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Cities: Skylines

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I played this over the weekend and enjoyed it a ton. Felt obligated to buy it after, and forgot how cheap it was! Gonna have to buy some DLC at some point.

 

I was surprised that maybe it was just how I played, but the game was neither a gradual descent into city management hell nor was it just printing money the whole time. My memories of Sim City were that if you did it right then everything just flowed and propped itself up, but if you did it wrong everything collapsed under itself hours after you'd made the mistake and you had to pay attention to realise you were on the road to doom.

 

When I played Skylines I rubberbanded so hard. Multiple times I seemed to be flush with cash so I'd start enacting some policies only to discover I was now hemorrhaging money and I had to rebalance everything. And this also totally felt like actual budget balancing. I wasn't just throwing sliders to extremes, I actually thought about stuff. I didn't have much crime so I dropped police funding. I had built two firestations so I could afford to cut their funding. But with all the sick people and trash problems I had to put the hospital funding into surplus even when trying to save money because if the citizens weren't dieing they'd let me off with my 14% taxes. This actually felt like I was trying to herd cats to achieve my goals, which is the right kind of feeling. The up and down was great. Though I finished on a long high of making 10 grand a week so I'm worried it might get easy now.

 

Also weirdly no matter what I did, high taxes and massive budget cuts, people flocked to my city. I had high demand all the time, except when I had just added a bunch of residential areas. Is that just the norm or did I do something weird? While we're on residents, why is there so little leisure stuff you can add? Early on the parks screen shows how little leisure activities people have and parks don't boost it that much. When do I get to unlock real fun stuff, like cinemas or something?

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Also weirdly no matter what I did, high taxes and massive budget cuts, people flocked to my city. I had high demand all the time, except when I had just added a bunch of residential areas. Is that just the norm or did I do something weird? While we're on residents, why is there so little leisure stuff you can add? Early on the parks screen shows how little leisure activities people have and parks don't boost it that much. When do I get to unlock real fun stuff, like cinemas or something?

 

If I remember correctly, there are a few leisure activity buildings that are unlocked at some point similar to statues, etc. The DLC seem to add some more stuff (such as ice skating rinks). I think the idea is that cinemas, restaurants and so on are built automatically in commercial areas, and After Dark DLC enables you to plan commercial areas that specialize in leisure activities. I haven't tried that stuff yet, so I don't know how (if) it affects people's happiness.

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I can't really speak to how internally consistent the simulation of traffic is, but in my experience it certainly feels very true to life, in the sense that if you grow your city organically over time instead of applying extreme forethought to each decision, traffic is just always going to be a nightmare. I don't think it's necessarily a problem that traffic is hard to get under control in this game, it feels more like that is an intended and accurate representation of how it's not very desirable to traverse large cities by car.

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Does anyone have any tips on buslines? I'm putting a lot of money into having a really thorough bus system, but every time I zoom in to a bus station, like hundreds of people are there waiting.

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Obvious question maybe, but what's the traffic on those routes like?

 

Probably could be better, but not all the way red in any area. Dunno how severely bad traffic affects buses. 

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Probably could be better, but not all the way red in any area. Dunno how severely bad traffic affects buses. 

 

Pretty severely unless you're using roads with bus lanes.

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18citiesskylinesdisasters.jpg

This expansion may well get me back into this game:

"Paradox say the Natural Disasters expansion “features a catalog of catastrophes to challenge mayor-players everywhere, including planning with early warning systems and emergency routes, devastating and destructive disaster effects, and caring for the populace as they struggle to rebuild.” Expect infernos, falling comets, and other things that can happen naturally or be triggered whenever you want to cause trouble."

https://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2016/08/18/cities-skylines-disasters-expansion/

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