Cities: Skylines

Mc Love

Once I got to 30k pop, the rci for residential decided to bottom out.

Mc Love

Mc Love wrote: »

Anyone got any tips for trains? Mine are all stuck and barely moving..

I came back to this game recently and continued developing an existing city - got a population over 100k for the first time and by following some basic principles I have road traffic flowing well - then I realised my trains were in trouble.

Now my project is to separate international passenger trains, local passenger trains, international freight and local freight into four different networks - no point having random trains trying to make drop offs all over the map.

Check all your junctions to be sure trains can pass each other comfortably - eg that a train waiting to enter a station isn't being blocked by a train waiting to cross the same path.

I also experienced my first death wave, I inadvertently cut power to 2/3 of my city without noticing and lost more than half of the population.
Once power was restored new people moved in quickly but they all started dieing at the same rate a few years later. It took a while to figure out what was happening.

This Fat Girl Runs

Another way to handle trains is to build bypass routes and long feeder tracks through your stations.

Played another couple of hours today. So far, so good. My current city just hit 20k and I'm making 18k a week with population still coming in. Having trouble with my industry though, not enough workers so a lot is being abandoned but demand is still high.

I have bus routes and metro but no outside trains or ships yet. That's for another time.

Mc Love

Oh the dreaded death wave! Whenever I see people waiting for the hearse, i just bulldoze the building. I've pretty much got my traffic sorted, it's always around the 80 mark which I think is good.

Yeah the train is going to be one of my big projects. Think I'll wait a while before doing anything with it though, as the outside lines will eventually end up being part of the city.

I'm hooked by the game now, even dreampt of the grid the other night But I have been watching imperialjedi's video's and have to say theyre probably the best as he doesnt use infinite money, or mods when doing tutorials.

errlloyd

I can't go back from mods at this stage. Although many things that used to be mods are now in the expansions, so game is improving.

It's a cracking game. I find myself in work with a pen and paper redrawing roundabout junctions as any other junction.

Mc Love

OSI wrote: »

I find if you build up your "city" as smaller cities interconnected with highways, trains etc, they're alot easier to manage and population growth was a lot quicker. I could up to ~200k population pretty easily that way without running into significant issues.

Might try that for my next one

Internet Friend

I've been doing the same lately and it seems to be working well, modular designs with each area having a specific purpose.

errlloyd

I had a lot of traffic, which was making the death spikes worse. So I decided to ban trucks, from pretty much all non highway roads, and have railyards connecting industry to commercial everywhere.

Then I hit proper levels of train traffic bedlam. No easy escape routes.

Mc Love

Thats a lot of trains! I've sorted the rail, bus and metro now. No gridlock to report on any rail network, the separate lines really helped, i blew about 700k on the rail infrastructure, but I'm back up at 1 million plus in balance, and paid off the extra loans I took out. Currently at 54k pop - looking forward to getting my hands on the airport and maybe a few other bonuses.

Are there any mods in the workshop or buildings that are worth downloading?

Internet Friend

Having T junctions and cross roads are a massive contributor to traffic. One thing I've found really useful is try to have Y shaped junctions instead. They don't introduce a stop and traffic flows really fast. I'd highly recommend the mass transit dlc, the improvement to traffic AI is worth it.

Started this up for the first time in a while last night (I blame this thread entirely), completely forgot how you can get sucked in so quickly.

This Fat Girl Runs

For mods I recommend the Move It! mod. I also use Automatic Bulldoze.

I have some assets too but I'm on a laptop so don't want to go too crazy. My favourites are some circular parks, they fit nicely within roundabouts.

Rattlehead_ie

I must get back into this. I started a city when the game first came out and kept running into the same garbage issues.

errlloyd

Mc Love wrote: »

Thats a lot of trains! I've sorted the rail, bus and metro now. No gridlock to report on any rail network, the separate lines really helped, i blew about 700k on the rail infrastructure, but I'm back up at 1 million plus in balance, and paid off the extra loans I took out. Currently at 54k pop - looking forward to getting my hands on the airport and maybe a few other bonuses.

Are there any mods in the workshop or buildings that are worth downloading?

Hmm, I guess I can post a few mods now and maybe later I can post a few screenshots showing how those mods have improved my enjoyment of the game. One problem I have is that the best mods are usually incorporated into the base game pretty quickly so I can't remember what is a mod and what is not.

One mod I find absolutely vital is "move it". I mostly use it for roads. It allows you to place a road and then click and drag the nodes to move them around, and click and drag between the nodes to change the curve. You can also raise and lower nodes and importantly you can delete or move pillars underneath bridges. It makes intersections way easier.

Another mod which is very good is Traffic Management President Edition. You can click on any junction and control which lanes can do what turns. You can also click on individual lanes of roads and manage what traffic can use them, so you can make bus lanes, emergency vehicle lanes etc. You can make roads delivery only. It also gives you a few new road types.

Finally I have a mod that allows you to "plop props" - I can't remember the name. Which kind of enables you to place random objects in the same way you can place tress. For example you can dot some shipping containers around a port, or you can draw a fence around a lot. There is a mod called the "prop line tool" that allows you to draw these things in lines. So if you want a line of trees you just draw the line like a road.

In terms of buildings there are a heap of cool ones, my favourite is the sunken train station, mostly because I think the Vanilla train stations look particularly bad.

Internet Friend

There's two recycling plants on the workshop, on standard one advanced that are really good, I don't play without them anymore.

This Fat Girl Runs

errlloyd wrote:

Finally I have a mod that allows you to "plop props" - I can't remember the name. Which kind of enables you to place random objects in the same way you can place tress. For example you can dot some shipping containers around a port, or you can draw a fence around a lot.

It's called Rico. I see alot of players on youtube and twitch use it to build some incredibly detailed cities. I just don't have the patience for that level of detail :P

errlloyd

This Fat Girl Runs wrote: »

It's called Rico. I see alot of players on youtube and twitch use it to build some incredibly detailed cities. I just don't have the patience for that level of detail :P

It's actually not RICO. Rico does something else, and I completely agree it, does something I am not arsed doing!

Mc Love

Kind of surprised that there hasnt been a recycling plant in the game!

cherryghost

Prop Line Tool and Prop Precision

This Fat Girl Runs

errlloyd wrote: »

It's actually not RICO. Rico does something else, and I completely agree it, does something I am not arsed doing!

Oh right, sorry. Got confused as they are similar.

Watching Keralis' latest CS series and all he does is detail. It boggles my mind the time and effort he puts into one area or building. It's fascinating!

Internet Friend

It's probably an OCD thing...

This Fat Girl Runs

Mc Love wrote:

Kind of surprised that there hasnt been a recycling plant in the game!

The upcoming Eco-city DLC looks good and is bound to have recycling options.

Mc Love

I'm seriously hooked, even logged on this morning before work. Had to get to 65k pop to unlock the next square and to complete my trash highway, much like this guy did https://www.quora.com/Whats-the-best-way-to-manage-garbage-in-Cities-Skylines - will be interesting if it works, because it cost me an absolute truckload of money. I also put down a Nuclear plant, lets hope its not like sim city and can go kaboom!

errlloyd

Mc Love wrote: »

I'm seriously hooked, even logged on this morning before work. Had to get to 65k pop to unlock the next square and to complete my trash highway, much like this guy did https://www.quora.com/Whats-the-best-way-to-manage-garbage-in-Cities-Skylines - will be interesting if it works, because it cost me an absolute truckload of money. I also put down a Nuclear plant, lets hope its not like sim city and can go kaboom!

Yeah I almost always restrict my trash to one place and then try and keep that place well connected with the city. I have never built a dedicated highway for it. But it is an interesting concept. I guess you could also open this underground highway up to other services vehicles (if you have traffic manager, you can just ban normal cars from using it). It might help Hearses and Fire engines work better.

This Fat Girl Runs

I got my city to 31,800 and was so excited as the next milestone is 32k only to have people start moving out. Now I'm at 30k. Darn it!

I have industrial sectors dotted around my map and include garbage in each of them so it gets collected faster. So far it's worked for me.

Anyway, going back to play a bit more now!

Internet Friend

I usually have the recycling centres in the industrial zones. I try design my industrial areas with just one, one way entrance. Then have a one-way underground highway connecting out to both the highway and main city / residential areas. Seems to work well for both traffic and garbage trucks.

Had a look last night at some of the scenarios that the Mass Transit DLC adds, one of them in order to win one of the conditions is to get your city population up to 250k :eek: and never have your finances go into the negative. My PC struggles when the populating gets up around 100k as is...250k yeah that's never gonna happen :rolleyes:

errlloyd

Internet Friend wrote: »

Had a look last night at some of the scenarios that the Mass Transit DLC adds, one of them in order to win one of the conditions is to get your city population up to 250k :eek: and never have your finances go into the negative. My PC struggles when the populating gets up around 100k as is...250k yeah that's never gonna happen :rolleyes:

As far as I know the game stops simulating individual people after around 70 or 80k. So the performance after that should even out.

Internet Friend

errlloyd wrote: »

As far as I know the game stops simulating individual people after around 70 or 80k. So the performance after that should even out.

Oh really, ok maybe i'll start going for more bigger cities now so. always left my cities at around 100k because of that

Mc Love

This Fat Girl Runs wrote: »

I got my city to 31,800 and was so excited as the next milestone is 32k only to have people start moving out. Now I'm at 30k. Darn it!

This was happening me last night at half twelve, and it took ages for it to go up to 65k, played this morning and its at 80k now.

I'm definitely thinking about restricting the highway to just service vehicles.

Mr. CooL ICE

Hadn't played this in months but got back into it this week. It's fun looking back over my older cities. As it turns out, my highest population city was my very first, but it was an awfyl, awful city with so many problems. I always got to a point where I realised 'screw this' and started again.

I went along with the modular design for my last few cities and it worked really well. I would have high density commercial centres only accessible by freight train, passenger train and subway so that local road traffic never got hit and it worked well until the 100k mark. Then the problems crept in such as me suddenly realising building commercial centres at the edge of my city was a bad idea as freight trains would be backed up for miles.

IMO, the best thing about this game is that as soon as you think you have it figured out, then BAM, you realise your latest creation is a pile of crap and you in fact know nothing.

errlloyd

Nicolas Cage wrote: »

Then the problems crept in such as me suddenly realising building commercial centres at the edge of my city was a bad idea as freight trains would be backed up for miles.

So I have this problem, and I am not sure what to do about it.

I have 3 huge industrial parks, with 6 stations, and 5 big commercial centres with one station each. The problem is that instead of all the deliveries going from industrial station, to one commercial park, each commercial park takes smaller deliveries from each station - but adds a full sized train! So if I build one more commercial park - it creates 6 more trains effectively (one for each supplier station).

I was thinking of having all my commercial centres fed by just one designated industrial park. But I was wondering how easy it is to balance supply.

Mr. CooL ICE

What I haven't done re train lines is separate industrial freight lines from commercial freight lines, which was mentioned above. I always had industry and commerce both connected to each other and each one of those lines was connected by a station/road/station loop to the outside world.

Separating the two, but also having both connected by road loop to the outside world might have solved some of the issues I've been having.

errlloyd

Nicolas Cage wrote: »

Separating the two, but also having both connected by road loop to the outside world might have solved some of the issues I've been having.

Okay, so coincidentally I tried exactly that since my last post.

Effectively I build a transit centre. 2 main freight rail stations that linked only to industry. Another three that linked to commercial buildings. And a final one that linked to the outside. They were put on a one way system that was a closed loop (with one outside link for service vehicles).

Does it work? Sort of... There is still horrific industrial rail traffic on the lines that link to industrial sites. If you look carefully at the train station in the top left, you will see the lines coming out of both ends of it are one way. It is a loop of one way track that goes through two freight stations in industrial sites and comes back. It is wedged. Trains are nose to tail the whole way around. So in summary, if your tracks are overloaded they are overloaded. All dividing the lines does is help you identify which ones are overloaded.

This Fat Girl Runs

I spent a couple of hours on my city tonight; I upgraded the roads in my residential area to tree lined streets and paid more attention to beautifying the city. It worked. I hit the 44k population milestone with population still climbing.

I did have a hilarious time trying to build a monorail system. I deleted it all and will revisit again when I am more clued in to what I'm doing!

I'm great at building a ton of roads everywhere and I pay attention to junctions so my traffic isn't too bad. I'm just really bad at public transport, particularly trains!

Internet Friend

I hear those things are awfully loud...:pac:

Rattlehead_ie

Heys guys,
While Im looking at some of the mods, around before I start a new city what expansions would you consider "essential" before I start buying. I only have the vanilla version?

Internet Friend

Mass transit and natural disasters are must haves. Add so much depth to the game.

Mc Love

Internet Friend wrote: »

Mass transit and natural disasters are must haves. Add so much depth to the game.

I've heard natural disasters add so much grief to the game too, so be wary of that.

Internet Friend

Mc Love wrote: »

I've heard natural disasters add so much grief to the game too, so be wary of that.

Yeah, I built an interchange to start developing a new area I'd unlocked only to have a huge tornado come along a few mins later and wreck the whole thing!

Sephiroth_dude

Internet Friend wrote: »

Yeah, I built an interchange to start developing a new area I'd unlocked only to have a huge tornado come along a few mins later and wreck the whole thing!

That doesn't sound like fun.

Rattlehead_ie

Mc Love wrote: »

I've heard natural disasters add so much grief to the game too, so be wary of that.

Surely these can be turned off right....I suppose is the N.D DLC only real addition to the game Natural disasters, does it add other such tweaks?!

Internet Friend

Sephiroth_dude wrote: »

That doesn't sound like fun.

Ha, not exactly. Sure it's not as bad as the earthquake that opened up a massive rift through half of my original area, cut water and electricity to the whole city and killed over 200 people.

I should probably build evacuation shelters...

Internet Friend

Rattlehead_ie wrote: »

Surely these can be turned off right....I suppose is the N.D DLC only real addition to the game Natural disasters, does it add other such tweaks?!

You can enable it at the start of a build AFAIK, I'm only working on one city at the moment. I've never looked to see can it be tweaked. It adds in a load of new assets and things to consider when building. You can add in Fire Watch towers, different detectors and some cool new emergency services helicopter depots.

It really puts a focus on designing the city well to cope with a situation where you have to evacuate your citizens to the shelters. Traffic becomes a danger if you need to evacuate but it's also something you have to think about when placing the shelters. They require things like food and water, if service vehicles can't get to the shelters to make deliveries then you could be in trouble when things go wrong.

I find it funny watching literally your whole city running down the street to try get to the shelters and then vomiting out onto the streets when you give the all clear!

This Fat Girl Runs

I don't have natural disasters but have seen people on youtube use it. It looks challenging and fun.

Alkers

Just stumbling across this thread and looks like a game I'd really enjoy.

Do you think it would run at all on my pc with the following specs (circa 2012):
Base - Intel® Core™ i7-2600 Processor (3.40GHz, 8MB)
Memory - 12288MB Dual Channel DDR3 1333MHz [2x4096 + 2x2048] Memory
Video Card - NVIDIA® GeForce GT 530 1GB DDR3 Graphics Card
Hard Drive - 1.5TB Dual Hard Drive No RAID (500GB & 1TB 7200rpm)

This Fat Girl Runs

Simona1986 wrote: »

Just stumbling across this thread and looks like a game I'd really enjoy.

Do you think it would run at all on my pc with the following specs (circa 2012):
Base - Intel® Core™ i7-2600 Processor (3.40GHz, 8MB)
Memory - 12288MB Dual Channel DDR3 1333MHz [2x4096 + 2x2048] Memory
Video Card - NVIDIA® GeForce GT 530 1GB DDR3 Graphics Card
Hard Drive - 1.5TB Dual Hard Drive No RAID (500GB & 1TB 7200rpm)

I'm playing mine on a laptop with Intel i5 with no problems so far; I have the base game with 3 of the dlc and some mods and assets installed. Current city up to 65k now with no lag.

I'm not sure though which graphics card I have. Maybe someone else here will know if yours is current enough.

Internet Friend

@Simona1986 Min GPU is a GTX 260 so you're good.

This Fat Girl Runs

I got to 80k population tonight, woohoo!

This was after I completely overhauled my roads and razed several districts and neighbourhoods to solve bad traffic. I went from 75k down to 58 before the numbers started to climb again. It was well worth the time spent. I know have an airport with proper train, monorail and metro connections. I just need to fix my bus network and I'm good to attempt the next milestone.

Slippin Jimmy

Haven't played this in a good while. Always think that my city's are amazing until I start looking at youtube videos . What's everyone's thoughts on the next DLC? Personally I think it won't add much to the game.

This Fat Girl Runs

Slippin Jimmy wrote: »

Haven't played this in a good while. Always think that my city's are amazing until I start looking at youtube videos . What's everyone's thoughts on the next DLC? Personally I think it won't add much to the game.

I'm really looking forward to it. 350 new assets can't be bad! I like the idea of playing for less pollution and greener building. I can't wait to try it out.

Internet Friend

I like the look of this new expansion, I've always tried to build clean cities. Be interesting to see how they handle recycling, the two mods I use are really well balanced so if they're somewhere around the same I'll be happy, the less mods the better! But 350 assets alone is worth it!