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Cities: Skylines II

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Re: Cities: Skylines II

#121

Post by myself248 »

jeffbee wrote: post #7
nixpulvis wrote: post #5

I'll be so excited if this allows multiplayer city building. Imagine the possibilities... First of all, you get to collaborate and build things faster. You could have a voting mechanic where the citizens (AI) resolves conflicts. You could assign roles to subordinate players to manage things like traffic, services, new developments, etc. You could implement trade across city lines, and have acquisitions. It could easi…

And the other players could show up at city council subcommittee hearings to denounce your mouse clicks as the insidious, carceral hand of Big Developer, sucking the character right out of the neighborhood.

Yeessssss, enabling NIMBY mode would make the game so much harder.

Re: Cities: Skylines II

#122

Post by jschveibinz »

izacus wrote: post #61
leeter wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm curious how much they'll pull over from the existing DLCs, the Plazas and Promenades pack does allow for pedestrian cities. But not in a European sense despite the dev being in Europe.

We could even begin with a concept of mixed zoning that's so standard in many world cities. The usual "stores on the street, apartments above" design. (I was really surprised that actual USA is building cities the same way SimCity modeled - with complete separation between commercial and residental areas).

This was standard in US cities in the early 20th century (prior to 1920) before the value of the real estate (and taxes) and automobiles changed the model. Mixed use may be coming back-California recently passed a state law allowing for it, I believe . Here is one article on the topic of mixed-use:

https://www.secfin.com/private-money-blog/2021/12/15/the-ris...

And if you haven’t read anything by Jane Jacobs, it’s worthwhile checking out her books written (1950-1960) about the importance of city neighborhoods from the perspective of NYC urban dwellers.

Re: Cities: Skylines II

#123

Post by deanCommie »

toasteros wrote: post #20

I have a hard time with freeform city builders like Skylines or SimCity. The amount of unrestrained freedom makes me question why I'm even playing. I have the same issue with The Sims or something like Planet Zoo. That and Skylines giving me a blank canvas paralyses me. How does one plan a city? Where do the roads go? It's the sort of game I want to love, but I just get so overwhelmed by the sheer number of options a…

> That and Skylines giving me a blank canvas paralyses me. How does one plan a city? Where do the roads go?

The base game isn't quite this much of a blank canvas. You have a budget, and you have city needs. You try to fit the needs within your budget, while trying to expand and grow with what the immediate geography allows you to do.

You almost never (unless you're an advanced player who knows how to scam a bunch of money) have money to waste to treat central planning as a blank canvas.

Re: Cities: Skylines II

#124

Post by sefrost »

foobarian wrote: post #111
aflag wrote: post #57

I feel like most of these city building games is that they feel like a doll house. You can create all the nice things you want and have a pretty city that you'd like to live in. However, the cities themselves don't have much of a personality. It's barely a simulation. I'd like to see certain areas becoming rough sort of ghettos. People in the city having different backgrounds. Just creating a school in those places w…

Imagine the individual people in the simulated cities were run on a ChatGPT-like backend, and remembered everything. Held grudges for destroying their neighborhood. And therefore self-organized into gangs, etc.

Have you played Tropico?

Re: Cities: Skylines II

#125

Post by samtp »

scyzoryk_xyz wrote: post #101
dcchambers wrote: post #14

I have put many hours into Cities Skylines and I am really looking forward to this. The obvious thing people will want them to fix is traffic and vehicle pathfinding, put personally I hope they let us build more pedestrian-focused streets. I so desperately want to build walk and bike friendly cities with beautiful pedestrian malls and walking-only streets but the game kind of forces you to build out extensive car inf…

I too have put lots of time and energy into this and many other city building games. Agree on everything you say, but I do wonder to what extent the bad traffic and all those limitations are an inherent statement that these games carry by design. A statement on how we think urban design should work blah blah. SimCity 2000 certainly had a sharper, more pointed set of things to say that presumably originated with Will…

How is using your legs in an urban area political?

Re: Cities: Skylines II

#126

Post by EamonnMR »

satvikpendem wrote: post #83

I find it hilarious that EA had the concept down and just blew their opportunity with Simcity 2013 (always online (which by the way was actually not true, people cracked the online requirement within the first day or so), had to contract with other users for basic services like sewage and electricity), paving the way for competitors like Cities: Skylines to take the lead instead. This reminds me of the same thing tha…

Even if you got past the always online aspects, it just felt like a huge step down from Sim City 4. Too many opaque things going on, too much thrown at you, too high concept, didn't feel like building a model train set anymore.

Re: Cities: Skylines II

#127

Post by samtp »

toasteros wrote: post #20

I have a hard time with freeform city builders like Skylines or SimCity. The amount of unrestrained freedom makes me question why I'm even playing. I have the same issue with The Sims or something like Planet Zoo. That and Skylines giving me a blank canvas paralyses me. How does one plan a city? Where do the roads go? It's the sort of game I want to love, but I just get so overwhelmed by the sheer number of options a…

> The amount of unrestrained freedom makes me question why I'm even playing.

Well I hope you don't have the same feeling about life. Because we are all free to choose our own adventure (with some choices obviously better than others), and there are no clear objectives or goals besides what you set for yourself.

Re: Cities: Skylines II

#128

Post by pavlov »

satvikpendem wrote: post #83

I find it hilarious that EA had the concept down and just blew their opportunity with Simcity 2013 (always online (which by the way was actually not true, people cracked the online requirement within the first day or so), had to contract with other users for basic services like sewage and electricity), paving the way for competitors like Cities: Skylines to take the lead instead. This reminds me of the same thing tha…

I posted this earlier [1] but it’s an interesting little twist to this story…

While EA was busy destroying the SimCity brand with unadulterated capitalist greed, Cities: Skylines was created with public funding from the Finnish government.

No VCs wanted to invest in such a niche company. They were only able to get off the ground thanks to money from Finland’s public startup funding and arts grants.

Capitalism on its own isn’t always enough to ensure that successful products get built. Sometimes it takes public funding to salvage a good idea that capitalism managed to burn down.

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35047255

Re: Cities: Skylines II

#129

Post by user764743 »

haunter wrote: post #12

One of my favorite mod in Skylines that you can import _real world_ terrain maps into the game. Building your own city but better is a good fun (and challenge!) https://terrain.party/ Hope this will work in the sequel too

this doesn't work anymore and is no longer maintained.

Use this instead: https://heightmap.skydark.pl/#

Re: Cities: Skylines II

#130

Post by dysoco »

satvikpendem wrote: post #83

I find it hilarious that EA had the concept down and just blew their opportunity with Simcity 2013 (always online (which by the way was actually not true, people cracked the online requirement within the first day or so), had to contract with other users for basic services like sewage and electricity), paving the way for competitors like Cities: Skylines to take the lead instead. This reminds me of the same thing tha…

Wonder why a "The Sims" competitor hasn't appeared yet, would the lack of branding and general "charm" of The Sims(like Simlish) be a dealbreaker?
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