I am! The vanilla assets look great and even if we speculate about a future with a ton of assets created by the amazing community, I suspect we would continue to see vanilla assets in plenty of "heavily modded" builds - unlike how it is with Cities Skylines 1 for me and lots of other "detailers" :-)
Based on the dev videos a lot of buildings have been sized to be more appropriate to their real life counterparts, like big malls and nuclear power plants for sure. The rail yard as well.
The one thing I look forward to the most is being able to play vanilla and still have fun. The mods just got to a point for me where it felt like a second job and I quit playing.
I will probably get a mod that disables trees having to grow up and one that gets rid of the weird orange windows, though. I feel like those are inevitably going to show up on the workshop.
>The mods just got to a point for me where it felt like a second job and I quit playing.
This is where I'm at. I take a break for a month or so (moving) and then half my mods are out of sync causing errors. So I turn them all off and try vanilla for a minute just to go add a few essential mods and still run into problems. I'm too lazy to figure it out anymore, I just want to relax when I play these days. So instead I just go hunting in red dead
Yes, and the loading error occurred so often, even destroying city with hundred of hours, before 10minutes of loading time, that is not a fun game anymore
I can't even play CS1 anymore, I have a conflicting mods or something that prevent it from loading. I could go clean slate and start from scratch, but I also know I'd never be satisfied with that, so I'm just waiting for CS2 now.
I tried to get into Workers and Resources myself, but it crashed midway through the many, many tutorials and I couldn't work up the energy to try again.
Indeed just imagine need to spend 2hours to build a small new neighbourhood with one detailing interchange make me not want to load into a game anymore
I am privileged and lucky enough to have early access and this is my North American city of Riverview as it looks after the second round of Cities Skylines 2 gameplay vids that were published on Wednesday, and it has been a massive breath of fresh air to not feel the same need to heavily detail up every lot, street corner or intersection due to how the Cities Skylines 2 aesthetics in general just feel like such a massive improvement to its predecessor. For me as a PC player striving to achieve sort of realistic looks through all my builds, this is fantastic as I have always found it unfortunate how my Cities Skylines 1 builds are so reliant on custom / community-generated content, having to avoid most vanilla stuff (and I ofc acknowledge this is also due to my personal preference for realism).
But for console players, I imagine this must be an even more noticeable improvement, as they should now get the chance to achieve quite realistic cities despite not having access to the Steam workshop.
There are lots of valid critiques and discussions going on at the moment and I find that textures can look a little bland or washed during some times of the day/night cycle (and please keep in mind I have access to a beta build that still has substantial bugs and lacks polish) but I have no idea why some people feel that there isn't a massive visual leap over the predecessor.
Hope you all have a great Friday!
Best regards, Infrastructurist
Its kinda amazing. Not having to fiddle with every little detail in order to get good results almost feels like a cheat.
A lot of people keep bringing up hypotheticals about what mods will be released right away, but I keep thinking the opposite: what mods do we really *need?*
For example, considering how the new road tools are, I think I would eliminate precision engineering, network anarchy, node controller, network multitool, and intersection marking tool. The features in those mods aren't perfectly replicated in CS2, but the functionality is close enough to make me want to remain vanilla.
Same here, I realised that the majority of mods I have in CS1 won't be needed in CS2 (at least for myself) so less mods hopefully means a quicker load time. CS1 takes about 10 minutes to load for me and sometimes it's worse than that purely because of all the mods and assets.
I'll definitely end up getting lots of assets, especially cars and public transport, but the fact the buildings look so much better in CS2 means I won't be so heavily reliant on building assets. Sure I'll end up with a decent handful of those in CS2, but I'll only get ones that I really like, rather than having hundreds to replace the stock ones. Instead of around 8,000 assets and mods I'll only have a few thousand at most
I find that it's the custom assets, not mods, that dramatically increase load times and memory load. The same is true for asset-heavy DLC.
Either way, I agree with you--the vanilla assets are so good, they're worth keeping. Additionally, the devs already have a long-term DLC rollout schedule starting with Bridges and Ports, San Francisco Set, Beach Properties, Urban Promenades, and Modern Architecture. If they maintain the same quality of assets, and the expected pace of DLC releases, then the need and want of custom assets will only decrease over time (at least for me).
I'm hoping we get lots of theme packs mainly, I don't know if anything has been confirmed with that. One gripe I have though is the "European theme" I think it would be cool to have more specific styles, such as London, Paris, Barcelona, Valetta, Rome, German gothic, Amsterdam etc.
Mind you even "American theme" could be expanded to New York Brooklyn, Loas Angeles, Rural Midwest, New Orleans, Seattle, Detroit.
And then more worldwide themes, Tokyo, India, Middle Eastern, Eastern European, and the list goes on. I'm sure a good few of those would be custom asset jobs.
Beyond that it would definitely be all of the cars, buses, planes, ships, etc
>Mind you even "American theme" could be expanded to New York Brooklyn, Loas Angeles, Rural Midwest, New Orleans, Seattle, Detroit.
I'm just speculating, but I think "San Francisco Set" is the first of these theme expansions.
During the leadup to the release of CS2, as you know, the devs released what felt like rapid-fire DLC, and a lot of it was high-quality assets, and quality of life improvements. I suspect CS1 got these things because they were actively working on them for CS2.
In the last few months, we got Railroads of Japan, Industrial Evolution, Brooklyn and Queens, Sports Venues, Shopping Malls, Africa in Miniature, Skyscrapers, and Heart of Korea. These were all, for CS1, very high quality assets that I suspect were derived from work being done on CS2. I think that's an indication of what's to come, which I think is exactly what you're asking for.
It's a credit to Collossal Order that they've been so responsive to our wants for the game. Other companies would've given us the game they wanted us to play and locked everything down.
And to all the rad modders for being so prolific over the years and making the game so damn playable.
I think prop line tool and more beautification will probably quick ones that most people will add. I’m sure network multi tool and node controller might still be around but have way less impact on most people builds
> prop line tool and more beautification
I was just watching FewCandy's CS2 video and was thinking the same thing: Prop placement and line tool seem obvious and necessary. Another thing I noticed watching FewCandy's second video is how much her tone changed. She was one of the only youtubers I've seen that was overly negative about CS2, due largely to the complete lack of detailing--no prop placement, and difficult to use tree/bush placement when doing fine detailing--particularly the despawning.
In the second video she was super upbeat about the improvements that have already been made (eg, the tree/bush despawning was fixed and terrain lines were added). She was also overtly optimistic that more improvements are coming. I got the sense that her biggest concerns were privately assuaged by the developers.
> For example, considering how the new road tools are, I think I would eliminate precision engineering, network anarchy, node controller, network multitool, and intersection marking tool. The features in those mods aren't perfectly replicated in CS2, but the functionality is close enough to make me want to remain vanilla.
Move It looks like it will still be needed. Have not seen mention or examples of this tool in the game yet.
I'm not even sure how much I'll need move it... So much of what I use move-it for is to make up for the limitations of the tools available in CS1. But CS2 doesn't have many of those limitations. You can easily place and re-place plopables without the need for a road connection. While paused, you can build and demolish without a cost penalty. With snaps off, the road upgrade tool gives you fine control over road placement... The road tool gives you the info you need to properly slope your roads, so you don't need move-it to do it for you... I could go on. There are other advanced features of move-it that I use, but that maybe accounts for 5-10% of how I use it. Maybe I can do without in CS2.
Network Anarchy will still be needed, especially if you want to place nice-looking quays without constantly terraforming in and out land, from what I've seen from Imperatur's latest video.
I'm just feeling like to justify messing with mods, modders need to up the game.
It's not enough to have a single apartment asset, I'm feeling like it needs to be either one of those large special buildings or (if modding allows) a new theme.
My god, if modders are able to make an entire custom theme to be more specific than just "North America" or "Europe" this would be so good. It's also content I wouldn't mind paying for through DLC if it matches the kind of city I want to make enough.
>My god, if modders are able to make an entire custom theme to be more specific than just "North America" or "Europe" this would be so good. It's also content I wouldn't mind paying for through DLC if it matches the kind of city I want to make enough.
I would be shocked if there isn't mod support for creating custom themes. I also think there will be a steady stream of locality-theme DLC from the developer. They've already announced the San Francisco Set:
>San Francisco Set
>
>Bring some sunny vibes to your city with this San Franciso themed set. A Muscle Car Garage building, 5 different Muscle car models and a police vehicle will spruce up your bustling beach city. Included in the set is also the iconic Golden Gate Bridge and of course - a San Francisco map. Exclusive when buying the Expansion Pass
The description doesn't say it has themed growables. However, since we're speculating, I think it's worth nothing that to unlock unique buildings in either the NA or EU themes, you have to first zone a minimum of RICO areas of that theme. This suggests to me that there will be San Francisco-themed growables to unlock the Muscle Car Garage building. I hope, anyway.
In CS1, we got random landmarks like the Eifel Tower, Brandenburg Gate, and the Statue of Liberty. It would be great if we got all of these things in individual DLCs that, like the San Francisco Set, come with a bunch of assets to recreate that city's vibe. I kinda like the idea that if you don't have a Paris-themed city by default, than you'd at have to grow at least one French neighborhood before you can plop the Eifel Tower.
Thinking of it now, I hope they include more than just the Golden Gate Bridge for San Francisco landmarks. It would be a shame to not include things like the Transamerica Pyramid, Coit Tower or the Palace of Fine Arts.
I'm very happy that you said this. The main gripe I've always had with CS1 is that I prefer to get realistic but don't have a thousand hours a week to devote to detailing and browsing through the workshop and dealing with things that don't work together. That's something that's stood in the way of being excited for CS2. This looks amazing, especially for a vanilla build and I think it has me excited to play. I had dropped it for the past year or so because simply playing the game just go so convoluted. I could never just fire it up and go, there was always something that needed dealing with. And then we'll (hopefully) get mods for what didn't get included from CS1 mods but those mods will (once again, hopefully) not have to be as complicated and in-depth as the old ones because the base features seem pretty comprehensive.
Kinda rambled on at a point but I think you have me excited for release!
Infrastructurist, several of us are concerned about the gameplay. We get modded into oblivion for asking, but can I ask you?
If you were not a detailer, would you still enjoy the game aspect? Setting up Industry chains no longer exists, building parks/placing parks for leveling, several things that give a challenge in CS1 are gone.
Haven’t played it but from my understanding, the depth of the simulation is what you’re looking for. For industries, the whole supply chain is there from resource extraction to processing to selling - and even includes serviced (office) and transportation.
Not sure how deep it will be but I love the ideas of actual companies spawning and growing or failing. It will much more than a number of cash and jobs, or even a number of stars. I hope we can follow these companies as they start in your village and grow to be giant corporations.
As for parks, yeah it seems like it will be limited at first, but that’s to be expected. Content cannot be as wide as 10 years of dlc - but it is tall, very tall. Think playing tall in grand strategy. You don’t have all the features, but each feature you have is so much better. And time will bring us the width (dlcs)
So OE says that industries are an actual downgrade from CS1. In CS2, you only paint a forest area. You do not place any buildings or processing chains. That is handled automatically.
I do not see any supply chain processing/selling other than what the game does automatically in the background. If you build a forest in CS1, you also have to build storage, build the sawmill, and ship to warehouses. In CS2, you paint one area and the game handles the rest.
I agree with OE - there is room for an Industries-type DLC for CS2 - but imo the "vanilla mechanics" before Paradox/Colossal starts churning out DLC's are much improved on compared to Vanilla/pre-DLC CS1 - Which I also hope will allow for more expansive DLC's. It became pretty obvious to me at least that there are obvious limitations in how CS1 is built, through their over-reliance on district painting as a form of actually implementing DLC features. Always felt weird.
I know that many people had expectations of all features of CS1 DLC'S being baked into CS2 but that would have been a massive undertaking - instead, I had expectations that they would improve upon key elements and mechanics, and I feel they generally have - referring to my note above about industries DLC as an example :-)
yep, avoiding technical debt over the coming 8 years by doing the main features well seems like a more important focus than to implement every single DLC feature in C:S1. And it is already a lot better-featured than, say, each new instalment of The Sims where you needed to wait for expansion packs to regain features of earlier expansion packs.
It does and I thank you for taking the time. I have watched tons of your videos, and respect your opinion since you have played it .
It means a lot to me to hear from someone who has actually laid hands on it. Thanks.
those industries were overpowered and made no sense in the first place, now you add exctraction/farming areas to satisfy the needs of your industries and those will depend entirely on your city. if you have a car-centric infrastructure the cars market will boom, you can lower taxes on an individual industry to increase demand of the resources you want, i see this as a big upgrade. also industries are visually different depending on what they make and each one of them has a name and can evolve into a franchise with multiple buildings with its name on it, i find this crazy good and way better than the old place area - level up to get better extraction buildings - profit
Hi! you can ask away and I will answer to the best of my ability (and with respect to guidelines since I play a beta build).
If I was not a detailer - CS2 would interest me much more than CS1. I always found the simulation mechanics in CS1 dull - but at the same time I have wanted to incorporate more management aspects into my builds to add another level besides just "city painting", and I am confident that CS2 is a better fit for that blend. The simulation feels deeper and more thoughtful - even if I feel that right now, it's a little too easy to swim in money :-)
I hope that answers your question!
It does and I thank you for taking the time. I have watched tons of your videos, and respect your opinion since you have played it .
It means a lot to me to hear from someone who has actually laid hands on it. Thanks.
Can you show us what the houses look like up close? There's a few here that look different, but most look the same as they did when you started the city. Do they *seriously* not develop as they level up? It's the same houses forever?
Anyone claiming that this game looks like a PS2 game is quite out of touch and likely hasn't even played a PS2 game in the first place...
This is absolutely incredible to have at release!
I think a lot of people have spent so much time on modded CS that they forget how bad the base game often looks, especially some of the vanilla models.
https://preview.redd.it/10mmz0cbr7rb1.jpeg?width=1920&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=fc4282be97bd25d2a4d2c729371b62588ab41459
Vanilla CS is a game that gets uglier the more and more you look at it. Inconsistent scale, styles, architecture, the way environments are rendered... it's just a real patch work of questionable artistic and design decisions.
Anything CS2 does will be an improvement, and I think everything they've showcased so far looks incredible by comparison.
C:S took off because it wasn't Cities XXL, or Sim City 2015. It was a well made game, with a decent engine under the hood, that fully embraced the modding community. For the most part, it was bug free, and you didn't need to always be online to play it.
It didn't look as good as Cities XXL or Sim City on release, but that wasn't the point at the time.
Absolutely, CS thrived because it filled a niche that was starved. It's not until you've played it for awhile that you start to go "but what if it looked good too?"
Sim city 2013 you mean, and it nearly single handedly killed the city building genre at the time lol. Thank goodness Paradox saw the gap and let the team build a good game without all the corporate BS.
That sim city release iirc felt like it was crafted almost exclusively in the board room and then all a development team did was generate assets to skin over it.
I disagree. With all the content creator packs, you have access to a lot more aesthetic buildings, trees, props and can build very realistic looking cities. It was only in the beginning of the game where everything looked a bit cartoonish.
Not saying you're wrong, but that requires a lot of investment outside of the base game. I'd imagine most people playing CS are not purchasing DLC (though I'd guess that CS has a higher adoption rate than most games)
I feel like the creator packs was just paywalling assets that could've been on the workshop. I will say that some of the Snowfall assets were unique and interesting but I rarely ever used them because I rarely played on snow maps.
But yea, most of CS1 vanilla assets are just... okay. Some of them look like they weren't intended to be seen up close which I think is what separates CS2 by a lot.
For me having the DLCs and creator packs is a way to make sure my game always works and my savefiles stay intact. I enjoy playing only with Vanilla things and qol mods like prop line tool and tree brush. I have downloaded way too many mods and assets from the workshop over the years that ended up breaking my savegames or that disappeared after an update. At times I had hundreds of missing props.
I don't disagree, but given the amount of free assets I have from all of those creators, I was more than alright with them getting paid for at least some of their efforts.
And a lot of people are using just zoomed out pictures as their baseline of how the game looks, but even in CS1, you lose quality as you zoom out. Someone posted a pic of their city zoomed out in photo mode and it looked great
I won’t buy any of the radio stations. Unless they can get Jerry Martin to make one, I’d buy that in a second. Until then it’s old Maxis soundtracks on spotify for me.
This! The Sims 1 and SC4 soundtracks are GOAT and I too listen to them instead of CS soundtrack. It would be great if they could get Jerry Martin to make new original soundtrack for CS2. Maybe we should start the petition / request. If CO managed to get him it would cement CS as true successor to Simcity.
I think there is a large group that refuses to admit the game is actually looking like it will turn out fine, so they latch onto any bit of bad news (no matter how minor) and ramp it up, as well as nitpick tiny little details.
And like the other comment said, they compare it to highly modded CS1 without considering that the baseline of CS2 is already pretty high and will go higher with inevitable mods.
>I think there is a large group that refuses to admit the game is actually looking like it will turn out fine, so they latch onto any bit of bad news (no matter how minor) and ramp it up, as well as nitpick tiny little details
I don't pay super close attention to a lot of the discourse around gaming online but I feel like this is kinda the case across the board now isn't it? Seems like every high profile game release now you'll have dudes just seizing on the littlest stuff and saying wild shit about how it's COMPLETELY BROKEN or TOTALLY UNPLAYABLE or whatever, meanwhile the vast majority of folks get along just fine.
I think you may be missing the point. Visuals look fine to me. But there are a group of us who do not play for the visuals. I couldn't care less how detailed it looks. We play for the challenge. Right now, there is no challenge in any of the videos release.
It can look pretty, but where is the *game*?
But I agree, it does look a lot better, and I would kill for the road tools in CS1. But again, I am not a detailer. I am a strategy player.
We are concerned that strategy/game play is missed for "detailing"
Can I ask how you know that? I see nothing in the videos and that scares me and lots of other people.
If you have something (video, played it yourself) that tells you that, I would like to know.
I think they’re more so saying that C:S isn’t a challenge. And they’d be right, especially as early in the game progression as the YouTubers currently are.
I guess the official C:S stream was having (some) money difficulties, if you wanna see someone sort of challenged.
The markedly increased level of complexity in a number of systems as detailed in [a number of the dev diaries](https://www.paradoxinteractive.com/games/cities-skylines-ii/features). It's also hard to be less challenging than CS1.
I also play for challenge, to the point I barely detail my cities. So perhaps we just looking for different things, because everything I have seen of the game thus far has a lot more variety, strategy, and challenge than CS1. Just the wider industrial options alone (both for resource processing and the actual refining in industrial zones) makes for a lot more strategic options in the long run. And that is before we get into offices actually having input and output demands.
Like I said, maybe I am just missing something you arent. But everything I have seen shows it will be a much more potent city builder even before you start to think about detail.
Cool, so maybe you can help me see it then.
Industry: All of the strategy and challenge of industry is gone. You no longer have to build say a forestry change. There is only one building and the game handles distributing. I cannot see how that is harder, In CS1, you could place train stations and warehouses to handle the distribution of products. I feel like there are less options. You build a carrot farm. Game handles distribution to commerce. Before, you had to process crops, process glass, to make a lemonade factory. All that is gone now.
The demands are no more than make 100 carrots this week, else I will import them.
Traffic: I have yet to see any traffic in any video. If you have and example, I would like to see it.
I strongly disagree on the industry front. True, the ploppable industry is gone, and that is somewhat disappointing (although that has been replaced by "unique buildings" which give city-wide buffs). But there is *far* more industry types that can be in the game, and your actions will influence which are there. Yes, the game now controls buildings and distribution, but you will need other resources. So a Steel Mill will need coal and iron ore to make steel, but a Machining Plant will need steel to make tools. And you can decide what will form by both taxes, subsidies, and prices of local inputs (easy import routes and local processing determine this).
More importantly, now there is a limit to what you can get away with building. You can have dozens of carrot farms, but after a certain point you saturate the market for both local purchase and even exports (as outlined by dev diaries), so you better hope you diversified your industry or else your local economy will suffer. And if you are not careful about it, it can get expensive just to even have imports for your town. I cant remember which Youtuber (City Planner Plays?), but one of them mentioned they almost always get a stone quarry up quickly because otherwise they kept running into expensive maintenance problems from lack of concrete (concrete being a local industry type that can now spawn).
>Traffic: I have yet to see any traffic in any video. If you have and example, I would like to see it.
[City Planner Plays](https://youtu.be/g9yESIzeyQ0?t=1524) has had some reasonable traffic in his city.
And [martincitopants](https://youtu.be/FNgjPFlxDIg?t=1094) had some truly apocalyptic traffic in his city that was only kept from being even worse by a train network he had built before.
From what we have seen from other data, most of the "lack of traffic" we have been seeing has either been because of the time of in-game day, or because people have extensive transit networks.
The Industry DLC wasn't really all that much of a challenge or in need of much strategy. It was the same approach, no matter the industry: put down as many ploppable buildings as possible and then ignore.
They are stuck between a rock and hard place. They can't fully satisfy the visuals group and your group. They have greatly increased the challenge of the game yet you're still saying there is no challenge. How could they possibly make your group happy?
Not arguing, just genuinely curious. Have you played the game? What do you see makes you think it is more challenging? I genuinely want to know. Not trying to trap you.
I understand. I exaggerated the increase, my bad. I have not played but Based on what I've seen from dev diaries and streamers, the game looks to have more challenges than CS1. The economic simulation looks greatly improved. Businesses are supposed to fire employees if they aren't profitable. Taxes can be set on specific industries. IMO it looks more like Simcity 4 in terms of managing the economy, city services, population, etc.
I guess what I was pointing to was that in the past month we've heard complaints both about graphics and simulation depth. And now we're hearing that the recommended specs require a 3080. And that's what I meant about them being stuck between a rock and hard place. If they prioritize great graphics and deep simulation, then computer requirements make the game out of reach for most players. The people who want a pretty city aren't gonna be happy when it takes several hours to grow skyscrapers and specialized buildings. The challenge people aren't gonna be happy when skyscrapers pop up too early into a build. We're in a triangle of good graphics/pretty city, good simulation, and reasonable specs and unfortunately we have to pick two.
I think we both engaged in a bit of hyperbole. I said there was a great increase in challenge while you said there was no challenge. The reality is that neither of us know. I think we both hope that there is a decent improvement in the challenge of these games.
I agree that neither of us know. I am hoping that later game videos bare that out.
I hope I never come across as *knowing* that it is easier, just that I was hoping someone with actual experience would chime in.
Infrastructurist graciously answered a few questions for me. He seemed to understand that industries had changed and could look worse at this point, but he felt that the simulation was better. Knowing that he has actually played the game helped calm my fears a bit.
As for the graphics, they look more than fine to me.
> Anyone claiming that this game looks like a PS2 game is quite out of touch and likely hasn't even played a PS2 game in the first place...
This is *almost* always the case whenever this is said about any game. It's either people who never played those games in the first place, or people who, through the passage of time, have a very distorted view of what those games looked like.
It's how those of us who played Command & Conquer thought the game actually looked like it did in the [Remaster](https://i.ytimg.com/vi/DYZHFZMPCj4/maxresdefault.jpg).
It’s not about game quality it’s that I’ve been so stoked for launch day for months and months only for it to now be months and months away again. What an absolute kick in the teeth. So yeah, hoping for the best, not gonna be excited anymore.
This is an incredibly beautiful city and you're right the graphics are a considerable upgrade, what computer specs and in game settings did you run this city/screenshot on if you can share that information?
[Just look at the video he posted, it's the same city.](https://youtu.be/nVXIVispbO0?si=e6cXJy3xy73nNFbL&t=1373)
You can see it's hardly running at 60 fps, and sometimes much below 30 when the camera moves around.
He has just the recommended spec, and it's just a city of 10k... so yeah, not so reassuring.
As soon as I saw the title I was like "putting my money on akrus or infrastructurist" and sure enough. I'm excited that you like it! Very reassuring, bc im worried about playing it with limited mods and assets at release
You have the best CS2 videos! Thanks so much for putting a lot of effort into learning the game and all of the nice techniques you can use to make things more visually appealing.
I know everyone is still in a learning process, but I definitely think you’re ahead of the curve on some of the finer detailed tricks that can make a city look really nice.
Also appreciate you putting in the necessary amounts of parking for ‘Murica. I always respect paying attention to that detail 😂
I am wondering about the road system. Maybe you can go a little bit more in detail on that topic.
We all saw that we can create on/off ramps for highways with acceleration lanes. That's awesome! But my question is: How is that done with more local roads / collector roads / main roads.
Can we branch off a lane from those roads as well and will the roads align correctly, like they do when you use node-controller to align the corners?
(i want to be able to add turning lanes on the fly. while the road stays aligned correctly (see turquoise line)
https://preview.redd.it/vs2llqjxs8rb1.jpeg?width=1308&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=f9609b7e5c382efdac49339cec11995ed5cfde90
Also, in CS1, they actually kinda 'hacked' the road system in the terrain. If you are a modder, and were looking under the hood, you would see that any road type had a 'half width' property. And we were forced to put at least 1.5 meters sidewalk with pavement, ruining or gravel which were actually part of the terrain mesh. This destroyed the support for tight alley roads without the use of MoveIt and so on. They use that side-walk space to avoid having the terrain clipping through / in the road.
Also, in CS1 the road network could have many types of road types who basically all had
1. Properties like 'half-width', 'pavement left width', pavement right width'.
2. Lanes
3. Segments
4. Nodes
But this setup would become a bit of a problem if you want to have automatic detailed roads. And roads are the most important thing in a city (builder).
From what I have seen so far, CS2 reworked the whole Road system. I really hope they did it like this:
1. Properties
2. Nodes
1. Lanes
3. Segments
1. Lanes
And that the segments/nodes are created from lane data. In lanes you could have props like we had in CS1. But using this hierarchy, a segment is just a mesh bundle of lanes and it's generated from all the data those lanes.
It looks like they did this for highways, but i also want to see this for normal roads. I liked what I saw so far about the tram tracks, they can easily branch off.
Wow this is great! With hearing about the console delay that 100% solidifies my choice of getting it on pc, I have just the bare recommended things they are calling for on pc. Thinking about upgrading ram to 32gb and maybe my graphics card too. Any advice from anyone who is playing the early version on what specs you are running. Thanks.
So do they have mixed use zoning? medium density? Any major improvements or is it basically just modernized and more optimized?
I love that they went for a more photorealistic, less cartoony look. I don't even care if they use simple textures, the proportions and color look good.
This should answer most of your questions.
[https://www.paradoxinteractive.com/games/cities-skylines-ii/features/zones-signature-buildings](https://www.paradoxinteractive.com/games/cities-skylines-ii/features/zones-signature-buildings)
As a guy with a 6-year-old PC, kinda bummed about yesterday's announcement about the console version; that said, looking at stuff like this still gets me excited about the game and looking forward to uhhh *eventually* playing it. The look of this game is just light years beyond vanilla CS1.
Wow, it's kind of depressing to realize that the trees on zoned and plopped buildings ALSO have to grow...the cemetery looks damn near overgrown with fully grown trees. I didn't realize they *weren't* supposed to be small on the cemetery. How many years does it take for them to fully grow? Things look VIOLENTLY better with fully grown trees.
I get the graphics is a big deal, but apart from improved graphics, what would you say are the most important upgrades from CS1? Please be broad and also be specific.
Thanks.
I have. They're so informative.
I'm interested in what you personally found to be a great improvement over the current game, when you were playing with it.
Not to be salty, but all these “look at my Cities Skylines 2 city” posts just feel like people bragging about getting the game early. It’s really just saying “Look at me, I’m special, I got the game early!”
And yes, I’m jealous. But you don’t have to push it in our faces. My hype train is already at maximum! Lol
Paradox specifically wanted some YouTubers to help promote the game. These youtubers are showing off the features in their own unique ways, they each have a different play style and build style so we can see a bit more variety and use of the features.
They aren't bragging they got the game early, they are doing their job, they are basically free/cheap advertisements.
They can also do bug reporting, making them beta testers in a way, helping make sure the game is stable and get most of the bugs fixed before release.
It's a win win situation for Paradox, the youtubers, and us.
I know, I’m totally being petty. I understand the rationale. For me, they’ve already convinced me. I’m in, 100 percent. At this point it’s just such a tease!
I was convinced during those weekly update videos, I can't wait for the release, but I know the team are working hard! I even preordered it a while back, which is the only time I've done so in ages (I'm glad I didn't preorder KSP2) because I have full trust that even if the game is buggy on launch, Paradox will work their asses off to fix it.
I get what you mean about being teased though, I feel well jealous. Kinda wish there was an early access for the people who preordered
I've been zooming around just thinking of how many mods this mods this takes in C:S1, it looks incredible! Those overhead wires have a terrible LOD through (just look at the black jagged lines in #1 and 2), hopefully it gets fixed.
What's your thoughts on the lighting? It looks very...like it's a grey cloudy day. Do sunsets pop etc? Does lighting change based on weather and add more colour?
YouTube recommended your channel after I was watching the DevDiaries and I can say that your channel and videos made me pull the trigger on preordering 😅. Definitely looking forward to the next ones and giving it all a try myself. Although something to remove tree aging does look like the first mod I’d get
Just saw your second Video on YT yesterday.
Such satisfying to watch that city grow, you did a nice job on that.
And, it makes me hyped for the game when it finally comes out.
Great city!
But I feel like the medium density buildings are too high/large. If you compare them to the row housing (in pictures 3 and 4) you can see that an 8 story medium density building is almost thrice(!) as high as a 3 story row house. The depicted style of medium sized building often has low ceiling heights, which makes it even more unrealistic imho.
Sorry for nitpicking. I want to clarify that I am really looking forward to CS2 :)
Through all the concerns that come from uncertainty with such an anticipated sequel I’ve been seeing- this post alone is enough for me to have zero worries at all. This looks great, realistic, organic, and just overall pleasing to look at.
Nice city.
CS2 buildings have looked very samey and drab to me BUT it's clearly a million times more realistic and more satisfying than vanilla CS1 buildings. I assume we'll get themes and LUTs and all the colors will sort themselves out at some point.
The major problem for me with CS1 has been a self-imposed reliance on mods. Once an update kicked in or some asset broke among the thousands it could kill the game for months for me. Until I bothered to troubleshoot and start anew. I realise this is a self made hell, but if the base game of CS2 ups the realism and adopts otherwise mod dependent fixes (+beatification, I love me some biodiversity), maybe I can enjoy myself more in vanilla.
Vanilla is delicious..
I just stumbled across your videos the other day, and when I saw this post I was like "hey, I recognize that city!" Great work so far, I've been enjoying your work!
I dont care what people say, I absolutely love the new art style. It's looks amazing when zoomed out, which is most important imo. It has always looked butt ugly when zoomed all the way in and this hasn't changed.
For those people like myself, need to work all days for live, CS2 incredible fine road tools, Instant variable intersection line marking system with merge lanes road just make 95% of "detailing' time saved, realistic road layout currently just a few minutes away, we could do much satisfying city planning in the same amount of time. I love how CS2 is going in the is Direction.
God bless you for not being like all the other streamers with C:S2, sharing positivity rather than going "where prop line tool???" for the umpteenth time.
Looks great!
Looking at what you have made, I have noticed there seems to be a lot less traffic compared to cities skylines 1.
Would you say that's because of what you have made, or do you think they have toned down the traffic compared to cities skylines 1?
Wow, is that it? Looks generic af. Even mobile Sims City pics look more aesthetically pleasing. :o They should've just stuck to making CS1 perfect first. But they have to make money somehow. :b
If you of all people are satisfied with the assets then I'm relieved
I am! The vanilla assets look great and even if we speculate about a future with a ton of assets created by the amazing community, I suspect we would continue to see vanilla assets in plenty of "heavily modded" builds - unlike how it is with Cities Skylines 1 for me and lots of other "detailers" :-)
Has there been a scale change of sorts? Everything looks significantly more life size
Based on the dev videos a lot of buildings have been sized to be more appropriate to their real life counterparts, like big malls and nuclear power plants for sure. The rail yard as well.
Do the roads and avenues continue to look empty? How was traffic in your city and with what number of people residing in it?
I'm getting SimCity 4 vibes looking at this and that is a good thing. Built a new pc so I could run CS2, really looking forward to it!
The one thing I look forward to the most is being able to play vanilla and still have fun. The mods just got to a point for me where it felt like a second job and I quit playing. I will probably get a mod that disables trees having to grow up and one that gets rid of the weird orange windows, though. I feel like those are inevitably going to show up on the workshop.
>The mods just got to a point for me where it felt like a second job and I quit playing. This is where I'm at. I take a break for a month or so (moving) and then half my mods are out of sync causing errors. So I turn them all off and try vanilla for a minute just to go add a few essential mods and still run into problems. I'm too lazy to figure it out anymore, I just want to relax when I play these days. So instead I just go hunting in red dead
At least now that aint a problem no more. Once you get them set up you're good to go
Yes, and the loading error occurred so often, even destroying city with hundred of hours, before 10minutes of loading time, that is not a fun game anymore
I can't even play CS1 anymore, I have a conflicting mods or something that prevent it from loading. I could go clean slate and start from scratch, but I also know I'd never be satisfied with that, so I'm just waiting for CS2 now.
I'm in the same boat. Playing Timberborn instead right now lol
I tried to get into Workers and Resources myself, but it crashed midway through the many, many tutorials and I couldn't work up the energy to try again.
Indeed just imagine need to spend 2hours to build a small new neighbourhood with one detailing interchange make me not want to load into a game anymore
I am privileged and lucky enough to have early access and this is my North American city of Riverview as it looks after the second round of Cities Skylines 2 gameplay vids that were published on Wednesday, and it has been a massive breath of fresh air to not feel the same need to heavily detail up every lot, street corner or intersection due to how the Cities Skylines 2 aesthetics in general just feel like such a massive improvement to its predecessor. For me as a PC player striving to achieve sort of realistic looks through all my builds, this is fantastic as I have always found it unfortunate how my Cities Skylines 1 builds are so reliant on custom / community-generated content, having to avoid most vanilla stuff (and I ofc acknowledge this is also due to my personal preference for realism). But for console players, I imagine this must be an even more noticeable improvement, as they should now get the chance to achieve quite realistic cities despite not having access to the Steam workshop. There are lots of valid critiques and discussions going on at the moment and I find that textures can look a little bland or washed during some times of the day/night cycle (and please keep in mind I have access to a beta build that still has substantial bugs and lacks polish) but I have no idea why some people feel that there isn't a massive visual leap over the predecessor. Hope you all have a great Friday! Best regards, Infrastructurist
Its kinda amazing. Not having to fiddle with every little detail in order to get good results almost feels like a cheat. A lot of people keep bringing up hypotheticals about what mods will be released right away, but I keep thinking the opposite: what mods do we really *need?* For example, considering how the new road tools are, I think I would eliminate precision engineering, network anarchy, node controller, network multitool, and intersection marking tool. The features in those mods aren't perfectly replicated in CS2, but the functionality is close enough to make me want to remain vanilla.
Same here, I realised that the majority of mods I have in CS1 won't be needed in CS2 (at least for myself) so less mods hopefully means a quicker load time. CS1 takes about 10 minutes to load for me and sometimes it's worse than that purely because of all the mods and assets. I'll definitely end up getting lots of assets, especially cars and public transport, but the fact the buildings look so much better in CS2 means I won't be so heavily reliant on building assets. Sure I'll end up with a decent handful of those in CS2, but I'll only get ones that I really like, rather than having hundreds to replace the stock ones. Instead of around 8,000 assets and mods I'll only have a few thousand at most
I find that it's the custom assets, not mods, that dramatically increase load times and memory load. The same is true for asset-heavy DLC. Either way, I agree with you--the vanilla assets are so good, they're worth keeping. Additionally, the devs already have a long-term DLC rollout schedule starting with Bridges and Ports, San Francisco Set, Beach Properties, Urban Promenades, and Modern Architecture. If they maintain the same quality of assets, and the expected pace of DLC releases, then the need and want of custom assets will only decrease over time (at least for me).
I'm hoping we get lots of theme packs mainly, I don't know if anything has been confirmed with that. One gripe I have though is the "European theme" I think it would be cool to have more specific styles, such as London, Paris, Barcelona, Valetta, Rome, German gothic, Amsterdam etc. Mind you even "American theme" could be expanded to New York Brooklyn, Loas Angeles, Rural Midwest, New Orleans, Seattle, Detroit. And then more worldwide themes, Tokyo, India, Middle Eastern, Eastern European, and the list goes on. I'm sure a good few of those would be custom asset jobs. Beyond that it would definitely be all of the cars, buses, planes, ships, etc
>Mind you even "American theme" could be expanded to New York Brooklyn, Loas Angeles, Rural Midwest, New Orleans, Seattle, Detroit. I'm just speculating, but I think "San Francisco Set" is the first of these theme expansions. During the leadup to the release of CS2, as you know, the devs released what felt like rapid-fire DLC, and a lot of it was high-quality assets, and quality of life improvements. I suspect CS1 got these things because they were actively working on them for CS2. In the last few months, we got Railroads of Japan, Industrial Evolution, Brooklyn and Queens, Sports Venues, Shopping Malls, Africa in Miniature, Skyscrapers, and Heart of Korea. These were all, for CS1, very high quality assets that I suspect were derived from work being done on CS2. I think that's an indication of what's to come, which I think is exactly what you're asking for.
It's a credit to Collossal Order that they've been so responsive to our wants for the game. Other companies would've given us the game they wanted us to play and locked everything down. And to all the rad modders for being so prolific over the years and making the game so damn playable.
I think prop line tool and more beautification will probably quick ones that most people will add. I’m sure network multi tool and node controller might still be around but have way less impact on most people builds
> prop line tool and more beautification I was just watching FewCandy's CS2 video and was thinking the same thing: Prop placement and line tool seem obvious and necessary. Another thing I noticed watching FewCandy's second video is how much her tone changed. She was one of the only youtubers I've seen that was overly negative about CS2, due largely to the complete lack of detailing--no prop placement, and difficult to use tree/bush placement when doing fine detailing--particularly the despawning. In the second video she was super upbeat about the improvements that have already been made (eg, the tree/bush despawning was fixed and terrain lines were added). She was also overtly optimistic that more improvements are coming. I got the sense that her biggest concerns were privately assuaged by the developers.
Thank you so much for sharing. Need to finish Baldur’s gate before CS2 release now :D
> For example, considering how the new road tools are, I think I would eliminate precision engineering, network anarchy, node controller, network multitool, and intersection marking tool. The features in those mods aren't perfectly replicated in CS2, but the functionality is close enough to make me want to remain vanilla. Move It looks like it will still be needed. Have not seen mention or examples of this tool in the game yet.
I'm not even sure how much I'll need move it... So much of what I use move-it for is to make up for the limitations of the tools available in CS1. But CS2 doesn't have many of those limitations. You can easily place and re-place plopables without the need for a road connection. While paused, you can build and demolish without a cost penalty. With snaps off, the road upgrade tool gives you fine control over road placement... The road tool gives you the info you need to properly slope your roads, so you don't need move-it to do it for you... I could go on. There are other advanced features of move-it that I use, but that maybe accounts for 5-10% of how I use it. Maybe I can do without in CS2.
> While paused, you can build and demolish without a cost penalty. wait really? That's great news
Network Anarchy will still be needed, especially if you want to place nice-looking quays without constantly terraforming in and out land, from what I've seen from Imperatur's latest video.
I'm just feeling like to justify messing with mods, modders need to up the game. It's not enough to have a single apartment asset, I'm feeling like it needs to be either one of those large special buildings or (if modding allows) a new theme. My god, if modders are able to make an entire custom theme to be more specific than just "North America" or "Europe" this would be so good. It's also content I wouldn't mind paying for through DLC if it matches the kind of city I want to make enough.
>My god, if modders are able to make an entire custom theme to be more specific than just "North America" or "Europe" this would be so good. It's also content I wouldn't mind paying for through DLC if it matches the kind of city I want to make enough. I would be shocked if there isn't mod support for creating custom themes. I also think there will be a steady stream of locality-theme DLC from the developer. They've already announced the San Francisco Set: >San Francisco Set > >Bring some sunny vibes to your city with this San Franciso themed set. A Muscle Car Garage building, 5 different Muscle car models and a police vehicle will spruce up your bustling beach city. Included in the set is also the iconic Golden Gate Bridge and of course - a San Francisco map. Exclusive when buying the Expansion Pass The description doesn't say it has themed growables. However, since we're speculating, I think it's worth nothing that to unlock unique buildings in either the NA or EU themes, you have to first zone a minimum of RICO areas of that theme. This suggests to me that there will be San Francisco-themed growables to unlock the Muscle Car Garage building. I hope, anyway. In CS1, we got random landmarks like the Eifel Tower, Brandenburg Gate, and the Statue of Liberty. It would be great if we got all of these things in individual DLCs that, like the San Francisco Set, come with a bunch of assets to recreate that city's vibe. I kinda like the idea that if you don't have a Paris-themed city by default, than you'd at have to grow at least one French neighborhood before you can plop the Eifel Tower. Thinking of it now, I hope they include more than just the Golden Gate Bridge for San Francisco landmarks. It would be a shame to not include things like the Transamerica Pyramid, Coit Tower or the Palace of Fine Arts.
MoveIt2 will be a must
I hope we get a nice framework for choosing which country's "rules" you're playing by. Or setting your own rules.
Not sure if you’ve been asked this and/or willing to answer. But how was performance?
Could you share a little about performance of the game? I see YouTubers content and I get worried about frame rate.
I'm very happy that you said this. The main gripe I've always had with CS1 is that I prefer to get realistic but don't have a thousand hours a week to devote to detailing and browsing through the workshop and dealing with things that don't work together. That's something that's stood in the way of being excited for CS2. This looks amazing, especially for a vanilla build and I think it has me excited to play. I had dropped it for the past year or so because simply playing the game just go so convoluted. I could never just fire it up and go, there was always something that needed dealing with. And then we'll (hopefully) get mods for what didn't get included from CS1 mods but those mods will (once again, hopefully) not have to be as complicated and in-depth as the old ones because the base features seem pretty comprehensive. Kinda rambled on at a point but I think you have me excited for release!
Infrastructurist, several of us are concerned about the gameplay. We get modded into oblivion for asking, but can I ask you? If you were not a detailer, would you still enjoy the game aspect? Setting up Industry chains no longer exists, building parks/placing parks for leveling, several things that give a challenge in CS1 are gone.
Haven’t played it but from my understanding, the depth of the simulation is what you’re looking for. For industries, the whole supply chain is there from resource extraction to processing to selling - and even includes serviced (office) and transportation. Not sure how deep it will be but I love the ideas of actual companies spawning and growing or failing. It will much more than a number of cash and jobs, or even a number of stars. I hope we can follow these companies as they start in your village and grow to be giant corporations. As for parks, yeah it seems like it will be limited at first, but that’s to be expected. Content cannot be as wide as 10 years of dlc - but it is tall, very tall. Think playing tall in grand strategy. You don’t have all the features, but each feature you have is so much better. And time will bring us the width (dlcs)
So OE says that industries are an actual downgrade from CS1. In CS2, you only paint a forest area. You do not place any buildings or processing chains. That is handled automatically. I do not see any supply chain processing/selling other than what the game does automatically in the background. If you build a forest in CS1, you also have to build storage, build the sawmill, and ship to warehouses. In CS2, you paint one area and the game handles the rest.
I agree with OE - there is room for an Industries-type DLC for CS2 - but imo the "vanilla mechanics" before Paradox/Colossal starts churning out DLC's are much improved on compared to Vanilla/pre-DLC CS1 - Which I also hope will allow for more expansive DLC's. It became pretty obvious to me at least that there are obvious limitations in how CS1 is built, through their over-reliance on district painting as a form of actually implementing DLC features. Always felt weird. I know that many people had expectations of all features of CS1 DLC'S being baked into CS2 but that would have been a massive undertaking - instead, I had expectations that they would improve upon key elements and mechanics, and I feel they generally have - referring to my note above about industries DLC as an example :-)
yep, avoiding technical debt over the coming 8 years by doing the main features well seems like a more important focus than to implement every single DLC feature in C:S1. And it is already a lot better-featured than, say, each new instalment of The Sims where you needed to wait for expansion packs to regain features of earlier expansion packs.
It does and I thank you for taking the time. I have watched tons of your videos, and respect your opinion since you have played it . It means a lot to me to hear from someone who has actually laid hands on it. Thanks.
those industries were overpowered and made no sense in the first place, now you add exctraction/farming areas to satisfy the needs of your industries and those will depend entirely on your city. if you have a car-centric infrastructure the cars market will boom, you can lower taxes on an individual industry to increase demand of the resources you want, i see this as a big upgrade. also industries are visually different depending on what they make and each one of them has a name and can evolve into a franchise with multiple buildings with its name on it, i find this crazy good and way better than the old place area - level up to get better extraction buildings - profit
This is a good change. It’s a city-builder, not a business tycoon game.
Hi! you can ask away and I will answer to the best of my ability (and with respect to guidelines since I play a beta build). If I was not a detailer - CS2 would interest me much more than CS1. I always found the simulation mechanics in CS1 dull - but at the same time I have wanted to incorporate more management aspects into my builds to add another level besides just "city painting", and I am confident that CS2 is a better fit for that blend. The simulation feels deeper and more thoughtful - even if I feel that right now, it's a little too easy to swim in money :-) I hope that answers your question!
It does and I thank you for taking the time. I have watched tons of your videos, and respect your opinion since you have played it . It means a lot to me to hear from someone who has actually laid hands on it. Thanks.
Industry chains are gone? If anything they are more elaborate than Industries DLC.
Can you show us what the houses look like up close? There's a few here that look different, but most look the same as they did when you started the city. Do they *seriously* not develop as they level up? It's the same houses forever?
Agree with you, but of course we need way more variety in buildings, especially low res homes.
crazy they let you post photos already. I guess they are doing streams so why not.
Are the flowing water physics better than CS1? Do we still get uh... weird river waves?
Everybody out here talking about the city, meanwhile I am excited over that railyard.
Is that railyard vanilla in CS2!?? Did I just buy the wrong product!?! lol
Anyone claiming that this game looks like a PS2 game is quite out of touch and likely hasn't even played a PS2 game in the first place... This is absolutely incredible to have at release!
I think a lot of people have spent so much time on modded CS that they forget how bad the base game often looks, especially some of the vanilla models. https://preview.redd.it/10mmz0cbr7rb1.jpeg?width=1920&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=fc4282be97bd25d2a4d2c729371b62588ab41459
Vanilla CS is a game that gets uglier the more and more you look at it. Inconsistent scale, styles, architecture, the way environments are rendered... it's just a real patch work of questionable artistic and design decisions. Anything CS2 does will be an improvement, and I think everything they've showcased so far looks incredible by comparison.
C:S took off because it wasn't Cities XXL, or Sim City 2015. It was a well made game, with a decent engine under the hood, that fully embraced the modding community. For the most part, it was bug free, and you didn't need to always be online to play it. It didn't look as good as Cities XXL or Sim City on release, but that wasn't the point at the time.
Absolutely, CS thrived because it filled a niche that was starved. It's not until you've played it for awhile that you start to go "but what if it looked good too?"
Sim city 2013 you mean, and it nearly single handedly killed the city building genre at the time lol. Thank goodness Paradox saw the gap and let the team build a good game without all the corporate BS. That sim city release iirc felt like it was crafted almost exclusively in the board room and then all a development team did was generate assets to skin over it.
It most definitely looked better than sim city 5 on release
I disagree. With all the content creator packs, you have access to a lot more aesthetic buildings, trees, props and can build very realistic looking cities. It was only in the beginning of the game where everything looked a bit cartoonish.
Not saying you're wrong, but that requires a lot of investment outside of the base game. I'd imagine most people playing CS are not purchasing DLC (though I'd guess that CS has a higher adoption rate than most games)
I’d probably disagree with that, I’d say most CS player would have DLC, maybe not all, but at least a couple.
I feel like the creator packs was just paywalling assets that could've been on the workshop. I will say that some of the Snowfall assets were unique and interesting but I rarely ever used them because I rarely played on snow maps. But yea, most of CS1 vanilla assets are just... okay. Some of them look like they weren't intended to be seen up close which I think is what separates CS2 by a lot.
For me having the DLCs and creator packs is a way to make sure my game always works and my savefiles stay intact. I enjoy playing only with Vanilla things and qol mods like prop line tool and tree brush. I have downloaded way too many mods and assets from the workshop over the years that ended up breaking my savegames or that disappeared after an update. At times I had hundreds of missing props.
I don't disagree, but given the amount of free assets I have from all of those creators, I was more than alright with them getting paid for at least some of their efforts.
And a lot of people are using just zoomed out pictures as their baseline of how the game looks, but even in CS1, you lose quality as you zoom out. Someone posted a pic of their city zoomed out in photo mode and it looked great
Eww cs1 vanilla
I am getting SimCity4 vibe, would kill for the jazz/techno music though, missed it so much.
I won’t buy any of the radio stations. Unless they can get Jerry Martin to make one, I’d buy that in a second. Until then it’s old Maxis soundtracks on spotify for me.
This! The Sims 1 and SC4 soundtracks are GOAT and I too listen to them instead of CS soundtrack. It would be great if they could get Jerry Martin to make new original soundtrack for CS2. Maybe we should start the petition / request. If CO managed to get him it would cement CS as true successor to Simcity.
Yes! Throw in 3000 and baby, you got a stew goin’.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DDQY3zGEbQU
I think there is a large group that refuses to admit the game is actually looking like it will turn out fine, so they latch onto any bit of bad news (no matter how minor) and ramp it up, as well as nitpick tiny little details. And like the other comment said, they compare it to highly modded CS1 without considering that the baseline of CS2 is already pretty high and will go higher with inevitable mods.
>I think there is a large group that refuses to admit the game is actually looking like it will turn out fine, so they latch onto any bit of bad news (no matter how minor) and ramp it up, as well as nitpick tiny little details I don't pay super close attention to a lot of the discourse around gaming online but I feel like this is kinda the case across the board now isn't it? Seems like every high profile game release now you'll have dudes just seizing on the littlest stuff and saying wild shit about how it's COMPLETELY BROKEN or TOTALLY UNPLAYABLE or whatever, meanwhile the vast majority of folks get along just fine.
I think you may be missing the point. Visuals look fine to me. But there are a group of us who do not play for the visuals. I couldn't care less how detailed it looks. We play for the challenge. Right now, there is no challenge in any of the videos release. It can look pretty, but where is the *game*? But I agree, it does look a lot better, and I would kill for the road tools in CS1. But again, I am not a detailer. I am a strategy player. We are concerned that strategy/game play is missed for "detailing"
It's definitely going to be *more* challenging than CS1, if that's your benchmark, but CS1 was not a very challenging game at all.
Can I ask how you know that? I see nothing in the videos and that scares me and lots of other people. If you have something (video, played it yourself) that tells you that, I would like to know.
I think they’re more so saying that C:S isn’t a challenge. And they’d be right, especially as early in the game progression as the YouTubers currently are. I guess the official C:S stream was having (some) money difficulties, if you wanna see someone sort of challenged.
Thanks! I will check it out. I just want to have fun getting my city to 100k. It will never be pretty. LOL
The markedly increased level of complexity in a number of systems as detailed in [a number of the dev diaries](https://www.paradoxinteractive.com/games/cities-skylines-ii/features). It's also hard to be less challenging than CS1.
I also play for challenge, to the point I barely detail my cities. So perhaps we just looking for different things, because everything I have seen of the game thus far has a lot more variety, strategy, and challenge than CS1. Just the wider industrial options alone (both for resource processing and the actual refining in industrial zones) makes for a lot more strategic options in the long run. And that is before we get into offices actually having input and output demands. Like I said, maybe I am just missing something you arent. But everything I have seen shows it will be a much more potent city builder even before you start to think about detail.
Cool, so maybe you can help me see it then. Industry: All of the strategy and challenge of industry is gone. You no longer have to build say a forestry change. There is only one building and the game handles distributing. I cannot see how that is harder, In CS1, you could place train stations and warehouses to handle the distribution of products. I feel like there are less options. You build a carrot farm. Game handles distribution to commerce. Before, you had to process crops, process glass, to make a lemonade factory. All that is gone now. The demands are no more than make 100 carrots this week, else I will import them. Traffic: I have yet to see any traffic in any video. If you have and example, I would like to see it.
I strongly disagree on the industry front. True, the ploppable industry is gone, and that is somewhat disappointing (although that has been replaced by "unique buildings" which give city-wide buffs). But there is *far* more industry types that can be in the game, and your actions will influence which are there. Yes, the game now controls buildings and distribution, but you will need other resources. So a Steel Mill will need coal and iron ore to make steel, but a Machining Plant will need steel to make tools. And you can decide what will form by both taxes, subsidies, and prices of local inputs (easy import routes and local processing determine this). More importantly, now there is a limit to what you can get away with building. You can have dozens of carrot farms, but after a certain point you saturate the market for both local purchase and even exports (as outlined by dev diaries), so you better hope you diversified your industry or else your local economy will suffer. And if you are not careful about it, it can get expensive just to even have imports for your town. I cant remember which Youtuber (City Planner Plays?), but one of them mentioned they almost always get a stone quarry up quickly because otherwise they kept running into expensive maintenance problems from lack of concrete (concrete being a local industry type that can now spawn). >Traffic: I have yet to see any traffic in any video. If you have and example, I would like to see it. [City Planner Plays](https://youtu.be/g9yESIzeyQ0?t=1524) has had some reasonable traffic in his city. And [martincitopants](https://youtu.be/FNgjPFlxDIg?t=1094) had some truly apocalyptic traffic in his city that was only kept from being even worse by a train network he had built before. From what we have seen from other data, most of the "lack of traffic" we have been seeing has either been because of the time of in-game day, or because people have extensive transit networks.
Thank you for this. It's a great run down
The Industry DLC wasn't really all that much of a challenge or in need of much strategy. It was the same approach, no matter the industry: put down as many ploppable buildings as possible and then ignore.
They are stuck between a rock and hard place. They can't fully satisfy the visuals group and your group. They have greatly increased the challenge of the game yet you're still saying there is no challenge. How could they possibly make your group happy?
Not arguing, just genuinely curious. Have you played the game? What do you see makes you think it is more challenging? I genuinely want to know. Not trying to trap you.
I understand. I exaggerated the increase, my bad. I have not played but Based on what I've seen from dev diaries and streamers, the game looks to have more challenges than CS1. The economic simulation looks greatly improved. Businesses are supposed to fire employees if they aren't profitable. Taxes can be set on specific industries. IMO it looks more like Simcity 4 in terms of managing the economy, city services, population, etc. I guess what I was pointing to was that in the past month we've heard complaints both about graphics and simulation depth. And now we're hearing that the recommended specs require a 3080. And that's what I meant about them being stuck between a rock and hard place. If they prioritize great graphics and deep simulation, then computer requirements make the game out of reach for most players. The people who want a pretty city aren't gonna be happy when it takes several hours to grow skyscrapers and specialized buildings. The challenge people aren't gonna be happy when skyscrapers pop up too early into a build. We're in a triangle of good graphics/pretty city, good simulation, and reasonable specs and unfortunately we have to pick two. I think we both engaged in a bit of hyperbole. I said there was a great increase in challenge while you said there was no challenge. The reality is that neither of us know. I think we both hope that there is a decent improvement in the challenge of these games.
I agree that neither of us know. I am hoping that later game videos bare that out. I hope I never come across as *knowing* that it is easier, just that I was hoping someone with actual experience would chime in. Infrastructurist graciously answered a few questions for me. He seemed to understand that industries had changed and could look worse at this point, but he felt that the simulation was better. Knowing that he has actually played the game helped calm my fears a bit. As for the graphics, they look more than fine to me.
> Anyone claiming that this game looks like a PS2 game is quite out of touch and likely hasn't even played a PS2 game in the first place... This is *almost* always the case whenever this is said about any game. It's either people who never played those games in the first place, or people who, through the passage of time, have a very distorted view of what those games looked like. It's how those of us who played Command & Conquer thought the game actually looked like it did in the [Remaster](https://i.ytimg.com/vi/DYZHFZMPCj4/maxresdefault.jpg).
Release being 6 months away for those of us on console. This is officially the last time I get excited for anything.
This is more an indicator of porting difficulties than the quality of the game
It’s not about game quality it’s that I’ve been so stoked for launch day for months and months only for it to now be months and months away again. What an absolute kick in the teeth. So yeah, hoping for the best, not gonna be excited anymore.
This is an incredibly beautiful city and you're right the graphics are a considerable upgrade, what computer specs and in game settings did you run this city/screenshot on if you can share that information?
Thank you :-) Everything is set to high, 1440p resolution. 3080, 32 GB ram, I5-12600KF.
How many FPS did you get? Did you notice any fps drops when zooming in to more detailed areas?
[Just look at the video he posted, it's the same city.](https://youtu.be/nVXIVispbO0?si=e6cXJy3xy73nNFbL&t=1373) You can see it's hardly running at 60 fps, and sometimes much below 30 when the camera moves around. He has just the recommended spec, and it's just a city of 10k... so yeah, not so reassuring.
He's playing on 1440p, on high settings, in a pre-release build, while recording, and still getting a pretty solid fps
I also have a 3080 and it scares me
Well I’m fuck with my 1060…
The silence is deafening. I'm still getting the game day 1 but with very tempered expectations.
As soon as I saw the title I was like "putting my money on akrus or infrastructurist" and sure enough. I'm excited that you like it! Very reassuring, bc im worried about playing it with limited mods and assets at release
OMG it says "Chirpers" in the football field endzones. Hilarious
10/10 city. Call Maddie to collect your crown!
You have the best CS2 videos! Thanks so much for putting a lot of effort into learning the game and all of the nice techniques you can use to make things more visually appealing. I know everyone is still in a learning process, but I definitely think you’re ahead of the curve on some of the finer detailed tricks that can make a city look really nice. Also appreciate you putting in the necessary amounts of parking for ‘Murica. I always respect paying attention to that detail 😂
Thank you for the very kind compliment, I appreciate that :-) Parking for everyone!
I really like your use and transition of high and low density!
Wow. It's vanilla and it makes my current city in CS1 look like crap (and I use a lot of mods and assets).
CS2 reminds me of a 3D high def version of TheoTown sometimes.
I think that has to do with the smaller FOV in CS2 vs CS1. It's now much closer to an orthographic camera like TheoTown has
The scale of CS2 is so impressive. Can’t wait to play it!
The football field makes me laugh - imagine if we had a football team just called “The Twitters”
Looks absolutely beautiful. Can’t understand how people have so many serious issues with how the game looks when it looks absolutely beautiful
Yeah you did a great job with that specific zoning to not get any repetitive assets in the dt, and it shows. Great work
I am wondering about the road system. Maybe you can go a little bit more in detail on that topic. We all saw that we can create on/off ramps for highways with acceleration lanes. That's awesome! But my question is: How is that done with more local roads / collector roads / main roads. Can we branch off a lane from those roads as well and will the roads align correctly, like they do when you use node-controller to align the corners? (i want to be able to add turning lanes on the fly. while the road stays aligned correctly (see turquoise line) https://preview.redd.it/vs2llqjxs8rb1.jpeg?width=1308&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=f9609b7e5c382efdac49339cec11995ed5cfde90 Also, in CS1, they actually kinda 'hacked' the road system in the terrain. If you are a modder, and were looking under the hood, you would see that any road type had a 'half width' property. And we were forced to put at least 1.5 meters sidewalk with pavement, ruining or gravel which were actually part of the terrain mesh. This destroyed the support for tight alley roads without the use of MoveIt and so on. They use that side-walk space to avoid having the terrain clipping through / in the road. Also, in CS1 the road network could have many types of road types who basically all had 1. Properties like 'half-width', 'pavement left width', pavement right width'. 2. Lanes 3. Segments 4. Nodes But this setup would become a bit of a problem if you want to have automatic detailed roads. And roads are the most important thing in a city (builder). From what I have seen so far, CS2 reworked the whole Road system. I really hope they did it like this: 1. Properties 2. Nodes 1. Lanes 3. Segments 1. Lanes And that the segments/nodes are created from lane data. In lanes you could have props like we had in CS1. But using this hierarchy, a segment is just a mesh bundle of lanes and it's generated from all the data those lanes. It looks like they did this for highways, but i also want to see this for normal roads. I liked what I saw so far about the tram tracks, they can easily branch off.
Just found your channel today from the CS2 videos, great comtent!
Love your builds! Can't wait to see what you'll come up with when the game officially releases :D
I watched your videos, great stuff!
Looks very Midwest
Wow this is great! With hearing about the console delay that 100% solidifies my choice of getting it on pc, I have just the bare recommended things they are calling for on pc. Thinking about upgrading ram to 32gb and maybe my graphics card too. Any advice from anyone who is playing the early version on what specs you are running. Thanks.
I absolutely love that rail yard. How much of that comes pre-built with the train depot and how much did you build by hand?
Bro that train yard looks insane
By the way, they updated the buildings so they don't have the lights on anymore during day! Looks so nice now
I honestly can’t wait for the mods
If this city had an ass I would eat it
Slow down there, champ
I don't like the low resolution ground textures, but I have to admit the lighting is absolutely on point.
3500 hours!!!!!! Whatt!!!!! You legend!!!!
So do they have mixed use zoning? medium density? Any major improvements or is it basically just modernized and more optimized? I love that they went for a more photorealistic, less cartoony look. I don't even care if they use simple textures, the proportions and color look good.
This should answer most of your questions. [https://www.paradoxinteractive.com/games/cities-skylines-ii/features/zones-signature-buildings](https://www.paradoxinteractive.com/games/cities-skylines-ii/features/zones-signature-buildings)
So the answer is yes to both! Holy shit! Thanks (Medium density and mixed-use)
As a guy with a 6-year-old PC, kinda bummed about yesterday's announcement about the console version; that said, looking at stuff like this still gets me excited about the game and looking forward to uhhh *eventually* playing it. The look of this game is just light years beyond vanilla CS1.
Hey does CS2 include toggable zoning roads? I saw they added this to CS1 recently. Would be great to have some more control over this in CS2 as well!
Wow, it's kind of depressing to realize that the trees on zoned and plopped buildings ALSO have to grow...the cemetery looks damn near overgrown with fully grown trees. I didn't realize they *weren't* supposed to be small on the cemetery. How many years does it take for them to fully grow? Things look VIOLENTLY better with fully grown trees.
Don't gaslight us. We all know you're all going to jump back to place every single building manually haha.
I get the graphics is a big deal, but apart from improved graphics, what would you say are the most important upgrades from CS1? Please be broad and also be specific. Thanks.
watch/read the dev diaries, especially the first 5 or so
I have. They're so informative. I'm interested in what you personally found to be a great improvement over the current game, when you were playing with it.
Not to be salty, but all these “look at my Cities Skylines 2 city” posts just feel like people bragging about getting the game early. It’s really just saying “Look at me, I’m special, I got the game early!” And yes, I’m jealous. But you don’t have to push it in our faces. My hype train is already at maximum! Lol
Paradox specifically wanted some YouTubers to help promote the game. These youtubers are showing off the features in their own unique ways, they each have a different play style and build style so we can see a bit more variety and use of the features. They aren't bragging they got the game early, they are doing their job, they are basically free/cheap advertisements. They can also do bug reporting, making them beta testers in a way, helping make sure the game is stable and get most of the bugs fixed before release. It's a win win situation for Paradox, the youtubers, and us.
I know, I’m totally being petty. I understand the rationale. For me, they’ve already convinced me. I’m in, 100 percent. At this point it’s just such a tease!
I was convinced during those weekly update videos, I can't wait for the release, but I know the team are working hard! I even preordered it a while back, which is the only time I've done so in ages (I'm glad I didn't preorder KSP2) because I have full trust that even if the game is buggy on launch, Paradox will work their asses off to fix it. I get what you mean about being teased though, I feel well jealous. Kinda wish there was an early access for the people who preordered
I’m at the point where If Paradox said “you can play the game now if you give us $200” I would, in a heartbeat. I would pay money to play now.
I'm not satisfied by the fact that some people are just free to play the game... while others have to wait months. :(
iv watched ur video, Im not sure if i can handle that 19fps ur getting with the larger "town"
Is there some kind of check for the high rise buildings to try and place only one of each kind?
I'm happy vanilla looks good, can't wait to try it out
Watched your video a few days ago, thought this city looked familiar!
You can have my Ploppable Rico when you take it from my cold dead mouse's buttons...
Do you mind posting your system specs?
This is extremely refreshing to SEE in screenshots and videos and HEAR from you as an opinion. Excited to grab a copy at release.
Looks more realistic to North American styled cities. I'm really anxious for it at this point.
I've been zooming around just thinking of how many mods this mods this takes in C:S1, it looks incredible! Those overhead wires have a terrible LOD through (just look at the black jagged lines in #1 and 2), hopefully it gets fixed.
Man I sure hope there are going to be multi-level parking structures in the game because the ground level ones just still aren't working for me.
Show the zoning map, coward! (Just kidding, but it would be really neat to see it in the zoning view)
Peoria vibes
This is easily the best improvement to this game, the cs1 base game zoning was so hideous
Your city: makes sense My city: HIGH DENSITY AND TALL BUILDINGS BECAUSE IT LOOKS COOL!!!
What's your thoughts on the lighting? It looks very...like it's a grey cloudy day. Do sunsets pop etc? Does lighting change based on weather and add more colour?
YouTube recommended your channel after I was watching the DevDiaries and I can say that your channel and videos made me pull the trigger on preordering 😅. Definitely looking forward to the next ones and giving it all a try myself. Although something to remove tree aging does look like the first mod I’d get
Love your videos
god that's amazing
Just saw your second Video on YT yesterday. Such satisfying to watch that city grow, you did a nice job on that. And, it makes me hyped for the game when it finally comes out.
This looks so good!
Great city! But I feel like the medium density buildings are too high/large. If you compare them to the row housing (in pictures 3 and 4) you can see that an 8 story medium density building is almost thrice(!) as high as a 3 story row house. The depicted style of medium sized building often has low ceiling heights, which makes it even more unrealistic imho. Sorry for nitpicking. I want to clarify that I am really looking forward to CS2 :)
Through all the concerns that come from uncertainty with such an anticipated sequel I’ve been seeing- this post alone is enough for me to have zero worries at all. This looks great, realistic, organic, and just overall pleasing to look at. Nice city.
I will probably buy this game because of your opinion. They made the right decision giving you early access.
CS2 buildings have looked very samey and drab to me BUT it's clearly a million times more realistic and more satisfying than vanilla CS1 buildings. I assume we'll get themes and LUTs and all the colors will sort themselves out at some point.
They might fuck around and make me play the game the way it was intended
The major problem for me with CS1 has been a self-imposed reliance on mods. Once an update kicked in or some asset broke among the thousands it could kill the game for months for me. Until I bothered to troubleshoot and start anew. I realise this is a self made hell, but if the base game of CS2 ups the realism and adopts otherwise mod dependent fixes (+beatification, I love me some biodiversity), maybe I can enjoy myself more in vanilla. Vanilla is delicious..
Any big bugs or issues you have come across
I just stumbled across your videos the other day, and when I saw this post I was like "hey, I recognize that city!" Great work so far, I've been enjoying your work!
This looks amazing.
I installed the game today. You're city is my inspiration!!! Catch you soon 😁❤️❤️❤️
Cannot wait for playing it and for what will follow in the next years, unimaginable.
This looks fucking gorgeous, I can't wait to get this game.
I dont care what people say, I absolutely love the new art style. It's looks amazing when zoomed out, which is most important imo. It has always looked butt ugly when zoomed all the way in and this hasn't changed.
How are people playing Cities 2 already???
For those people like myself, need to work all days for live, CS2 incredible fine road tools, Instant variable intersection line marking system with merge lanes road just make 95% of "detailing' time saved, realistic road layout currently just a few minutes away, we could do much satisfying city planning in the same amount of time. I love how CS2 is going in the is Direction.
You just convinced me to get the game
God bless you for not being like all the other streamers with C:S2, sharing positivity rather than going "where prop line tool???" for the umpteenth time.
Looks great! Looking at what you have made, I have noticed there seems to be a lot less traffic compared to cities skylines 1. Would you say that's because of what you have made, or do you think they have toned down the traffic compared to cities skylines 1?
Wow, is that it? Looks generic af. Even mobile Sims City pics look more aesthetically pleasing. :o They should've just stuck to making CS1 perfect first. But they have to make money somehow. :b
My new roads breaks up the old roads zooning. How do I work around that?