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[Cute Dragon Here]

Is it normal the amount of money you make fluctuate so much? At a time I can be making 1k and in the next I drop to -1k what am I doing wrong?

It's very finicky, but check the budget panel. If taxation revenue is dropping like a brick, pause the simulation, and check for any possible problems.

Otherwise, cut back on your services! You should only add services when you need them at the beginning of the game.

Add your first Fire House when you get your first fire; add your first police station when you start to see crime indicators; add your first landfill when you see your first garbage indicator; add your first graveyard when "Deceased" isn't 0; add your first schools when you start to see buildings complaining about lack of skilled workers.

Once you reach +5,000 or higher weekly income, then that's where I'd feel safe just expanding wherever I please.

And, finally, if you're not expanding, do so now! Expanding = new residents, workplaces, and stuff = more income.

Also remember to replace your first-tier fire and police buildings eventually with the better equivalents. The extra maintenance cost is worth it in coverage and responsiveness alone.

You can also safely set the tax rate to 11% if you don't need all the demand. The residents will still be OK with it, and you get a nice bunch of extra income, in addition to still allowing growth. 12% if you want the demand to be relatively flat; don't try anything above 12%.

 

[anonymous_abc]

Huston, we might have a a problem here...




Two achievements left. Really enjoying getting them as they force you to experiment and risk letting your city go to the shitter for a while.

Not sure I can get my 155k city to be 95%+ happy for 5 years at this stage though. Might have to start a new one for that.

 

[Calavera520]

this game..

I find myself spending time reading about different types of interchanges... frontage roads, collector distributor lanes http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Local-express_lanes

as a fan of simcity 4 i am very happy with Cities Skylines. It keeps getting better by the day too with all these excellent mods. I can't wait to see the sort of things people come up with, given the current quality of user releases so far.

 

[OchreHand]

Two way -> one way and one way direction change mod released:
http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=408209297

Looks like Sips can finally fix Bagelsville.

 

[ConfusingJazz]

Got a city up to 44,000 residents, $28,000 a month, and a million in the bank.

Damn I love this game.

But now I need to upgrade my roads. I am going to ruin everything

 

[CHC]

The gif of that dam building going wrong totally sold me on this.

 

[Cute Dragon Here]

Got a city up to 44,000 residents, $28,000 a month, and a million in the bank.

Damn I love this game.

But now I need to upgrade my roads. I am going to ruin everything

I prefer to just do "never go back and upgrade previous residential and commercial areas to higher density or road sizes". Gives the city a bit of a charm, with a "small residences" feel on a part, while the rest of the city is, well, filled with high-rises.

How did you get around 7K a week, anyway? You could do a lot better if you set your tax rates to 11% if it's below that.

 

[Klyka]

Their house might burn down, but getting to school doesn't matter. The school simulation is like the work simulation: They can never be late. It doesn't matter if their commute takes 5 minutes or 5 days. If their route in inaccessible, they teleport to school.

Wait, if they don't have a way to work,they teleport there?

So I don't need to have my residential and my industrial hooked up via roads at all?

 

[Amzin]

Right now police can't use pedestrian paths, so buildings on them will not have coverage. Hopefully this is something that can be modded or added in.

The Zen Garden is not out yet for some reason.

Thanks. That's what I figured I guess, for some reason I thought people had been building roads then bulldozing them and it had been working out. It looks so nice the way I have it too, building roads to the parks is going to be so awkward :/

My first city is still only at ~8,000. I pause to make any significant changes and I've mostly been sitting on the slowest speed. The advantage is I've had no catastrophes, the disadvantage is it is slowwwwwww going

 

[TimeEffect]

Wait, if they don't have a way to work,they teleport there?

So I don't need to have my residential and my industrial hooked up via roads at all?

It's for the sake of the game.

Vehicles teleport to their location if stuck in a particularly tough gridlock, otherwise your whole game will go to shit.

There's a mod that removes despawning vehicles if you are feeling brave.

Once road tools get better, and once I get better at road tools, I will maybe install some kind of mod that despawns vehicles and tries to make traveling more synchronous, as I do want to play without despawning and a sense of real time.

By the way, how did time work in Sim City 4?

 

[Linius]

Up to 15K pop now with a healthy 8500 profit as the city is doing it's thing. Guess I should try to make some serious bank now. And I need to learn how the subway system works. I got one line now from my University trough some suburbs but it looks horrendous and the metro only stops on way direction so I can imagine people would have to wait a while before a metro comes by.

 

[Cute Dragon Here]

By the way, how did time work in Sim City 4?

In SimCity 4 there are two time scales.

One is the overall city simulation; city development and processing goes there. Traffic is pre-calculated for everything, and traffic congestion is represented - not actual. Until you enter U-Drive-It and realize that all the cars just suddenly "exist". (The cars are still generated based on representation, though.)

The other one is strictly for day-night cycles. (Although there is a morning and evening commute distinction, it's calculated in the overall simulation.)

That's the nutshell, I think.

 

[Rentahamster]

If anyone wants to try to win a free key for this game, I'm holding a small contest here: http://www.neogaf.com/forum/showthread.php?p=156028069#post156028069

 

[Rentahamster]

Wait, if they don't have a way to work,they teleport there?

So I don't need to have my residential and my industrial hooked up via roads at all?

Yep. I originally suspected it when watching Psykoboy2's stream and he accidentally made the only entrance to his new neighborhood one way only.

 

[The Real Abed]

In SimCity 4 there are two time scales.

One is the overall city simulation; city development and processing goes there. Traffic is pre-calculated for everything, and traffic congestion is represented - not actual. Until you enter U-Drive-It and realize that all the cars just suddenly "exist". (The cars are still generated based on representation, though.)

The other one is strictly for day-night cycles. (Although there is a morning and evening commute distinction, it's calculated in the overall simulation.)

That's the nutshell, I think.

That's what I think Skylines should have. The normal time ticker, and a day/night cycle simulation where people would be sleeping at night (Unless they like the night life and have to boogie) and will wake up in the morning for work, go to work, then come home. You could have the garbage/transit services set up to start their duties at a certain time, and would still need to work with traffic to make sure they can finish the main part of the job before the rush hour hits. It would be neat to watch as traffic dies down at night, then gets busier during the day. Plus if it looked as nice as SimCity's nighttime did, it'd be amazing. (I saw that mod someone made, it's not perfect because buildings don't have lights in them at night and cars don't have rear taillights. Even in SimCity the cars had brake lights at all times.) With day/night they could add a whole new scheduling layer to the game.

And let us set garbage trucks and hearses to specific districts. It's all I want.

Oh, and the game REALLY needs a centralized list of all the namable items in the game that can be sorted by type and searched through like Roller Coaster Tycoon. If I name someone Bill, I want to be able to find him later. See what he's up to. Right now, once you lose Bill, you can't find him again unless you remember exactly where he lives or works and wait for him to appear outside the front door again.

And parking lots. I know people have made them in the asset store, but official ones would be useful for cities where we want roads to not have parking on the sides.

 

[Rentahamster]

Oh, and the game REALLY needs a centralized list of all the namable items in the game that can be sorted by type and searched through like Roller Coaster Tycoon. If I name someone Bill, I want to be able to find him later. See what he's up to. Right now, once you lose Bill, you can't find him again unless you remember exactly where he lives or works and wait for him to appear outside the front door again.

And parking lots. I know people have made them in the asset store, but official ones would be useful for cities where we want roads to not have parking on the sides.

Parking really doesn't matter in this game, actually.

 

[The Real Abed]

Parking really doesn't matter in this game, actually.

I know, but they look cool.

 

[Grief.exe]

Early game tip, reduce your power and water budgets significantly.

You can bump your power down all the way to 50%, but don't do the same for your water budget, leave it at ~60%. At 50%, your sewage facility stops working entirely.

 

[Rentahamster]

I know, but they look cool.

I see.

I find it funny how parking structures would have been extremely useful in SimCity, but alas there were none.

 

[TimeEffect]

In SimCity 4 there are two time scales.

One is the overall city simulation; city development and processing goes there. Traffic is pre-calculated for everything, and traffic congestion is represented - not actual. Until you enter U-Drive-It and realize that all the cars just suddenly "exist". (The cars are still generated based on representation, though.)

The other one is strictly for day-night cycles. (Although there is a morning and evening commute distinction, it's calculated in the overall simulation.)

That's the nutshell, I think.

Feel like Skylines should have something like this.

Night/Day with rush hour, dawn, night... workers needing to get to work in a certain time frame, making metro, traffic, etc. crucial for long travels.

... Not sure how it can work with the current scale though.

 

[Poodlestrike]

Parking really doesn't matter in this game, actually.

Doesn't it, though? I mean, it doesn't matter on basic roads, but the tree/grass lined ones don't have street parking, do they?

 

[Rentahamster]

Doesn't it, though? I mean, it doesn't matter on basic roads, but the tree/grass lined ones don't have street parking, do they?

The nice roads don't have parking, yes. But it really doesn't matter. The people in this game will park anywhere, and since there is no time constraint on whatever it is they are don't (going to work, going to school, shopping), it doesn't matter where they park, or if parking spots are available at all.

It may or may not reduce traffic congestion, I don't know how it would influence a citizen's propensity to take a car in the first place. At the least it can take a car off the road temporarily, since sometimes you'll have citizens park somewhere and then walk across town for some reason.

Try this in your game: Find some parked cars on the street. Click on them. Click on the owner's name to see where their present location is. Laugh.

 

[Grief.exe]

I have to head out, but I think I have an extremely efficient road design plan. I'll post it here for critique when I get back.

 

[Toma]

I call it...The Kraken:

 

[RayStorm]

I really need a realistic scale total conversion.

I so very much hate that 20 story high rises house 20 households, and a single floor house holds 3 households. And why are office buildings rather flat while commercial buildings become skyscrapers? That's kind of bckward.

 

[Mengy]

Check this for example: http://steamcommunity.com/id/DPruett2333/myworkshopfiles/?section=collections&appid=255710

Those are good collections, I subscribed to all of them. Man, the mods for this game are truly awe inspiring!

 

[Linius]

That's what I think Skylines should have. The normal time ticker, and a day/night cycle simulation where people would be sleeping at night (Unless they like the night life and have to boogie) and will wake up in the morning for work, go to work, then come home. You could have the garbage/transit services set up to start their duties at a certain time, and would still need to work with traffic to make sure they can finish the main part of the job before the rush hour hits. It would be neat to watch as traffic dies down at night, then gets busier during the day. Plus if it looked as nice as SimCity's nighttime did, it'd be amazing. (I saw that mod someone made, it's not perfect because buildings don't have lights in them at night and cars don't have rear taillights. Even in SimCity the cars had brake lights at all times.) With day/night they could add a whole new scheduling layer to the game.

And let us set garbage trucks and hearses to specific districts. It's all I want.

Oh, and the game REALLY needs a centralized list of all the namable items in the game that can be sorted by type and searched through like Roller Coaster Tycoon. If I name someone Bill, I want to be able to find him later. See what he's up to. Right now, once you lose Bill, you can't find him again unless you remember exactly where he lives or works and wait for him to appear outside the front door again.

And parking lots. I know people have made them in the asset store, but official ones would be useful for cities where we want roads to not have parking on the sides.

That day/night cycle how you describe it would be welcome. I'm confident the devs and the community are going to add a ton of stuff to make the game near perfect.

 

[jtb]

I really need a realistic scale total conversion.

I so very much hate that 20 story high rises house 20 households, and a single floor house holds 3 households. And why are office buildings rather flat while commercial buildings become skyscrapers? That's kind of bckward.

Totally agree. I get that they have to artificially deflate the population models so the agent calculations don't fry everyone's computers.... but yeah. The current scale (or lack thereof) is really disappointing.

 

[Saganator]

I keep hearing that trees don't reduce noise pollution, but I question that. I have a pretty busy highway roundabout in my city, it was causing a lot of noise pollution, and I already had the sound barriers. I paused the game, plopped a bunch of trees in the middle of the roundabout, and before unpausing I opened the noise pollution info screen. I then hit play and the noise pollution signature of the roundabout definitely shrunk.

 

[TimeEffect]

That's what I think Skylines should have. The normal time ticker, and a day/night cycle simulation where people would be sleeping at night (Unless they like the night life and have to boogie) and will wake up in the morning for work, go to work, then come home. You could have the garbage/transit services set up to start their duties at a certain time, and would still need to work with traffic to make sure they can finish the main part of the job before the rush hour hits. It would be neat to watch as traffic dies down at night, then gets busier during the day. Plus if it looked as nice as SimCity's nighttime did, it'd be amazing. (I saw that mod someone made, it's not perfect because buildings don't have lights in them at night and cars don't have rear taillights. Even in SimCity the cars had brake lights at all times.) With day/night they could add a whole new scheduling layer to the game.

And let us set garbage trucks and hearses to specific districts. It's all I want.

Oh, and the game REALLY needs a centralized list of all the namable items in the game that can be sorted by type and searched through like Roller Coaster Tycoon. If I name someone Bill, I want to be able to find him later. See what he's up to. Right now, once you lose Bill, you can't find him again unless you remember exactly where he lives or works and wait for him to appear outside the front door again.

And parking lots. I know people have made them in the asset store, but official ones would be useful for cities where we want roads to not have parking on the sides.

Also, when we click on a building, the game should highlight all cims that are out and about

 

[Durante]

I keep hearing that trees don't reduce noise pollution, but I question that. I have a pretty busy highway roundabout in my city, it was causing a lot of noise pollution, and I already had the sound barriers. I paused the game, plopped a bunch of trees in the middle of the roundabout, and before unpausing I opened the noise pollution info screen. I then hit play and the noise pollution signature of the roundabout definitely shrunk.

The game itself gives you the tip that trees reduce noise pollution.

 

[Rentahamster]

Hey everyone, if any of you remember, I did a contest shortly after Banished came out, and it went over pretty well, I think.

http://www.neogaf.com/forum/showthread.php?t=788912

I think I'll do the same thing for this game. What do you think the goal for the challenge should be? Highest population? I think that might be too easy, though. One thing I'm considering is seeing who can get the highest industry export numbers, since that requires a really good road network, unlike population.

What do you think the rules should be? I want to say no gameplay altering mods (UI and aesthetic are ok), and no ploppable assets (RCI growables are fine since you can't alter their stats).

Should there be a gametime limit? For example, you can't run your city past the year 2050?

 

[Caesar III]

btw is there a way to change the facing direction of a hydro dam? It's always facing against the streaming direction. I want it the other way around

 

[Josh7289]

Is it possible to make dense, Asian-style (Tokyo, Seoul, etc.) cities in this game?

 

[Rentahamster]

http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=406649206&searchtext=dickbutt

 

[Grief.exe]

Is it possible to make dense, Asian-style (Tokyo, Seoul, etc.) cities in this game?

High-density residential, commercial, and offices.

You can make some massive, sprawling downtowns

 

[RageOfFury]

http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=406649206&searchtext=dickbutt

haha what is that thing?! lol

 

[Dennis]

It is Dickbutt.

 

[SuperCambot]

Something keeps going wrong, GAF.

 

[Linius]

Just watched a gameplay video on the subway system. I think I know how to fix my shit now. Guess I'll destroy my first line now. Also need to fix some proper bus lines and get these cars off the road.

 

[KnightHart]

Is it possible to make dense, Asian-style (Tokyo, Seoul, etc.) cities in this game?

Yep.

In fact I'm pretty sure some of the higher density commercial buildings are designed to look like some of the higher density buildings you might find in insanely dense cities like Tokyo.

I've been messing around by creating other cities and most of it has been me trying to figure out how the traffic system works.

Just watched a gameplay video on the subway system. I think I know how to fix my shit now. Guess I'll destroy my first line now. Also need to fix some proper bus lines and get these cars off the road.

Do you have a link to that video on the subway system? I can't seem to figure out how to properly make a subway line. Also is there stuff like inter-change stations or whatever? Cause those would be really helpful... Like a lot.

 

[Linius]

Yep.

In fact I'm pretty sure some of the higher density commercial buildings are designed to look like some of the higher density buildings you might find in insanely dense cities like Tokyo.

I've been messing around by creating other cities and most of it has been me trying to figure out how the traffic system works.



Do you have a link to that video on the subway system? I can't seem to figure out how to properly make a subway line. Also is there stuff like inter-change stations or whatever? Cause those would be really helpful... Like a lot.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7GlKUZJuseM

He starts doing his subway somewhere over halfway. He's doing it the first time by the way, but he already does it better than me. There's probably a better instructional video out there to learn from, but this covers the basics

 

[Caesar III]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7GlKUZJuseM

Had to stop watching. I can't handle him.

 

[Corgi]

for usability sake, i'd love for a mod that paints arrows of traffic flow for each road type.

 

[Rentahamster]

Do you have a link to that video on the subway system? I can't seem to figure out how to properly make a subway line. Also is there stuff like inter-change stations or whatever? Cause those would be really helpful... Like a lot.

Subway protips:

Have a ring of subway stations that connect the densest parts of your residential areas. Ideally, each subway station should have pretty good pedestrian access.

Connect all the stops in your main ring along the inside path. In your game that probably means you have to connect the line stops in a clockwise direction. Notice that your entire line only takes up the inner path, and the outer path is totally clear.

Make some stops in your industrial and commercial areas. Connect these in a loop that also connect back to your main loop. Now, make your secondary line. Connect it so that it only uses the outer path of your main loop, and that it shares at least one station with your main loop. This means you create the line in a counter clockwise fashion.

If you do it properly, you'll see that the two lines never have to run into each other. Now, any citizen can take the main loop, get to the transfer station, get off, then take the secondary loop to get to work or to shop.


Then, make a bus system that hits the areas of your residential areas out of the reach of your subway stations, so that citizens can take the bus and then get dropped off at a subway station.

Next, make a similar system in your commercial and industrial districts so that citizens can get off the subway in the work/shopping district, then catch a bus to get closer to where they want to go.

 

[MrTroubleMaker]

Praise The Gods!

:O neat !

 

[Grief.exe]

Ok, here is the road design layout I've been working on.

I haven't tested it yet on a wide scale, but it essentially keeps traffic moving at all times in your city.

This is a paired down version for simplicity, just using one block for each road segment. In reality, I would probably use 2-3 blocks for each segment. Since this is paired down, you may also notice that the citizens living on the outside will be able to feed back into the system, will be naturally taken care of as you expand the system out.

 

[Shahadan]

I certainly wouldn't want to be the garbage man having to pick up trash on that block

 

[KnightHart]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7GlKUZJuseM

He starts doing his subway somewhere over halfway. He's doing it the first time by the way, but he already does it better than me. There's probably a better instructional video out there to learn from, but this covers the basics

Subway protips:

Have a ring of subway stations that connect the densest parts of your residential areas. Ideally, each subway station should have pretty good pedestrian access.

Connect all the stops in your main ring along the inside path. In your game that probably means you have to connect the line stops in a clockwise direction. Notice that your entire line only takes up the inner path, and the outer path is totally clear.

Make some stops in your industrial and commercial areas. Connect these in a loop that also connect back to your main loop. Now, make your secondary line. Connect it so that it only uses the outer path of your main loop, and that it shares at least one station with your main loop. This means you create the line in a counter clockwise fashion.

If you do it properly, you'll see that the two lines never have to run into each other. Now, any citizen can take the main loop, get to the transfer station, get off, then take the secondary loop to get to work or to shop.


Then, make a bus system that hits the areas of your residential areas out of the reach of your subway stations, so that citizens can take the bus and then get dropped off at a subway station.

Next, make a similar system in your commercial and industrial districts so that citizens can get off the subway in the work/shopping district, then catch a bus to get closer to where they want to go.

Alright thanks for the tips. I'm planning on making a really dense city like Tokyo so I'll be relying heavily on a good metro and train system.

 

[Rentahamster]

Alright thanks for the tips. I'm planning on making a really dense city like Tokyo so I'll be relying heavily on a good metro and train system.

If you wanna use Tokyo as an example, they have that main line, the Yamanote sen. That's your main ring. Then there are all those secondary lines. Many people's commutes consist of them using the Yamanote sen first to get to a transfer station, then taking the secondary line to wherever they wanna go.