City Skylines is a game where you can sink in hundreds of hours into it and still not get bored. Cities Skylines has been the pinnacle for city-building games for a while now. SimCity was ruling the city building genre before but with the release of Cities Skyline in 2015, that monopoly ended.
Cities Skylines still has a very active player base and a lively community of builders and modders. The biggest reason the Cities Skylines 2 is still playable and popular is because of its modding community.
The latest DLC released, Plazas and Promenades, was a much-needed addition to the game which improved the walkability in the game by a lot. The addition of new pedestrian-only roads and pedestrian roads with bus lanes is a game-changer in many aspects.
Cities Skylines also added 2 new content creator packs which are probably the best introduced until now; Seaside Resorts and Mid-Century Modern Pack.
We will talk about the new DLC and Content Creator Packs but that is not what we are here for. We will rank the best DLCs in the game and talk about problems in the current games and what improvements will be needed in the next game if it is in the works.
Let’s talk a little about the new Plazas and Promenades DLC
Plazas and Promenades DLC provides the best facelift to your city. You can create a walkable plaza in your city centre or in the community centre of a suburb. While it is a really good DLC, it has some shortcomings.
The new DLC adds a lot of stuff to the game from the new High Capacity Educational buildings to 2 new Metro Stations. It also adds five new maps, 6 Unique buildings, and 11 service buildings. It also adds a lot of assets, new types of roads and a lot of props.
The new DLC changes how you build your city centres or downtowns. With real-life cities focusing more on car-free zones in the downtowns, you can replicate the same in your cities.
Thus far, I am loving the new expansion and I have managed to create an office district with walkability as a primary theme and a downtown area with only no traffic. Although it is a great DLC, it has some problems. First of all, the game was not playable at all with mods for the first 48 hours until patch fixes and mods were updated. Well, that was expected but it is fixed now since mods have been updated by the modders.
When I got my hands on the new DLC, I wanted to use the pedestrian roads on my Campuses. But, I was not able to place any campus buildings on it. That was a bummer. The same goes for Parks as well.
You can use the roads in those districts but you can’t attach any buildings to it which are DLC specific. Although you can bypass it by attacking campus roads and park roads to the pedestrian roads but it looks ugly.
Nevertheless, it was an absolute bummer to not be able to attach any buildings in parks or Campuses to the pedestrian roads. Realistically, it makes total sense to do that but the game doesn’t allow it.
Another problem is that you can’t use the pedestrian roads as normal roads and attach zonings or assets to them without painting that particular area as a pedestrian district/area. It is not much of a problem and we can certainly live it but this shouldn’t have been necessary.
From the game’s perspective, it makes sense because pedestrian roads can’t use service vehicles like garbage trucks, police vehicles, etc. to service the attached buildings. And to add service to buildings, you have to add it in the pedestrian zone.
The DLC would have been the best if it didn’t require painting every pedestrian area you use in your city.
Let’s talk a little about Seaside Resorts and Mid-Century Modern Pack
Seaside Resorts is a welcome addition to the Cities Skylines. If you have a city in the tropics, you will greatly benefit from this. It fills the beach area to a degree with resort buildings.
It does not fill your entire beach area but it looks great if you are building a “resort-themed” island on the map.
The mid-century modern pack adds a lot of growable “Low-density houses”. It also introduces this as a theme which you can use to have a suburb full of buildings of this pack which has a total of 147 new houses.
It also adds 3 Hotels, 2 Restaurants and Car Ports.
Overall, both of these are a welcome addition to the game and add value to the game and are something you will keep using in your city.
Is Cities Skyline 2 in development?
Even after seven years, the game is still getting new DLC, mods and players. It surely is popular but the game can be massively improved if we get a sequel.
There is no official news about the Cities Skylines 2 or even significant rumours to indicate that there is something in development. It is safe to assume that there are no plans to create a sequel for Cities Skylines and the fact that they are working on DLCs for the first game.
Even with new DLCs that are good, it is time that we get Cities Skylines 2 which improves on the first game and keeps it in the top spot for a city builder. With new indie games like UIrbek City Builder gaining popularity in this genre, there might come a game that will usurp the position of top city building game.
Problems with the Cities Skylines as of now
As good as the game is, it needs to be upgraded and improved upon to be relevant in the coming years. There are certain problems in the game which take some fun out of it like the traffic.
Traffic Simulation is weird and too simple for a game like Cities Skylines
For me, the traffic simulation is the worst thing about this game. 3-lane roads and 4 lanes roads are virtually useless because vehicles use only one lane most of the time. Traffic simulation is too simple in the game.
Vehicles have a pre-determined path which it takes to their destination and they will only stick to it no matter what. The games need dynamic lane switching which also makes use of all the lanes on the road.
Just adding a little more complexity to the traffic simulation will reduce the traffic in any city by a lot, making it a lot more fun to manage traffic. While veterans may not see this as a problem but many players often stop improving their cities when the traffic problem becomes too huge.
I know, I am guilty of this where I start a new city every time the traffic problem gets out of hand.
Industries create too much traffic and you have no control over where your produces go
Industries, in my opinion, are my top 3 DLCs of the game but it creates too much traffic, especially the farm industry. Industries have been the best addition to the game but the industries spawn too many trucks which become problematic when your industry area grows.
This traffic may not affect your city centre but certainly chokes the area around your cargo airport/train station and harbour.
Another problem with this is you have no control over how your produces are distributed. This might add another layer of complexity to the game and I realise that this may turn off a lot of players who might not be into industry’s management.
But, is it too much to ask for manual control and automatic control for the players who do not want too much micromanaging?
Manual control over produce and transportation will also help control traffic, solve the “Not enough goods to sell” problem and deal with “Not enough resources” in unique industries.
Possibilities are endless with this.
Population Simulation is funny and ridiculous at the same time
Can you imagine this building only has 26 people living? I know it sounds ridiculous but this is what the base calculation of the game gives you. Realistic Population mod addresses this issue somewhat but it is not the solution.
Plus, vanilla players who can’t or don’t want to use mods are still plagued with this problem. I don’t this as a huge problem but it feels ridiculous that a huge skyscraper only houses 30 people.
Some minor problems in Cities Skylines
Cities Skylines sorely lacks in the audio department. I always keep the sound off because it has become annoying to listen to the same 2-second audio loop every time I zoom in on my city.
Even zoomed out, the sounds lack character and are overall very generic and boring.
Optimisation is another issue which only plagues the players who use a lot of mods. It can eat up 32GB of RAM just that like if you are using a lot of mods and user created Assets. Since the game itself wants players to use mods, this could have been more optimised.
Top 5 things we need in Cities Skylines 2
Multiplayer and the ability to visit and trade with other cities
SimCity got this right with a multiplayer setting where people could trade with other cities. It was simplistic in nature but Cities Skylines can make it amazing.
Imagine I don’t have oil in my city and excess farm produce and I would like to visit my friend’s city and make a trade deal. It could add a new dimension to trading between cities which would make it more lively and fun to play.
Bigger Maps or multiple shorter maps that are interconnected
9 tiles itself feels too small when I am used to playing with 81 tiles. For the sequel 81 or more should be a default. They can also add multiple maps to build different interconnected cities on different maps.
Non-American cities
Most of the assets and the way cities work is based on America. From suburbs to downtowns, the city feels very American or European (if you choose the European theme). What I mean is that if the maps do get bigger, which it will if there is a sequel, I would like to add a small village which looks like a village and not a mini-American suburb.
It would be cool to see elements from all around the world like Indian or Japanese rural areas or the whole city themes based on Asian cities or Russian.
Bottomline, it would be cool to see a city not “American”.
Day and Night Mechanics
City is always on, traffic is always the same whether it is day or night. It would be awesome if traffic declined as the night progresses and increase as the day starts. The shops are always open and schools are operating at night.
This mechanics also opens up the option to ban heavy trucks in an area during day time and to let them operate at night.
More life to the game
A city has a lot of stuff going on in it. Strikes, concerts, New Year Parades, Festivals, etc. It would be awesome if we got to organise these things in the city which would take a considerable amount of planning but it would be worth it.
Imagine, your industry completely stops when you raise the tax too much and workers and industrialists are on strike. You are now forced to reduce the taxes or squash the strike with the police.
It would be fun, wouldn’t it?
Conclusion
There are a lot more things that can be added to the game to make it more “real” and fun. The biggest issue of the game currently is traffic and if that is solved, that will improve the game by a lot.
I would also like to see more control over the economics of my cities in terms of export and import. That is present in the game somewhat but you don’t get to micro-manage it. I know, I would enjoy micro-managing the logistics, traffic and economics of my city than rebuilding my city to fix the traffic.
If you ask someone else, they might give you a different list of what needs to improve in the game. I understand that it would be too much to ask for but there are some core issues which need to fix and everyone agrees on it.
Cities Skylines is a lot of fun and it never gets old to start a new city or fix an existing one. Paradox Interactive has kept the game fresh even after 7 years with DLCs but it is time that Cities Skylines upgrades to something, even more, better in form of Cities Skylines 2.
I hope that the Plazas and Promenades was the last DLC and they have started working on Cities Skyline 2.
What are the top DLCs for Cities Skyline?
People might give a different list but no one can argue that the best DLCs in the game are the ones which allow you to build modularly and adds a new layer to the game like Industries or Parklife.
This is how I would rank the DLCs
- Industries
- Parklife
- Plazas and Promenades
- Green Cities
- Campus
- After Dark
- Sunset Harbor
- Airports
- Natural Disasters
- Mass Transit
- Snowfall
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