Author Topic: Cities: Skylines: The Only Good SimCity Game We've Had in 12 Years.  (Read 53128 times)

Offline eRe4s3r

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Re: Cities: Skylines: The Only Good SimCity Game We've Had in 12 Years.
« Reply #15 on: March 17, 2015, 05:20:28 pm »
Mhh, I just kinda sorta reached 50k population as well ;p But for me it's easier than getting to 25k heh

http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=409579064

Traffic is no real problem so far (meaning no major backlogs, though in places there can be a lot traffic every now and then. Though I did revise my road layout 3 times (and completely scrapped a good 10+ blocks in the process) building proper highway round-abouts even into the city so that things flow, replacing and deleting roads that block traffic etc.

Here you can see the total view and the beginnings of a large looping city highway system.
http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=409578972

After that screenshot I redid the entire upper left area and added a major highway based roundabout. Deleted like half the area there to make space ;P

Big factor in traffic is knowing where to put your industry, and where to NOT put your commercial areas. Commercial areas draw in lorries, and lorries block traffic when they "load/unload" So building large zones with these 2 things with many junctions in between is a bad idea. I suffered from this heavily before I realized my folly. Now I only build 1 block farm industry and 1 block wood industry next to 1 block of commercial....

Ps, get the mod that allows you to replace and convert 1 way and 2 way roads. Build highway base layout with normal 2 lane 1 way roads. Those lock to the grid, and so you can build your highways with high precision. And you can then convert the 2 lane roads to highways. Meaning you don't have to build highways without a proper grid based guide. (there is no way to build a "round" roundabout with highway roads otherwise.
« Last Edit: March 17, 2015, 05:50:56 pm by eRe4s3r »
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Offline Aklyon

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Re: Cities: Skylines: The Only Good SimCity Game We've Had in 12 Years.
« Reply #16 on: March 18, 2015, 05:35:28 pm »
I was playing around with the water in the map editor, and eventually it turned into a nice-ish map, I think. Or at least one that shouldn't flood without effort anymore. ;)

Have a link to it, if you guys want to try it.

Offline eRe4s3r

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Re: Cities: Skylines: The Only Good SimCity Game We've Had in 12 Years.
« Reply #17 on: March 18, 2015, 11:02:06 pm »
Not yet ready for custom maps ;) My current one where I play (Lake Valley) is not even 5% filled. (I guess I will reach building limit before reaching map limit, but so what ,p)

So 64000 people and .. not yet a traffic collapse thanks to some workshop intersections with roundabout and foot-bridges (No idea how people do this stuff this neatly, but I love that I can just drop them in like this... after bulldozing 5 blocks that is)

DSR + Sun Position mod


The "main" road through the city (DSR + Sun Position mod)


Considering that I have now surpassed Sim City 5 city sizes by about.. factor 4 I am very happy. And the game is still challenging imo, though I do make a ton of money expanding without collapsing your entire traffic network is a big challenge.

What I am missing though, is military, marina and assorted "Function" buildings. Though maybe I should do them myself...  and a space-launch center. (Not just a space elevator). More factory diversity and drone systems and arcologies like in Sim City 5 expansion.
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Offline Mánagarmr

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Re: Cities: Skylines: The Only Good SimCity Game We've Had in 12 Years.
« Reply #18 on: March 19, 2015, 02:50:28 am »
Just a question: DSR mod? What's that?
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Offline eRe4s3r

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Re: Cities: Skylines: The Only Good SimCity Game We've Had in 12 Years.
« Reply #19 on: March 19, 2015, 02:58:47 am »
Down Sampling Resolution ;) It renders the game internally at up to 300% higher resolution, which is basically Super Sampling AA

In Skylines you essentially hit F10 when you have this mod activated and you have a slider from 100% to 300% you select what you want (I choose 200%) and hit apply, and now the game renders at twice the res internally and you get better Image Quality. Uses tons of video memory though, so if you see shadows disappearing that is when you need to hit "reset" and stop using it. So I use it for screenshots only ;)

I just need to figure out which mod made my subway tunnels disappear....

Ps.: 76K ;) At this point traffic is such a problem that I choose to change my approach and instead build self-contained city blocks with far larger focus on foot paths. And.. space elevator wonder.. except it doesn't do a dang thing to my tourism income ;P



And by the way, all those trees? There is a mod that lets you have a proper brush with size settings for tree painting. Otherwise you'd have to place them 1 by 1.... ;P

And that neat row of buildings near the white one in the top left of the image? That's 6 grade schools and 3 high-schools in a block, connected to subway... that's how much I noticed I needed post expansion to 76000 people. When those spawn their "people" i have literally over 5000 people walking through my city. In a giant mass. I had to build like half a dozen foot bridges so they don't clump up my intersections. But now it works ;p No traffic chaos but.. it's very close to it in some areas. Learned from steam guide to restrict heavy traffic now, wish I would have thought of that BEFORE building that giant grid of interconnected roads, now it's nearly impossible to remake that ;P

I want to note, even now the game still runs at a about 40fps.. that's immensely impressive as I don't have best system ever. Very well optimized game.. and it uses all 6 cores ;P
« Last Edit: March 19, 2015, 03:16:35 am by eRe4s3r »
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Offline Mánagarmr

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Re: Cities: Skylines: The Only Good SimCity Game We've Had in 12 Years.
« Reply #20 on: March 19, 2015, 04:57:18 am »
Yeah, I'm going to have to rethink much of my intracity traffic and build proper foot paths because I think a BIG issue with my traffic problem is all the pedestrians. Busses and Metro's are great, but one has to remember that pedestrians clog up every intersection if they can :P


EDIT: Holy crap is that 4:3 resolution? O_o
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Offline eRe4s3r

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Re: Cities: Skylines: The Only Good SimCity Game We've Had in 12 Years.
« Reply #21 on: March 19, 2015, 05:39:54 am »
Yeah, I'm going to have to rethink much of my intracity traffic and build proper foot paths because I think a BIG issue with my traffic problem is all the pedestrians. Busses and Metro's are great, but one has to remember that pedestrians clog up every intersection if they can :P


EDIT: Holy crap is that 4:3 resolution? O_o

It's actually 5:4 but yeah .. ;) I still rock a 24" CAD certified CRT ;) Wish I could run it at 1600x1200 though, but game has various resolution issues. My 2nd monitor isn't even an option for some reason. Just displays black window when I drag it over. (And the game doesn't even show me my 2nd monitors resolution as option (1920x1200)

I think something is very wrong with how this game handles multi-monitor setups...
« Last Edit: March 19, 2015, 05:54:14 am by eRe4s3r »
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Offline Misery

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Re: Cities: Skylines: The Only Good SimCity Game We've Had in 12 Years.
« Reply #22 on: March 19, 2015, 07:38:18 am »

It's actually 5:4 but yeah .. ;) I still rock a 24" CAD certified CRT ;)

And this is where I had a brain crash when reading all of that.  Good grief.  I havent even heard "CRT" in about a bazillion years.

I'll be honest, there's times when I'd genuinely prefer one over these flat things that are the norm now.

Ugh, makes me feel old.  Despite that I'm not.

Also, yeah, that tree brush mod.... that seriously should just be a part of the main game.  Soooooooooo much better than the other way of doing it. 

Offline eRe4s3r

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Re: Cities: Skylines: The Only Good SimCity Game We've Had in 12 Years.
« Reply #23 on: March 19, 2015, 08:30:24 am »
I love my CRT and would never trade it away.... and yes.. it is getting very old 7 years I think, but it still works great ;) And as long as it works that will remain my Main monitor ;P

Now reached 80k population. They just released an update too, to 1.0.6b

They made the no-film grain mod stock ;) That's nice and yep, Tree Brush should absolutely be in native. Also, invisible subway tunnels? That was the dynamic resolution mod :/

I find myself adding a few new buildings every day (I am very picky, only select growables get into my list). I have 16GB Ram and maybe in this game I can finally get to use them ;P
« Last Edit: March 19, 2015, 08:32:41 am by eRe4s3r »
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Offline KingIsaacLinksr

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Re: Cities: Skylines: The Only Good SimCity Game We've Had in 12 Years.
« Reply #24 on: March 19, 2015, 01:29:15 pm »
Yeah, I tried that SSAA mod and I found that my framerate would tank hard when using it. It's not a cheap resource.
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Offline KingIsaacLinksr

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Re: Cities: Skylines: The Only Good SimCity Game We've Had in 12 Years.
« Reply #25 on: March 19, 2015, 02:58:13 pm »
FYI: Cities Skylines just had it's first patch released. Lot of bug fixing and performance optimizations (mostly aimed at Linux & Mac). A few major notes to take note of:

http://steamcommunity.com/app/255710/discussions/0/611701360821801977/

Nerfed parks decreasing commercial demand

Road upgrade tool now works between two-way and one-way roads and right mouse-button changes direction of one-way roads

Added a Film grain slider in the Graphics options, like for the Tilt shift.

Intro screen can now be skipped with mouse click or key press.

Pretty good stuff here, especially the road upgrading thing. It makes one of the mods in Workshop completely pointless now. Btw, if you're noticing some odd framerate lag that wasn't there before, restart the game and that fixes it right up.
« Last Edit: March 19, 2015, 02:59:46 pm by KingIsaacLinksr »
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Offline Aklyon

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Re: Cities: Skylines: The Only Good SimCity Game We've Had in 12 Years.
« Reply #26 on: March 19, 2015, 04:53:13 pm »
The update was pretty much two mod integrations and a bunch of nice fixes. Hopefully some work on the lanes thing is next.

Offline eRe4s3r

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Re: Cities: Skylines: The Only Good SimCity Game We've Had in 12 Years.
« Reply #27 on: March 19, 2015, 05:20:51 pm »
I am more hyped for tunnels and European style back-to-back buildings ;P (Free DLC?)

Anyway loading my 80k city the one thing this patch did was raise my weekly income from +11k to +55k ;) I am rich now hah and from 80k to 86k this apparently dropped to +30k .. where did all that money go and come from? Weird ;)

Anyway... 86000 people and.. my highway got clogged up because I refuse to make unrealistic smaller cities (Everyone of my satellite cities has commercial, industrial and living space and it connects to main city)

So this special intersection was born. It's not pretty, but it is very effective ;)


Lately I find myself redesigning my highway intersections most of the time. When you fix 1 flow problem, it basically just moves it further downstream. And I don't think this is a particularly well thought out intersection design ;P

Edit: So turns out I could have just a easily placed a clover intersection . is smaller, works better. Blimey ;)
« Last Edit: March 19, 2015, 06:42:33 pm by eRe4s3r »
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Offline mrhanman

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Re: Cities: Skylines: The Only Good SimCity Game We've Had in 12 Years.
« Reply #28 on: March 20, 2015, 08:05:29 pm »
I think I'm about to get this, but is the Deluxe version worth it?  $10 seems a little steep for 5 buildings.  The soundtrack and art book aren't really interesting to me.

Offline eRe4s3r

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Re: Cities: Skylines: The Only Good SimCity Game We've Had in 12 Years.
« Reply #29 on: March 20, 2015, 08:11:46 pm »
I would say no. Those 5 buildings add not much (I would even say, nothing), get the normal version and be happy. Mods add everything you want if you are so inclined. I got deluxe because 27€ is really cheap for the added feeling of supporting a small dev.

Anyway.. I made a giant mistake.. Hadron Collider educates everyone... that's cool. Except now I have a 56% unemployment



See those completely orange industry demand bars? That's not a joke. Currently employed : 42000 cims, I need.. a whopping 47000 extra work places.. Holy.. moley...  I don't think I can even do that with industries. That would completely kill my traffic. (The more commerce and industry you add, the more traffic). So an giant office complex it's gonna be..  probably I will go out of my way to design that properly and visually pleasing ;P

Ps.: 95k people <3
And that sewer lake is very nearly flooding the land, I wonder what happens? I think it needs 2 or 3 more sewage plants
« Last Edit: March 20, 2015, 08:13:38 pm by eRe4s3r »
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