Cities: Skylines

[PointOfViewGun]

First expansion is announced. It's a feature DLC called After Dark, priced at $14.99.

Cities Skylines: After Dark

Night time is fun time! After Dark is the first expansion to the hugely popular classic city simulation Cities: Skylines. The game expands on the repertoire of features and customizations designed to enhance the thrill as well as maintain the challenge of the city building experience.

Developed by Colossal Order and published Paradox Interactive, the central feature of the latest expansion is the day and night cycle, which alters the approach to managing your city. Will you construct a bustling city that lives and breathes at night or will your city succumb to the perils and misadventures of night life? You’re only limited by your imagination, so take control. The sky is the limit! Find out what life is like in the city when the sun goes down!

Main features:

Day and Night Cycle: Day and night changes in the city and affects citizen schedules. Traffic is visibly slower at night and some zoned areas do not work with full efficiency, further easing the traffic. Service vehicles move around as usual. A free update for all users.Leisure specialization: Commercial areas can specialize in leisure activities. Leisure areas are especially active during the night, but work like regular commercial areas during the day.
Beach specialization: Commercial areas such as beach bars and restaurants, small marina and fishing tours on the shoreline can specialize in beach activities.
Expanded City Services: Criminals will now be taken to Prison from Police buildings. Taxi service will help citizens and tourists travel around the city. Cargo hubs are harbors that accept cargo trains straight to the terminal. International airport is a huge airport, allowing much more traffic than the previous airport. It has a metro station attached to it. Bus terminal allows citizens to transfer to other bus lines in the terminal building.
New transportation options: Bikes and dedicated bike lanes and bike ways let citizens opt for a faster alternative to walking. Bus lanes can be used to help the public transportation run smoother.

It's the kind of DLC that I don't like...

[roaringsilence]

I've played this for maybe two weeks now and in general it is a very good game but you "need" to add a bunch of mods to make it really shine.
Here is two pics of the main low residential district in my latest city Riverside. The district is called Riverside hills and as you can see, it is built in a large hillside
spanning many squares on the width. It is complete with bus lines, schools, metro, death care, health care, fire fighting services and etc. It also is connected
with the rest of the city with underground freeway tunnels.

All in all the city works pretty well and I managed to get traffic somewhat under control, though the trains still are a bit of a mess.

I'll get you more/better pics of the whole city later on.

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

[PointOfViewGun]

I had some time lately to put into this game and tried doing my usual grid city from SimCity 4:

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

The game has great potential but it feels like only a small portion of it is used.

[prithupaul]

I am having a sort of gamebreaking problem with this game. My citizens would prefer to take jobs miles and miles away rather than to work in the conveniently placed commerical and industrial zones right next to them. This completely messes up my traffic system, jamming all the roads and overcrowding trains and underground. Same goes for industrial supplies - industries prefer to import and export goods via the freight stations and docks miles away than the ones next to them. It does not make any sense.

I have tried to manage things by restricting education levels to what is required by the businesses and industries nearby, but that does not solve anything.

Anyone else experience this? Any ideas?

[General Maximus]

...And apparently now we have the new expansion, Snowfall.

[PointOfViewGun]

Yup, forgot my duties. Sorry.

The second expansion is Snowfall, priced at $14.99 / €12.99.

Cities: Skylines Snowfall In Snowfall, the difficulty heats up when the city cools down, thanks to a new in-game temperature reading that will have residents bundling up for warmth when the weather outside is frightful. Cosmetic weather, composed of rain and fog, will be added to Cities: Skylines as part of a free update, along with other features to be announced soon. Players who own Snowfall will get to face new challenges such as ensuring that their city infrastructure can handle seasonal heating demands – and, when the snow starts falling, that the roads can stay clear. New snowplow services will be required to prevent traffic from freezing in place, while new all-weather trams and expanded public transit options can help residents and visitors alike get around town – and visit the new winter parks and landmarks available in Snowfall.





Now is the Winter of This Content: Rain and fog for existing maps, plus a new “Winter” map theme with snow and all of its challenges




The Streetcars You Desire: Expanded public transportation options, including easier management of existing lines – and Trams, a new system demanded by fans





World Warmth, Too: Cold weather increases demands for electricity, unless new water-based heat systems are in place





Plowers to the People: Build a snowplow depot to keep traffic flowing during winter weather, and employ new road maintenance systems to keep your streets in shape





New Chirps: #yeahthereare

[General Maximus]

I have rather mixed feelings about this expansion. While it is good on one hand, I think they should've spent more effort on actual gameplay mechanisms rather than cosmetics. They even locked the snow to a single map type, which means snowy maps will have eternal snowing and non-snow maps will be completely unable to get any snowing.

They added trams, which is good I guess. Didn't fix tourism and taxis on the other hand. Modders are doing their job and making the game deeper.

Simcity 4 still remains the overall king of city builders, and I really hoped that this game would dethrone it.

Still, I have high hopes for this game and I hope they eventually add actual gameplay content to it, inspired from awesome mods on the workshop, like Rush Hour, Traffic++ (or was it some other name?) and others.

[PointOfViewGun]

They're adding a disasters expansion:

Natural Disasters will add a series of city-destroying emergencies to Cities: Skylines, which can occur unexpectedly during the game – or be manually triggered by mayors seeking a challenge or some sort of gruesome, vindictive pleasure. Buildings and infrastructure will be destroyed, fire can spread across locations, and countless lives may be lost unless players implement the right emergency plans and responses and keep an ear on the new radio alert system. Fans of Cities: Skylines will have the chance to overcome everything from massive fires to meteor strikes, and allow their friends to do the same with a new Scenario Mode, where custom challenges can be designed and shared through Steam Workshop.

• Natural Disasters will include:
• Deep, Impactful Gameplay: Keep your city going through the devastation of several possible doomsday scenarios, from towering infernos to the day the sky exploded
• With Great Power Comes Great Response Abilities: Plan for, and respond to, disasters using early warning systems, countermeasures, and new disaster responses such as helicopters and evacuations – finally, a Paradox game where “Comet Sighted” actually means something
• Radio Saved the Video Game: Citizens can go Radio Ga-Ga with a new broadcast network, helping to rapidly spread evacuation warnings and emergency alerts – or simply relax to new in-game music stations
• An Objectively Good Feature: Scenario Mode allows players to design custom game objectives, including custom starting cities, win conditions, time limits, and more – and share scenarios to Steam Workshop
• Chirpocalypse Now: Heck yeah, new hats for Chirper

[agunter999]

Natural Disasters has got to be the most uninteresting dlc :/

[PikeStance]

I think it is response to people manufacturing their own disasters.
My issue with Paradox is they pass of minor tweaks you would expect to be already part of the game as something "new." For example; after dark you would expect different behavior between sims from day to night, but this is not the case in the base game.
My advice is to wait for sales. This is easy for me because a year of ownership is equivalent to 2 months of another more active player.

[Prodromos]

I think it is response to people manufacturing their own disasters.
My issue with Paradox is they pass of minor tweaks you would expect to be already part of the game as something "new." For example; after dark you would expect different behavior between sims from day to night, but this is not the case in the base game.
My advice is to wait for sales. This is easy for me because a year of ownership is equivalent to 2 months of another more active player.

I can understand a few expansions to add significant improvements to a game. Age of Empires for instance usually had 1-3 very good expansions per game.

But when I read about a game having 12+ "major" expansions and dozens of minor DLC, that just seems insulting. There is nothing preventing them from including most DLC content in the original game. This is just nickle and diming.

[PikeStance]

I agree. The argument that they make is it is cheaper to pay 15 USD for a DLC rather than wait and pay full price for a new game. In the old days, this sort of model wasn't even possible. I am afraid it is here to stay.

[Prodromos]

Yes back in the old days you couldn't release a buggy, incomplete game, and then ask players to spend $100+ to download fixes/DLC over the next 5 years. I think the Internet and digitization of game sales is largely responsible for this. "One click to download extra content for $3!"

I do miss the cool boxes though.

[Theramines]

I bought CS late last year and enjoyed it until the natural disasters update borked the mods I was using. I waited a while for a few of them to be updated then started another city. But further DLC updates kept ruining things, so I stopped playing altogether. I hadn't done due diligence before buying the game. If I'd been aware it was a Paradox game and been more aware of their DLC practices, I would have thought twice about buying the game. It's my fault for not using my brain before clicking "buy".

I'd like to try some of Paradox's games, but their DLC policies are horrific so I won't go near any of their products any time soon, if ever.

[PikeStance]

The key to Paradox is never buy anything when it first comes out. It is best to wait until a few DLCs come out and then you buy it in bulk for pennies on the dollar. I'll wait until they go on sale around 66%- 75% off. Moreover, many games do not need the DLCs like Stellaris and Hearts of Iron 4. there are mods that do a good job adding content.

[PointOfViewGun]

New expansion. This time its concers:

Cities: Skylines - Concerts is a mini-expansion for the award-winning city builder that gives players the power to plan and present major concerts.

Featuring music and images from Rock, EDM, and Pop/Folk bands - as well as a new music focused radio station - Concerts brings a more melodic component to the sounds of city life.

With Concerts, putting on a great show is about more than just the music. From new buildings to host your headliners to festival management options that encourage ticket sales, creating advertising campaigns, driving band popularity, optimizing security budgets and more, Concerts puts players in control of everything from the front of house to backstage.

This one seems to be a tiny addition that I'm not sure if its worth paying for.

[PointOfViewGun]

The latest expansion, Industries:

In Cities: Skylines, Industry becomes a larger and more meaningful part of the game. Players can customize their industrial areas with supply chains for the four different resource types and unique factories. Well managed industry areas will level up and become more efficient.

Aside from production chains, there is a new city service for handling mail and the cargo airport eases import and export of factory goods.

As much as I love Cities: Skylines, I really don't like paying for more features. This is the kind of DLC that people should have been against.

[PikeStance]

I have to admit, I actually like this DLC. I think it adds something to city-building that was not present before. Outside of Mass Transit and After Dark, most of the DLC's I can do without.