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

[Night Crawler]

isn't literally the same shit people have been saying about C:S1?
also i'm not surprised wtth SC2013, it was a predictable movement from EA as 2013~2015 was the boom of online gaems.
still a more management city sim than heavily modded SC1 pretends to be.
why aven colony gone without mention to this day? it was a okayish anno-tier game.

even if it has mods it doesn't remove the real currency diamond purchases and DLC bundles, i'd rather play SC4 because i can mod shit for free innit.

I didn't notice any currency purchases or DLC in the Steam version. In the Steam version you can download stuff made by other players and it's 100% free.

 

[Xarpho's Return]

anyone tried https://store.steampowered.com/app/290100/Bulwark_Falconeer_Chronicles/ ?

seen it during next fest, and the dev seems to keep the demo up and updated to reflect development (and gather feedback). it's not a really a city simulator but this is probably the most fitting thread


I think part of it is they want to keep it simplified (maybe too much) so more people than just us autists can play it - it certainly worked for the first skylines.

what I'm more interesting in if they are smart enough to open up those numbers. defaults can be whatever they want, but if they can be easily modded, thus in turn casuals can have their city designer while autists can go all out, all buying the same game in the end, that's where get to good business sense.

SimCity 4's freight rail system was awful. Always double-tracked to allow for easy pathfinding (true double-tracked trains aren't always bidirectional--trains aren't like roads), very short, very unimpressive crossings. It was more like a toy train than anything and didn't even fit in with the rest of the simulation.

I realize the whole issue with freight train vehicles is practically a game in itself as you can have anything from scrap metal to vinyl chloride, but actually screwing people over by having stations so far apart just would encourage the use of roads anyway. Another dev diary is coming out on July 3rd, I'll save my extended rant on light rail and other stuff I missed the first time around.

 

[reptile baht spaniard rid]

SimCity 4's freight rail system was awful. Always double-tracked to allow for easy pathfinding (true double-tracked trains aren't always bidirectional--trains aren't like roads), very short, very unimpressive crossings. It was more like a toy train than anything and didn't even fit in with the rest of the simulation.

I realize the whole issue with freight train vehicles is practically a game in itself as you can have anything from scrap metal to vinyl chloride, but actually screwing people over by having stations so far apart just would encourage the use of roads anyway. Another dev diary is coming out on July 3rd, I'll save my extended rant on light rail and other stuff I missed the first time around.

The city builders have always been shit railroad simulators, though if you abuse Cities Skylines with enough mods you can almost get something that's like a very discount bargain bin at the going out of business sale at the dollar store version of transport tycoon.

Maybe if the grid was 4x as dense or something you could have more decisions and realism (a one-way road should be about as wide as a single rail, etc).

CS2 is adding depos to everything, but none really model the correct "it's a fucking siding next to a building" freight unloading that is possible; one of the whole values of a freight railroad is that you can have a rail car dropped off on your siding and unload it yourself, and it takes basically not much space at all.

 

[Xarpho's Return]

The city builders have always been shit railroad simulators, though if you abuse Cities Skylines with enough mods you can almost get something that's like a very discount bargain bin at the going out of business sale at the dollar store version of transport tycoon.

Maybe if the grid was 4x as dense or something you could have more decisions and realism (a one-way road should be about as wide as a single rail, etc).

CS2 is adding depos to everything, but none really model the correct "it's a fucking siding next to a building" freight unloading that is possible; one of the whole values of a freight railroad is that you can have a rail car dropped off on your siding and unload it yourself, and it takes basically not much space at all.

To say nothing of the spurs where you back trains into, too.

It's just a damn shame that there's so much that could be corrected, and you know none of it will, if not be made worse, it won't be corrected through patches or DLC, and mods won't magically fix it.

Anyway, the page on public transportation dropped a few days ago.

This thread is spawned from the NJB/anti-car thread, and there's a lot of crossover. A lot of the urbanists were crying about Cities: Skylines II being too "car-centric" but this latest post shows that they'll bend backwards to add viable public transit to the game.

Now, first off, as much as I disagree with these retards, there is some room for light rail to urban areas. Both Houston and Dallas, pre-2020, had their original "Red Line" wildly successful with park-and-rides in the suburbs and hitting up popular destinations (both hit the zoo, for instance). Unfortunately, nowadays with the crime wave, ridership has decreased as people drive more cars.

Simulating this wouldn't be difficult, an agents' preferred method of travel would factor in crime, and dissuade them from public transit. Of course, even in the best of circumstances, taking 5% traffic off the associated highway is a smashing success, but despite everything working in hand with conventional "good city" logic by city sims...lower crime -> encouraged mass transit -> lower mass transit -> less traffic -> less pollution -> ??? -> profit. However, the same sorts that like mass transit are the same ones crying about police, so police = more trains is antithetical.

But the trains aren't really great because rail mass transit in America either takes one of two tracks (pardon the pun): a legacy system that dates back to private streetcar lines that were popular enough that they were adopted by the city, or a new system pushed by politicians once the size of the city reached critical mass. Remember, 100,000 is a time for a fancy achievement of "Six Figures" but in real life that is still not skyscraper city populations.

We all know that a super-sprawling empire a la Houston is not going to be possible, and even making a scale New York City probably isn't possible either (and NYC has a lot of smaller municipalities that power the beast, especially the money-munching MTA).

What I haven't heard is what if you build your city to be "car-centric" with no bus systems? The young typically don't have anywhere to go, and I doubt that you'll see 1980s bicycle-era Hong Kong unless everyone is really poor...so would it simply just add cars to the highway?

But I digress. Let's look at what the blog says.

Buses unlock first and form the backbone of the city’s public transport network in the early game. They are a tried and true method, cheap and flexible even though they are very much affected by the traffic conditions of the city. Buses require the Bus Depot for periodic maintenance and come in two flavors: traditional fuel-operated buses and environmentally friendly electric buses. To use electric buses in your city you will need to update the bus depot to maintain them.

OK...this is not bad per se but it does show that they still don't have what SimCity had. Even though SimCity games generally simulated post-WWII America, they still had inventions where after a certain point in the game's time, new stuff would be unlocked, and electric buses just are "more expensive"...which is a bit of a shame because that's one thing where C:S could've been actually improved.

Taxis are a staple in most cities and that is also true in Cities: Skylines II. Taxis operate on a similar logic to personal vehicles, able to transport passengers to where they need to go, and in the early game, taxis also bring new citizens to the city who don’t have their own personal vehicle. Taxis are an extremely flexible public transport option as they don’t require lines to operate. However, they are low capacity, contribute to the city’s traffic congestion, and are also held back by it.

Now we're this is an actual disadvantage. One of the things that started becoming bad with SimCity 4 but got worse with the clones and inferior successors is the need to control everything, and taxis are not one of them. I'm not sure if the developers understand that taxis aren't a form of public transit, they are effectively contractors that the city manages. New York, Boston, Chicago, and others sell a transferable permit that they sell to individuals or taxi companies, and this permit effectively creates a contract with the city and in exchange for using road space, they contribute a small amount of profit. Therefore, taxis should be a way to add to your coffers, not take out. The idea of door-to-door service in terms of public transit does exist, but it's used primarily for the disabled. (If you aren't disabled, the cost/benefit is usually so bad you should just get a car). There is no mention of anything like Uber or Lyft, which is not so much a new idea but rather a recreation of the old one. Before taxi companies were organized in a single cohesive unit, the idea of transporting someone else in a car for a small fee is as almost as old as cars themselves, and in the mid-1910s, the idea had grown so popular that the streetcars were losing hundreds of dollars a day to them (which in 1916 was not chump change). The idea of yellow cabs being a drain on your finances is absurd and either they don't care or don't understand why taxis are what they are--and thinking that they're a staple in "most cities" (they are not) indicate that.

Trains carry large amounts of passengers and cargo and while their infrastructure size makes them better suited for intercity transport, they can be used locally as well. To create train lines you need to first build a Rail Yard, which sends out and maintains your trains, and connect it to the tracks. Trains naturally require tracks to run on and building a train infrastructure is a high initial expense but due to their transport capacities, they more than make up for the initial cost over time.

Train infrastructure allows you to create two-way and double tracks as well as one-way train tracks, elevated tracks, bridges, tunnels, and cut-and-fill tracks running lower than the ground level. Trains and other rail transports are able to drive backwards and forwards, and thus they can utilize track switches created by combining two-way and double train tracks. Stations also feature pre-built tracks which create track switches automatically when tracks are connected to them, regardless of track type.

A lot of train track in the United States was first laid down back in the 19th century by railroad companies who got cart blanche from the federal government, and all the train infrastructure is built from that, either with trains operating on track that is leased from the same companies (which have since dropped passenger service), or purchasing the track themselves.

Plus, the idea of "one way track" still rears its head because Cities: Skylines is too lazy to set up a signal system. The trains run more effectively in Factorio (which can also do single-track spurs, though Factorio still requires dual-engines). Also, freight train tracks for intra-city transportation is extremely rare. Austin does it (though with diesel-electric operated trams, no wires), Syracuse did it (that bombed), and a few others do. There's no mention of wire-operated trolleys either (either interoperability with the freight train system or not)...guess they're saving that for DLC.

Subwayis a fast, high-capacity local public transport option. The initial investment in the rapid transit infrastructure is high but due to its speed, it is a popular transport choice for many citizens who value their time when making pathfinding calculations.

The only time when subways are faster than the road system is when the road system is packed and there's no highways, like New York, and even then they only "win" during business hours. Scrolling down, they seem to have an option to have day or night service, but there's no more advanced options. For example, you can't have trains running until last call (middle of the night), or slow down service after around 7 pm, or have different weekend schedules...and the day/night service is probably not advanced enough to have any real consequences.

For example, if you want a robust 24/7 city with night shifts, all-night restaurants, where revelers will party until 6 am, then limiting night service.

This is why I have no confidence in CO/Paradox. They merely did an imitation of SimCity without understanding what made the game fun, and didn't have the passion to actually research why some things are the way they are. In terms of freight rail, for instance, overpasses or underpasses are useful not just for congestion reasons and emergency times, but that means that trains don't have to blow their horn (no more crossing), which means quieter neighborhoods, more desirability.

 

[Snekposter]

didn't have the passion to actually research why some things are the way they are

Expecting PDX to do research is... yeah, not happening. No Step Back for HoI IV had a weird-ass USSR focus tree where you could go full Tzarist again yet completely excluded a Trudovik path despite Kerensky still alive, kicking, and in exile or a constitutional monarchy under one of the reform-minded Romanovs.

 

[Ughubughughughughughghlug]

@Xarpho's Return Good effortpost, learned

 

[ZMOT]

This is why I have no confidence in CO/Paradox. They merely did an imitation of SimCity without understanding what made the game fun, and didn't have the passion to actually research why some things are the way they are. In terms of freight rail, for instance, overpasses or underpasses are useful not just for congestion reasons and emergency times, but that means that trains don't have to blow their horn (no more crossing), which means quieter neighborhoods, more desirability.

this is gonna sound like a defense of CO, which it's not, but things happen for a reason. you have to keep in mind in the time since they started working on skylines, someone will have brought all your points up (and probably more) before, which they will have seen, yet they chose not to implement it or keep it simpler. or might be simple laziness (which is another reason, but not a good one).
I never expected skylines to be a highly detailed management simulator, and depending which crowd they want to attract, it's might simply be outside the scope of it (and devtime costs money, so the less and simpler they do it, the faster it's done). performance is another reason, turning the game into the citybuilder version of prime95 to be "accurate" limits who then would give them money for it, or is even interested in that aspects if he just wants to build some cities with a bit of traffic mechanics. even in the shit state some people think skylines 1 is, it still sold well enough that it got a sequel after all.

that's why I wouldn't push for that, but how open it's gonna be. if it allows you to set your own logic, you can take care of that yourself, it affects no one else and depending on your machine you can take the performance hit (it's the main reason skyrim still sells 10 years later - although I expect much less sexmods for skylines).
for example if we go with trains causing noise pollution, then not blowing their horn would affect that. if it's just the train tracks causing an area to be more noisier, there's no option to change it.
maybe I'm just a bit spoiled by the X games and the options you got there....

 

[Ughubughughughughughghlug]

How is the music in Cities Skylines?

I got Surviving Mars. It's good, it's like crack playing it but I kind of feel like I've seen everything in an hour and it's just frustration from here on. But I was shocked that it has multiple radio stations of entirely original, commissioned music just for it. It made no sense for a space colonization game to have a fleshed out surf rock and country station. Then I got to thinking, this was probably something they started with Skylines and then carried over the same monetization scheme (like grand strategy games having their music packs). And lo and behold it was so.

 

[Xarpho's Return]

this is gonna sound like a defense of CO, which it's not, but things happen for a reason. you have to keep in mind in the time since they started working on skylines, someone will have brought all your points up (and probably more) before, which they will have seen, yet they chose not to implement it or keep it simpler. or might be simple laziness (which is another reason, but not a good one).

For the SimCity games, that was the case. For SimCity, especially in the pre-EA days, they had done a lot of research, and for all of SimCity's quirks, they made a lot of sense considering the sacrifices for development (and what computers back then could handle), what was "fun", all the little things rolled into the obscenely high "property tax", and understanding that Will Wright was a pro-rail, anti-highway guy himself, which contributed to the rail bias in the SimCity games.

Obviously there are going to have to be changes and abstractions and simplifications to make it accessible to non-autists, to keep development costs low, to not set your computer on fire, and all that, but there is zero evidence any research was done by just directly copying SimCity and doing none of it well.

My transit rant was from their development blog. It would be a slam dunk to show how copying Google Earth to make something resembling a city would be possible with work-in-progress sheets (and as flawed as American Truck Simulator can be, they at least studied floorplans of distribution centers to understand how they worked), or how easy of a flex it would be to have read one of the urbanists' library (Strong Towns, Life & Death of Great American Cities, etc.) while incorporating "ideas" from that, but there isn't ANY of that.

How is the music in Cities Skylines?

I got Surviving Mars. It's good, it's like crack playing it but I kind of feel like I've seen everything in an hour and it's just frustration from here on. But I was shocked that it has multiple radio stations of entirely original, commissioned music just for it. It made no sense for a space colonization game to have a fleshed out surf rock and country station. Then I got to thinking, this was probably something they started with Skylines and then carried over the same monetization scheme (like grand strategy games having their music packs). And lo and behold it was so.

I can't imagine it'd be much better. One of the things about the soundtracks to SimCity 2000, 3000, and 4, was that it was not just the music composer, it was also the overall, consistency of it. 2000's was dark and moody, 3000's was more upbeat and jazzy, and 4 was...well, I can't describe it but all the songs had a cohesive vibe to them.

 

[StacticShock]

How is the music in Cities Skylines?

nigga, can't you use youtube?

 

[Xarpho's Return]

The new dev diary entry at CO has been posted: "Zones & Signature Buildings".

Once again, Paradox has (poorly) copied a lot of the mechanics of SimCity without an attempt on research or improvement.

And the big thing with medium zoning is apartments and rowhouses...with the ability to dictate by zone what building style you want...but only tearfully bland "building styles", with "North American" and "European" options, and both look hideous. (Note the wall A/C units, so zoning "North American" style brings you pre-WWII tenements apparently).

Picture was supposed to be here but attachments have been giving me fits



In addition to being frankly terrible, this is why I have so little faith in the game. In the previews, you're supposed to make things exciting, an improvement over the previous game. Even if these features aren't added or implemented correctly, it builds hype. This sort of thing was basically from SimCity 4 twenty years ago, with ugly New York-style brownstones and the like, and it was depressing to see your ordinary homes give way to outdated townhomes.

What Paradox gives us instead is mixed-use, but as you can predict this is done badly. According to Paradox, "Commercial businesses pay a portion of the rent for mixed housing which causes the rent for the households to be more affordable."

That's not how it works at all. Commercial rents for mixed-use buildings are entirely separate from residential units (usually a lot more expensive and definitely don't subsidize apartment rents), and depending on the economy and location, could go unleased even as the rest of the apartment units fill up. I would assume that the rents are impossible to separate and thus won't have that problem.

There's also a "low rent housing" option, which Paradox states that it is "especially useful for low-income residents such as students and young adults who have moved out of their parent’s house to live in their own first apartment". Unless you're building government projects for the local "welfare race" or adding trailer parks, low-cost housing is made, not born. Almost every "low-cost" housing option in the semi-free market is either some apartments built out in the sticks that are built without city permits, or just older apartment units/rental properties in a variety of forms.

None of these are what the city simulator actually needed: apartment complexes. The humble low-rise apartment complex is something completely ignored by urbanists, despite cropping up in the suburban areas. Yeah, most of them these days are shitholes and/or made of paperboard, but they're ignored because it's inconvenient to the density/missing middle argument.

Despite the fact that such a complex is extremely common in the United States, and also adds density to suburbs without aesthetically ruining them, they're not there, and it's unlikely that they'd ever be added in any satisfactory capacity.

We go into commercial zoning. It's what you'd expect, the same model ripped straight from SimCity 4 with worse-looking buildings...no advancement in that category, like multiple tenants in one building which can be partially abandoned or not...but the "new" feature is how tenants are more profitable selling locally produced goods (it assumes that imported goods can never be cheaper, which is the opposite...guess CSII has high tariffs).

Then there's industrial zones, which like SimCity games are all just generic smokestacks and nothing more nuanced like agriculture (guess agriculture is DLC).

Industrial zones attempt to sell goods to local buyers first. If there is overproduction of a type of goods the companies will ship the excess production to Outside Connections, but selling to the local market is always more profitable due to lower transportation costs. Continuing to sell to Outside Connections will further decrease the profit as they have to ship the goods further and further to new buyers, simulating the eventual oversaturation of the market.

From a quick glance-over, this doesn't even seem to follow simple supply & demand economics because since the Industrial Revolution, companies are designed to sell goods abroad, whether through exporting commodities or creating a wholesale market (and nowhere did I see the term "wholesale" in the blog), even in a domestic market. No one city can specialize in everything, and commodities are traded. Rural areas (in the South and Midwest, mostly) export fruits, nuts, and vegetables, factories in the north make textiles and consumer products.

The last section is on "Signature Buildings", which are basically like Landmarks in SimCity 4 in that they're ploppable objects can contribute jobs and other benefits...so it includes "large commercial buildings, massive factories, or impressive offices which function like your zoned buildings" which isn't all that bad of an idea, though not too unique. Big buildings, especially for a smaller city, require a lot of planning and a lot of press. The issue of scale is still there, though. For a small town, a Wal-Mart or a modern gas station could be a big deal (no Wal-Marts in C:S, I'm using it as an example) that require proper placement, but as cities grow, so must be what exactly you're planning. An office park, mansion, or huge warehouse could be an accomplishment, but once a certain point is passed, those start to become commonplace (drive down any Houston freeway and notice how many large office buildings there are) and you'll only be placing down the truly greatest stuff by the end, like 60+ floor towers.

It's like how in Katamari Damacy, you go from being delighted that you can pick up pencils without them throwing your katamari off-balance, and eventually you're rolling up entire islands, leaving the pencils long behind. I have a feeling that you might end up having 3-5 nice mansions (for example) in a city built for thousands because those got blocked off for "Signature Buildings"...

 

[Midwit]

One of the things that started becoming bad with SimCity 4 but got worse with the clones and inferior successors is the need to control everything

On the Industry front I would very much like to micromanage certain things, doubly so if the game can use anything other than cargo trucks to transport things from place to place. Pipes and conveyors are a must if you're going to be doing anything with Ore or Oil, and there's no reason you can't adapt them for other goods too, if only to make it so that industrial vehicles aren't driving through my suburbs instead of using the main arterial.

Plus, the idea of "one way track" still rears its head because Cities: Skylines is too lazy to set up a signal system.

That feels like something that could be added in a DLC, though gating semi-realistic train organisation behind a paywall would be scummy as fuck and as such is something I can 100% see Paradox doing, and even then it'll probably only be simplistic block & chain signals rather than contemporary path signals which to my knowledge only OpenTTD has managed to implement in a functional manner.

nothing more nuanced like agriculture

You can literally see agricultural zones being painted in the trailer itself, which is actually big step forward since it means that you can have oddly shaped farmland which fits around your city in a semi-natural manner.

The last section is on "Signature Buildings",

I think that's the creators throwing a bone to Ploppable RICO. It's a step in the right direction for when you have buildings that are too large for normal zoning but should function the same way, the issue I see is that the buildings are unique one-offs rather than just being ones that don't fit into regular zoning plots so now you're stuck with only having the one giant supermarket when you should be able to have a lot more than that.

 

[Xarpho's Return]

I started writing something down for the latest post about what it got right (a little) and what it got wrong (a lot, very much so)...and then I decided "Why am I doing this? Most of this is terrible, and I don't need to repeat how awful this is."

This isn't SimCity 4, where by some youthful innocence and a better company they can bedazzle me with something I've never seen before (the ferry stations in SimCity 4 were intriguing but ultimately disappointed). There's some new ideas and technology in the genre that could be implemented, but aren't. (I mean, even the stillborn indie title NewCity had some great ideas that I would've considered myself--like separating the concept of buildings and businesses). There isn't a single thing that I've looked at in C:SII and thought "Holy shit, this is amazing and what I've always wanted. Take my money, please."

 

[reptile baht spaniard rid]

How is the music in Cities Skylines?

it's decent but I basically always turn the music off on games and just play my own

half the damn DLC seems to be "radio stations" so maybe if that's your thing you can go wild.

In addition to being frankly terrible, this is why I have so little faith in the game. In the previews, you're supposed to make things exciting, an improvement over the previous game. Even if these features aren't added or implemented correctly, it builds hype. This sort of thing was basically from SimCity 4 twenty years ago, with ugly New York-style brownstones and the like, and it was depressing to see your ordinary homes give way to outdated townhomes.

from the preview and preview-review videos, CS2 is seeming a lot like "CS1 + DLC + top ten best mods" - only the multi-zone zoning and some of the free-form layout tools seem "new".

Also the damn thing is not for Mac so I suspect this is an attempt to sell more copies on console.

 

[Just Some Other Guy]

The amount of crossover there is between these games and the fuckcars crowd is the most annoying thing. Just constant "just add 1 more lane bro. Rip out a neighborhood for a highway bro. More parking lots bro. Build another walmart bro"

Reddit wannabe city planners deserve to be lined up.

 

[Xarpho's Return]

The amount of crossover there is between these games and the fuckcars crowd is the most annoying thing. Just constant "just add 1 more lane bro. Rip out a neighborhood for a highway bro. More parking lots bro. Build another walmart bro"

I was on Simtropolis in my SimCity 4 days, which was definitely left-wing for what it was (Canadians, go figure) but not the extent to screeching about freeways, as the NAM and RHW were welcomed with open arms.
Anyway, Paradox just dropped another dev diary with power plants. Seems like they took note from Factorio with an "emergency battery station" item (that's not especially realistic given how the grid functions, and if they were copying Factorio they could've taken a dozen more good ideas instead), but power plants require shipments of fuel for coal power plants to work...and many coal power plants still have train lines operational to bring in bulk shipment. (So much for rail focus).

They bring up sewage again like last week, but sewage is an essential function in real life, but it's basically busywork here because it is simplified. There's no lift stations (essential in mountainous areas) nor septic tanks (in more rural areas). The idea of dropping raw sewage straight into waterways is something first-world countries haven't really done for years, something that hasn't been done for years. Raw sewage, of course, could take different forms, whether its just germ-riddled water (or contaminated with chemicals), or the solid sludge that comes along with it.

Paradox apparently hasn't incorporated the solid sludge, even if you put raw sewage outputs next to fresh water intake in C:S, they'd still technically work. In real life, it wouldn't even work on a mechanical level due to the condoms, tampons, toilet paper, solid fat and waste and all that bullshit.

 

[Just Some Other Guy]

Honestly even modeling in sewage was dumb. Just another "plop the building to solve the issue" instead of going any deeper or focusing more time on another mechanic.

 

[Xarpho's Return]

The latest developer diary is out and it brags about how "big" the playable area is.

In Cities: Skylines II things are a bit different. For starters, one map tile is much smaller - roughly ⅓ what it is in the predecessor - but you are able to unlock almost all tiles giving you a whopping total of 441 map tiles. That results in a playable area of 159km² which is roughly 5 times bigger than in Cities: Skylines.

But unless my math is wrong, that's just about 7.5km*7.5km meters, which is less than four times the size of the largest SimCity 4 tile, and still not enough to make truly sprawling cities. And of course, there's no Region View, so you can't fake-it-till-you-make-it of connecting "cities" together for a full region view. Because the map tiles can be arranged in a non-square shape, you might be able to squeeze Manhattan in there...but I wonder if Cities: Skylines will actually work well enough for you to actually do that.

It's just so damn disappointing. It's been twenty years since SimCity 4 and Paradox still can't come up with something that's actually a massive improvement on the genre, yet still can't re-capture the sorts of things that made SimCity 4 great to begin with.

Here's another thing to chew on: the city genre is ripe for some sort of marketing tie-in, something that EA made great use of over the years, though SimCity saw that sort of thing, with Progressive (SimCity Social), BP (SimCity Societies), and Nissan Leaf (SimCity 2013). The Sims saw more of it with licensed stuff like Gucci, IKEA, and H&M (among others) appearing over the years. The opportunities for a real corporation and a city-building game tie-in are endless. But those sorts of things are only tied in with games that marketers think are popular enough or good enough to represent their brand. We know that Paradox isn't shunning such things for altruistic reasons (after all, the endless parade of paid DLCs for their games should say that much), therefore, it's rather telling that Paradox has none such brand tie-ins.

 

[Midwit]

It's been twenty years since SimCity 4 and Paradox still can't come up with something that's actually a massive improvement on the genre

I'd argue that the level detail possible in the creation of road systems and general traffic management (granted you need mods to get the most out of it) is a massive advancement over older titles, it's just that CS doesn't really do anything interesting outside of that.

 

[Just Some Other Guy]

Modded SC4 let you get pretty autistic with roads and interchanges.

On top of giving God's gift to city builders: the regional mode.

That feature alone trumps every advancement in CS.