Cities: Skylines

[EyeKhan]

I have created myself a delightful mess of a traffic problem in my second city; I think I may abandon it in favor of starting over with a third using what I have learned now about the way the game lets traffic flow.

I found that as long as you don't make (many) intersections, your traffic problems stay light - long parallel lines of 4 lane roads that have a single cross street at 1 end and no traffic problems. I made a number of areas that are huge 6 lane 1-way loops with some smaller roads criss-crossing and no traffic problems there either. I've also put together areas with just traffic circles connected in 4x4 or 6x6 grids - did get some traffic issues after a while there though. At first I hesitated to do this sort of thing because it's inefficient with the city services buildings - Simcity 4 thinking here - but those buildings are way cheaper to build and maintain than they were in Simcity. Overall I'm finding the game a little too easy.

[Timbuk2]

Aye - it's been generally noted that there is no financial challenge here; money is never an issue regardless of what you do.

The challenges seem to lie in managing traffic flow, goods flow and flow of services (which in turn is efficient if traffic flows well).

Your approach seems right for traffic flow Choobies; large roads and one-way systems.

Am now starting my 3rd city. The last one I made I got fed up with cargo depots and cargo track layout mis-management - trains getting stuck in congestion everywhere. Am still trying to figure out the best way for cargo trains to operate. Had my depots in a loop, with a single connection to the outside world. Didn't seem to work very well

I've also read that it's a good idea to have depots in your commercial zones, linked to industrial, so that goods can ship between the two. Will try that next.

Got passenger trains sussed at least.

[EyeKhan]

Aye - it's been generally noted that there is no financial challenge here; money is never an issue regardless of what you do.

The challenges seem to lie in managing traffic flow, goods flow and flow of services (which in turn is efficient if traffic flows well).

Your approach seems right for traffic flow Choobies; large roads and one-way systems.

Am now starting my 3rd city. The last one I made I got fed up with cargo depots and cargo track layout mis-management - trains getting stuck in congestion everywhere. Am still trying to figure out the best way for cargo trains to operate. Had my depots in a loop, with a single connection to the outside world. Didn't seem to work very well

I've also read that it's a good idea to have depots in your commercial zones, linked to industrial, so that goods can ship between the two. Will try that next.

Got passenger trains sussed at least.

Corpse disposal is a neat little task that Simcity never bothered with, lol. I gave up on cemeteries right away and now every neighborhood gets a crematorium. Did the same thing with trash - dump the landfills and build incinerators. I think they could probably combine the two functions into one...

Haven't found any policies I would want to implement in a single district vs. the entire city. Have you found any useful specialization with the district functionality?

[Wraith]

I heard a rumor about "pretty good mods" out there. Start talking, Timbuk, or I send out the pictures.

[Ominous Gamer]

http://steamcommunity.com/app/255710/workshop/

Only 2 I've heard about so far, Los Santos http://steamcommunity.com//sharedfil.../?id=406684124 and the constant stream of incrementally better than that other guy's ground level first person camera.
Oh and this ex-Maxis artist: http://steamcommunity.com/profiles/7.../?appid=255710

I plan to pick this up soon, but Valve's new 1 week wait on all market items put a hole in my market income.

[Timbuk2]

I heard a rumor about "pretty good mods" out there. Start talking, Timbuk, or I send out the pictures.

I was young. I needed the money.

~

Ok then. Mods.

Yep, ex-Maxis artist Gula has some nice buildings, as Omnomnomnominous links above.

There is some nice artwork some modders have created for buildings and parks which I've downloaded.

It's the mods which affect gameplay that I'm using mainly:

Level Up Balance Mod Modifies the criteria the game uses for residential, commercial, office and industry building level up. Vanilla version the levelling up of buildings is much too quick and easy. This mod balances it out and gives it a more logical progression.

No Despawn mod Vanilla version will despawn vehicles in traffic if they are stuck for too long/take too long to reach destination. This mod removes that despawn. Gives a more challenging game as congestion builds up more easily. A more realistic traffic simulation. Very useful.

Proper Hardness Configurable Mod which increases the challenge of the game; adds flooding and fire-spread disasters, adds significantly to the cost of building infrastructure, prevents de-spawning of both vehicles and walking CIMs when they are stuck in traffic or waiting for transport, affects the levelling up of buildings - various other tweaks.
I no longer use this mod as it is not compatible with Level-up mod and No Despawn mods above, which are mods I prefer.

Extended Public Transport UI. Provides an additional screen which summarises your running public transport, and gives additional info such as # of vehicles/trains/metros per line, # of passengers per line. Very useful.

Infinte Oil & Ore: I rarely use cheat mods of any sort, but since the finite resources (Oil and Ore) last about 10 - 15 mins of gameplay once you start extracting/mining them, this mod has become a must-have. Bit flaky though, stopped working in my last game and my ore quickly dried up.

Autosave Does exactly wot it sez on the tin. Vanilla has no autosave. A must have.

Chirper Position Changer Mod which allows you to move the tweet chirper. Vanilla has it top middle of the screen which is a little irritating. Other mods remove the chirper entirely, but I don't mind it so long as I can stick it in a corner.

Timboh's Marvellous Interchange Emporium A modder with far too much time on his hands has created dozens of interchanges. All good quality though. I've not installed his entire collection, but do have 3 or 4 of them.

Control Building Level Up A mod I was extremely happy was created. Essentially, it is very, very difficult to stop residential buildings from levelling up by limiting access to services. If you want an area of purely level 1 or level 2 or level 3 houses let's say, to represent poorer communities, this allows it. Mod enhanced in the latest version so can limit level up by district, rather than having to set it on every individual house, which is great. Haven't yet tried latest version though - I'd removed this mod as it consistently crashed my games, so hoping the modder has fixed it.

To give an idea of what this mod allows - a screeny of 1x1 zoned terraces I created - allowable because this mod allowed me to limit these houses to level 3. At level 4, all these houses level up to fancy condos, which entirely disrupts the look of the more middle-class terraced streets I have here.




~

Many, many, many more mods out there which affect how the game plays and how it looks.

[Wraith]

Alright, I'll keep the pictures for personal use only.

I'm looking forward to this one: http://forum.paradoxplaza.com/forum/...ties-Republic&

[Ominous Gamer]

this one that allows you to fly airplanes just popped up on my facebook via kotaku
http://steamcommunity.com//sharedfil.../?id=413366627

[Wraith]

Escapist pushed this out today: http://www.escapistmagazine.com/arti...es-Mods-So-Far

Warning, it's one of their stupid gallery things instead of an actual article.

[earthJoker]

I am happy with my first city in vanilla now. So starting with the mods now. And I defenitely want a more interesting map.

[Timbuk2]

Proper Hardness mod, in Normal mode, is the best overall gameplay balancing mod. Combines many different elements to make the game more challenging, and more logical.
Have been using it consistently.


Since you have a flashy new powerful rig, you'll be wanting to tweak and improve the graphics of the game:
Ambient Occlusion for one.
Dynamic Resolution to adjust ingame graphics.
Sun Shafts is wonderful.
You'll probably want a First Person Camera so you can get right down to see the view of your city from any CIM or vehicle.
Get FPS Display too.


Necessities for me are:
Infinite Oil and Ore, seeing as finite resources run out in mere minutes of gameplay in vanilla.
Persistent Resource View so that the resource overlay remains while you plan your city, plop roads down etc. Very useful.
City Vitals Watch keeps a tab on your screen for availability of all your services.
Extended Public Transport extends information on your running buses, metros, trains etc, as vanilla is very limited.
Autosave configurable - no vanilla autosave so you need this.


Buildings; soooo many to choose from, but a couple that I really like and use a lot:
Recycling Centre


Suburban Train Station


Mojiko Train Station


Multi-storey carpark


Maps, haven't used any but the vanilla ones, but have downloaded a few to try in the future.

ScotlandTom has 3 highly rated maps, which I've got.

[earthJoker]

I continued my city with all the tiles now available. Then lost it again because of a windows update

Time to start a second city.

[Flixy]

No autosave?

[earthJoker]

I had a save, but the file was lost.

[RandBlade]

Would those who've bought this game recommend it now or not? Seems to be getting much better feedback than SimCity 2013.

[littlelolligagged]

Yes.

[Timbuk2]

313 hours in, and still loving it, still much to do.

[RandBlade]

313 hours in six weeks? Wow.

I've just passed 500 hours on CK2 I think after 3 years lol.

[Ominous Gamer]

If gaming was his full time job he would be collecting overtime wages. 84 hours in the past 2 weeks.

[Timbuk2]

Insomnia has its upsides

[earthJoker]

The "no despawn" feature of the proper hardness totally deadlocks all my major roads. Not that I don't like the no despawn. But jeez are those drivers stupid.

So I downloaded the traffic manager mod. Interesting that it's not on your list Timbuk. I will tell you how this turns out, soon....

http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfile.../?id=427585724

[earthJoker]

OK, this will get you at least another month of awesome optimization. It fixes pretty much everything to make your streets working. I wonder if I can now manage with a totally different grid layout.

Thing you can do with the traffic manager.

- Turn a main2main intersection from a 2 phase to a 4 phase style.
- Make left turn only lanes.
- Disallow turning left simply by removing the lanes.
- You can also make a main2lower intersection into a 3 phase.

Actually you can make any phases you want.
Next I have to try, how to connect several intersection togheter. You could even make a green wave. So many opportunities.

What I am missing is, some kind of template mechanism. I always have to start from scratch with every intersection.

[earthJoker]

The lane editor is very helpful. You can get rid of all the left+straight lanes. Actually, mixed lanes are not a good idea at all if you have enough lanes. In a 2+2 read intersection I prefer a left|straight+right over the default left+straight|straight+right layout.

(All this applies to right hand driving)

[RandBlade]

All this talk on traffic management is interesting. Do you have traffic lights in an intersection or not? Or is that a choice?

If you do have traffic lights do you have the option to allow to turn left (or right in US-style as applicable) on a red? One thing that irritates me in the UK is that we can't turn left on a red.

Incidentally can you chose which style of driving you have? I'd want British-style driving on the left.

[Timbuk2]

The "no despawn" feature of the proper hardness totally deadlocks all my major roads. Not that I don't like the no despawn. But jeez are those drivers stupid.

So I downloaded the traffic manager mod. Interesting that it's not on your list Timbuk. I will tell you how this turns out, soon....

It's a very new mod, not long released.

I've been contemplating downloading it, but have gotten used to planning my cities to avoid congestion, and so far I'm mostly succeeding.

There are some intersections where I would want to adjust the traffic light timings though, so may download soon.

What I am missing is, some kind of template mechanism. I always have to start from scratch with every intersection.

Create some intersections in the asset manager and save them for re-use??

Since I use a lot of roundabouts (great for keeping traffic flowing and avoiding congestion) I made a few roundabouts of different sizes in the asset manager, so I can just plop them down in the game.

All this talk on traffic management is interesting. Do you have traffic lights in an intersection or not? Or is that a choice?

Intersections involving basic two-lane roads don't; they're give-way. Intersections on four- and six-lane roads have lights.

On and off ramps to highways don't.

If you do have traffic lights do you have the option to allow to turn left (or right in US-style as applicable) on a red? One thing that irritates me in the UK is that we can't turn left on a red.

Nope, not in vanilla.
The Traffic Manager mod joker referenced allows you to, I believe.

Incidentally can you chose which style of driving you have? I'd want British-style driving on the left.

Yup, vanilla gives you the option.

[earthJoker]

All this talk on traffic management is interesting. Do you have traffic lights in an intersection or not? Or is that a choice?

In vanilla it depends on the intersection, there is a table on the interweb showing which have lights and which don't.

If you do have traffic lights do you have the option to allow to turn left (or right in US-style as applicable) on a red? One thing that irritates me in the UK is that we can't turn left on a red.

With traffic manager mod you can choose that yourself. The manager let's you design the phases of an intersection. You can add as many phases as you want and you can allow as many direction as you want per phase.

It's a very new mod, not long released.

I've been contemplating downloading it, but have gotten used to planning my cities to avoid congestion, and so far I'm mostly succeeding.

There are some intersections where I would want to adjust the traffic light timings though, so may download soon.

Actually if you only want to optimize a few intersections and want to leave the other as they are, this is the mod you want to have!

Create some intersections in the asset manager and save them for re-use??

I will try if the intersection setup is possible in the asset manager. Thanks for the tip!

Since I use a lot of roundabouts (great for keeping traffic flowing and avoiding congestion) I made a few roundabouts of different sizes in the asset manager, so I can just plop them down in the game.

Did you manage to built small roundabouts? I want something really small like in SC4 with mod:

[Timbuk2]

Been fiddling with some excellent new asset mods; walkways and boardwalks:


















~

Sun Shafts mod and Photo-realism colour-enhancement LUT mod apparent in these images too.

[earthJoker]

Any link to those walkways and boardwalks? They look delicious.

[Timbuk2]

Sure

Walkway


Pier for walkway



Boardwalk


Boardwalk with shops


~

Also, these can be fiddly to align nicely, so you'll need to get Terraform Tool mod if you haven't already, so you can raise/lower/level terrain.

[earthJoker]

Found some walkways and boardwalks, but not all of yours. I need the terraform, it doesn't align at all currently.