How Cities: Skylines Makes You Plan Bad Cities

I love Cities: Skylines, and I've been building cities for almost six years. But for most of that time, I've used mods to turn most features of the simulation off entirely because the simulation is so unrealistic. In this video, we will explore what makes the Cities: Skylines simulation unrealistic, what the simulation's impacts are on players and their cities, and what can be done to make the simulation better. Specifically, this video argues that the simulation obscures urban history, gives the player unrealistic levels of power, and encourages (even forces) the player to plan car-dependent cities.
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WORKS I CITED
Bereitschaft, Bradley. “Gods of the City? Reflecting on City Building Games as an Early Introduction to Urban Systems.” Journal of Geography, Sept. 2015. ResearchGate, doi.org/10.1080/00221341.2015....
Herriges, Daniel. “The Difference Between Mobility and Accessibility.” Strong Towns, 17 Oct. 2018, www.strongtowns.org/journal/2....
Manaugh, Geoff, and Nicola Twilley. “The Philosophy of SimCity: An Interview With the Game’s Lead Designer.” The Atlantic, 9 May 2013, www.theatlantic.com/technolog....
Shoup, Donald. The High Cost of Free Parking, Updated Edition. Routledge, 2011.
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MUSIC
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VIDEO CONTENTS
0:00 Intro
1:24 Chapter 1
7:19 Chapter 2
12:31 Chapter 3
26:21 Conclusion
PC SPECS
CPU: Intel Core i7-5820K 3.3GHz 6-Core
GPU: GeForce RTX™ 2070 WINDFORCE 2X 8G
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Motherboard: ASRock X99 Extreme4 ATX LGA2011-3
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SSD: Crucial MX100 256GB 2.5"
Hard Drive: Seagate Barracuda 3TB 3.5" 7200RPM
#CitiesSkylines

[@NotJustBikes]

Yes! This is the best C:S video I've ever seen. These are all the things I've complained about in the game, plus things I hadn't even thought of. I was amazed when I heard that C:S was designed by European because it encourages building very "American" cities, and every city I've built devolves into a (car) traffic management sim. You can't even build mixed-use walkable neighbourhoods (as you said). I stopped playing the game because I could never design "good" cities. People may say that it's just a game, but it's gone way beyond a game and it directly effects how laymen, who know nothing about urban planning, think about cities. That being said, if somebody makes the game you're suggesting, I hope there's still a "disable NIMBYs" checkbox. Because sometimes I'm going to want to just play the game without getting flashbacks to every painful community engagement meeting I've attended. 😂

[@PjXu98]

Just came to this video because of you😂 Love your channel btw

[@feyindecay912]

I litterally thought about all the stuff your channel has taught me throughout the video, you're doing a great job, alright!

[@jonarific8504]

I genuinely think the best thing they could do to reflect actual cities (and let's face it the whole game is God complex wish fulfilment so options o ln implementation benefit the player) would be to facilitate walkable neighbourhoods with mixed use zoning, pedestrianisation and values (I.e. the games measure of success) based on this with commercial demand reflecting footfall.

[@groundzero_-lm4md]

The developers are European but wanted to make a game more similar to SimCity. Remember Paradox only greenlit the project after SimCity 2013 failed. They wanted something that would be familiar to SimCity players.

[@PresCities]

*sits through 8 angry monologues in a row about “neighborhood character” in a video game*

[@Gingerxyz1]

As a European, lack of middle density and mixed use zoning are absolutely the things that frustrate me the most in the game. I want to build terraced housing and flats over local shops and city centres full of buildings with ground floor commercial units and five storeys of apartments on top. I want to build the world I know (but better!)

[@butterboi1503]

Ikrrr I really want to build small American towns with mixed-zone downtowns. Would definitely make the use of space much more efficient.

[@ekszentrik]

As a fellow Euro, it doesn't bother me because I re-adjusted my expectations of the game after the first play session I had that this is a McCity builder, and I would appreciate my cities only as the American McCities they were intended to be.

[@andrewjackson8845]

The car-focused nature of the cities in this game, as mentioned in the video, really bugs me as well as someone from the UK. Having those absurd interchanges in the middle of a city just seems absurd to me, as does all of those lanes.

[@jacksondice5435]

LAUGHS IN *BACKYARD* But no i agree diversity in building design

[@liesdamnlies3372]

I live in Canada, in one of the few nice places where we have mixed-use zoning and I couldn’t agree more. (Vancouver is even, finally, clawing it’s way back to sanity with its planning. Stroads and parking are disgusting blights to be excised.)

[@edwardmiessner6502]

The most humorous thing about Cities: Skylines is when a cim steps up out of the subway station (the metro entrances, stations, and vanilla trains are totally unrealistic imo) and realises, "I have a car in me pocket!" Then all of a sudden a car appears and off he goes, another piece of the traffic.

[@AY-hq4qz]

Yes I can buy the foldable backpack bicycle which apparently sold tremendously well in the C:S universe, but the car out of the pocket is where my imagination comes up short. 🤣

[@FreeSalesTips]

You don't even have a pocket car? What year are you living in, 2021? It's already 2132, pocket cars have been a thing for 80 years. 🚗☁☁

[@edwardmiessner6502]

@@FreeSalesTips 😁

[@oldvlognewtricks]

I miss Park and Ride from SC4

[@GordonSlamsay]

When you see like 1000 cims exit the metro and then click on the station to see 250 passangers/week

[@ildesu789]

I absolutely want more walkability. Wider sidewalks, fully pedestrianized streets and maps that start with train and regional bus access. Aldo due to the way traffic works, bike roads are really effective, cims love them if you make an integrated system of bike lanes and bike roads.

[@StarcrossTV]

All of those points except the transit start all exist in the game now! CS has grown a lot over the past year and has introduced a lot of new features and QOL improvements as development for CS1 winds down

[@ripred42]

If there's a cities skylines 2, one thing i would love is maps that start out with just rail connections, or dirt roads, and a few small settlements. I think that would be more realistic than creating an entirely new historical mode.

[@Zzrott1]

This tbh

[@Bigcountry4415]

Ya chapter 1 was kind of unrealistic since in my mind that is a different game (not that I wouldn’t want to play that game but I don’t think it’s very feasible). The rest of it seems great. New thought maybe you could add a mode where you can ask the government for money if your in enough debt (that is the only way North American cities including Canadian cities can exist).

[@Bigcountry4415]

I don’t know about Mexico’s cities.

[@makalejdo2]

thats why i always choose an island map with just one highway onto it. then i try to force myself into simulation of the organic/historical way of urban/rural development: 1st: destroying the highway, leaving it just at the end of the map 2nd: creating a small village with all the basic infrastructure (electricity, water, health...) 3rd: slowly expanding farms throughout the entire map 4th: slowly expanding the first village into a small rural town 5th: creating new villages throughout the map 6th: manually leveling buildings - destroying smaller houses to make room for bigger appartment buildings 7th: building new avenues and highways where they are actually needed my friends think im crazy because it takes ages to create something big...for instance it takes really really long to build your first skyscraper... i started a new city 3 weeks ago. im still at 2k population and barely made the first elementary school however there are two very positive points in this type of creating the city: 1st: the city or the map always looks finished (especially when the farms are done), anything else you build is just "extra" 2nd: when you have an entire map covered with something (villages, towns, farms) traffic management really gets challenging. it makes you think how to solve it and what is actually worth destroying not sure if OP was talking about this but one thing that really annoys me in this game is the price of building roads, especially highways, which in reality are very expensive

[@leshiimorph7933]

I'd want maps that start with just harbors too

[@johngaudet7363]

The lack of medium density zoning has always struck me as an odd choice, since it was always a thing in the SimCity games so it's strange the devs would omit it

[@geryhabul8923]

Aren’t the low level high density buildings medium density tho?

[@johngaudet7363]

@@geryhabul8923 technically yes but I would still prefer the option to zone only med density if i wanted to

[@clnetrooper]

@@johngaudet7363 you can set a high density zone and ban high raise. It'll keep to those smaller medium density buildings. Or go full mods with plop the growables and place yourself those buildings.

[@johngaudet7363]

@@clnetrooper It's more complicated than it needs to be imo. Because then you have to make sure the districts are drawn correctly and that the right policies are enacted

[@ChemySh]

@@johngaudet7363 not to the extent you may be thinking. I usually just enact a blanket highrise ban for the whole city, and plop the highrises myself since there's not many of them if you're going for a realistic skyline. I do agree that this could be easier if building plopper is in the base game instead of a mod

[@mimimurlough]

So essentially, Skylines is a modernist planning simulator, which is kinda funny. Shows just how much the field has evolved in the past 60+ years. I would like to see it updated for modern, more complex and collaborative planning, if only to give players something to do once all the mile stones have been passed and traffic is doing okay

[@ignemuton5500]

the point about cities with no history is something i constantly felt without realizing, sure the game was fun but every time i reached a certain city size it felt super boring, there was no context to these cities, and sure i could make up my own lore and history but that required too much time for any single person, so you end up just not playing it because there is no real connection, it's unlike a real city where almost every square meter of land has some sort of history to one person or another.

[@adrianoarne-ritz249]

To add a sense of history I just download progressively more futuristic buildings from the workshop. Starting from vanilla into sustainable smart cities (or a corporate cyberpunk dystopia, if I like) into adding giant arcologies and habitats complete with flying cars etc.

[@BiffaPlaysCitiesSkylines]

Walkability video challenge....accepted?!? Some great points made, enjoyed the video a lot. Just getting more into the actual details of city planning myself, its a learning curve for sure but very interesting 😁👍

[@PresCities]

Do it!! If anyone could pull off a walkability challenge, it would be you!

[@3dmaster205]

Add proper bicycle infrastructure, and traffic safety and calming to build a fantastically working city... and hey, make it the next season of 5b1c, invite Pres over as well... look in the City Planner Plays started thread.

[@colonelcampbellsoup6318]

Was going to say something along the lines of "oh biffa would make a video with that kind of title"

[@moxxy3565]

Biffa! Love your work

[@Dudezonid]

Please make a walkable challange! I love to play the game with walkability in focus. I makes it a whole different game with different challanges

[@SuperTobyproductions]

One thing about the lack of parking: in cities skylines the scales of population are way off. An 15 story would normally take in hundreds of workers/visitors, while in the game maybe 20 people go to a dense place. Therefore in the game not a lot of parking is required. So if parking has to be "fixed", population scale should too. Great video pres!

[@walmartian]

right, 10k ppl looks like a 1/2 a million city

[@Sasujerk]

So that's why it takes almost an entire map to reach 300 000 citizens

[@carstarsarstenstesenn]

yeah I can't play the game without the realistic population mod

[@krabgrass]

That’s why I like using the RICO mod to edit the number of households & manually plop middle class houses.

[@cakeisyummy5755]

Or you could just bring in Temporary Workers from Eastern Europe, India, Bangladesh, or Pakistan.

[@deViant14]

Whatever you might think of these critiques, for sure the lack of historical, organic growth makes it hard to start cities, at least for me. I seek out really mountainous terrain instead to put some creative constraints and help me break the grid. I need to have a reason, an explanation for why my main roads go the way they do. Without the imperfections of terrain, I don't even know how I want to start. So then I don't play.

[@gadsdenflag5218]

For real, if the city had actual history it would be so much better. Like, starting your city in the 19th century America. A small town evolving into a massive city naturally and historically would be so much better

[@seriphyn8935]

Making me think if people made use of the scenario feature on the workshop. People could make historical cities using the European vanilla set then you start with that.

[@justanotheryoutubechannel]

@@gadsdenflag5218 Honestly that’s something I’ve always wanted from a city builder, but so far the closest I’ve found is starting Tropico 5 in the colonial era and progressing through the eras from there. SC2K came close to having this as some releases had multiple tile sets for eras, but no game has done it as well as Tropico 5 and no game has done it as well as I want.

[@adrianoarne-ritz249]

@@justanotheryoutubechannel Exactly. A Civilization style city building game. Start from the ancient era all the way to the modern age. On every architectural advancement, you should be making a choice on whether to demolish the old buildings and replacing them with new ones, or maintain it to get a historic value bonus. By the end of the game you would end up witha modern city filled with a time-spanning history. The only way to do this in the current game is by progressively adding more futuristic modded buildings

[@magscorner]

@@justanotheryoutubechannel don't remember the right name of it but one of the simcities for the DS makes you develop cities tru time

[@devononair]

For point one, I suggest having a mode where you take over a historical city (real or fictional) and have historical monuments and neighbourhoods that you can't or shouldn't destroy. I feel that would really get round the 'placeless cities' problem.

[@AlexGoldhill]

I would love to have a scenario where you play in a city in the aftetmath of a revolution or massive political upheaval where you have to deal with repairing the damage and addressing the impact and legacy of the decades of the pre-revolutionary city government's misrule, whilst weathering the upheavals and challenges that your new government faces.

[@rzingg209]

That would be cool.. I like to make historical maps of real places.. I'll take a topographic map of, say Oakland CA, from some random year (usually pre 1960) and make it to scale and go from there.. I really enjoy making historical maps

[@danielbishop1863]

I know that SimCity 3000 included some historical scenarios like that. For example, Berlin 1989, where the goals included tearing down the wall, reconnecting the transit lines that were severed by it, and replacing the East's heavily-polluting coal power plants with something cleaner.

[@CityPlannerPlays]

Excellent video! That said, I have mixed emotions about the message. At the most basic level, it's a game, so it needs to have systems and mechanics that are easy to grasp and fun to play. That's why I like Stardew Valley, for instance - it has easy to understand mechanics but it obviously isn't a representation of what it takes to actually start a farm. Most of what urban planners do wouldn't be fun to most people and the level of detail in designing a city is infinite. I think the quote from the SimCity designer sums it up well. On the other hand, there are significant issues with some of the omissions in the game - ped streets and transit streets DO exist and are wonderful. Vertical mixed use is present in nearly every community - regardless of size, and is missing from the game. And you're right - horizontal mixed us is penalized (though it's arguable if this is a problem or not - there is some truth to the nuisance some commercial uses can have). Parking is omnipresent, expensive, and with current planning practice, absolutely necessary to consider. Safety drives so many transportation network decisions. And I could go on. All of that said, Cities Skylines causes players to think about their environments - something so many people don't do. They think about their home, their job, where their friends are, where they shop... and don't consider the impacts of their individual choices on the collective. And it get's people interested in planning, which is my main reason for loving the game. While I agree that many of the suggestions you make would make the game stronger as a simulator, I would hope that any of these advanced options would be just that - options. Not everyone wants a hardcore real-life simulator and I'm not sure that it would be fun to 95% of players. Wouldn't want the game to become a job, you know?

[@davidsdesign543]

You might have mixed emotions, but you are subscribing to Pres' theory with your content. Even you have to play pretend with Clearwater County. It's just fantasy roleplaying at this point - you're trying to tell a story, but there is no game mechanic that supports how you and others (Pres, Lee, Two Dollars Twenty, etc.) are playing the game in the only meaningful way possible this long after it's release. I'm only saying that because you're contradicting yourself here to your own detriment and as a Patreon supporter I clearly admire your content. So make it an additional game mode, as Pres starts out with. No obligations: One game, two massively different ways of playing it (think CS meets Transport Fever 2). The CS story mode is notoriously lacking and that could fix it. Could theoretically even be DLC, doesn't have to be C:S 2. The current game-engine should be able handle a 'historical mode' with a few mods and tweaks. "Not everyone wants a hardcore real-life simulator and I'm not sure that it would be fun to 95% of players" If that were true you wouldn't have experienced the (more than deserved) spectacular growth and success that you have over that past year. You, Lee, Pres and others fill a void in the game with your roleplaying builds that is clearly broadly shared within the community.

[@safe-keeper1042]

Yeah, I'm not on board with *all* the proposed features, but I do really agree with the general idea. CS2 needs to get out of the North American city planning philosophy. My theory is that CO saw that Sim City ruled the roost and didn't dare depart too heavily from their approach. So they made their own take on a North American-style city builder, instead of going their own way. Now that they've made a name for themselves and are being published by PDX, I hope they dare go their own way.

[@deathdealer312]

@@davidsdesign543 "Not everyone wants a hardcore real-life simulator and I'm not sure that it would be fun to 95% of players" If that were true you wouldn't have experienced the (more than deserved) spectacular growth and success that you have over that past year." Come on, you really think everyone who plays this game wants to be forced into something that detailed and difficult? You think they want to be forced to consider political consequences and difficulties of building cities in real life, just because people watch youtube channels? Speak for yourself only please.

[@davidsdesign543]

​@@deathdealer312 That's really misconstruing what I was saying. I'm not saying 'everyone' nor 'forced' anywhere in my argument. I am saying 'additional' and 'no obligations'

[@deathdealer312]

@@davidsdesign543 You talked past my point, man

[@alehaim]

You forgot one very important thing, the amount of households/workplaces that buildings hold, which also plays a part in making car centric design seem like a good idea. The fact that suburban houses can have 5 households when they in real life hold one, while high rise buildings holding only 20-30 households when in reality they could hold hundreds is just ridiculous. Most especially this is a problem due to being an integral part to the milestone part with growing population. It really makes a disservice to just how much space is actually required for suburbs to have so few people. The difference is really stark when using the realistic population mod, as suburbs of low density housing become extremely empty, while high rise housing in high density area holds thousands upon thousands of people in a few blocks, compared to how it would take several neighborhoods of suburbs. Also realistic traffic cycle theoughout the day, due to the fact that the base game just doesn't simulate the difference of traffic over the day that well.

[@flyingpiggie979]

The suburb houses hold several households because the game is way off in scale. If it were scaled properly, the best you could realistically build would be a large town. You’d need maps several orders of magnitude larger to come anywhere close to the status of a moderate city. Let alone the likes of London, New York and so on.

[@Orinslayer]

@@flyingpiggie979 Exactly. the map is only like 17 kilometers across. I'd need about 49 times more land area to even fit Phoenix and its suburbs into the map in real scale.

[@edwardmiessner6502]

@@Orinslayer 17? I thought it was only 9 km across, about the size of a standard American township 6 miles, squared. You could fit Paris proper in it but not the suburbs

[@Orinslayer]

@@edwardmiessner6502 nonono, its 9 tiles across, but 17km across.

[@AY-hq4qz]

So if it’s that much out of scale do you guys even use the realistic population mod? I’ve always thought about turning it on, but never really knew how it would turn out.

[@caio5987]

😂 can you imagine?: “I want to build a road here… oh what? The game won’t let me?”

[@ColorfulHalo]

You're making some very good points. I always wondered how it could be that a commercial block could send cims to the hospital because of the noise but streets have no significant impact at all.

[@maiihew3808]

As someone about to begin a career in city planning and has over 700 hours on city skylines, this was what I yearned for in the game and drove me to use as many mods my pc could handle. The concept and creation of the game is wondereful and the best city builder we have, but I agree with you that there is no real realism in the game.

[@jamesbedford7327]

Im in a very similar boat. I have close to 6000 hours in the game and I'm just starting a urban planning degree

[@ashleyhamman]

Same, I graduated with my bachelors in Geography with a focus on urban planning this spring, and for a few years now have found Cities Skylines borderline unplayable both because of the insane numbers of mods and because I've been unable to build cities that I consider to be "correct". Other citybuilders set in modern times have pretty much all of the same issues. It's rather strange to say that Workers and Resources: Soviet Republic, a country tycoon more than anything, seems to capture aspects of realistic urban planning better than games focused solely on the cities, despite having its own meriod of problems and focus differences.

[@editoron]

Same.

[@firstnamelastname7003]

@Maiihew What mods did you use to simulate this stuff, out of interest?

[@carstarsarstenstesenn]

@@firstnamelastname7003 Network extensions 2 provides zonable pedestrian streets--I recommend it for sure. Realistic population mod makes the city feel more realistic in some ways.

[@artyoz]

Some of the problems might be right there in the name of the genre: "City Builder," rather than "City Manager." The actual joy of making your dream city is basically already doable with mods, and if there is to be a Cities: Skylines 2, I'd love to see it embrace the sandbox/Lego set side of things and embrace the "builder." I think you'd need almost a completely different game for a good "city manager," or an actual "mayor simulator." Both could make for very good games, but trying to mash these two, often-conflicting game design goals into a single game is, you're right, an increasingly-noticeable problem with Cities: Skylines. On the other hand, at least it ain't SimCity. I swear that game was designed for real estate scammers.

[@144teebone]

I think that your comment captures the essence of the issue perfectly. Almost 7 years on now, a lot of people forget that many of the design decisions that Colossal Order made for Cities Skylines were seemingly direct responses to criticisms and frustrations that people had for SimCity 2013. That game was a massive let down to just about everyone who played it; to the point where for a while it seemed like the city-building genre was just going to die, but then along came Cities Skylines, directly addressing just about every major criticism that SimCity had. Where SimCity restricted city sizes, Cities offered 9-times larger play areas (81-times with mods). Where SimCity was always online (even if playing alone) Cities was a purely single player experience (with no DRM). Mods themselves were discarded by SimCity, but Cities baked them directly into the UI and UX of the game. SimCity had few (if any) meaningful transit options, but Cities had many options in the base game, added more in expansions, and based a lot of the simulation around how these transit networks all interacted with each other (helped in part by Colossal Order's experience with Cities In Motion). The list goes on. In Cities Skylines, emphasis was put on player expression. The game did everything it could to allow players to build exactly the kinds of cities that they wanted, unhindered. It was a building game first, and a management game second. It's more like a toy than a game with no real win-state; a creative outlet that happens to have some simulation systems to flesh out the world that you create. And for a while this was very successful! Many of the great Cities Let's Plays are just long form art projects where the player is creating the exact kind of city that they envision whether its a perpetually burning version of Miami, a loving tribute to Western Australia, an idealized trans-European metropolis, a 1:1 re-creation of Osaka Japan, an oppressive cyberpunk hellscape, a martian colony, or just a remake of one's own hometown. The focus was always on creation more than simulation, and the result was the most successful city-building game of all time. That's not to say that a potential sequel shouldn't improve its simulation, but I do think it's important to recognize that the reason this game exploded in the way that it did is because it never forced players to get bogged down by systems that would impede your ability to craft the city that you want (often with help from mods).

[@artyoz]

@@144teebone Yeah I think there's really something to the fact that C:S doesn't go to any trouble at all to hide the "infinite money" option, and they don't even call it a cheat, it's just a pre-loaded mod. For that matter, I don't know for sure if CO/Paradox went out of their way to make the game easily moddable, but they sure didn't put up any barriers to it. But as far as the funding thing goes, it's so nice to be able to see that as more of a "metric" than any kind of limitation. Again, lookin' at you, SimCity 2013. I've often thought of Skylines as a toy, like you said, like the world's greatest Lego set. When you're playing it as a game, it's so easy to make the "win conditions" things that are set by the player, even if the game does kinda nudge you towards outward expansion. Sometimes I'll sit down to a project with the express intent of "I'm gonna make the nicest metro loop I can," or "I'm gonna imagine what a modern-day streetcar suburb might look like," or something like that. The simulation is necessary to make those kinds of things "work," and maybe the conversation should be about optimizing the simulation for "play" rather than optimizing it for "goals." And to Pres' point about the game being a good intro to urbanism and related topics, like a lot of good "toys" much of the play is self-educational. And, obviously, when you "play in public" it's socially educational, too. And yet, I still *do* desire a really management-focused city game. Something I've been thinking about: SimCity and Skylines tell you that you're playing as the "mayor," and Pres already ripped that metaphor to shreds, but I think the thing is you're actually "playing as the city." You're pretending to be the city planner, city council, neighborhood groups, universities, local industry, and all these other things, all at the same time. Whereas I can't really think of a game that exists where you're actually playing as a mayor. Just for the fun of it (full disclosure, I'm a tabletop game designer but not a video game designer or programmer, so a lot of what follows is going to be pie-in-the-sky spitballing with NO IDEA as to implementation) here's an idea: a TURN-BASED city management game. You're managing the city from, let's say, month to month. One month you approve plans for a freeway (to use an example brought up in the video) which will take, let's say, nine months to complete (even that feels pretty optimistic, but for the sake of having some numbers). In any event, there's no "plopping," freeways, water treatment plants, sports stadiums, whatever, there is only "planning." The "problem" is, around Month Three you start hearing protests from the community you're building the freeway through/near, and they're threatening to block further construction. Now, you can push construction through, but you're gambling on the community backing down, and maybe they do but maybe they don't... you'll just have to hit the "end turn" button and see what Month Four brings. Or, cancel the freeway, and see what happens then (industry gets mad, inevitably). The point is, make the player have to think months in advance, make plans that might or might not come to fruition, adapt to unforseen disasters, and always live under the possibility that if they push the envelope too far, well... elections are a thing. That game sounds stressful and exhausting and downright anxiety-inducing. That game also sounds a lot like XCOM. And that wasn't exactly a flop. I dunno, like I said, spitballing ideas. I don't know if Pres is right in that Skylines needs to be more of a city management game, but I think he's identified an unfulfilled niche in video games, that only LOOKED like it had been filled by SimCity and Cities Skylines. I'd love to play both games, depending on how I'm feeling on any particular day. Some days I might want to seriously dig into urban politics and city management. Some days, I might just wanna chill and make my dream streetcar suburb. There should be room in video games for both. Anyway, thanks for coming to my TED Talk

[@3dmaster205]

@@144teebone More simulation while keeping simple could easily be implemented with difficulty settings. Standard is Cities Skylines, and then higher levels of difficulty more and more simulation and agent AI features get turned on; much better than now; exact same game, no more difficulty, everything just costs more and you get less.

[@Latriise]

@@144teebone You make some great points. And I'm glad CS came along and kept the city game genre from dying. However, I wish that both franchises were still thriving. And I wish a new SimCity game would come out. There was a fun and whimsy to SC that doesn't fit with the more realistic style of CS. For example, in SC 2013, my sims once asked for permission to throw a city wide block party. And if I accepted the challenge, and my city services were good enough to keep the city from being overrun with the extra trash during a set time limit, I could make a nice chunk of bonus money. It was fun to randomly challenge my city in that way. Like a nice mini game. Another time, there was a zombie outbreak. And I could visually see glowing green zombies come out at night and roam through certain neighborhoods. The only major downfall, for me, of SC 2013 was/is the map size. If they could have doubled the current size of the city squares I think the game would've been a hit with players. But even without that, I still find it fun to play. To me, CS and SC are different styles. CS is a city builder, where the goal is mostly aesthetic. While SC 2013 focuses a bit more on being a city simulator. I think there's room for both approaches. Which is why I wish a new SC would be released.

[@144teebone]

@@Latriise I actually 100% agree with you Latriise. I know my comment came off as harsh, but SimCity was one of my favorite series in gaming. You can't be disappointed unless you're expecting something good... As you said, it had a specific charm that is very difficult to replicate. All of Maxis' games had this great "game-feel"; their secret sauce that made everything a joy to play. And there were certainly things in SimCity 2013 that were enjoyable. I personally loved the system that allowed you to build extensions to city buildings. Being able to add new wings to hospitals, new floors to schools, etc. added a wonderful sense of personalization to the assets. It was possible to have dozens of the same building, and all of them look and even function differently based on how/where you placed their extensions. And also as you said, there were good parts of the (rather broken) simulation that they were doing. The zombie apocalypse disaster is, in my opinion, one of the coolest events ever in a city-builder. Seeing your citizens turning into green blobs, flooding your streets, and watching the emergency services trying to respond was an inspired gaming moment that I haven't seen repeated since. I honestly miss SimCity (and Maxis) terribly. Even though it was frustrating dealing with EA's broken servers, I still had well over 100 hours played on that game, and I bought the Cities of Tomorrow Expansion as well. I absolutely hear what you're saying. My comment wasn't meant to say that a more simulation focused game is worse, or even that I didn't want it added, just that C:S has defined its place in the genre by removing all of the shackles that SimCity 2013 arbitrarily added. It was catering to particular audience that had specific desires for the next big city builder, namely, freedom to create a large complex city in a 3D space, which was frustratingly difficult to find until Colossal Order arrived on the scene. Arguably, C:S is a like a successor to SimCity 4, the last great SimCity game, which also thrived as a creative outlet for well over a decade thanks in large part to its huge passionate modding community on Simtropolis that kept the game alive and relevant well past its shelf life. I wouldn't say that the simulation in that game was particularly robust, but there was a lot of that Maxis charm which made "painting" or "sculpting" your dream city nonetheless very enjoyable. I think that's the hole that SimCity 2013 left and which C:S was trying to fill. Honestly though, if as you said, SimCity could make a comeback, and compete with this new standard, adding its own (hopefully better) ideas into the mix, I think that would be great! I love this genre, and I want to see it get better. I just hope that a potential sequel to C:S doesn't alienate the player base in the same way that SimCity 2013 did to the fans of SimCity.

[@CultOfAlan]

The strange thing about points 1 & 2 is that tropico actually does a really good job of tackling these things.

[@raheem201231]

They do but don’t. Tropico falls at being a city builder

[@Dave_Albright]

@@raheem201231 Tropico isn't a city builder and never was and never will. And I'm a Tropico Fanboy

[@MaticTheProto]

@@raheem201231 long live el presidente! To the guillotine with you!

[@royvandermarel3953]

While I agree with half the issues you've adressed, I do feel that there needs to be significant distance from reality to keep the game fun. I'm glad I don't need to do the debrief and paperwork after a mission in Call of Duty. Or deal with environmentalists when chopping down forrests is Age of Empires. Or have to watch replays of my tactical choices after each game in FIFA

[@pushingboundariesyt]

Sums it up perfectly! All I need to make the game perfect is mixed use zoning and medium density.

[@royvandermarel3953]

@@pushingboundariesyt Two great additions, if implemented. And I would add 5x5 and up for industry plots (especially farming) to that list

[@designerama1099]

He's gotta make a longer video somehow so might as well preach about stuff that makes the game not realistic

[@flyingpiggie979]

Difficult to translate such complex political and social dilemmas into a game like this. Because at best you’d simply be faced with a financial cost, maybe decline in population. This is a passing inconvenience for players who don’t care, and an underwhelming pop up for those that do. Maybe it could work, but the idea will be forever mired by the reality that you as the player, are basically God. The feelings and lives of the simulated citizens are intangibles imo. That said, the simulation still has miles of room for improvement.

[@safe-keeper1042]

Oh, and I love that mod that gives you an actual day-night cycle, with most cims sleeping at night, rush hour in the morning and evening, and events around town sometimes like concerts and football games. Just makes the town you're building feel so much more alive and immersing.

[@BluePieNinjaTV]

Love that mod, just wished it extended to public transport too. I'm sick of losing money during the night solely because the evening rush hour is at the same time the night network gets turned off or there is no people using it at lunch time.

[@bonumonu5534]

The more I play this game the more I realise how "American" the way its been developed. with literally the same infrastructural problems that US has. same mindset(

[@matthiasmay1977]

It has so many modes of transportation and is actually derived from Cities in Motion a transit planning game. You can build an European or Asian style city even in vanilla.

[@midgetwars1]

Finnish company too. Odd

[@bly4t]

@@matthiasmay1977 its easy to create and asian city tho

[@Liggliluff]

@@midgetwars1 That's what confuses me. While it is European road signs, the whole planning style feels so American. You can build curved roads and such, but the zoning requires straight roads. - While European cities tend to be more compact than American cities with curved roads; the game requires you to build straight roads like American cities to make it more compact. It's backwards.

[@alienngl]

@@Liggliluff How are building straight roads backwards, like seriously, they are easier to build on and are more efficient. I'm not saying they should be everywhere but don't antagonize straight roads Makes no sense at all

[@SJITZ]

YES, the freeway fetish thing! I've been binging city design channels on YT for a couple of months and when I fired up C:S again yesterday I was so disappointed that I could barely put what I learned into practice.

[@sharpless]

While I certainly agree with the problems you bring up, I'm thinking that there is a fine line between making the game more realistic, and making it too complex and intricate for most to enjoy.

[@gfasterOS]

It is perfectly doable to introduce players to more advanced mechanics over time. You’re not going to have major advocacy groups in a tiny town.

[@liquidlethe]

Game Devs solved this a long time ago: Choose Difficulty! >Easy >Normal >Hard >Realistic

[@gfasterOS]

@@liquidlethe Difficulty selection at the start of games is endlessly flawed, but having ways to turn on and off mechanics could absolutely be valuable

[@liquidlethe]

@@gfasterOS I was just pointing out that there a definitely solutions to the problem and no need for worry. Having a customize button for each gamemode where you can turn off and on specific mechanics for a new game is nothing crazy. Something like this would work well Gamemodes: >Standard City Builder -(customize) >Historical mode >Free build

[@minxhozx5113]

I think there are ideas like he suggested being proposed so its either its hard to code so it needs a long time to blend such mechanics to game or its just not their priority orrr they are releasing it for 2.

[@Kleavers]

I'm sorry but that displacement thing is just not something this game is. It's like wanting The Sims to deal with cancer or other major health problems, psychological/anxiety issues, trauma, unemployment, famine, pandemics etc. If they were to include that stuff I'd be the first to turn off those features or just not play at all. The game is fun because it allows you to be free in how you want your city to look and run. However, more walkability options is definitely required. It's silly how people just have a car in their back pocket, and it is difficult to make proper European cities.

[@firstnamelastname7003]

That's just like, your opinion, man. The game has adjacent features such as worker education, building abandonment, pollution. Plus the game's spiritual predecessors had things like environmental protests. Why would homelessness be so different and unsuited to this game?

[@euricoaw1535]

as simple as citizen limit of 67.500

[@ColtsMan2005]

@@firstnamelastname7003 because its an opinion doesent mean it should be discounted wtf

[@firstnamelastname7003]

@@ColtsMan2005 it's a Big Lebowski reference. Also, that's why I respected their opinion by laying out my argument against it rather than dismissing it.

[@akorn9943]

I mean, that’s kind of the point he’s making, no? That the game is fun but it encourages you to accept practices that are absolutely terrible in real world city planning. It definitely gave me a lot to think about.

[@HarishChouhan]

I hope these suggestions are taken by the developers. As a kid I used to draw slums on a large piece of paper based on the places I knew in Mumbai, India nd then erased it to plan the city better. I dropped out of Architecture and recently when I got into playing this game, I had hoped this would have some ways to replicate planning in real cities but sadly no such feature yet. I presume it would be very difficult to make it but I hope someone works on it.

[@ghastlyghandi4301]

The thing about games, especially strategy games, or city builder games, or games where you have to accumulate wealth. The game is always mostly about maximising efficiency, and therefore getting more money from that efficiency to win easier. while managing the people’s happiness is a secondary interest.

[@pilot9651]

@@Nexamexahexaflexai feel like it’s commonly used only as negative motivation or treated as an annoyance, as in “I can’t do this because the people will get mad”

[@spartan117zm]

I think the issue is, so many players want this game to be so many things. You want it to be super realistic and tackle hard political issues, meanwhile I want it to exist almost as a 3D model maker for an ideal city, or to show off how a project in the real world might look. I don’t think these things are incompatible, but I think you’d need a lot of toggle switches built into the game. For example when I’m trying to build a model of something I’d like to see, I don’t want to deal with a neighborhood that “resists demolition.” So there should be a toggle switch for that, or perhaps a different overall mode within the game. Like having the sandbox mode stay what it is, but then making an almost “campaign” mode that goes through history starting from old times to new times, with a more political simulation and such. Also, I think you’re taking this a little too seriously. I appreciate your opinion on it, and it’s interesting to hear this take, but please do remember the context around the time and place of this game’s release: SimCity was failing, and these devs wanted to take a shot at making something fun. They never imagined it would get this much interest. Do I think they should take some of these things into consideration for their next game? Sure, why not. But again, I think it must be in a clearly distinguished, wholly separate mode, because this level of stuff would kill the game for likely 75% of players. It wasn’t designed to be an urban planning simulator, and I would argue most players wouldn’t want it to be. But I think it can exist as a psuedo-version of one, just, as a stand-alone mode. What’s more, I appreciate this game for the blank canvas that it is, the ability to let your creativity run wild with whatever you want to build, and I think it serves a great purpose as a creative outlet. If you’re growing tired of it from that perspective, perhaps you should try some other games for awhile and come back to Cities later; there are certainly games which account for some of what you’re looking for, because they were built with it in mind from the beginning. Not every game needs to cover everything, and I think if the devs choose to keep Cities as a sandbox, then that’s their choice, and we should respect it. Certainly there are other groups of devs who would fill the gap.

[@AY-hq4qz]

I feel like the Trópico series is the game to go to if you wake up feeling this way one day about C:S. And I do occasionally! That game is all about focusing on the cims.

[@RuukuLada]

Ideal cities don't feature cars to the extent in C:S

[@nonec384]

i wouldn't want a politicts focus game , thats just too complex so it either a pain to undertand the basic or realy simplifidy

[@emptycloud8669]

Really great comment friend, expressed how i feel about the video and the game

[@ScottDaniels1977]

I disagree in this regard, you can have too many features in a game. All of these features need development time and Cities is the game is mainly because of the community. The base game has a lot of issues that have been solved by the community, I can only imagine how many more issues there would be in the base game if they had to have more city management features or building design features. I agree with the mix-use, medium density, parking, and less auto depended, but all of these are changes to the city builder gameplay. I'd like to see more options for industry zones such as the ability to build light and heavy types of industrial zones.

[@MateodeJovel]

I'm so glad you brought up these critiques. The reason I almost always started with infinite money was so that I could start with rail infrastructure only, sometimes waiting until my population was 40,000 before connecting to freeways, but at the cost of perpetual bankruptcy. I also agree that the lack of solid cycling, walking, and other transit demands could be better. Hopefully they take these thoughts into consideration for Cities:Skylines 2

[@matthewparker9276]

It's also interesting to see some of the flaws CS inherits from its predecessors, even though they might not be inherently present in the game itself. I was confused why so many cities you see on channels where KZbinrs fix traffic in their viewers cities had oversized roads everywhere with lanes coming out of your ears on every single road, until I remembered that SimCity bases the density you can develop on the size of the road you are developing, so new players approach the game with that mentality. Of course there are also many flaws from the SimCity games that cities skylines includes as part of the mechanics, not just in player assumptions.

[@Xankill3r]

I'm actually surprised that the costs for demolishing neighbourhoods in C:S are basically non-existant. Even the Impression Games city-builders did a decent job of that. Mostly because those neighbourhoods would improve over time as you provided more amenities and demolishing housing in one part to create it elsewhere would take time. You would have to provide all those amenities in the other section that you were creating and that would take time and resources.

[@Dave_Albright]

i would like to have a blueprint mode. You plan your project. People will relized it and demonstrate against your project (big highway through a old neighbourhood). If you start your project. Houses will demolished, it doesn't just vanished... and your whole blueprint area will turn into a big construction site. I hate just vanished and plop up buildings. It needs chaos

[@moxxy3565]

This is why I like biffa so much. He makes up stories and reasons for what he's doing instead of just doing stuff.

[@osets2117]

Exactly, half of the stuff he's suggesting is pointless to have since you, the player, has the final say. It doesn't matter what my Sims want in the end I decide what happens

[@mk45232]

Most of these would turn CS from a game into a chore. Or at the very least, into a different kind of game (example: Democracy series). While such deep simulation would be cool af, I play games to have a fun challenge and relax. Not having to slog through a second job. I'm especially into the idea of iterative historical building though. The game's unlockables is probably an attempt at this, but doesn't make much sense past giving players goals and milestones to work towards. A historical village-to-metropolis mode would be very interesting and make for more in-depth and living cities, while still not reducing the game to some gray social science pet project.

[@joshflynn2173]

Yeah, I think the guy is asking for a completely different type of game tbh. I understand his points but I personally want to build roads, and expand my city. Not dealing with city politics and stuff. That's why I play fifa's career mode and not football manager. Football manager is way more realistic but its overwhelming and difficult, compared to fifa

[@Lankpants]

I think there would be a good way to implement this sort of political sim into the game in a way that wouldn't be absurdly obtrusive personally. What I'd do is just have a singular "opinion" bar, or possibly one for each zone you can place (low density res, industrial etc). When you do bad things like rip down a neighbourhood or pollute an area that bar should decrease. When you do good things such as build a new heavily used metro or significantly increase traffic flow in an area it should increase. Then open up a simple quest system where your citizens can give you simple requests such as expanding a metro line, increasing walkability in an area or reducing congestion on a road or intersection and have completing this give you a boost to opinion. Finally scale the amount the player is allowed to tax citizens based on opinion rather than just being a flat 12% (this mechanic feels like they wanted to do something then just didn't). It could work if you think about how to implement it using game mechanics like quests and stats rather than trying to make it a perfect simulation, at least in my opinion. It also still lets you rip everything down and rebuild if you want, but that would cost tax revenue, which to me feels like it wouldn't be to big of a cost to pay, it would just force the player to think about when they destroy housing.

[@wiraydh]

Most of his points will not gonna make sense for beginners, But they will be cool features to be included on Hard Mode mod that you get on the content manager since that mod doesn't feel like adding anything to the game at all.

[@BitchspotBlog]

The problem here is that he doesn't seem to recognize that this is a GAME. It's not a reality simulator, it's a video game. Regardless, it is not, nor will it ever be a political simulator. If that's what CO tried to make it, I'd stop playing. Now it might be cool to see a game try that but CS isn't it. As others have pointed out, that's not the game that he's playing. It would entirely destroy game balance and make the game basically unplayable by the target audience. I really wish that people would learn that the game is the game and if you don't like the game, go play something else. It's like trying to play Skyrim and then complaining that there are dragons because that's unrealistic.

[@ComradePhoenix]

I mean, there's a lot of great points here (especially accessibility), but like, solving them inherently will increase the minimum system requirements for the game. Even someone running a system with a high-end CPU (and GPU) would likely barely crack 10 fps with the kinds of changes you're suggesting.

[@ColonelBragg]

I remember in Sim City 3000 when you would hold the bulldoze marker over a residential area for a prolonged period you could see the sims holding a protest.

[@davidjohnson1691]

In reality the developer has to balance level of simulation with fun. I agree with some of your points, but I don’t think the game you would make would have been a hit like C:S. You’re describing something niche and, frankly, in my opinion, boring.

[@jeremymason8081]

Yes frankly I agree 100%. This is more like dlc. A social justice dlc to go along with the environment one, where the riots are changed to peaceful protests. I’d buy it

[@RuukuLada]

Car dependence does suck though, and shouldn't be the default

[@Kiwi2703]

I agree. I wanna build a nice city, not have a political-economic existential crisis. I have enough of that in real life.

[@RuukuLada]

@@Kiwi2703 Regardless of whether there's a political system in the game, the lack of bike/pedestrian street options in this game is embarrassing, and mods struggle to get it right. These street types should at least exist.

[@rahulsujan3699]

While I agree that it’s just a game and that it would difficult to build what he is describing, I completely agree with chapter 3 of this video. The lack of mixed use zoning, walkable neighbourhood and mid density building makes this game quite unappealing to me as a non-American. You can’t really build unique European style cities or plan for walkability and sustainability in this game. It just prioritises car-oriented development. Developers of this game could at least implement these and incentivise these things, it’s kinda crazy how they’re actually de-incentivised like from the example he gave with putting commercial shops next to houses.

[@SpudsCS]

Intresting vid, some very good points but if they implemented all off that it'd would become super hard and slow to play, theres a lot you can do with mods to adress some of the issues like parking & mixed use zoneing. For me personaly as a player I want all the power I dont want peskey cims telling me no I can't put this or that where I want, but it would be nice to have that in a hard mode or toggleable where you have to deal with the ocasional protest like the disasters dlc. The thing id most like to see is an overhaul of the weather systems to have seasons.

[@illinest]

I really appreciate this type of discussion. I really think you need to appreciate this game for what it is rather than hyperfocus on what it's not. Some of the fixes that you want would hurt my enjoyment. I don't want to have realistic costs of redeveloping. I don't want more realistic road maintenance costs. I don't want to spend all my time building parking lots. As an electrician I'm capable of conceptualizing a more interesting method of gamifying the electric grid, but just because it's something that could be interesting to me that doesn't make it appropriate for a game. You seem to be more simulation-motivated than I am. I see the game as an infrastructure traffic simulator with detailing, and the main thing I want more of is more detailing. All of your simulation concerns - especially if carelessly implemented - have the potential to reduce the fun of detailing. The last thing I want to have to deal with when I'm attempting to beautify an office district is the political ramifications.

[@andrewtucker94]

The problem is that all you can make are horrendous American auto dystopias, which we should all be trying to move away from for multiple reasons.

[@hi_im_sota]

Hit the nail on the head!

[@Xenro66]

16:00 I was actually thinking about this recently... I live in Europe, so I just assumed walkability is just.... The norm. NotJustBikes opened my eyes to how car-dependent the US is with the multi-lane "stroads" that are death traps for pedestrians and push everything far apart, and encourage urban sprawl. I even looked at my long term CS save that I've had for aaaages, and it's... Just full of stroads and while there's loads of quality public transit, it's still all connected via roads, primarily. *There are no areas of my city that can't live without a car,* and that's wild. You joke about the walkability challenge, but before this vid was even recommended I wanted to try it. My dreams are shattered lol

[@jarskil8862]

I hate when people use "Europe" as some homogenic place where everything is perfect 😅 I'm also from Europe, but in my country it would be almost impossible to be without a car, if you planned to leave either of two big cities. Where I live nearby towns are 100km away and buses might go once a day and not on weekends. And on national scale, I'm living in medium size town. So for smaller towns and villages the situation is worse.

[@vacationbonerschool]

@@jarskil8862 Are there not trains? I’m in the UK and you can get pretty much anywhere with a combination of buses and trains, but we are a very small country compared to others so it’s different

[@adhdegrees]

New game name “Political gridlock the simulator”

[@osets2117]

Or just "boring"

[@cooldude2251]

Hey can I build this 10 meter connection ? Its not displacing anyone and it would help improve traffic. *3 in game years later "No"

[@agrofindastation]

Yeah, the game Pres wants would be played by pretty much nobody. Well, maybe a few self righteous people for a minute, but then they'd quit because it would suck so hard.

[@kaiserteddie9564]

maybe instead of cities skylines having that, or that being put on a sequel, maybe there should be an entirely new citybuilder based on those concepts. liking it or not, cities skylines is a game made for mass apeal, a lot of these ideas would be either too complicated to code in or balance or too complex for the average player. maybe a more scalled down city builder would be better to demostrate those and more concepts.

[@aaronsutter1155]

There is city state 2 which actually came out a couple weeks ago. It’s a city builder game that is definitely more political based than cities skylines. It gives you different political decisions and laws to pass and even keeps track of your political leaning throughout the game.

[@kaiserteddie9564]

@@aaronsutter1155 its more about politics in general rather than municipal politics though, it also doesnt simulate parking and walkability

[@aaronsutter1155]

@@kaiserteddie9564 yeah that’s fair

[@kaiserteddie9564]

@@aaronsutter1155 looks like a really good game though, its a shame that my pc sucks

[@aaronsutter1155]

@@kaiserteddie9564 I don’t have a pc so unfortunately I have to settle for watching people play. I wish it was on PlayStation

[@undercoverduck]

While watching this on my little phone screen I thought I was looking at drone footage rather than a videogame right until the moment I noticed how the cars moved

[@theknightstar8640]

The whole community and seeing the effects of your decisions really reminded me of another city development game called frostpunk. In that game each and every decision will have effects on people, and people will often bring up their problems. If you want a more down to earth human based city sim I highly reccomend it, though the game is definitely a brutal one so prepare to have a lot of tough learning

[@safe-keeper1042]

*Not Just Bikes has entered the chat.

[@TylerNeflas]

To your point about infrastructure removal, I think implementing something like Mini motorways does where the segments remain until all trips have completed is the way to go. Great video tho! And I really hope CS2 takes to heart a lot of modern city planning philosophy.

[@tbrown5657]

From the sounds of it, this game strays quite a ways from the strict definition of simulation and towards straight wish fulfilment, where the only wishes you get to fulfil are Robert Moses'.

[@jeffparker1617]

not really, you can absolutely focus your city on public transport, walking paths, bicycle lanes. At some point because sims and goods import/export from out of town either by train or car, you will need to have a connection to a freeway for some goods to leave the map.

[@blindovermatter3054]

As a blind guy, I just wanted to say thank you for highlighting the fact that accessibility and disability are something that aren’t covered in the game, I think it would be really neat to actually be a feature that is worked on by paradox in collaboration with people with disabilities to talk about some features, policies, and that sort of thing, well said and keep up the great work

[@edwardkeirle4453]

The great thing about cities is that it doesn't require any in-depth knowledge of city planning to have fun. It's pick up and play. If you're bored of the current format of cities (which I wouldn't blame you for, considering the number of hours you've put in) then find something else that piques your interest

[@Jacob-yg7lz]

Why should city planning be considered less important than traffic engineering? You pretty much need to learn traffic engineering for this game otherwise your city will die when it gets too big,

[@3dmaster205]

@@Jacob-yg7lz Hell, that is the case in real life; a city stands and falls with proper road and traffic management, everything you want to do or see; traffic management. It's why most North American cities are insolvent, and most European cities aren't. Car dependent hellscapes are bad in pretty much every metric you can think of.

[@warmike]

the problem is that there is no such game yet

[@Sasujerk]

That game doesn't exist

[@wildcraftone]

I’d love to see a game where you do “planning” and it builds it over time. Not instantly. So you have to do some very serious planning and sometimes your plan can’t go through in certain areas due to resistance or what have you.

[@alohatigers1199]

But is that the game want to play? From a casual FUN game to a more strategic management game. This is why I prefer to play FIFA > FM. I want to PLAY and control, not manage

[@charlesnew5834]

​@@alohatigers1199 I get what you mean but I think C:S's target demographic mostly leans towards the kinds of people that play FM or other management/strategy games. Right now it doesn't seem to be doing as much as it can in that area.

[@wildcraftone]

The point is I don’t want to play another City Skylines, I want to play a city building simulator with more dynamics you have to account for building.

[@eltontv2]

@@charlesnew5834 Not true at all. Where did you get that statistic?

[@anniehimself]

Fuck yeah

[@canorth]

Glad to see this. I wanted to build a European style city of my dreams and quit even playing before I understood the mechanics enough to explain why it was impossible.

[@andrewtucker94]

Exactly, the only cities you can build would be horrendous to live in, like Houston or something.

[@tcniatcniatcnia]

I watched this video when it first came out and now I'm watching it again after Zoe Bee recommended watching it in their latest video. Miss your content, hope you're doing ok

[@Nerthus2010]

I want to play a game with cities skyline. Not have something that is only for someone who has studied city planing and wants a simulation to try different things out. If city planning need a simulation to try out reality, ok, what about developing such a program?

[@arthurdemelosa]

Have you guys played Frostpunk? That's a scaled down city builder, but heavily based on political decisions. E.g.: should children work on mining coal to increase production, since we will be having a storm in two days and need that extra coal stored? Obviously, cities in Frostpunk are comparatively small, and the game's atmosphere is murky. But it shows that it's possible for a city builder to address the political issues of... Building a city.

[@brytonheringer2611]

I love Frostpunk! The way the game mechanizes how one decision effects whether you are the mayor or not. Also, the fact that you choose which way you want your society to progress to is a great feature. However, Frostpunk is a post-apocalyptic game. The world has basically gone extinct, except for a few humans. The games aren’t the same. In my experience, the most people you can have in a Frostpunk city is around 600, while in Cities Skylines, it’s around a hundred thousand (with no mods). I hope that Cities Skylines could make an ability to create a game like Frostpunk, except not a post apocalyptic, but a in depth game of the now

[@AY-hq4qz]

Great game by 11 Bit Studios. I also really enjoyed their This War of Mine game which was a totally different spin on what a game about war could be like from the civilian’s perspective. Leave it up to those French developers…

[@nattdx846]

literally half the things he just mentioned is in transport fever 2 and i use to play cities skylines and i always felt like something was missing and when i played transport fever 2 i was able to scratch that itch of what was missing in cities skylines

[@sergiofreitas9368]

Something I never got about my city is: I made it walkable, I made the public transport excellent, and I reduced parking spots, but cims STILL prefer cars. Rather than going downstairs to a shop, they'd rather drive (or take a train) across the city to go to another random shop. That's the main issue to me, Cims need to have an "assigned place to live", and they should prefer jobs and shopping closer to their house, rather than driving across the city for no reason.

[@dredmondo]

I think want you want is a hardcore realism mode. This is for the experienced player that has played the game and wants a new challenge. I've been playing for around 2 years and I'm still learning about the game and traffic and that's fun for me. I think if I had put in planning for every highway or rail project and wait for planning to pass I'd get frustrated.

[@roqsteady5290]

I like the challenge of managing car parking and car parks give much more life to your cities and indicate where Cims want to be. Traffic manager (TMPE) has a realistic parking setting and the ability to stop traffic from despawning. That is good start already!

[@RaccoonRepublic]

I've also spent most of my time in Skylines with the game heavily modded to disable the simulation. My observations of what is lacking: - Individual agents don't work when the day/night cycle is not in real time. If a "day" lasts all of five or ten minutes, but cars drive in something equivalent to real time, it creates an unrealistic environment of perpetual traffic jams. Even cities with bad traffic have their quiet times. If Skylines implemented something more like a real time day/night cycle so that the "rush hour" cycle wasn't so condensed, that might be helpful. Farms produce so much industry traffic it looks like something equivalent to everyone leaving a ball game at the same time. The unrealistic aspects of the traffic generation make it hard to not view the game as a traffic management sim instead of a city manager. - The design of the buildings themselves is unrealistic. Traditional styles of buildings seem to always take the backseat in Skylines in favor of a style which is unique to the game. But it's not realistic. Little "skyscrapers" and houses that don't fit in with anything you'd see in a typical neighborhood break the sense of immersion - and when you get to extremely high density areas, the game also falls short of generating impressive super tall skyscrapers, too. None of the Vanilla buildings feel special, and so growth doesn't feel special. It all feels generic. The SimCity franchise did a much better job of designing buildings that looked ordinary as what you would expect to see in a real town, and epic in the sense of being exciting. SC2K Arcologies, SC3K Skyscrapers, even SimCity 5's buildings looked really nice (though the rest of the game fell far short.) - The never-ending increase in demand. Zone more residential, you get more Commercial & Industrial Demand. Zone more Commercial & Industrial, you get more Residential Demand. All of the above generates more services demand. So it is very difficult to just design a small community and not fall into the repetitious cycle of just madly plopping down more of whatever the game says you need more of. It makes you chase the goal of meeting never-ending demand until you get bogged down in traffic and then it becomes a traffic management puzzle. A real city is just as much about staying small as it is about expansion - and that is lost on Skylines because it trains you to chase sprawl. - The lack of stories. I wish there was something more Macro, kind of like SimCity, but more Micro - more like a colony builder, but not as granular - Maybe something akin to a more polished, finished version of what SimCity 5 initially aspired to be. Something that makes you feel a sense of connection to the story of the people who live in your town, but not so granular as "The Sims" where you are telling them when to go to the bathroom. Something that isn't a traffic management sim, and also not a supply chain management sim. More of a social community sim on a grand scale. Maybe that's too much to ask. In the mean while, I think there's a lot of fun we leave on the table when we don't use our imagination. Sometimes you just have to come up with those stories yourself - and despite its shortfalls, Skylines is probably still one of the best options for doing that.

[@Not-tomorrow]

Such a great video! Thank you for making this! Would love to play the game you're describing.

[@madao7865]

An idea would be to extend the level-up/level-down mechanics of campuses to city districts in general.

[@edwardmiessner6502]

Like residential districts should level up from single family residential to skyscraper apartments over a series of steps, not remain singles until you rezone to high density and half the homes become tall apartment houses or skycraper condos and the other half become abandoned and disappear for a bit.

[@madao7865]

@@edwardmiessner6502 I thought more of something like leveling up based on citizen happiness and their expectations. If yo build a huge apartment or office building in the middle of a low-rise residential neigbourhood (or allow it through your zoning codes) the current residents will not be too pleased with that. The tax income might increase but the neighborhood level as a whole may drop (regardless of the fact, that the service coverage is the same or better). On the other hand, if the player densifies the district center over time with an organic growth pattern, noone would really mid and the district could level up due to the added jobs and shopping opportunities.

[@Solus749]

@@madao7865 and how do you plan to code or simulate that? How would the quest tracker work and what would trigger x quest to be enabled etc. Understand that there are limitations in what you can code and how you code it. There is a reason pen and paper dungeons and dragons with a human dm have diffrent flair and reactivity than the one done in a computer simulation. The computer one can't invent new options out of thin air as it all have to be precoded and predicted and in a pen and paper setting that is HARD! Same thing with political simulation in a city builder, in a politcal simulator that is built around it however it is very possible.

[@madao7865]

@@Solus749 It's less about coding and more about game design. The idea is to incentivize and disincentivize certain behaviors and introducing interesting trade-off mechanics. What exactly those behaviors are is yet to be determined but the points in the video are a good starting point, imo.

[@Solus749]

@@madao7865 yea but still you need to be able to smoothly implement them within the general gameplay loop without them becoming intrusive. THAT is much harder than it seems and is one of the main reason why neither sim city or city skylines have large parking lot assets. Instead they either have roadside parking or the car just despawn. Because that DOESN'T break the gameplayloop. Political simulators have these simulations built in but they don't simulate 400 simultaniusly moving cars, trash disposial in EVERY house etc at the same time. Like I said there is a limit then it becomes more of a hazzle than it is worth to add that extra simulation and th ebest part is that both these simulations need to cross pollinate at the same time as the game tracks movement of 100 if not thousends of individual sims journey to and from work as well as shops/school etc. So it need to check this politcal mood while tracking location and current task they are on. There is a limit and these suggestions are very fast approaching it if not allready crossed it. There are politcal simulators where you just set policies and your sims react but they don't exist in a full on developed city builder.

[@Ilikefire2793]

I want a transport fever style train/ subways planing system . I want complex train interchanges underground, rail yard simulations, airport zoning and planning, better and more complex industrial that don't require and create lots of truck traffic.

[@AY-hq4qz]

And traffic and transit pollution which Transport Fever also delivers on.

[@warmike]

Workers & Resources: Soviet Republic. Early access (so there are a lot of unrealistic elements for now), no subways yet (announced for the next update), but there is a very complex industry, trains and airport systems. You can either give it a try right now, or wait for more updates, they're pretty frequent.

[@furrydreamer4443]

I unironically play Cities Skylines as a corporate town dystopia sort of game. The player represents a ruling power, people in the city are rightsless workers who's happyness is considered as a metric to be factored to encourage growth and profit, ultimately without any say in regards to their community or municipality because the entirety of the city is in fact private property. If you live in the city, the city owns you. Your only means of 'voting' is moving out, which is also your only recourse during 'urban renewal', and is only effective if it happens en-masse without sufficient replacements shipping themselves in. The people voice their concerns through chirpr, which is only regarded at 'head office's' whim and leisure. With all that being said, I think a cool addition would be a 'riot' disaster type, and have riots triggered by a variety of things. Players going a police state direction can up their police budgets and coverage, players going a more political route can focus on appeasements or taking care not to trigger it.

[@KHarling]

Where would one be without such personal presentations. While I may or may not agree with the ideas or concepts, opinions put forward, I can admire the time, effort, passion and personality that clearly shines through. I enjoyed the journey immensely. Thanks it was brilliant.

[@youatemycheeto]

Awesome video. I really appreciate the chapter about parking. The simulation includes all the fun of roadbuilding with none of the costs and frustration of providing parking for cars your sims are apparently using to get around.

[@oxain88]

Well maybe thats why they didn't include it. They wanted to make a game that is fun, not frustrating. Like you said, road building is fun. So if you wanna build a city using nothing but roads, you'll get punished because 1/3 of your city is now parking. But I do agree to the point that you should be able to build a city without roads. But dont punish players that has the road fetish. I can watch hours of Overcharged Egg build a massive intersection, or Biffa fixing traffic with mods. With the displacement and massive cost increase suggested in the video, people would have to turn on infinite money, for every city build, if they wanna build something cool. Or spend three years irl building up the money to make 20km of highway.

[@KubicaMr]

@@oxain88 maybe just parking needs as another thing to compute and eat computer recources and CS has limited engine that can simulate only 65K for people and 16K for moving vehicles at once, so adding parking needs is another level to compute.

[@Critical_Hit]

Good video, reminds me how much I miss Donoteat's Cities Skylines videos. Well he is too busy now with the podcast I guess.

[@pablofmc]

Great video, man, i come here from NotJustBikes and i didnt even play c:s, but im a software dev and i loved all the aspects that one takes for granted when you're so focused on a main goal

[@NoName-ex9pl]

yes that’s so true especially the car-dependency aspect is annoying. You can, throughout DLCs like Mass Transit or Plazas and Promanades reduce that but the simulation isn’t changed by them. Nice Video

[@BeastModeTempo]

Welcome back Pres, great to see more content again! I love CS, and I love the way you play CS with realism and discussing urban planning topics, strategies, and historical prevalence to how cities get to where they are. Agreed in that the main metrics and objective of CS at the current state are unrealistic and all about quick and senseless (usually ugly and exaggerated) expansion. Add on the horribly cheesy Vanilla buildings (green cities buildings are better but, but I've yet to see a city where buildings are essentially covered in grass, thus making them.. sustainable?) and poor simulation mechanics make it so that mods and essentially turning off the games core aspects outside of being a sandbox feels essential to me. I can totally appreciate all the desires you mentioned for the game, and hope we see something that does take more into account in the future, but I would want all of this optional depending on how I'm wanting to play that given time/city. I think mixed-use buildings are a great first step towards realism since practically every place I've been to that's urban or non-suburban is mostly made of these. Think of pretty much any European City or US city, and smaller towns... the core is nothing but mixed use and duplex/2-5 story buildings until you reach the outskirts/suburbs.

[@another131]

In Hardcore Mode NIMBY's stop every transit and high density project

[@Gamesational1]

I agree with all of the points presented in the video. City Skylines does not pay attention to the walkability of cities. It does not pay attention to parking within those cities and disregards the politics of demolishing neighborhoods and displacing people. Many improvements are required in order for this simulation to be remotely realistic.

[@lucashm302]

People keep saying that 'it's just a game' but lots of stuff that you mentioned would make it even more fun to play as a game. I hope they take some of it into consideration if they make a sequel and continue to add it through the form of DLC like P&P in the meantime.

[@joeconner7490]

I have some things to say that I want you to read Chapter 1: It sounds very American-centric, as in its an issue very important to your country but to me and others abroad, we never really had to worry about those specific issues. I have always found your videos informative and relevant to the US. However, as someone from Australia, it's hard to relate as we haven't screwed up our cities in the same way as yours. There are other ways apart from the American way to destroy cities. I do agree with the lack of demolition and land acquisition costs as they are extremely relevant. Chapter 2: I agree with you but remember it's just a game. Again, different cities around the world have very different government structures, I don't think it would be fair to just include an American-style planning department, (as it I defiantly not the best). Chapter 3: Pretty spot on 99% correct. The lack of mixed-use and medium-density zoning is killing me. I have very extensive urban planning knowledge and I see where you are coming from. But, it's just a game. And I feel like honestly the game was created mainly for people with the freeway fetish and that is partially why it's so popular, people have really turned freeway building into a form of art. Overall, many of these issues are currently being addressed with mods or the imagination of the player. But the game is due for an upgrade. The reason the game is so popular is not because of how realistic or unrealistic it is. Ist because everyone has a choice on what playing style they want to do with not many limitations. If the game becomes too realistic then it won't be fun or popular as people want to use it as an escape where they can build their perfect utopia, carefree. I want and agree with most of the things you are suggensting, but this game can barely run on standard computers currently because it just requires so much ram and CPU power and other stuff. City Planner Plays did a super amazing video on his wishlist for the future of the game which was very good. I would love a response please very much as I am a big fan and would like to see everyone's point of view

[@Doddibot]

I agree that it will be very hard to simulate politics in a game, because which politics? The politics of building cities varies substantially from Singapore to Dubai to Madrid to Toronto. Aside from doing all of them and giving the option for which to enable on your city, I don't know how you'd make it realistic without making it just be overly American.

[@DomovoiCookie]

Out of curiosity, whereabouts in Australia are you? I live on the west coast in Perth and it's very Americanised here - huge distances to cover, a stretched-thin bus system that nobody uses if they can avoid it as it can take two hours to travel across town, a train network that services the areas it reaches well but doesn't go everywhere it needs to (and also shuts off at night, leaving nightlifers to sleep on the street if they miss a train and can't afford an Uber), freeways cutting through suburban neighbourhoods that back up horribly at rush hour, and poorly designed collector roads with no bus lanes that are often lined with houses, traffic lights every second block, borderline restrictive speed limits that no-one follows anyway ... Driving here is miserable at best and dangerous at worst, and for many people there's no better option :/

[@kymourdarkmyth799]

When people bring ideas to games, they tend not to elaborate on how such "things" can be implemented in said game. The game was developed by a small team that had a passion for city-builders and wanted to take a shot at it, they had no intention of dethroning SimCity. It is not optimized in a way to make it realistic, it was designed for fun. Now thousands of modders have tried to make it more realistic, but with these mods, the game becomes more unstable. I know people who went from 8 gig ram to 64 gigs just to play this game with as many mods and assets as they can to make it as real as they can. But the game wasn't designed for this... you need to build a new game from the ground up, and that costs money. Even Colossal Order has become very famous for this game, it still has to justify the cost of a new game, especially when modding seems to have replaced updates. Hell, the trees when they first came out are the same as the ones currently in-game despite modders making more trees, better-looking trees, and more efficient for the simulation. Maps are the same way, the original maps are considered horrible when compared to creators like Ecania, MRMiyagi, and SIdai. Yets even those these assets are better in almost every way, instead of learning from these modders, they continue on the already implemented path. Don't forget Crime has never been implemented in any way compared to Simcity or Cities XL. Now I am not saying your ideas are wrong, I agree with you that it would be a more engrossing game. Unfortunately, I don't see how it can be implemented in this game in this state. to fudge a quote from a movie, " its not the game we wanted, but it is the game we needed".

[@Jacob-yg7lz]

A simple trick that could impliment 90% of what he's asking for is to make districts work like industrial zones. Have a lot of local needs be done within them, and make them be rated, or even have certain stats, based on their content. We already have district-wide regulations too.

[@TheSpiffyNeoStar]

A few months back I wanted to boot up city skylines and build an all bike, all pedestrian city in city skylines and got sad when I couldn't. This video is great at pointing out the problems with that.

[@NerdyNanaSimulations]

In a way I want to say yes we need some of this. On the other hand I don't want it to be so realistic that I'm not getting a break from real life. This is an amazing video and I do think it needs more realism at least in the communities and residents. I just also want it to remain a game when it's ok to be unrealistic too. So while I think this would be great, some of the more too real situations should have an off button. Thanks for making me think more about how to build better. Blessings.

[@rldash]

This video has a few points…it’s still a sim GAME though…I’m not trying to think about homelessness and the nitty gritty details of city planning just to play CS. I actually play this game to relax…I find joy in the building of the city…who wants to this about what a HOA is thinking while playing the game? I don’t think every SIM has to be an exact replica of the real world and all the drama it entails…

[@devvydoesstuff]

25:46 Natural disasters dlc : am i joke to you?

[@Njord-80085]

Upgrading "from 2 to 4 to 6 lane roads" just ends up with my Cims making a long line while leaving the neighboring lanes empty. 😂 Great video, lots of valid points.

[@Jameilyara]

Cities was my introduction to city builders and colony sims so I'm very grateful for this game- it's still very much my timeless fav, but I've found myself playing it less and less and this video actually accurately sums up why.

[@fullyawakened]

NO ONE WANTS TO PLAY LIKE THIS

[@robmarney]

Just make demolition cost scale with the level of the building you're replacing and the number of squares demolished this week. Now it feels like the neighborhood is resisting massive changes, and you didn't have to add an entire game system.

[@Seriously_Unserious]

I'll add my 2 cents regarding your 6 solutions 1- Walkability and Livability - There is SOME of this in the form of parks improving happiness and Cims will gladly leave their cars at home and walk if they at all can, but the simulation could definitely do so much more and make this aspect much more prominent then it is. The fact you didn't notice the parks effect in this video says a lot about how easy to miss and ignore the current "livability" simulation is. 2- Mixed Use Zoning - not all all in Vanilla, but can be added with mods and assets. It's very challenging for your casual player to access however and I've not bothered with the mixed use assets and mods. This should be in the basic game or at least a DLC. 3- I think there is an option you can activate to turn car crashes on, but I'm not 100% sure as I've never used it, just seen it. It's buried in the settings and I doubt 99% of the CS players out there have even seen this setting. I attribute this to piss poor documentation to explain what the settings are, where they are, and how they affect gameplay, stuff that in the old days, would have been in an instruction manual, but is just left for "the players to figure out on their own" by lazy, cheap developers today. 4- I agree to a point. In Sim City from the original up to 4, infrastructure VS tax revenue was way too far the other way to the point it would become almost impossible to maintain a positive cashflow for larger cities, effectively capping growth and soft locking the more advanced infrastructure options as there was never any way to afford them. CS, however, went too far the other way, making maintaining a profitable city capable of growth too easy. There has to be a happy middle ground where infrastructure costs enough to be a challenge, but not so much that it becomes impossible to grow past a certain point. 5- Not in Vanilla, but is available through the mod Traffic Manager: President's Edition (TMPE). It's disabled by default, but in the TMPE settings, you can enable "advanced parking AI" which means all Cims who travel somewhere by car, must now find a parking space or they can't finish their trip. No more "pocket cars" with this turned on. This should be in the main game however, in fact all of TMPE should be in the vanilla game. 6- This is already in the game. Check your pollution overlays in a big city with lots of car traffic and you'll see lines of pollution along the major roads, in addition to your blobs of industrial and city services pollution (eg power plants, waste processing, etc). 7- Effects of Climate Change - some vestiges of this is added in via Natural Disasters DLC, but more attention to pollution could have been added in via this DLC too, something of a missed opportunity for Colossal Order here.

[@somsnosa.]

this video is amazing. im so glad that this exists and im really happy that you made it and im now in love with you and your channel this video is exactly what i was looking for. ive always loved cities and urban planning but i was never a part of the cities skylines community so whenever i saw anything about the game all i could think about were all the issues with it that just kept me from enjoying the game. thank you~!!

[@jackleonard2240]

Great video. I practically have no interest in urban planning, I play C:S occasionally casually as something fun. I think though, you hit the nail on the head about simulations in general with your first point. even though a video game may have a “historical mode” or something, a video game simulation is always going to be apriori precluded from simulating actual historicity as the player does not live in the system they develop, and their form of understanding does not evolve along side the general populace’s. That being said adding a historical mode would be great, even if I’m always a bit skeptical of political simulations in videogames. I remember liking the advisor mechanic in sim city 3000 and in simcity DS, not because it was realistic - I found it to be very goofy- but instead just because it added depth to the gameplay. You are totally right that communities are very complex things and you touched on that a little when you were talking about how pedestrians sometimes optimize aesthetics on their walk than the fastest way to point a and point b. Wow. I didn’t not realize that about parking lots. Great video

[@sammyimbega5761]

Its a game, an escape for us to create what you want and how you want it to be. I respect your opinion but I love the way the game is

[@INTCUWUSIUA]

What the game allows me to create isn't what I want to create. It's a game that forc s me to create what I consider hell

[@cakeisyummy5755]

Maybe there should be more than 1 City Simulator. That's just my take on this.

[@SimonS44]

As a European, I like Cities Skylines as a quirky fantasy city building game, but it's very annoying that I can't built cities that look like the one I live in

[@bxlbjorn]

A couple of things I do agree with: historic architecture through time, making destruction harder ect... But it also has to remain fun to play.

[@mrslagowhoreusrex6300]

Car crashes would be too morbid & would probably make the game a higher pg

[@Thehoeh]

All of these things are great points, but the option of being able to turn on (or off) a historical mode or a simulation mode would be nice for people who don't want to go that far into socioeconomic consequences and impacts

[@kaileebailee23]

Amazing video! Whenever/if Cities Skylines 2 comes out, I'd love to some of these things implemented!!! I think there are somethings where I'm glad that I can just be creative and I don't have to worry about certain things but this could be solved through all sorts of options!

[@Seroth88]

Great video! I have been playing games like SimCity and Cities Skylines for large parts of my life, that has encouraged me to quit my job and to start study. And in about 1 year I'll have a masters degree In sustainable urban management and can start planning in real life.

[@andrewcitylife]

You summarized really well the core of this games' problem. My biggest problem is: there is no reason to build a realistic city, because the game - without or even if with the mods - penalized the realistic city planing.

[@safe-keeper1042]

Agree on most of your points, except I dislike actually having advisors. Both in city management games and in Civ3 they just felt... almost patronizing, and certainly not human. Same reason people disliked the paper clip in Word, really, people tend to not really like their computer trying to get personal with them. What I would want is the system they use in the Paradox games (Hearts of Iron, Crusader Kings, etc.), where you see a row of icons along the top of the screen informing you of things that need your attention. Alerts can be things from idling factories, new techs you can research, another country justifying a war against you, etc. Left-clicking an icon takes you to the relevant screen or location, right-clicking just dismisses the alert. This would work so much better than Chirpy and also feel a lot more interactive. I do think CS needs more politics, though, at the very least as an option. Remember, a large part of the draw of CS is that it's this "chill game" where you can just relax and build a city. There should be some actual consequences for your actions and failures in 2, but nothing that turns it into a simulator.

[@HavenarcBlogspotJcK]

Thats why i love advisors in sim city 4. They dont give you patronizing tender advices, they berate and insult you while also telling other advisors to go eff themselves.

[@robdin81]

You make many good points and I agree with all of them. To me the ones that I notice the most is parking, lack of safe streets and roads being an influence and the scale is often not right. With the scale I mean things that for instance the cost of roads, parking but also that it is too easy to create landscapes with huge height differences. There should be a difference in how much the height increase or decreases when manipulating soil in mountains or when in flat lands

[@TimBorg]

I totally agree with you seems like some of these features are coming with the next version 2 CS

[@Doddibot]

Ssome of the aspects of the game make it much easier on the player to create walkable and transit-oriented cities than it would be IRL. - Cims are prepared to walk for a very long distance to get places, regardless of weather, topography or the safety of the roads. This makes it much easier to create a city where walking is the dominant transport mode. - Biking is preferred over driving by most cims, and the use of 'Encourage Biking' policy makes it preferred by all cims. It's not that easy to switch people to biking IRL! - Cheap infrastructure makes it as easy to overbuild transit networks as it is to overbuild highways. It's just not that easy to supply everybody with quality transit IRL - Lack of political opposition and parking simulation in the game also means nobody complains when you remove the on-street parking to add in a bike lane or bus stop. Nor is there a big oil company spreading disinformation about the negative consequences of the planned transit network.

[@safe-keeper1042]

Particularly agree with you about traffic, road use, and so on. Merely removing the ability for cims to spawn cars out of nothing, for then to just vanish them again, would make the game so much more enjoyable. Yes, I say enjoyable, because it'd encourage you to play with more parts of the game, primarily collective transportation.

[@Zyo117]

Huh. You know the connotation of the term "collective transport" and "public transport" seem different from a North American viewpoint. Politically, if you campaigned for 'more money towards collective transport', I feel like you'd get more supporters than saying 'more money to public transport'.

[@safe-keeper1042]

@@Zyo117 Hmm. I think I just translated a bit too dirtectly from my native Norwegian. I meant to say public transportation :p . But yeah, maybe :p.

[@edwardmiessner6502]

There is an option for Despawning Off, but no idea about spawning within the map. I think with Despawning Off, spawning should automatically be switched off too. No cars magically appearing at the vanilla metro stops.

[@edwardmiessner6502]

@@Zyo117 no, in North America, especially here in the USA, "collective" would be even worse because that word connotes Communism! 😒

[@dogameda]

TMPE does correct it if you allow the "realistic parking" on the opitions. It also helps to eliminate that non-sense bizarre traffic that occurs in front of metro stations and the aeroport when hundreds of people try to take their cars out of their pockets

[@Dave_Albright]

I wish a 1850 - 2050 mode. It would be cool to found a city in 1850 (or a year of your wish) and play it through YOUR Story of YOUR city. In 1800 the "traffic" is only with horses and horses with carriage. You can build your first train track with a old 4-4-0 Locomotive. With the passage of time, houses are modernized. From wood, bricks, steel to glass facades. Sheriffs become obsolete and a police force is formed. Cars will change from round old-fashioned 40's cars to 70's boxy cars to modern vehicles with xenon lights in 2020. You will see a Titanic in 1912. From 1930 the first planes appear and you can build a small airport. And then you will have problems to integrate modern huge highways, airports, skyscrapers and wide traintracks into a already build functional city from 1800s This is not only building a city. It's building a story. No game dares to do that 😞 Yea i know of Transport Fever 2 or Transport Giant from 2004 with a history gameplay. But their focus is not building a city

[@dmitryburlakov6920]

While I find this topic very interesting and like that someone brought it up I probably want to say I disagree with you. It’s a city building _game_, and obviously it’s encourages you to try all your ideas and make a decision of your own. Not everyone who starts game knows everything about bureaucracy of city planning, and it would be a big struggle. Simulating history would be near impossible technical task, and different timeframes would increase complexity heavily, while average player won’t be playing long enough to feel the impact of time. I’m personally starting new cities over couple of months even if I’m quite satisfied. What my list would be for C:S is the following (partially similar to some of your points): 1. Dynamic road layout editor. I.e. you reserve 6m wide road, where you can decide how many lines you want for every side, pedestrian zone design and road decisions (like an elevated crossings gives lower car speed but makes pedestrian safer and quicker) 2. Road safety. This partially overlays highway fetish you were talking about, since it will discourage players from building highways in cities. Actual citizens dying or needing healthcare because of bad planning of speed limits and intersections. It would be actually fun to manage too. It’s still numbers and it don’t have to get you a feeling you’re killing people. It’s a game. 3. Obviously, mixed zone usage. Maybe even customisable with procedural building generation / wave function collapse systems, like you reserve 20% for commercial and two floors built like commercial. 4. Height redesign. The heights in game are broken. Roads look messy, buildings even worse. They’re inconsistent, terrain grid (is it called NURBS?) is big and very noisy especially in vanilla maps. 5. Population and simulation rebalance. While increasing population may affect performance, the amount of people active in city feels accurate. But due to simulation issues (like driving to another city edge for groceries), it’s overwhelming even on low quantities. My guess here is more inactive citizens with little personal preferences, that are active in different time. With car despawning disabled, this would make transportation system more realistic and fun. 6. Finally, grid rebalance. 4x4 is a bit too little. I understand that more assets quickly will make your PC fry, but a some kind of pieces or structural blocks with wave collapse (see: Townscaper, Bad North) maybe will make city look really nice while keeping memory usage low. Obviously, it’s a very complicated task for both programmers and especially artists. But longer, wider, higher, free shaped, automatically generated houses with controllable usage of commercial and residential seems such a good shot to change the game in a better way. Current asset system only works good for suburbia, but cities are dull.