Cities Skylines (1&2), SimCity 4, city simulators - sperg about simulations that include or don't include niggers

[reptile baht spaniard rid]

We don't have a thread for the various city simulators; I'll post a bit about the ones I know of.

The big one these days is City Skylines (a new version was just teased but we don't know much about it). It's developed by Colossal Order and published by Paradox. It's heavily DLC'd and modable; general consensus is you want the Mass Transit DLC for more road types, and Traffic Manager Presidential Edition for actual working roads and shit. You can also play it on console like a goddam fucking peasant but my god why.

Cities Skylines was made by the developers of Cities in Motion (literally just a traffic simulator) after EA fucked the SimCity series so hard it died and never recovered. Even Wikipedo admits it:

A 2013 EA-Maxis reboot was subject to what has been described as "one of the most disastrous launches in history", which may have triggered the 2015 shutdown of Maxis Emeryville and the end of the franchise.

Many people stayed on SimCity 4, widely considered to be the crown jewel of the SimCity series (and many still prefer it to Cities Skylines as the cities can be MUCH larger). There are very large sites still dedicated to it - https://community.simtropolis.com (these sites have their own fun drama if you dig into it. If you play SC4 (grab it on Gog or Steam or whatever) you will want the Network Addon Mod, it's basically TMPE for SC4.

Cities Skylines is a relatively popular city builder; there are multiple youtube channels dedicated to the game, some good ones include the hilariously named Biffa Plays Indie Games (content warning: br*tish) which is now entirely dedicated to Cities Skylines; City Planner Plays who spends almost as much time sperging about actual city design (content warning: you may learn something) as he does accidentally forgetting to provide fire coverage; and Real Civil Engineer who mainly spends his time turning shit into power and drawing dicks with roads when he is not consigning architects to eternal hellfire.

As mentioned in the Not Just Bikes / r/fuckcars / Urbanists / New Urbanism / Car-Free / Anti-Car thead (and the source of this one) there are internet dweebs who use these games to "prove" their design for perfect urbanism is totally workable you guys; but as we seen since the game doesn't simulate crime that well (it's just unemployment, not niggers) and you can build an airport under a freeway and anything can be solved by abusing parks, so it's applicability to real-world situations is not entirely proven.

All these games are now 10 to 20 years old, and should run moderately well on a potato; though loading tons of mods on Cities Skylines can make it eat infinite RAM; people suggest using Loading Screen Mod if you start playing with mods. Realistic Population can also be a quite nice one but be aware you should START with it; adding it to an existing city will almost certainly break your shit.

One thing you'll find as you play Cities Skylines is that roundabouts are worshipped, mainly because the simulation is too dumb to use traffic lights correctly. TMPE helps somewhat, but to do it right you end up doing "lane management" and telling cars where they should go.

Otherwise the simulator is as dumb as midwesterners, and they will only use the EXACT lane that will take them where they want to go, even if there are five other lanes on the road.

Once you get a moderately large city and learn how not to go immediately bankrupt, the game becomes quite the traffic simulator with a city painter tacked on. Many of them are propagated by the youtubers, but some are fighting back against the myths.

My recommendation is just play the game how you want, and don't worry about it too much.

 

[reptile baht spaniard rid]

reserved

 

[NerdShamer]

SC 3000 was an lot of fun, growing up; but my metropolis consistently started dying after it aged past an certain point and I filled up most of the map.

The only thing that 4 had going for it was that you get to.drive around in your barren hellscape of an town, considering how the base version was possibly bugged.

EA's take at the series was technically functional; but outside of the gay drama and the rare disaster events, it was kind of bland.

As with Skylines, I haven't had an lot of experience with it. Aside from the population bug and some expansion issues, it was kind of enjoyable.

 

[ye's Official KF Burner]

For people who want to download Cities Skylines to give it a whirl, the Modi Repack is the one I use. Just Google it because I think directly linking it would get dear feeder in trouble so I won't. Smods.ru is a good site for mods and custom assets.

Now that I've got that taken care of, I do enjoy Cities Skylines. I think the Paradox team understands a lot of the bad choices EA has made and has learned from a lot of the EA cash grabs and shitty decisions. I like the way they incorporate content creators and I'm also a fan of the community since it's relatively laid back.

My only gripe is I wish there was a way to build a street grid by plugging in numbers and options and then dropping the grid where you want it.

I'm curious about others experiences so I'll be following along.

 

[reptile baht spaniard rid]

My only gripe is I wish there was a way to build a street grid by plugging in numbers and options and then dropping the grid where you want it.

Zoneminder (I think) is a mod that lets you turn off some of the auto "helping" stuff that Skylines does, which can help a bit. It would be nice to have "blueprints" like factorio for somethings, but then all your cities become identical (I used to play SimCity 3000 on perfectly flat maps until I started to realize that part of the fun is building around terrain, not turning everything into Nebraska).

SC 3000 was an lot of fun, growing up; but my metropolis consistently started dying after it aged past an certain point and I filled up most of the map.

One of the sad weaknesses of these games is always the simulation weirdness; and back before everyone and their dog had easy access to the internet, you may never learn about weird issues. Skylines has the deathwave (a) problem which is caused by all the sims being the same "age" when they move in, so if you build a large residential area, you get a whole town of zoomers, and they'll all become boomers and all die at the same time, causing your city to spiral into shit. There are mods that fix it but if you're playing without mods or on console you just have to remember to build very deliberately and slowly so you don't have huge swaths dying all at once.

The only thing that 4 had going for it was that you get to.drive around in your barren hellscape of an town, considering how the base version was possibly bugged.

SC4 was the first one that I really felt you HAD to have mods to play it; it's basically unplayable without NAM (even after the addition of Rush Hour). Skylines is at least somewhat playable without mods if you work around simulation quirks.

Now that I've got that taken care of, I do enjoy Cities Skylines. I think the Paradox team understands a lot of the bad choices EA has made and has learned from a lot of the EA cash grabs and shitty decisions. I like the way they incorporate content creators and I'm also a fan of the community since it's relatively laid back.

They've done really, really well here, amazingly so. They've incorporated new features in each DLC and gone out of their way to not really "step on toes" of modders as best they can; adding things in DLC that the modders can't really add themselves. And it's been an absolute cash cow for them because of it, Skylines + all DLC is $134 right now, and if you add up at launch for each one, it's well above that.

I hope Skylines 2 delves more into some of the stuff that's not really implemented very well; I'd love to see more control of the rail network for my train autism, perhaps not as detailed as some dedicated rail games, but at least a bit more than the current dumb pathfinding loops. Skylines 1 broke the grid somewhat (you can have curved roads with zones on them, but the zones are still little squares; I'd love to see a game where the zoning supported all sorts of weird shapes. People mimic it with ploppables, but it would be nice to have engine support for it.

 

[FudgeFish]

I remember getting obsessed with Skylines for a bit, after having not touched anything since the original Sim City days. I think I really only ever built one city in it, but loved the level of detail you could build into the city - as opposed to anything EA's bothered with.

I mainly remember it being terribly optimised though. I've always had fairly decent gaming PCs, but City Skylines is the one game that always seemed to cause problems.

 

[Sister Miriam Godwinson]

Мухосранск, you say? There is also Workers and Resources, a massive nostalgia hit for any Russian older than 40 and any self-respecting tankie. I haven't tried it myself, but my friends are telling me the game is autistically difficult and requires anal attention to detail like availablility of communial services.

It also had a lolcow episiode a few days ago when a butthurt modder managed to get it temporarily removed from Steam because he claimed the developers were using his assets and Valve decided to play along and suspend them.

 

[Ughubughughughughughghlug]

Real Chads play Tropico and shoot all the Communist Redditors.

 

[The Ghost of Kviv]

The big one these days is City Skylines (a new version was just teased but we don't know much about it).

There is evidence of Unreal Engine assets in the trailer. The engine could be used just for the trailer, but it's not a good sign if the release is scheduled in a few months. Unfortuantely I can't think of any UE4 game that has workshop support, so that may be another bad sign.

https://youtu.be/r9XHvsm9OVE?t=57

Many people stayed on SimCity 4, widely considered to be the crown jewel of the SimCity series (and many still prefer it to Cities Skylines as the cities can be MUCH larger).

It's not just larger cities, you could have cities sharing a region that would allow you to set different policies and specializations for each city. C:S got a similar feature in districts, but it was half-finished, and in traditional Paradox fashion the can was kicked down the road after release.

Otherwise the simulator is as dumb as midwesterners, and they will only use the EXACT lane that will take them where they want to go, even if there are five other lanes on the road.

The most, absolutely fustrating part of the game. I grew up playing city builders, SC3000 had better traffic simulation. I can't take C:S seriously as long as this isn't fixed. It's just a shallow sandbox.

 

[Ughubughughughughughghlug]

This is only barely related, but you know what I want to seen run in a computer simulation? Traffic with and without altruism.
Rural Southern drivers (perhaps drivers elsewhere, I'm talking about what I know) very often will hold up traffic to allow someone out of a parking lot into a crowded street. That is, if traffic is backed up they will consciously stop before the parking lot hooks into the road, and if the traffic is slow moving but heavy but they may stop and motion them in.

Urban Northern drivers do not, in my experience, do this, they drive very defensively and have no mercy or sense of human decency.

I already know which I prefer on moral grounds, but I want to know which ends up being more efficient. The point of stopping is that you slow everyone down slightly but you potentially save one person from an extremely long wait and it also helps to avoid traffic jams caused by the parking lot backing up so much it spills out onto the street from the other end.

 

[PipTheAlchemist]

Real Chads play Tropico and shoot all the Communist Redditors.

But I thought Tropico involved you being a pineapple-flavored Communist Redditor? Why would you shoot your own kind?

 

[reptile baht spaniard rid]

There is evidence of Unreal Engine assets in the trailer. The engine could be used just for the trailer, but it's not a good sign if the release is scheduled in a few months. Unfortuantely I can't think of any UE4 game that has workshop support, so that may be another bad sign.

CPP was wrong; Biffa got Colossal Order to confirm they’re using the latest Unity engine or something.

 

[Ughubughughughughughghlug]

But I thought Tropico involved you being a pineapple-flavored Communist Redditor? Why would you shoot your own kind?

You can be a typical Rightist junta (Militarists, Capitqlists, Religious, US).

Mechanically they’re easier to deal with.

 

[ye's Official KF Burner]

This is only barely related, but you know what I want to seen run in a computer simulation? Traffic with and without altruism.
Rural Southern drivers (perhaps drivers elsewhere, I'm talking about what I know) very often will hold up traffic to allow someone out of a parking lot into a crowded street. That is, if traffic is backed up they will consciously stop before the parking lot hooks into the road, and if the traffic is slow moving but heavy but they may stop and motion them in.

Urban Northern drivers do not, in my experience, do this, they drive very defensively and have no mercy or sense of human decency.

I already know which I prefer on moral grounds, but I want to know which ends up being more efficient. The point of stopping is that you slow everyone down slightly but you potentially save one person from an extremely long wait and it also helps to avoid traffic jams caused by the parking lot backing up so much it spills out onto the street from the other end.

I want to see Miami traffic in Cities Skylines. Two drunk Cuban dudes getting out of their cars and brawling at a red light type shit.

 

[reptile baht spaniard rid]

TMPE has an asshole setting:

You can change it to allow a percentage of people to ragepig out:

• driving faster than allowed,
• ignoring priority rules,
• ignoring red traffic lights,
• ignoring lane arrows,
• ignoring vehicle restrictions,
• entering blocked junctions, and
• illegal parking.

Allowing a small percentage of assholes actually makes things work a bit better because they’ll part illegally instead of driving around the block looking for a prking space j til despawn

Also don’t be a pussy - disable despawn and realistic parking lololololol

 

[YachieKicchou]

Why would you shoot your own kind?

Leftists are good at one thing. Would you like to take a guess at what that is?

 

[Sicko Hunter]

I grew up with the more advanced simcity 4 but my favorite city builder will always be Simcity 3000. The combination of one of the best soundtracks in games and a very pleasing UI and overall aesthetic is the reason. It has a certain late 90s charm that is hard to describe. It's $9.99 on GOG and if you are even slightly interested in retro city builders you should pick it up.

 

[JJLiautaud]

Did CS ever add subways?

 

[Ghost of Wesley Willis]

You gotta check out Magnasanti if you ever get the chance. it was a city built in SC3k by some bored architecture student from The Philippines. Essentially he made the "perfect city" in the game: 6 million citizens, entirely symmetrical, no roads. Just watch the video below because the amount of autism needed to build this city is insanely hard to describe in words, and if that wasn't enough either, his city even made it to the New York Museum of Modern Art.

 

[Kane Lives]

Did CS ever add subways?

Pretty sure subways was in the base game from the very beginning. Like all things traffic the way it works is wack as fuck