Multiplat Cities: Skylines II

[dwwaino]

 

[dwwaino]

Got a 3080ti and 5800x and even with the sample 100k city the performance was playable on High.

Liking it a lot, even though I have NFI and first city builder game.

Only did up to the first milestone, but already with the city problems im a bit like this haha

If you build zoning right on shorelines, does that open you up to water damage all the time?

Depends on the shore line. Water bobs up and down a bit and if you do any sort of terraforming somewhere else upstream it may displace water down stream. I typically won't zone to a shoreline mostly because of the topology where the ground is uneven as it slopes to the water line. If I want to build really close flatten the terrain and build a quay wall which in CS2 you do with roads that do it automatically. Except I'm still getting the hang of the behaviour of the roads with different parts of terrain as there are different quirks from CS1.

 

[dav3]

Gee disabling things like DoF and motion blur really help, got a city of 25k and it's playable. Found this article linked on Reddit with some tips to make it run a lot better.

Cities: Skylines 2 PC performance and best settings

Cities: Skylines 2 is one of the most PC-punishing games of 2023 thus far. Here's how it runs on a range of GPUs, and the best settings to tune up performance.

www.rockpapershotgun.com

 

[Smeg Head]

What sort of pc specs are you running it on dav if you dont mind me asking?

 

[dav3]

What sort of pc specs are you running it on dav if you dont mind me asking?

5800X3D, 32gb ram, 5700XT, 1440p monitors

 

[Smeg Head]

5800X3D, 32gb ram, 5700XT, 1440p monitors

Beefy!

 

[dav3]

Beefy!

GPU is a bit shit but it still goes ok

 

[Smeg Head]

GPU is a bit s**t but it still goes ok

Considering the game is gpu bound for the most part, and my 2070super is similar to that I can probably give the game a go then.

 

[gaskin]

Did lol. Did also bring back memories.

 

[BallaratBulldog]

Another patch:

• Increased leisure probability to balance the "No customers" situation with commercial companies
• Improved balance of companies' profit
• Tuned down companies ordering input resources when their storage don't have enough space
• Fixed trade resource bug preventing some resources from being consumed
• Fixed miscalculation in college/university eligible count
• Improved conditions for companies to move away when bankrupt
• Fixed a dependency error with land value causing potential instability
• Fixed an issue where loading a new map would cause water state to get out of sync with the save data
• Slightly increased Windows emission intensity
• Optimizations for area lights
• Prefer rendering small objects after large ones when possible to improve GPU performances in some cases
• Improved shadow LOD calculations to cull irrelevant shadow casters earlier
• Reduced situations where trees and alpha clipped objects would lead to virtual texturing space running out
• Fixed citizens hanging around at park areas on regular building lots never getting inside the building
• Decreased resolution of unnecessary large character textures
• Removed Spasm radio ad (due to offensive content)
• Added missing localization ID for Paradox account linking

 

[cats2rise]

Depends on the shore line. Water bobs up and down a bit and if you do any sort of terraforming somewhere else upstream it may displace water down stream. I typically won't zone to a shoreline mostly because of the topology where the ground is uneven as it slopes to the water line. If I want to build really close flatten the terrain and build a quay wall which in CS2 you do with roads that do it automatically. Except I'm still getting the hang of the behaviour of the roads with different parts of terrain as there are different quirks from CS1.

Automatic quays?!?

 

[dwwaino]

Automatic quays?!?

Yep! No more quay walls. If you build any road along a steep shore or cliff, whether on water or not, it will build a retaining wall. I'm still getting the hang of it as it sometimes behaves weirdly and still getting used to the new ways you can cut roads through terrain and stuff.

Egg goes through it all in some other videos but right here starting at about 10minutes he does some landscaping then plonks an elevated road in that auto builds a wall. In CS1 without mods you had to flood the area first to do things like this.

 

[BallaratBulldog]

A heads up, using steam cloud for saves thought I lost my current city because I couldn't load in from resume on the launcher. It would direct me to main menu with older saves from load and the continue greyed out. Thankfully they were still in C:\Program Files (x86)\Steam\userdata\89442906\949230\remote and can be moved to where the local data can read it at C:\Users\<username>\AppData\LocalLow\Colossal Order\Cities Skylines II\Saves\.

Turns out im not the only one - so maybe do a manual save \not just in cloud. Or turn autosave on so its very often incase something breaks further. (I had auto off because I'm a newbie tinkering)

Can't speak for gamepass.

 

[BallaratBulldog]

(1.0.13f1) New patch on steam (gamepass still to come) if you have the garbage issue this addresses it

Bug fixes & improvements:

• Balanced Garbage production and accumulation calculations
• Fixed garbage truck accidentally adding garbage load when calculating garbage amount estimate for the path
• Fixed garbage resource "Trade value" showing negative value in statistics
• Balanced Incinerator Plant electricity output
• Fixed various character clothing issues
• Balanced stray pets in the city
• Increased pathfind penalty for unsafe u-turns on highway
• Fixed incorrect traffic lane-changing behavior when one or more lanes are merged to one from the left side
• Balanced Water Consumption of multiple City Service buildings
• Fixed wrong zoning grid offset when opposite side of pedestrian street, alley or gravel road has retaining wall. (This can cause some zoning issues that cannot be automatically fixed if this type of location is already zoned in a save)
• Fixed cars signaling wrong side when leaving roundabout with left-hand traffic (Takes effect on existing saves only after touching roads near the roundabout with road tool)
• Fixed parking fee policy available for subway stations even though they don't have parking spaces
• Fixed an issue with randomization of radio ads per brand influence in a city
• Fixed faulty unicode and non-alphanumerical characters support to Microsoft cloud saves
• Fixes various occurrences of randomly bright windows on vehicles
• Matched Transportation infoview stop legend colors to stop icon colors
• Performance optimization to polygon area triangulation and validation
• Fix for potential error: Inspector failed to parse HTTP data on connection

 

[dwwaino]

Never thought I'd say it after complaining about it in CS1 but I don't think I'm a fan of free terraforming. It's too easy to use as a crutch from the start and just flatten everything out. While in CS1 it didn't matter when you were swimming in cash and could sell/buy soil but my default approach was to work with the terrain. I'd only majorly terraform if the terrain was really unworkable or I was creating a feature.

 

[dwwaino]

It might just be PR but this is a really interesting video. They talk openly about the reasons why they launched it when they did (simply out of time) and how they underestimated what it would take to fix some performance issues after a tech review in 2022. The game was initially planned to be released in 2020 but they had problems with third party tech that was out of their control. This is a perfect example of why some studios choose to develop their own engine so they are in total control.

Some of the early development footage is really cool too and it's a fun little insight into game development and how the earliest steps are nothing more than proof of concepts.

My only beef is this sort of transparency might have been better at launch. Slap an early access badge on it or something. I'm sure it still would have sold just as well but it may have just been a little more informative about what we were actually getting.

 

[BallaratBulldog]

Their last steam patch was good for performance on my 3060ti. its getting there now.

 

[cats2rise]

First DLC stuff dropped I hear. Beach stuff and something else I forget.

Meanwhile I've picked up CS1 again after a fair break.

Had a lovey 30k city I was slowly plugging away it. I lost it to the steam cloud universe. Have not been as upset as the time I was about 9 and I accidentally put a $20 note in the public rubbish bin but kept the icy pole wrapper in my hand instead.

 

[gaskin]

Yeah the DLC is being shit on massively from what I have seen.

 

[dwwaino]

The new DLC looks a bit poo. Not sure on the point of the Paradox mods at this point unless there is at least something like Find It. I can deal with the performance and obvious lack of content compared to CS1 and the bazillion DLCs, I also really like the simulation and lots about how the game generally works. However it just feels like a game and I'm zoning a city. CS1 feels more like building a real city where even without mods you can apply so many personal touches. CS2 still has some ways to go in that regard unfortunately.

 

[Smeg Head]

Ever tried Workers and Resources dwwanio? You aren't zoning in that, you are placing down everything in the chain.

And I've been playing some leisurely CS1 again the last few days

 

[dwwaino]

Ever tried Workers and Resources dwwanio? You aren't zoning in that, you are placing down everything in the chain.

And I've been playing some leisurely CS1 again the last few days

Workers and Resources always looked a bit more like Factorio or that kind of strategy game to me.

By zoning a city rather than building a city I guess I mean in CS1 I still zone but I have a little bit more control of the aesthetic and the way it grows. Having access to so many props is nice to make neighbourhoods look handcrafted. In CS1 the zoning demands are basic so there is more flexibility in the ways you decide to answer them. It's more relaxing and I don't feel like I'm playing a game.

Where as in CS2 for example if there is a demand on higher density residential I have to build higher density residential. If I don't then the land values of my low density can become a problem. It feels like a game and I've got to constantly react to demands in a specific way and after a while I feel like I'm not able or permitted to create the city how I want.

I still have hope. CS2 will be a slow burn. It really should have launched as Early Access and I think as more content drops and they listen to what the community wants it will turn into the sequel we wanted it to be. Also by then everyone will have the hardware required to run it lol.

 

[sataris]

How is the performance now dwwaino ?

 

[dwwaino]

How is the performance now dwwaino ?

It's a lot better at the start and small cities than it was at launch. Also the more brute force optimisations like aggressive draw distance and LODs are slowly being improved. I haven't tried with a large city yet but apparently that still absolutely tanks. I'm having trouble getting to highly developed city for the reasons in my previous posts. I just can't play the same city that long without feeling like it's just painting by the numbers.

 

[revo333]

Is this now worth playing on a PS5?