Cities: Skylines from Colossal Order

Robear wrote:

I think honestly it's in there not just as a realistic feature, but as something you have to deal with locally. Makes the game more interesting.

Right, which is why I don't like it. Feels like artificial inflation of the difficulty.

I know I'm griping a bit since release but spending my time on garbage is really not that fun to me in a city builder. There's no positive side to it, which is just like reality, I know.

At least crime is cool, man.

Garbage issues may not stem from how many facilities you have, but your traffic flow, as well. If your trucks have a hard time reaching the locations they need to to pick up trash, you're going to have difficulty.

I've got a city of about 16,000 right now that continues to have trash issues, and I think I can largely attribute it to traffic flow. My grid was poorly designed. I was just having fun, and I didn't realize how crucial good traffic flow would be. I am looking at dropping that city and starting over because it's too far gone to fix.

NSMike wrote:

Garbage issues may not stem from how many facilities you have, but your traffic flow, as well. If your trucks have a hard time reaching the locations they need to to pick up trash, you're going to have difficulty.

I've got a city of about 16,000 right now that continues to have trash issues, and I think I can largely attribute it to traffic flow. My grid was poorly designed. I was just having fun, and I didn't realize how crucial good traffic flow would be. I am looking at dropping that city and starting over because it's too far gone to fix.

I agree with this, traffic is a huge part of the trash issue. I'm sitting at a population of 25K right now and I have 11 landfill sites and 3 incinerators. When I first started this city I was having massive trash issues because the trucks couldn't get to the right location and I wasn't managing their capacity properly. I reorganized them and put them in areas that flow through the city and now I only have trash problems in the hardest to reach areas. So far it seems that easy access is more important than quantity.

The thing I don't like is how much micro-management goes into landfill capacity and the fact that you can't move sites until they're completely empty, which makes sense but isn't exactly fun.

Cities: Skylines has sold 250,000 copies, including pre-orders chumps, in the first day

P. S. I purchased it. Haven't had a chance to dive in yet, though... Inquisition will have me firmly in its dragon claws for the forseeable future.

I'm starting to think that the first tile is my dumping ground, and shouldn't be considered part of the meta game.
I dumped my 2nd city of trash last night (after it started overflowing with bodies as well as trash) and went back to my surprisingly stable first city.
Started with 2 tiles last night, with the second focussed 100% on industry. This has now spread to yet another industry tile, and is nicely off the side connected to the main interstate, but seperated from my first tile by a big river.
My first tile is half filled with dumps/incinerators, graveyards/crematoriums and power/water supply. However I did manage to squeeze a bunch of high density residential into the top of the map, and have some nice skyscrapers now.
I have been able to purchase a further 4 tiles, all underneath in which I can focus on aestheticly pleasing zones.
I'm a bit surprised how few unique tiles and parks that there are. I hope the modders and patches fix that.

BadKen wrote:

Cities: Skylines has sold 250,000 copies, including pre-orders chumps, in the first day

P. S. I purchased it. Haven't had a chance to dive in yet, though... Inquisition will have me firmly in its dragon claws for the forseeable future.

That number is gonna skyrocket as word of mouth continues.

The 88 score on Metacritic helps, I'm sure.

garion333 wrote:
BadKen wrote:

Cities: Skylines has sold 250,000 copies, including pre-orders chumps, in the first day

P. S. I purchased it. Haven't had a chance to dive in yet, though... Inquisition will have me firmly in its dragon claws for the forseeable future.

That number is gonna skyrocket as word of mouth continues.

The 88 score on Metacritic helps, I'm sure.

I'm holding out for another week just to see if people run into any late-game issues, but at $30 this is sounding like a slam-dunk for me. It doesn't help that the Maxis closure has me hankering for a city-builder something fierce right now.

Does this game have disasters in any form?

EDIT: Oh and apparently tunnels are coming in a free update?

It's kinda funny how a different publisher/developer makes this sound like "hey, we really care about our fans so we have some more content coming for free" yet with EA/Maxis the free updates to The Sims 4 just feel like "hey, we were going to put pools in an expansion pack but you caught us, mea culpa".

shoptroll wrote:
garion333 wrote:
BadKen wrote:

Cities: Skylines has sold 250,000 copies, including pre-orders chumps, in the first day

P. S. I purchased it. Haven't had a chance to dive in yet, though... Inquisition will have me firmly in its dragon claws for the forseeable future.

That number is gonna skyrocket as word of mouth continues.

The 88 score on Metacritic helps, I'm sure.

I'm holding out for another week just to see if people run into any late-game issues, but at $30 this is sounding like a slam-dunk for me. It doesn't help that the Maxis closure has me hankering for a city-builder something fierce right now.

Does this game have disasters in any form?

Only the ones you make yourself.

The game is a meta-commentary on humanity's place in the universe and man's inhumanity to man with side commentary on the suckiness of traffic.

If Paradox well and truly plans on supporting the game just like their own series then I expect we'll see disasters at some point.

Based on sales of this game, I expect we'll see plenty of new stuff in the coming months. And not just from mods.

tboon wrote:

The game is a meta-commentary on humanity's place in the universe and man's inhumanity to man with side commentary on the suckiness of traffic, garbage and deathcare.

FTFY

garion333 wrote:

If Paradox well and truly plans on supporting the game just like their own series then I expect we'll see disasters at some point.

Based on sales of this game, I expect we'll see plenty of new stuff in the coming months. And not just from mods.

I agree. There's so much potential for additional content. The repetition of buildings and cars doesn't really affect gameplay, but it is an aesthetic distraction. I'm looking forward, six months from now, to downloading the "Community Building Pack" from the Steam workshop. Or maybe the "Traffic Diversity Mod" to get some new cars.

Like I said on the Steam forums: Content is easy to do after the fact. I'd rather their modest team got the simulation systems right--and they're pretty darn close IMO.

I've only gotten to play a little so far, but I am VERY impressed.

When I realized that even the pre-generated highways weren't hardcoded, but really were roads that you can modify as you see fit, on top of how much freedom they've already given the player with this game?

IMAGE(http://gifrific.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/04/star-trek-mind-blown.gif)

Been keeping my eye on this one for a while, still going to wait and see how things go before I pull the trigger on it. I've been missing a good city builder for a LONG time.

shoptroll wrote:

I'm holding out for another week just to see if people run into any late-game issues, but at $30 this is sounding like a slam-dunk for me. It doesn't help that the Maxis closure has me hankering for a city-builder something fierce right now.

$30?

GMG VIP has it for $21.89! http://www.greenmangaming.com/vip/

Some things to note about garbage:

1) there are policies to reduce garbage production

2) education level has a dramatic impact on garbage levels

3) education levels of citizens are fixed at the time they first enter the workforce

So early large populations of low education workers are going to stay low education and produce more trash until those citizens move out or pass away.

This isn't to say "oh, this is where your problem is!" More I just want to point out that there are a lot of interacting systems here and something that seems unrelated might actually be having an impact in ways you don't expect.

Based on your guys' feedback, and the still working GMG VIP link, and a $10 credit I had with GMG, I pulled the trigger on this bad boy for like $11. Now I almost feel bad. I certainly got my money's worth in the first night of playing. I've paid $50 for much less well crafted games, in the past. If anybody still has reservations: this is a well crafted game, but a passionate team that seems to have their act together. Aside from minor niggles that are fully expected from an open ended complex simulation, this game is one of the least buggy pieces of software I bought in a while. If there are late game bugs, I have every confidence that the team will tackle them right away.

My overall impression of the game though, is that it is a very well crafted base, with some fluff content on top. Like a well made trunk of a tree, with a few leaves of various designs. I totally suspect that they are expecting a vibrant modding community to create the rest of the fluff content. And I'm actually glad for it. They put their efforts into making a moddable well working simulation base and opened it up for an enthusiastic audience. I really think this game/franchise is going to go far.

Just don't look at individual elements of the simulation in detail. They may not make much sense. For example, I found one of those Ferrari cars parked in front of a factory in my industrial district. It belongs to an uneducated, unemployed, retired person that keeps taking a bus from his house to shops. In other words, that car was totally senseless there. But... meh. This game is so much superior in what we really want from such games to the main franchise behemoth that delivered a turd.

So if you're fence sitting, don't. At $20 on GMG, this game is an absolute steal.

MoonDragon wrote:

So if you're fence sitting, don't. At $20 on GMG, this game is an absolute steal.

I don't say this lightly: I would happily pay $50 for this game, and feel that it gave me more than my money's worth.

BoogtehWoog wrote:

$30?

GMG VIP has it for $21.89! http://www.greenmangaming.com/vip/

Sean's article had almost sold me on this game, and this price sealed the deal.

I've been waiting for a good city builder for a long, long time. The most recent Sim City had me so excited initially and then so disappointed; I'm ready to finally be impressed.

The problem with the garbage system has everything to do with landfills. They fill up way too fast. Once you get incinerators, you can empty and remove your landfills. There is no need to have both.
IMAGE(http://cloud-4.steamusercontent.com/ugc/37491958339054118/F0A010EDD8AD765CDA3F4826CB0AE5027E80B516/2048x1152.resizedimage)

Interestingly enough, cemeteries and crematoriums do not work the same way. People get upset when you remove the cemetery, which makes sense I suppose. You have to leave the cemetery and make your crematoriums in addition.

I expanded my city north of the highway, and now with about 75% of the starting tile occupied:
IMAGE(http://cloud-4.steamusercontent.com/ugc/37491958339047343/25B4757F4981B2E75C36B58760BE9EB647900EC8/2048x1152.resizedimage)

Mass transit tip: In the info display, you can click on your lines and recolor and rename them.
IMAGE(http://cloud-4.steamusercontent.com/ugc/37491958339105482/306F34BE04E2C2F5AA1E2036D4B8566435EF2981/2048x1152.resizedimage)

Farscry wrote:
MoonDragon wrote:

So if you're fence sitting, don't. At $20 on GMG, this game is an absolute steal.

I don't say this lightly: I would happily pay $50 for this game, and feel that it gave me more than my money's worth.

This is the main reason I bought the deluxe edition. From everything I was seeing, there was WAY more than $30-worth of game here. The extra goodies are just gravy.

After watching a few LP videos, I went ahead and bought it.

Good choice. I doubt there will be a single ounce of disappointment.

omni wrote:

Good choice. I doubt there will be a single ounce of disappointment.

In this day and age, and for a very emotionally charged genre, this is saying a lot!

MoonDragon wrote:
omni wrote:

Good choice. I doubt there will be a single ounce of disappointment.

In this day and age, and for a very emotionally charged genre, this is saying a lot!

I'm just tickled that (of all things) "city builders" have managed to become "a very emotionally charged genre." I suspect few people would have considered that possibility back in 2012

Farscry wrote:

I've only gotten to play a little so far, but I am VERY impressed.

When I realized that even the pre-generated highways weren't hardcoded, but really were roads that you can modify as you see fit, on top of how much freedom they've already given the player with this game?

Oh, thanks for that tip. I hadn't even tried to mess with them, even though the defaults have annoyed me in each of the cities I've started.

This game really seems to have stormed the Internet. Bit of a breakout hit. Will be very interesting to see what happens down the line!

MoonDragon wrote:

For example, I found one of those Ferrari cars parked in front of a factory in my industrial district. It belongs to an uneducated, unemployed, retired person that keeps taking a bus from his house to shops. In other words, that car was totally senseless there.

That was a drug dealer

I've just learned the importance of slums. I thought I was doing well, making sure everyone was covered by adequate schooling. What followed was an absolute 'bottom out' of my industrial area as they clamoured for workers. Investigating more, I found that they were desperately short of uneducated workers. So, I build an area of high density residential, far from existing schools, this cleared up the problem in short order. Does 'light' industrial ever get to the stage that it doesn't require education of some kind?

I had the same problem and implemented the same solution. I need to look into this further--policies, etc.

Well, I now have train traffic problems in my new city. I have tried just about everything that I can think of to alleviate it, but I've got nothing. My only option is to cut off outside lines, but I need that for exports. Grr.