Simulation Mode Overhaul - Construction, Simulation, Game Pace - (In-depth post)

[naive jungle]

This mode/mod/DLC should overhaul the structure of the current simulation. I think many would agree that the game runs more like a city painter then a city simulator, so I've brought some suggestions I've gathered through lots of thought and passion. Please share your opinions and feedback. From the beginning, I believe paradox has been too concerned about adding proper penalties when player decisions are poorly thought through. This facilitates bland and repetitive game loops (It's ok if players get upset, as long as its for the right reasons) Here's some suggestions that would make the game more realistic, strategic, and engaging. In my opinion, the games long term success depends on a number of the suggestions I've included below. ⚖️ 🔧 ⚙️

~Game Pace & General Gameplay~

• Slowing the pace of gameplay down. The city needs to evolve like it does in real life. Penalties (high costs) to prevent players from easily fixing mistakes. When mistakes have costs associated with them, they incentivize more learning, thought through, planning, and strategizing.
• Add blue print mode to preplan neighborhoods, larger construction projects (Would be useful for projects that are more financially large/risky for the city to undertake), smaller things should be done on the go to keep the game pace moving along.
• Completely reform the tax system. Tile Upkeep? Taxes based on Education? These feel like strange simulation elements that don't actually simulate how cities create wealth for themselves and are governed. We should have property taxes based on the type of development. Please see attached graphic in the thread.

See post below for Part 2

Continued...

• Build permitting system for growable buildings. When buildings want to upgrade they need to be permitted by the city. This allows the player to choose the look, design, aesthetic of their city, neighborhood's, and districts. This can be an in-depth/optimized system to save the player time if they prefer different gameplay elements (AI shortlist of building designs, shapes, etc.)
• The Debt system needs reform. Debt with a sliding scale to borrow and pay back does not make any sense and is unintuitive. The point of debt is to balance risk with the potential of prosperity. Having contractual systems in place create space for analytical problem solving.

~Road & Building Construction~

• Road and building construction should take time to construct with beautiful construction animations, actual resources that your city either produces or needs to import to construct the infrastructure, and general or specialized labor depending on the type and complexity of road/building being constructed. Solving bottlenecks in one of the three areas when they come up is rewarding and creates real time strategy and satisfaction. These three gameplay elements of construction would create immersiveness that would never be matched in a city builder. Please Paradox trust me on this.

• Road maintenance should be simulated in a style like constructing/upgrading buildings are. Following the logic of short term pain for long term game, here are a few scenarios. Example #1: Road is worn out and needs to be replaced. lanes get shut down for repaving initially causing a spike in traffic however when built, lower traffic since cars can travel faster, and stop accidents from happening saving on hospital, police, and other economic costs of otherwise delinquent infrastructure. Example #2: In order for a building to unlock its full economic growth in an excellent downtown area they need to be reconstructed into a high-rise from a low-rise. This entails a lengthy construction period. Sidewalks and roadsides are closed down time to time to allow construction crews and equipment to get through. Traffic is increased because of roads being diverted and closed down as well as the increase of construction vehicles in the area delivering goods to the construction site.
• Demolishing inhabited buildings should come with huge costs for the city as the inhabitance have to be compensated and relocated. The same thing should apply to infrastructure with smaller repercussions. This is a game play element that once again, incentive more learning, thought through, planning, and strategizing on the part of the player, creating a very engaging experience.

Not sure if this would fit in best as a Mod, Hard Core DLC, Regular update, etc. Please provide your feedback and bump the post if you agree :).

Thanks for listening -James Brock

[severe halo]

these aren't even bad ideas and would make a great game however probably a different game. Economy 2.0 like just came out lol

howevver loans being a scale is a perfect system and I love it and I will take no further questions

[naive jungle]

I feel like this is what most people expected on release. The city “simulation” doesn’t really exist by definition. That’s why the devs had to do a complete U turn on the simulation since launch. I think it’s still far off because the game panders more to what YouTubers like and YouTubers typically focus on building the map, editing details, and, map painting as opposed to the simulation. This is because people watching the game on YouTube can’t actually experience the simulation, they experience how the city is built. Not the effort or thought through the YouTubers would do. That’s why I feel the devs got a poor feedback loop stemming from people that got popular by people watching the game but not actually playing it. That’s my opinion anyway.

[severe halo]

I disagree the simulation isn’t really faked you can follow the imports and exports of material good most of the time. It only teleports materials if all of your roads are extremely clogged

That’s my understanding anyway

[heavy ridge]

I recently played Workers Republic and it does seem very much like you describe it... Tho as a soviet republic you build the residential homes and mostly you don't have access to a big variety.

I would disagree since this isn't the focus of the game.

I think otherwise that Cities Skylines developers should be more focused on infrastructure and industry which in reality is overly complex and in the game they have it overly simplified.

[naive jungle]

No need to disagree, in that case it could fix in well as a mod. I think that’s ideal actually since they’ve already mentioned the variety of players and play styles that are present.

[heavy ridge]

I am free to have an opinion.

[cinder helm]

Workers and resources has a really good simulation and I think CS2 has a lot to learn from it. They could automate most of the micro to simulate a more free market economy while still calculating proper costs and construction times

[safe pendant]

You say in this post that roads should take time to build, we don't want cs2 to be a waiting game

[hollow pewter]

it should be an option though

so if someone does want to have a realistic gameplay they can enable it

[safe pendant]

Okay but I don't understand why you would want to go away from the keyboard just for the roads to build

[hollow pewter]

i mean theyd be built while ur focusing on other stuff

like upzoning or smth

[safe pendant]

But at the start of the city you have nothing to focus on

[naive jungle]

I absolutely agree. It makes way more sense to play the game at a higher speed at the beginning to compensate for a mechanic such as this. Here’s a quote I made in another post that would highlight the gameplay elements of construction taking time to build roads.

“Would be cool to have a preview template option before you commit resources and money to build the roads. This way you need to think ahead and consider the road with more thought through, Add extra financial penalties for changing the design once construction starts, and add costs to demolishing the roads.”

[naive jungle]

bumping this!

[austere nimbus]

yes

[naive jungle]

It would be cool as a play style with the described mechanics above, to choose the type of city beforehand that you will be building before you put a single road down. For example if you wanna grow huge and massive as quickly as possible you want to focus all your effort on building a construction industry so lumber, concrete/cement industry, steel manufacturing, a trades focused workforce. These unlocked the bottle necks to create a booming construction industry that makes it cheaper and faster to build out and plan a huge city. As opposed to creating a more rural town with more low rise since importing all the things noted above is more expensive and makes less economic sense to do so.

So it fits multiple play styles giving the player the ability to plan what they want to focus their city on. There’s so many different ways you can develop and add on to this with a more tourist focused economy, export focused economy, large pop/large city/finance, focused city, etc.

[naive jungle]

Friendly bump!

[naive jungle]

Hey paradox, in case you’re lingering around in the thread.

Has it occurred that solving the “balancing the play style people want” pretty much comes down to a difficulty slider? If you could select your difficulty level with one side being more “easy/creative” and the other “difficult/realistic” this would solve the issue of different play-styles because essentially if you had to sort the play styles on a one dimensional plane, you would get more difficult and more easy. I think this would be an excellent way to fix the problem of different play-styles and seems to me like a win, win scenario. Thoughts?

[jovial tree]

if you need a different mechanic, a different way how the simulation functions to be satisfied that is not just a slider to add.

I do not think CO should go and totally redefine the game now. Much better to get rid of annoying bugs, add missing features (asset import, bike, animation) .

[safe pendant]

But I've heard people say that the way the game is coded makes it almost impossible to make the performance a lot better but maybe this isn't true

[grave linden]

The cost for building roads is too low in my opinion, and the ability to choice different levels of difficulty that impact also on roads cost in addition to other parameters would be nice, also the option to disable and enable these settings Individually to customize the experience.
Even in CS1 in the game options you can change way more things than CS2, and there was an official mod called Hard Mode in the mod menu, but idk exactly what it changes, i think increase the costs and reduce revenues, not remember.

[naive jungle]

It’s not redefining the game if the simulation includes what is currently present along with the ability to change the difficulty of the simulation. Because let’s be honest, if there’s no difficulty in any dimension then even if there is a simulation, it doesn’t matter. Because you can’t meaningfully interact with a simulation if there’s nothing to fix.

[humble remnant]

Cim walk insane distances this allowed me to build a city that would never work out. As I did not create proper roads because I didn’t have an overwhelming traffic because cim will walk many miles to work. Where in reality most people would not walk one mile. At least not be happy about it. There for I’m for more reality in the simulation. Just my thoughts

[jovial tree]

Walking for 1 mile to work is quite ok. I did so for years.

But ok 5 miles I would not have liked much

[humble remnant]

here is a screen shot I highlight the path the little red arrow is the CIM. A road like this I did not expect to see any CIM's as it is very long so I started to look into where they were headed. So my CIM's are very health conscious trekking that far in the snow haha. I think the simulation should push more CIM's to hop in their car if it is faster as most would. if heavy traffic or parking is bad you should see more walk (based on health /age the likely hood of walking vs bus or car should go down) it but when there is parking to CIM should prefer fastest route.

decision should look like this maybe come up with a stat for CIM info of max distant willing to walk.
do I have a car Y can get there faster and cheaper by public trans N am I healthy enough to walk Y is walking faster N is walking cheaper N = drive randomly some CIM's will choose to walk even though it not faster but should be a small percentage

another factor that would be fun is walking city streets vs suburban roads. this would require a new two lane road two way, two lane road one way, one lane road and a three lane two way with no side walks cheaper to maintain, higher speed limits. ( I will start a new thread for speed limit as they are a little high)

[safe pendant]

But if it was the only way to have food on the table I think most people would do it, but they have the option to move to another city which they should choose in your city

[naive jungle]

Yeah Sims should be more economically sensitive. They kind of feel like tesla bots running errands for their masters in the sky looking down at them, rather then people :/

[rare cove]

so like, give the player the ability to decide what city type it's based on, yes? if so, you'd still be outsourcing your tradespeople until you build some housing... I get the idea, and it works well, but idk... just seems a bit counterintuitive, or this one is anyway

[naive jungle]

bump!

[tawdry fable]

I see this post for very long time tbh, when they gonna take this suggestion