I never pre-order but I preordered this because I knew I was going to buy it at launch whatever state it was in.
I think it depends on whateher you think you'll be buying DLC for this game at release. I thought it was likely for me so I figured the 22% saving was good. You get the game, & San Francisco set at launch, and then Bridges and Ports expnasion, Breach Properties Asset Packs, Urban Promenades (presumably peedestrian street variations) and Modern Architecture Content Creator Packs, and 3 radio stations.
The base game is £42, and for £33 more you get a fair bit; definitley work it for me. But if you always intended to hold off and buy DLC on sales in future years then no not worth it.
I'm loving the game so far (I haven't had performance issues) - it has much more in it at base than CS1 did, and the simulation feels better and a real step forward. All that I'm missing at present is the workshop and it looks like with the Region pack announcement that when that launches there will be way more user made content than was available for CS1 in the first months. From what I've played of CS2 it's a fundamentally better base game so the potential over even the next year is immense.
Never preorder a game - it leads the game studios to make poor decisions and rush games out the door before they’re actually ready.
Personally, I’m very excited for the game, but I’ll be waiting at least 2, and possibly more, weeks before I buy it. The game will still be there, and any showstopper bugs will have time to be quashed and essential mods may be available by then.
I personally don’t want to preorder even though I love v1 a lot.
I would never have played City Skylines as much as I have without mods, and the same will be true for v2.
I’ll personally wait 6-12 months to see how the mod world stabilize - I heard they would move mods away from Steam? - and then decide to purchase the game or not.
Metro Overhaul Mod isn't nearly as useful now that vanilla metros can go above ground, plus I believe there are a few assets with similar tracks to the MOM ones.
Anyways here's a few you didn't mention that would be useful:
Transfer Manager: CE is another really good one that lets you manage which districts different services can use, so you don't get hearses and the like driving to the other side of the city. Also really useful if you're using the "industries" DLC so you can assign warehouses to specific
Game Anarchy lets you tweak a lot of gameplay things (like removing unique building limit, turning off requirements for services, etc), but my favorite thing about it (and the main reason I use it) is that you can reduce the depletion rate of oil and ore independently of one another, without making them completely unlimited. That way, you still have to move your industries at some point, but the resources don't run out immediately. Also if your map has e.g. a lot more ore than oil, you can make the ore deplete faster than the oil so you don't risk running out of oil completely.
You probably already have these, but I'll mention them anyway:
Loading Screen Mod Revisited is nice for speeding up loading times
Move It is a community favorite, though it can feel a bit cheaty moving stuff for free sometimes.
I like the new zoning options; it seems they've particularly focused on the Residential. I do wonder if there are hints that more complexity might come for Industry &/or commercial in a future DLC. Like the industry is specifically mentioned as manufacturing and warehouses, and we can see some agriculture. But I wonder if high tech industry will be a thing at a later stage?
Also strong hints that European and North American styles are whats present at launch. So maybe a DLC in the future to expand that. Asia is an obvious future possibility, and perhaps options for modders to create styles in the same way? I like that it sounds more of a meaningful theme with road marking changes, signage changes and vehicle changes.
I'm getting more and more excited by CS2 both at launch but also all the "hooks" that seem to be in place for future expansion.
Great question! I thought about jumping in and doing one more city. I was going to ask something similar so I'll watch closely. The only 2 on your list that i have used are TMPE and network anarchy.
I'm very happy to see all of the new pre-made intersections! That'll help save a lot of time out of the box. I also love that pocket cars are gone, and that citizens need to park their cars now. I feel like that's a great step towards making building American-style and European-style cities a bit more distinct. The roundabout tools are amazing too! So many different QOL features, I'm excited
As well as the "Feature" videos on Mondays, CO also releases a further "Developer Insights" video on the same topic on the Thursday. Well worth a watch!
Yeah, I think it'd be sick if when you go to build roads or buildings, you get some sort of planning view. And the roads take time to build and if you did it at too extreme an elevation change, they have to add or remove dirt and it takes longer, and they have to pay to dispose of or bring it in.
I like CS and the CS2 hype so far is really exciting. But I can tell CO has made the right decision to balance realism with aesthetics, simplicity, and gamification.
I'm curious if there is another city simulation that emphasizes realism. For analogy, there are "serious" flight simulations like MS Flight Sim and DCS. Is there a "serious" simulation for cities?
I'm especially interested in an aesthetic that is more like an architectural site plan and rendering like the picture I posted. (Source is here, but not really on topic.)
I think it may be too niche? I'm not aware of anything that does what you're suggesting. But this is the sort of thing that would make sense through mods for CS. CS1 is very different when modded, but the core game mechanics I suppose are unchanged - the mods make it into the ultimate sandbox but it's difficult to bring in the "serious" realism elements if you're looking for challenge. A modded "hard mode" for ultimate realism would be great though.
The closest I can think of is Workers and Resources, where you have to handle constructing buildings and roads, as well as manufacturing and delivering goods yourself. Though it's a lot more complex and has more micromanagement than Cities: Skylines - there are no "zones", instead you plop all buildings yourself.
It's hard for me to express what I mean, and that's why I put "serious" in quotes. There are different ways to do simulation. Like with aircraft you can do full Navier-Stokes CFD with a very fine grid and you need a supercomputer for that. But you can also do simplified forces and moments with state-space equations for PC simulation like Microsoft Flight Simulator.
I don't think it's necessary to simulate every resident in every house in a city. I would rather that whole neighborhoods or districts get computed as a single module. There's no need to simulate every air molecule for a flight sim.
I want the simulated city to look like Google Earth in 3D mode. I want campuses of related buildings to fill irregular parcels. I want the distances to be 1:1 with real cities, infrastructure project costs to be millions of dollars, and aggregated population numbers in the dozens of millions.
I think a serious sim would let the user import GIS data from a real city and then do what-if scenarios and get a rough idea of how changes would affect the real city.
I'd also like to pick a role for the player that is a real kind of organization. Like the player can act as a city government, or as a developer, or as a transportation agency.
Cities: Skylines
Hot