Cities: Skylines

Lordnine · Post by **Lordnine** » Fri Mar 13, 2015 11:28 am

TiLT wrote:
Lordnine wrote:Silly people and curved roads! A proper city needs to be square!
Oh man, that city is going to become traffic hell, if it isn't already. Building on a grid in this game is generally not a great idea, in my experience.

No problems so far. Maybe because I have tons of bus routes and subway stations? I implemented the free public transportation policy. That is roughly 2/3 of a starting block, by the way.

coopasonic · Post by **coopasonic** » Fri Mar 13, 2015 11:55 am

I guess I lack imagination. What is superior to the grid layout?

tgb · Post by **tgb** » Fri Mar 13, 2015 12:33 pm

coopasonic wrote:I guess I lack imagination. What is superior to the grid layout?

Don't feel bad. I tend to stick to grids as well.

Archinerd · Post by **Archinerd** » Fri Mar 13, 2015 12:54 pm

tgb wrote:
coopasonic wrote:I guess I lack imagination. What is superior to the grid layout?
Don't feel bad. I tend to stick to grids as well.

Grids are best.

Archinerd · Post by **Archinerd** » Fri Mar 13, 2015 12:56 pm

If you want to get fancy though I'll accept Paris / D.C. style "Nodes n' Lines". It's the Corinthian column of urban planning.

coopasonic · Post by **coopasonic** » Fri Mar 13, 2015 1:18 pm

Archinerd wrote:If you want to get fancy though I'll accept Paris / D.C. style "Nodes n' Lines". It's the Corinthian column of urban planning.

Is that the spokes of a wheel? I am having a hard time picturing nodes and lines. That doesn't conjure any specific image.

Archinerd · Post by **Archinerd** » Fri Mar 13, 2015 1:25 pm

coopasonic wrote:
Archinerd wrote:If you want to get fancy though I'll accept Paris / D.C. style "Nodes n' Lines". It's the Corinthian column of urban planning.
Is that the spokes of a wheel? I am having a hard time picturing nodes and lines. That doesn't conjure any specific image.

Yeah, spokes of a wheel or a spider web. I don't remember the technical term.

coopasonic · Post by **coopasonic** » Fri Mar 13, 2015 1:34 pm

I need to create a "second" city as my first is on a peninsula cut off from attached expansion by a highway (and at 30k pop with mostly high density buildings already). I think I will play around with that sort of layout there.

naednek · Post by **naednek** » Fri Mar 13, 2015 1:52 pm

Don't forget you can get free user made maps off of the workshop. I downloaded one where it looks like a pirate's cove. It's small and tight, but it's pretty cool
I find that most of the stock maps are kinda boring.

Archinerd · Post by **Archinerd** » Fri Mar 13, 2015 2:17 pm

coopasonic wrote:
Archinerd wrote:If you want to get fancy though I'll accept Paris / D.C. style "Nodes n' Lines". It's the Corinthian column of urban planning.
Is that the spokes of a wheel? I am having a hard time picturing nodes and lines. That doesn't conjure any specific image.

Yeah, spokes of a wheel or a spider web. I don't remember the technical term.

jztemple2 · Post by **jztemple2** » Fri Mar 13, 2015 4:42 pm

Archinerd wrote:
coopasonic wrote:
Archinerd wrote:If you want to get fancy though I'll accept Paris / D.C. style "Nodes n' Lines". It's the Corinthian column of urban planning.
Is that the spokes of a wheel? I am having a hard time picturing nodes and lines. That doesn't conjure any specific image.
Yeah, spokes of a wheel or a spider web. I don't remember the technical term.

Something like this? just imagine that some of those radial roads connect to other roundabouts of that size.

Sepiche · Post by **Sepiche** » Fri Mar 13, 2015 4:47 pm

You might reduce the number of roads feeding into the roundabout by 2 or 3 as that many intersections might slow down traffic in the roundabout a little too much, but I've had pretty good luck with roundabouts in my current city.

persself · Post by **persself** » Fri Mar 13, 2015 5:57 pm

From PC Gamer: Cities: Skylines breaks Paradox' day-one sales records. City-building sim Cities: Skylines has become Paradox' most successful game launch, selling 250,000 copies in its first 24 hours. The number—tallied from day one sales and pre-orders—has made CEO Fredrik Wester quite happy.

Enough · Post by **Enough** » Fri Mar 13, 2015 6:42 pm

persself wrote:From PC Gamer: Cities: Skylines breaks Paradox' day-one sales records. City-building sim Cities: Skylines has become Paradox' most successful game launch, selling 250,000 copies in its first 24 hours. The number—tallied from day one sales and pre-orders—has made CEO Fredrik Wester quite happy.

Good deal, that should help fund continued improvements like day/night cycles, etc.

tgb · Post by **tgb** » Fri Mar 13, 2015 7:50 pm

It should also help mend Paradox' reputation regarding the release state of third party titles.

Archinerd · Post by **Archinerd** » Fri Mar 13, 2015 8:23 pm

jztemple2 wrote:
Archinerd wrote:
coopasonic wrote:
Archinerd wrote:If you want to get fancy though I'll accept Paris / D.C. style "Nodes n' Lines". It's the Corinthian column of urban planning.
Is that the spokes of a wheel? I am having a hard time picturing nodes and lines. That doesn't conjure any specific image.
Yeah, spokes of a wheel or a spider web. I don't remember the technical term.
Something like this? just imagine that some of those radial roads connect to other roundabouts of that size.

Yeah, kind of. The idea is that each of the Nodes is a place of importance, and there is a direct route from each place of importance throughout the city.
Nodes aren't necessarily a circle either, sometimes they are an oval with a big park in the middle, or an the cities main Opera House or a Cathedral on the most important corner of the intersection.
Sight lines between these places is also considered, though not necessary. In the case of the Cathedral for instance, the goal is to be able to see it from several angles.

Paris:

jztemple2 · Post by **jztemple2** » Fri Mar 13, 2015 8:38 pm

Archinerd wrote:Paris:

I'd buy that DLC

jztemple2 · Post by **jztemple2** » Fri Mar 13, 2015 10:02 pm

Interesting article on PCGamesN, The best Cities: Skylines mods. GTA V map, first person view, tree brush and a bunch of buildings.

jztemple2 · Post by **jztemple2** » Fri Mar 13, 2015 10:37 pm

My bus stops are very popular. Maybe too popular? Should I be doing something else?

Brian · Post by **Brian** » Fri Mar 13, 2015 11:38 pm

Was working on my first city, had it up around 7.5-8 thousand residents. Got up to get a cup of coffee and heat up some leftovers, came back to the game five minutes later to discover that right before I got up, I had inadvertently disconnected the entire city from its electrical power source.
When I sat back down my city had been nearly completely abandoned and I had gone from a several thousand dollar surplus to being about $50,000 in debt and hemorrhaging money like Detroit in a depression.
I had to take out $60,000+ in loans just to survive long enough to fix everything.
Lesson learned, double check your city before walking away while it's set to triple speed. Also, save every now and then.

Biyobi · Post by **Biyobi** » Fri Mar 13, 2015 11:57 pm

jztemple2 wrote:My bus stops are very popular. Maybe too popular? Should I be doing something else?

Upping your transportation budget will add more buses to your routes.

tgb · Post by **tgb** » Sat Mar 14, 2015 7:26 am

Brian wrote:Was working on my first city, had it up around 7.5-8 thousand residents. Got up to get a cup of coffee and heat up some leftovers, came back to the game five minutes later to discover that right before I got up, I had inadvertently disconnected the entire city from its electrical power source.
When I sat back down my city had been nearly completely abandoned and I had gone from a several thousand dollar surplus to being about $50,000 in debt and hemorrhaging money like Detroit in a depression.
I had to take out $60,000+ in loans just to survive long enough to fix everything.
Lesson learned, double check your city before walking away while it's set to triple speed. Also, save every now and then.

There's a mod for that. It autosaves every 10 minutes.

$iljanus · Post by **$iljanus** » Sat Mar 14, 2015 11:23 am

jztemple2 wrote:Interesting article on PCGamesN, The best Cities: Skylines mods. GTA V map, first person view, tree brush and a bunch of buildings.

So I'm downloading the game as I type and was just wondering what mods people are using? Read the article in your link and I think the tree brush sounds like a good start.

Rip · Post by **Rip** » Sat Mar 14, 2015 11:34 am

I've only had it one day so far and have been running without mods, just to get the raw taste, but that raised pedestrian roundabout is sure to be the first one I try.

tgb · Post by **tgb** » Sat Mar 14, 2015 11:45 am

$iljanus wrote:
jztemple2 wrote:Interesting article on PCGamesN, The best Cities: Skylines mods. GTA V map, first person view, tree brush and a bunch of buildings.
So I'm downloading the game as I type and was just wondering what mods people are using? Read the article in your link and I think the tree brush sounds like a good start.

Get the autosave mod, and, if you don't want to ram your fist through your monitor, the one that gets rid of that fucking bird.

For some reason I'm not getting how garbage collection works. As soon as it unlocked I went to place my landfill, and, since this isn't my first rodeo, i put it as far away from populated areas as I could afford. I get that the landfill sends out trucks to collect the cash, but this one was only sending one out sporadically. As garbage started to pile up, I thought it might be a funding issue, so I moved the budget slider all the way to the right. No help. Then I thought I might have to do something about traffic, but the overlay shows that traffic in my city is still pretty light (I still have under 2,000 living there).

I then noticed that the landfill has a coverage zone, so I placed several around my city. I now have 4 or 5 in the middle of populated areas, each sending out one truck - maybe. The garbage is no longer backed up, but that can't be right.

jztemple2 · Post by **jztemple2** » Sat Mar 14, 2015 12:55 pm

tgb wrote:Get the autosave mod, and, if you don't want to ram your fist through your monitor, the one that gets rid of that fucking bird.

There's also a mod that just repositions Chirpy if you still want the updates but want the top of the screen open. After all, you might not want to miss updates like this one:

And, by the way, there's a mod that allows you to still get achievements even if you are using mods

jztemple2 · Post by **jztemple2** » Sat Mar 14, 2015 2:28 pm

Just a heads up to folks. First of all, by default in the game "F1" will do an Quick Save, which is nice. I don't remember this being mentioned in the tutorial pop-ups. The bad news is that "F4" will without a verification step automatically load your Quick Save file, possibly ruining a lot of work. I therefor recommend setting your key assignments to something like this:

I cannot figure out how to set Quick Load to "None", otherwise I might just do that instead.

UPDATE: Changed to use "Quick" instead of "Auto", because it was, well, wrong before

tgb · Post by **tgb** » Sat Mar 14, 2015 3:29 pm

Quicksave is not the same as autosave - you still have to remember to do it.

jztemple2 · Post by **jztemple2** » Sat Mar 14, 2015 3:32 pm

tgb wrote:Quicksave is not the same as autosave - you still have to remember to do it.

You're right of course, I've been fiddling with an Autosave mod and got the two concepts confused (senior moment

). I've updated my post to use what I hope is the correct terminology.

jztemple2 · Post by **jztemple2** » Sat Mar 14, 2015 4:04 pm

Here's a capture of my districts overlay. It's a big messy in the middle as I had to merge two images, too big to fit on one (click the image to enlarge).

jztemple2 · Post by **jztemple2** » Sat Mar 14, 2015 4:14 pm

Just a note for folks who are less than pleased with Chirpy. There's a good mod called Chirper Position Changer. It allows you to move the Chirper, and so I've moved him to the menu bar:

When a message does display, it opens to look like this:

naednek · Post by **naednek** » Sat Mar 14, 2015 4:40 pm

I'm waiting for the mod that makes chirper give you real twitter feeds. They really missed the boat on this one by not partnering with twitter.

jztemple2 · Post by **jztemple2** » Sat Mar 14, 2015 6:26 pm

Are other folks finding passenger trains a pain in the butt? My trains get tangled, sit stopped and don't carry a lot of riders, like only a few each train. I had one station that recorded maybe a dozen riders in the previous week while the subway next door had 1600 passengers.

naednek · Post by **naednek** » Sun Mar 15, 2015 1:44 am

Here's my latest city (Rockdale) this map is from the workshop, and it's pretty cool, much more imaginative than the stock game.

Looking from the entrance to my city. Being that this is the only entrance, I had to seriously deal with traffic coming into the city and exiting. The farmlands produced a lot of produce trucks and it was clogging up my roads. I first built two 6 lane roads (3 way each way) and it wasn't enough. I then decided to change these roads to one way. So each span was in one direction. That solved my traffic issues. (One thing the guy did when making the map was placed the entrance and exit the wrong way so it made it more difficult than needed, thank God for elevated roads)

Beach front property with poop too close for comfort

Industrial area

View of the Opera House

Farmland

tgb · Post by **tgb** » Sun Mar 15, 2015 3:29 am

Some of you guys are far more creative than I.

TiLT · Post by **TiLT** » Sun Mar 15, 2015 3:39 am

jztemple2 wrote:Are other folks finding passenger trains a pain in the butt? My trains get tangled, sit stopped and don't carry a lot of riders, like only a few each train. I had one station that recorded maybe a dozen riders in the previous week while the subway next door had 1600 passengers.

What are you using them for? It's my understanding that passenger trains are best used to bring tourists to your city, not to transport people between home and work. Much like in the real world, where commuting by train isn't exactly the most common of options.

Biyobi · Post by **Biyobi** » Sun Mar 15, 2015 7:12 am

TiLT wrote:
jztemple2 wrote:Are other folks finding passenger trains a pain in the butt? My trains get tangled, sit stopped and don't carry a lot of riders, like only a few each train. I had one station that recorded maybe a dozen riders in the previous week while the subway next door had 1600 passengers.
What are you using them for? It's my understanding that passenger trains are best used to bring tourists to your city, not to transport people between home and work. Much like in the real world, where commuting by train isn't exactly the most common of options.

You can link multiple passenger train stations together just like the subways, so they are meant to move people around your city.

I'm finding trains in general to be a pain in the ass. I can't put enough bypasses in to prevent eventual total gridlock. I've laid separate tracks out for passenger and cargo routes but they will still flood the system when the trains connect back to the massively overburdened main line through town.

I need to bring in some laborers from somewhere. My citizens are getting a bit snooty about working some of the dirtier industries around town. The buildings in my oil zones are constantly getting the shortage of laborer warnings and going abandoned.

baelthazar · Post by **baelthazar** » Sun Mar 15, 2015 1:03 pm

TiLT wrote:
jztemple2 wrote:Are other folks finding passenger trains a pain in the butt? My trains get tangled, sit stopped and don't carry a lot of riders, like only a few each train. I had one station that recorded maybe a dozen riders in the previous week while the subway next door had 1600 passengers.
What are you using them for? It's my understanding that passenger trains are best used to bring tourists to your city, not to transport people between home and work. Much like in the real world, where commuting by train isn't exactly the most common of options.

Tell that to New York, Connecticut and New Jersey...

But yes, JZ, mine have been getting tangled up quite a bit and I had my freight trains going off the track and overlapping with city streets. I was only having tourist trains come in, so it wasn't a problem with commuter trains. Once I moved the freight stop away from the passenger stop, it got a little better, but I noticed my tracks were getting wildly jammed up occasionally. It is probably best to build other rails to connect with the main rails, but I haven't tried that. Not only did the trains get fouled up, the freight train station generates an insane amount of traffic. I positioned it very poorly, so my city has terrible gridlock now that it is in the 20-50K population range. I will probably start over and see if I can plan a little better (I relied too heavily on two lane roads).

jztemple2 · Post by **jztemple2** » Sun Mar 15, 2015 2:18 pm

Some interesting recently posted mods:

Extended Road Upgrade - Upgrade between one- and two-way roads!
This is a very slick mod that adds two new buttons to the roads menu, to convert a two way to a one way or vice versa, without deleting and rebuilding.

This mod adds two new road building tools that allow you to upgrade between one- and two-way roads and to change one-way road directions, without having to demolish and rebuild the road.

The tools work very similar to the default road upgrade tool. To convert an existing one-way road to a two-way road, you simply select the two-way upgrade tool and click on the segment of the the road you want to upgrade, and drag along the road to convert multiple segments. To convert a two-way road to a one-way road, however, you must drag to the direction you want the road to go instead of just clicking. One-way roads can also be changed to go to the opposite direction in the same manner.

The roads are always converted to the same type counterparts, so it does not matter which road type you have selected in the road tool. This also means that it is not possible to directly convert a 4-lane road to a one-way road, because there is no 4-lane one-way road type in the game. Instead you must first upgrade the road to a 2- or 6-lane road and then convert it to a one-way road.

While there are not known issues with the mod, it is still somewhat experimental. Therefore it is recommended that you always save your city before using the mod.

ChirpFilter
Note, it doesn't prevent these non-informative chirps from happening, it just deletes them immediately.

Filters non-informative chirps from chirper. No more chirps about lost wallets and vacations.

DISCLAIMER: Due to the high amount of these "random" chirps, the mod may not filter all of them. I will add & update the mod as I come across them.

Traffic Report Tool
This one is very cool, adds some functionality from SimCity 4 in monitoring traffic. The third function, the one about all traffic to and from a building, doesn't seem to work for me, but the first two do and it's nice.

Having problems figuring out why traffic is backed up? Want to know why a dohnut van is in the middle of an industrial district? This maybe the tool for you.

To activate the tools, select the "Traffic Report Tool" button in the to left. Your cursor will switch to a magnifying glass. To cancel this, press the button again or choose another tool.

The tool has 3 modes depending on the sort of thing you examine.

1. Selecting a vehicle will show its current path to its destination.
2. Selecting a stretch of road will show you the paths of all vehicles that will pass through it
3. Selecting a building will show you all paths of vehicles either going to or leaving from it

Selecting a road or building will halt the simulation for several seconds (depending on city size). Please be patient you game has not crashed.

Please note this is very very beta and has some funky bugs, particularly with displaying paths.

jztemple2 · Post by **jztemple2** » Sun Mar 15, 2015 4:01 pm

Sometimes it's all about having a nice house in the 'burbs on a Sunday:

Some shots using the First Person Camera and HideUI mods (click the image to enlarge)