Cities Skylines II is a simulation video game I play in which the player can build a city of remarkable complexity while managing the needs of the citizens of the city. Players need to manage traffic, mass transit, employment, housing, zoning, recreation and entertainment opportunities, and basic utilities (electricity, water and sewer, trash and recycling, and internet/telecommunications) so that their needs in those areas are met.
I’ve played city simulation games since they first were available, buying my first city sim, SimCity, in 1989. I’ve owned every iteration of the SimCity franchise, but like a lot of players, really lost interest with the SimCity (a new version, released in 2013, not the original) release. Cities Skylines came around in 2015, but I didn’t start playing it until 2017 or so, and became hooked. The downloadable content, ability to create and download mods created by other users really set it apart, along with a more realistic style of city.
As time goes on here, I’ll post about some of my cities and show off new things I’m playing with and some of the progress made on others.
According to Steam, I’ve played Cities Skylines II for 309.3 hours. This city, Wisterberg, probably represents about 30 hours of work, usually with about 2-4 hours a week of play time.
The basic concept for this city that there’s a strongly urban core, with some suburbs in the area that can be directly attached (via city streets or roads extending out of the urban core), or indirectly attached via a highway and freeway system.
I’m a big fan of incorporating as many forms of mass transit as I can in my cities, and love trying to make the various modes meet in hubs or similar areas. This city has a bus lines, a center city train station, along with one at the airport and one in the suburb at the top of the picture above.
Above is the train station in the suburb.
There are some subway lines, but I need to build that out more.
Both the suburb and the center city have trams, or light rail, or whatever you want to call it. In the center city, the tram runs a chunk of its route through a blocks-long city park space (running toward the upper left from the tower in the foreground. The tram route kind of meanders back and forth heading through the park, with several stops in the park so that it’s easy to use.
Though, there are some yahoos who decide to walk along the tram tracks (where they shouldn’t)…
I’ve tried to make whole space as urban as possible, while still providing some attractive natural areas:
The crossing the river toward the tower at the end of the city park.
Some housing (and water pumping stations) on the lake in that suburb area.
So, some stats: as you can see from the screenshots, the population of the whole area sits right around 300,000. There are many schools, including 3 colleges/universities. There is no coal or fuel burning power plants–right now, they’re all geothermal, so there’s minimal pollution from energy creation, but there is pollution from industry and the garbage incinerators.
Next steps will be to finish building out the housing around the lake shown above, along with building more residential blocks in the center city area. As I said above, I need to finesse and build out the subway system. And I’m running short on elementary schools, so need to build more of those. And I need to zone more commercial, business and industrial areas so I can bring unemployment down. It’s currently right around 10%.
