to balance the lighting and not every building would be fully lit up at night anyway.

 

[cardgame]

Holy crap, Dell, that's beautiful.

 

[Dell19]

Thanks!

Here are some more screenshots of my latest city, currently at 75k. A large portion of roads have bike lanes and around 10% of the population use the underground.

Overall view:

Spoiler :

I like that they now officially support mixing building styles as I quite like having a European zone surrounded by highrises:

Spoiler :

Night view from the starting point of the city:

Spoiler :

Central Bay area:

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Some more screenshots.

A flood created an inland lake and this was seemingly the only way to remove it:

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A hillside region with some high level buildings:

Spoiler :

Cyclists cross the bay:

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Moon overhead:

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Overview from a different angle:

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Ran into a massive issue at one point as I accidentally disabled high rise buildings everywhere and then saved it without noticing which meant that 30k people left. Took a while to get them to move back and be in a position to re enable all services.

 

[BirraImperial]

Love it...Looks sort of like Frankfurt, combining old Euro style buildings with skyscrapers...

 

[madviking]

50% off on steam right now. i'm getting it now.

 

[madviking]

after five days or so of trying to figure out the game, i give you this.

 

[Antilogic]

I keep failing to leave sufficient space for transit systems, particularly train stations.

I need to restart my Nantucket map because the highways aren't linked (long story).

 

[SouthernKing]

I love your city dell19.

 

[Dell19]

Thanks! Ran out of space on that map so have started a new city with a similar theme using European districts for the bulk of the city so that there are not high rises everywhere. Also that map had nowhere that would allow even the small airport to be built.

I need to restart my Nantucket map because the highways aren't linked (long story).

Could you build highways underground to connect them up if you don't want to demolish too many buildings? All my cities have tended to have some underground highways to help with traffic.

 

[Antilogic]

Maybe...

The map starts with two roundabouts for the ends of the highways, and they are over a map grid tile apart. I modified the map a bit to add resources and manipulated the coastline so that it would look like a harbor with seawalls. Regretting that bit.

I still packed the highway area too tight. I'm doing too much old-school SimCity in this game.

 

[AlpsStranger]

As cool as parts of this game can be, I just can't get into it. The game feels flat. You struggle for a little bit then you feel like an infinite money cheat when compared to SimCity 4 or something.

 

[Dell19]

I think the difficulty level is pretty similar to be honest, once you get past the early stage there isn't really anything that can go wrong. In some ways CS is harder as large cities can have major traffic issues.