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Cities: Skylines |OT| Not Related to Cities XL.

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That's a possibility. Its just too strong as a random happening though. If at least the game was setting a premice, something cool. If we had access to TV bulletins for instance and that some tourists would have bring an epidemic of some virus in my town, you know, setting the mood. And then you focus on "bringing back your city to normal". Right now it just feels like the game crapping on you even if you play it right.

First suggestion would be checking pollution and sound pollutions maps, polluted water screws your city up really fast. After that, deathcare, if the dead pile up, they cause people to get sick, might be wrong on that one though. Haven't had any random "disasters" besides traffic jams yet. Any mod that you have that might be causing these?
 

Ranger X

Member
First suggestion would be checking pollution and sound pollutions maps, polluted water screws your city up really fast. After that, deathcare, if the dead pile up, they cause people to get sick, might be wrong on that one though. Haven't had any random "disasters" besides traffic jams yet. Any mod that you have that might be causing these?

I only got auto destroy abandoned buildings.
Otherwise deathcare is fine, (anyways it would be skulls everywhere if deathcare can't supply). I don't really know whats going on. Something wierd happens everytime I build a new part of the town at once ('cause I am swimming in cash so sometimes I build alot in advance). This seems to mess with the game balance for a while and then in some years from now the town will be fine again.
 

mcbradle

Neo Member
I haven't had the sickness issue. But I've had two cities now that have major education problems. The first city, I had multiple elementary and high schools and a university. After about 24k population, industry was dead. I had way too many educated citizens, so any kind of new developments wouldn't find workers and go out of business. But offices wouldn't expand either, while the unemployment rate was at around 25% with literally thousands of jobs available. So, I restarted a new city and this time only put in 3 elementary schools. Nothing else. And now, at around 16k, I'm having the same exact problem. 50% educated citizens rate, offices won't expand, industry won't expand, and the unemployment rate is slowly rising because educated citizens can't find work, despite having plenty of office zoning AND the office tax relief to try and bring them in.

In my next city, no schools, nothing but farms, oil, and mining. When the oil and mining are gone, then maybe schools.
 
I haven't had the sickness issue. But I've had two cities now that have major education problems. The first city, I had multiple elementary and high schools and a university. After about 24k population, industry was dead. I had way too many educated citizens, so any kind of new developments wouldn't find workers and go out of business. But offices wouldn't expand either, while the unemployment rate was at around 25% with literally thousands of jobs available. So, I restarted a new city and this time only put in 3 elementary schools. Nothing else. And now, at around 16k, I'm having the same exact problem. 50% educated citizens rate, offices won't expand, industry won't expand, and the unemployment rate is slowly rising because educated citizens can't find work, despite having plenty of office zoning AND the office tax relief to try and bring them in.

In my next city, no schools, nothing but farms, oil, and mining. When the oil and mining are gone, then maybe schools.

I read somewhere that the issue is actually that the jobs aren't close enough to residential areas.
 

mcbradle

Neo Member
I read somewhere that the issue is actually that the jobs aren't close enough to residential areas.

I thought that might be the case, so I tried to keep it in mind with the second city. If you're trying a clean build, though (no unlock/cheat mods), it's tough because you can't see the resources info panel before you start zoning. So, you end up with a huge portion of residential on top of your one ore deposit that you have to pay to move later. Idk, I just wish that the education went was one-sided. Meaning, offices wouldn't develop without educated workers but the low education jobs would fill even if some were overqualified.
 

Ranger X

Member
I read somewhere that the issue is actually that the jobs aren't close enough to residential areas.

Well, that would be wierd.
For education they travel FAR. They take metro and buses. Now you would tell me they can't do that for jobs?


Anyways, the real error in this game is business and shops opening when there's no workers available for them or when there's no need for them at all. If they'd fix this the game would be MUCH more enjoyable.
 

neshcom

Banned
Anyways, the real error in this game is business and shops opening when there's no workers available for them or when there's no need for them at all. If they'd fix this the game would be MUCH more enjoyable.

Same for businesses upgrading. It seems counter-intuitive that businesses will grow themselves out of work, but can't scale down. Would be nice to be able to accommodate smaller cities instead of vying to make the biggest, sprawling city possible.
 

The Real Abed

Perma-Junior
I really really hate how this game handles resolution and fullscreen on my computer now.

Ever since they changed it so I can't switch between apps while the game is running in fullscreen on OS X it's been disappointing. I can't even set it to windowed because the limited options are horrible. You can only choose between 4:3 and 16:10 (My display aspect) which are both completely useless because I want to force it to 16:9 so I can run it windowed and not have anything off the edge of the screen. In the 1.0 version it would automatically resize the window to be shorter when the Dock is shown so it was no problem running windowed. But now in 1.1 it makes it 16:10 no matter what which means that with the 22 pixels for the menubar and 22 pixels for the title bar, I lose a lot of the window off the bottom of the screen, plus the Dock covers even more. So windowed is useless.

Why can't I just resize it freely? The game is designed to allow for flexible resolutions. It's a simple flag in Unity I would think. Just let me resize it with the borders when in windowed.

And why or how can I switch apps when in fullscreen anymore? The only way I've found is if I am in the Asset editor and click the button to show the screenshot folder. But that's a useless method since it does nothing for me when I'm in game. The other way is broken in that I can go into Options and change it to Windowed but the game bugs out when switching resolutions like and the screen just becomes black. But all the UI elements still work. I just can't see anything. So I have to quit the game.

It sucks completely that it's actually worse now than it was. At least work like Bioshock Infinite where Command+Tab will temporarily change the game to windowed until I focus it again. I just want to be able to switch to other things while the game is running if I need to.

I should post this complaint on Reddit. Or email it to them. It's perfectly valid. But before I do, let me know if there's any trick I'm missing.
 

Amzin

Member
I haven't had anything I could really tie to randomness. Every time I encounter a problem I can trace it back to something. There seems to be very little randomness at all in the game actually. I don't think I buy the "random shit as disaster" thing, but you have to know what to look for and what you're doing to find causes sometimes, which is just a problem of the game not giving you enough information straight up if you aren't like me and just dig into it :p
 

BlackJace

Member
After numerous restarts, I finally got into "gelling" with this city.

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Endgame in Cities is kinda meh, so I'll be putting the game on the backburner for now. Definitely might end up in my GOTY list for sure. This was a fun ride!
 

Avalt

Member
After numerous restarts, I finally got into "gelling" with this city.



Endgame in Cities is kinda meh, so I'll be putting the game on the backburner for now. Definitely might end up in my GOTY list for sure. This was a fun ride!

There is no endgame in city builders :p Try building a national park for example. Skylines is a surprisingly flexible game. See my water dam below :p (That southern river was real pain in the ass to get just right)

 

BlackJace

Member
There is no endgame in city builders :p Try building a national park for example. Skylines is a surprisingly flexible game. See my water dam below :p (That southern river was real pain in the ass to get just right)

Well, I know there's not a specific endgame, but I wish there were objectives or something, ya know?
 

spiritfox

Member
Well, I know there's not a specific endgame, but I wish there were objectives or something, ya know?

Make your own objectives, like hitting 100k pop, or congestion free roads, or a authentic looking European city. Or build a dam and flood it all. Sandbox games are all about how you make use of that sand.
 

Boss Doggie

all my loli wolf companions are so moe
I just realized

how come intersections here don't have "easy" roads, like say in a right-lane road, there should be a quick "if you're turning right then you get this quick lane"
 

Mengy

wishes it were bannable to say mean things about Marvel
Well, I know there's not a specific endgame, but I wish there were objectives or something, ya know?

I have Simcity 4 cities that I've been playing off and on for over five years. Maybe a few longer than that. Every now and then I go back to them and build some more, tweak things here and there, they are never "done". They are like model cities that I've built and continue to dabble with for years on end.

Cities Skylines will be that way for me, but oh so much more addicting and enjoyable. Because holy hell I can spend hours just touring around the cities I've built, following cars as they drive around the streets I've made, sightseeing the immersive 3D cityscape I've created. And the plethora of mods that CSL has, after only a few months and zero expansions? Yeah, I'll be playing this game forever (with break periods here and there), or at least until a better city builder comes along, but I've got to tell you CSL is going to be DAMN hard to beat. My Simcity 4 is officially retired, I may even uninstall it for the first time in over a decade, I simply see no reason to go back to it.

City builders are best enjoyed when the gameplay isn't about set goals or missions, but more about crafting and creating and molding a little model city that you've created. They are more about improving traffic and efficiency than reaching population numbers or money targets. Game time is better spent getting a park or urban area to look just right than getting every building to level 3. At least, that's what city builders mean to me. It's like a giant virtual model railroad set, but with more than just trains. Something you build as a hobby for long periods of time. Minecraft is honestly the closest game comparison I can make to city builders for me.





That said, DiRT Rally and KSP have been eating up all of my game time lately...
 

spiritfox

Member
I think the Minecraft comparison is apt. I grew on SimCity like some children are growing up on Minecraft today. I will just spend hours making cities and tweaking it, even creating histories and events that shaped how that city would have grown in real life. Honestly, if I have money and a lot of space I would spend the rest of my life making a model railroad, but city builders are the next best alternative to that.
 

Crispy75

Member
Yep, it's definitely that model railway itch. Better railway tools would be nice though, like single track sections and being able to adjust routes at locations other than stations (the auto-routing is infuriating sometimes).

Can't wait for VR or Hololens support (cmon CO!) so I can peer down on my little ant-cims from on high.
 

Mengy

wishes it were bannable to say mean things about Marvel
Yep, it's definitely that model railway itch. Better railway tools would be nice though, like single track sections and being able to adjust routes at locations other than stations (the auto-routing is infuriating sometimes)..

Yeah, I'm looking forward to better train stuff down the road, whether they be official updates or mods. More locomotives and cars, single tracks, roundhouses, trainyard buildings, etc. The next city I build is going to be very train heavy in an effort to minimize freight and commuter car traffic. Plus I just want to build huge rail networks...
 

spiritfox

Member
Yeah, I'm looking forward to better train stuff down the road, whether they be official updates or mods. More locomotives and cars, single tracks, roundhouses, trainyard buildings, etc. The next city I build is going to be very train heavy in an effort to minimize freight and commuter car traffic. Plus I just want to build huge rail networks...

A Rush Hour style expansion with better rail management, trams, and elevated metro among other things will be the greatest. I want to build proper working rail yards for once in a city builder.
 

The Real Abed

Perma-Junior
They really need to tweak the editing tools for underground management.

When you're trying to delete a tunnel, the game won't let you touch it unless there's nothing to delete above. So if I have a tunnel going under a zoned area with other roads, I can't get to it to delete it until I delete a house on the surface. It's stupid. When you go into bulldoze mode while in Road mode, it should only let you delete roads. Why let you delete houses? Just highlight the tunnels so I can get rid of them without making people homeless!

And it's a little finicky right now, but thankfully you can lower the tunnels further into the ground so you can go under subway lines. But it's hard to make out because all underground lines only show up as black lines. Just give us a proper underground view that removes everything from the surface and shows clearly how deep down they go in relation to the surface of the ground. I don't think the camera can even go down there either.
 

DSN2K

Member
Ive just unsubscribed to 35 pages of Mods.....why haven't Valve made this simpler ? Felt like I need clean slate and only having mods with correct icons.
 

Ranger X

Member
They really need to tweak the editing tools for underground management.

When you're trying to delete a tunnel, the game won't let you touch it unless there's nothing to delete above. So if I have a tunnel going under a zoned area with other roads, I can't get to it to delete it until I delete a house on the surface. It's stupid. When you go into bulldoze mode while in Road mode, it should only let you delete roads. Why let you delete houses? Just highlight the tunnels so I can get rid of them without making people homeless!


I am gonna try this tonight but I don't think its true. With road tunnels you simply open the road panel, put your cursor underground and then click on the bulldoze without exiting underground view. I suppose the same thing can be done for Metro lines.
But yes the dulldozer of X mode should delete only the object related to that mode. I dunno why the game isn't like that already
 

The Real Abed

Perma-Junior
I am gonna try this tonight but I don't think its true. With road tunnels you simply open the road panel, put your cursor underground and then click on the bulldoze without exiting underground view. I suppose the same thing can be done for Metro lines.
But yes the dulldozer of X mode should delete only the object related to that mode. I dunno why the game isn't like that already
Nope. I cannot delete tunnels that are under zoned areas or areas that otherwise have something above them. It's frustrating.
 
They really need to tweak the editing tools for underground management.

When you're trying to delete a tunnel, the game won't let you touch it unless there's nothing to delete above. So if I have a tunnel going under a zoned area with other roads, I can't get to it to delete it until I delete a house on the surface. It's stupid. When you go into bulldoze mode while in Road mode, it should only let you delete roads. Why let you delete houses? Just highlight the tunnels so I can get rid of them without making people homeless!

And it's a little finicky right now, but thankfully you can lower the tunnels further into the ground so you can go under subway lines. But it's hard to make out because all underground lines only show up as black lines. Just give us a proper underground view that removes everything from the surface and shows clearly how deep down they go in relation to the surface of the ground. I don't think the camera can even go down there either.

I dont understand why they dont think of this obvious things when they are designing the tools.
 

Oppo

Member
Man, I'm frustrated with this game.

(I'm also frustrated with GAF search. Is there a more useless and condescending search engine? I typed "Cities Skylines OT" and no results, then it makes you wait. fuxsake.)

Anyways -

can anyone point me to a good guide or something? I've perused a few already but somehow I simply CANNOT avoid the budget death spiral around 5k people. Like, I've started and abandoned 3 cities today with no luck. Somehow the first one I made way back at launch reached a good 30k but I haven't been able to get even close since then. I assume I'm building too fast but I'm really trying like hell to find the balance and I just can't. Somehow I always get stuck in the negative and watch boringly as the city falls apart with no option. I've tried loans but avoid them like the plague now.

I just can't figure out what I'm doing wrong. I set up wind power + waterworks right away and try to let that churn for a bit until progress stalls, I build a few super basic things like medical and fire, and somewhere around police I am $-5k. I've really tried to look at this, I tweak tax income, I've tweaked everything I can think of... starting to think either the game is fucking with me or I'm really stupid. (which is possible.)
 

Coolluck

Member
Man, I'm frustrated with this game.

Have you tried starting with Coal since green energy is a little more costly? Money seems to be important in the early game. I'm only on my first city still but I did that and then went back later and got rid of it once I had money for green energy.

Outside of that, I built generally slow only expanding when there was demand. I still go back to my original starting area to marvel at how small it was and for how long. I only really started expansion as a way to deal with the traffic problems that my small town main street was experiencing.
 

The Real Abed

Perma-Junior
What I want is a mod that simply makes sure there's always demand for RCI. If demand drops to near zero, I want the mod to reset it and act like I need more residential followed by commercial and industrial. Just something to keep me building and expanding. Or at least tell me what I need to do to get the green line to reappear when it becomes flatlined. I mean you can have infinite money, but if the game isn't asking for more stuff then what's the point. I'd rather not have the infinite money but be able to just keep expanding.
 

The Real Abed

Perma-Junior
Alternatively to what I posted above. A mod that would at least make it so when you de-zone areas, it will create demand for that zone type immediately so you can essentially move entire zoned areas. Right now it doesn't affect the demand at all so you could have an entire neighborhood demolished and the game won't want you to put any back again. Makes reconfiguring things later on harder. It should act like I'm relocating people.

Like if I had two areas next to each other. One completely zoned and full of houses and shops. The other identical but nothing built on it at all and no demand for anything. If I dezone the filled one, the demand should immediately return and people should immediately be moving into the other unfilled area.
 

Ranger X

Member
My #1 wish for a fix with this game is that they rework the demand gauge and the code responsible for letting X kind of building builds itself.

- Industry or Commerce, to the opposite of Residential, shouldn't even built itself if there's not enough jobless residents.



Right now with the game. EVERY TIME I build a new hood composed of all the different zones, commerce and industry built right away, complain there's no people and then you spend like 10-15 years popping abandonned buildings until the game adjust itself over time. Its FUCKING annoying.
 

vityaz

Member
Right now with the game. EVERY TIME I build a new hood composed of all the different zones, commerce and industry built right away, complain there's no people and then you spend like 10-15 years popping abandonned buildings until the game adjust itself over time. Its FUCKING annoying.

Check out the "Automatic Bulldoze" mod on the workshop, it automatically bulldozes abandoned and burnt out buildings.
 

Ranger X

Member
Check out the "Automatic Bulldoze" mod on the workshop, it automatically bulldozes abandoned and burnt out buildings.

I have this mod. Its indeed useful.
Still doesn't fix the game in the mean it doesn't prevent business to be built when there's not enough demand and workers.
 

Amzin

Member
I have this mod. Its indeed useful.
Still doesn't fix the game in the mean it doesn't prevent business to be built when there's not enough demand and workers.

I mean, this happens in real life too though. You have businesses crop up and fade out when there's not the expected/hoped demand. The thing is in the game, the zones aren't equal. There's some certain ratio of Residential -> Industry -> Commercial that I don't know the exact number for but it's not 1:1:1. Residential seems to be much more required than the others.

For myself, I always build residential first in a new area, even when there's no demand. When people start moving in (and they will slowly even with no demand) then I slowly add in whatever else. I did this for a whole island I built up all at once while paused and it's working fine so far.
 

Ranger X

Member
I mean, this happens in real life too though. You have businesses crop up and fade out when there's not the expected/hoped demand. The thing is in the game, the zones aren't equal. There's some certain ratio of Residential -> Industry -> Commercial that I don't know the exact number for but it's not 1:1:1. Residential seems to be much more required than the others.

For myself, I always build residential first in a new area, even when there's no demand. When people start moving in (and they will slowly even with no demand) then I slowly add in whatever else. I did this for a whole island I built up all at once while paused and it's working fine so far.

The ratio is probably more along the lines of 2:1:1. So there's enough residences for all the jobs, theorically. But I am conscious of that. Doesn't prevent me from waiting years before the city magically stabilise. I mean, if its to stabilise anyways, make so it takes longer for the buildings to get abandoned.

Also, if we want to go the realistic route, business DO check workers availability and traffic in an area before opening business. In the game they seem more like "OMG OMG OMG THERE IS ZONED TERRAIN AVAILABLE HURRY UP OH SHIIIIIIIT...... fuck. No workers. Crap."
 

The Real Abed

Perma-Junior
Can anyone tell me how this game would run on a late 2014 iMac?

3.5 ghz Core i5
8GB ram
AMD Radeon R9 M290X 2gb
Should be fine and dandy since it's a discrete GPU. The game likes to slow down as the city gets bigger though but I think that's an issue with all versions. It'll be fine on that machine. I have a 2013 iMac and it was fine.
 
Sometimes I don't understand this game.
You do everything logically and then all of a fucking sudden everything goes haywire without possible explanations.

Here's the situation:

- Water is good and enough
- Sewage is good and enough
- Hospitals are good and enough
- Crematoriums are good and enough
- Garbage is good and enough

YET, my city is suddendly sick by thousands. Its a fucking city of hospitals. This looks wierd and unrealistic. Also unexplainable why they all sick. I am tired of this shit.

Hospitalsmall_zpsukyfyonf.png

Coverage might be sufficient but how's your traffic? If the hearts and ambulances can't get around quickly enough you fall into the sick/death spiral.
 

Ranger X

Member
Coverage might be sufficient but how's your traffic? If the hearts and ambulances can't get around quickly enough you fall into the sick/death spiral.

Actually I found an explanation in the meantime. There was some place where I had some offices before. I bulldozed them and built some water pumps. What I didn't notice though is that there was a terrain near enough that I did "dezone". At some point an office built itself there and its presence alone was juuuuust enough pollution for apparently contaminate my water network!
 

The Real Abed

Perma-Junior
I've really been enjoying NerdCubed's Skylines "Completes" series. He makes it interesting and builds the weirdest things just because they look cool. Entertaining as hell. He's on episode 18 now with one episode every two days. It's the only series I watch anymore just because of limited time. (There's so much content and no time to watch it all)
 

DBT85

Member
Actually I found an explanation in the meantime. There was some place where I had some offices before. I bulldozed them and built some water pumps. What I didn't notice though is that there was a terrain near enough that I did "dezone". At some point an office built itself there and its presence alone was juuuuust enough pollution for apparently contaminate my water network!

I had a similar thing when I build some water treatment plants from a mod. 3 squares nearby were still industrial and contaminated everything.
 
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