Cities: Skylines Announced (Release date 10th March)

[Mav12 9]

Release date: March 10th 2015

 

EDIT: Since the game is now released, let's continue discussions in new topics!

 

FAQ Thread:

http://forum.paradoxplaza.com/forum/showthread.php?836421-FAQ-Guide

 

Release announcement trailer:

 

Paradox Interactive and Colossal Order just announced their own city builder, trailer mocks Sim City 2013

 

Website and Forum:

https://www.paradoxplaza.com/cities-skylines

http://forum.paradoxplaza.com/forum/forumdisplay.php?859-Cities-Skylines

 

Thing mentioned in Paradox's livestream event not mentioned on website (I was watching them announce there games via twitch):

Game has 38 by 38 km maps - when devs were comparing it to that OTHER game after reveal

traffic, ect simulation is exact opposite of Sim City 2013 (visuals display simulation instead of visuals defining the simulator) - mentioned in Q&A after reveals

reasorces and special industry eg. timber or mining - Quill18 asked about it.

  Edited March 10, 2015 by Cyclone Boom  
Topic closed.

[CapTon 592]

Looks very appealing sorta reminds me of Cities XL.

[Mav12 9]

Looks very appealing sorta reminds me of Cities XL.

I belive the game is actually based off of Cities in Motion 2's engine

[Aragorn 21]

COLOGNE, GERMANY — 14 August 2014 — Paradox Interactive revealed at Gamescom today an all-new city-building simulation game, Cities: Skylines, which will be coming to Windows, Mac, and Linux PCs in 2015.

Developed by Colossal Order, the simulation virtuosos behind the Cities in Motion series, Cities: Skylines pulls players out of the public transportation offices and grants them the power of true urban planning and development.

 

From zoning to building, from utilities to beautification, and from taxation to outreach, players of Cities: Skylines will have total control in endless sandbox gameplay across massive maps – all with extensive built-in mod support.

 

Paradox and Colossal Order invite players to create the cities of their dreams in Cities: Skylines, a massive city simulator from the creators of the Cities in Motion series.

Vast backdrops and maps provide players with countless ways to improve and expand their cities, building from humble beginnings up to beautiful, cloud-hugging structures and unique architectural marvels.

 

Cities: Skylines will Feature 

·         Designed to Impress: Massive map sizes and deep, detailed design controls allow players to construct the cities of their dreams, running everything from road building and zoning to public services and taxation – and, yes, public transportation

·         Policy and Progress: Set a series of civic policies to guide the city’s growth; fine-tune the placement and direction of local districts

·         Local Beautification: Admire the vastness of your city in a polished visual style and manage a living, breathing city, all the way down to realistic water flow in the irrigation systems

·         The Sky is Not the Limit: Strive to build up a city towards jaw-dropping endgame “wonders,” and then go beyond what is possible with built-in game modding tools

For more information on Cities: Skylines, visit www.citiesskylines.com

 

And play offline!!!

 

You see that, 3 times massive = ultra massive, massive, ultra, HL3 CONFIRMED!

[CapTon 592]

 

Looks very appealing sorta reminds me of Cities XL.

I belive the game is actually based off of Cities in Motion 2's engine

 

It is based off the Cities in Motion engine, but I was just saying that it reminded me of Cities XL .

[SirChick 184]

The roads look a bit stupid though in that thumbnail.

[Mav12 9]

The roads look a bit stupid though in that thumbnail.

That's a feature of Cities in Motion, Super road flexiability (if you look at CIM2 pics you can see the many interchanges and crazy designs people have made)

Though that's only if you so choose to draw them like that, you can be realistic

[AkemiAzula 280]

It is good to see finally healthy competition in this neglected genre. I await further developments and wish Paradox luck with their project.

I always fdlt they were in a good place to undertake such an endeavour. Transportation i trust shall not be a deficiency of this gsme.

[Dockter 13]

Shut up and take my money!

[zorkman 25]

Paradox is my favourite company, I know they aren't officially making it, but they will give good support to the developers, who have a good record. No wonder EA are advertising free time to play that other failure.

[Mav12 9]

Update:

Game Forum exists (EDIT: made publicly visible)

link: http://forum.paradoxplaza.com/forum/forumdisplay.php?859-Cities-Skylines

[Leathaface 3]

This game will be awesome!

[The Duke of Rockford 1]

Paradox, aside from being publisher for Cities in Motion games, is best known as developer of historical grand strategy games like Europa Universalis (one of my favorite), Crusader Kings, Hearts of Iron and Victoria. So I was really surprised to see Paradox entering competition in city-building genre, as they are the last company I would've expected to do so. Pleasantly surprised, nevertheless.

 

Look like a dent is about to get bigger again in EA's monopoly on city-building genre, if this game successfully takes off. EA will now have Cities XL and Cities Skyline to contend with in this niche market. Though, personally, I think EA would probably not care a great deal about this given that they have more lucrative franchises like The Sims and so on.

[FourWinds 29]

I'm a fan of Paradox too. I'll be buying this, as will most of us no doubt.

 

The only trouble with Paradox game is the fonts they always use in their UI: the fonts will be tiny and the UI won't have scaling. In every game I recall, Paradox have been asked to consider peeps eyes, and didn't bother. But it's always one of the first mods available, as people have come to expect it from Paradox. Ok. rant mode disengaged. 

 

This looks great. I have added myself to the mailing list so I don't miss any news of it.

[Terring 6,476]

[Ocram's Razr 964]

That looks pretty promising! I plan on buying it even though I never played any Cities in Motion games. I have, however, played Europa Universialis.

 

 

--Ocram

[Mav12 9]

The game devs are asking the community for a acronym for the game they set up a poll here: http://forum.paradoxplaza.com/forum/showthread.php?796173-Let-s-create-an-acronym! (you have to register to vote or post a suggestion)

[charlesnew 262]

Woah.. so that's what a city building game is...

[DomoTheRussian 68]

Game has a weird Citites XL feel for me... I dunno maybe they will pull something good out of this idea. 

[Haljackey 17,398]

I'll be watching this one. Looks like a mash-up of all kinds of city builders and simulators out there. Could be awesome.

[Rokugatsu 128]

I think this might be good! I believe in Paradox Interactive, most of their games are great and it seems like they know what players want (big maps, mods, zones ect).  

[Mav12 9]

Devs holding an IAMA at reddit 21:00 CEST/14:00 EST

[Haljackey 17,398]

The Reddit AMA in a nutshell

---

**I know probably can't get specifics, but would you describe this as a more expansive or larger area to build a city on than the (very restricted) tiny room in simcity 2013? I often find that game revolves around tearing down one thing to fix something and causing another problem in the process because of the small room.**

It's a lot bigger. About 36km2. We've optimized the game for cities of that size. BUT - The sweetest feature is that we'll have an option where you can uncouple the limitation and go bigger. but that's up to you and your hardware

**Will it feature regions like in SimCity?**

Nope. It's an interesting concept/feature if done correctly though. But we don't expect you to depend on other players/cities in order to build a big sweet city.

There are no regions, but map tiles have attributes like a possibility for a certain outside connection (seaside for harbor, train tracks for train connection) and natural resources. So selecting map tiles to expand to lets you choose what kind of a city you want to play.

**Are there "neighbor" AI cities that offer/request utilities?**

There is an outside world, but it just buys any surplus your city produces and offers resources and goods if your city needs something. To get the highest tax income your city would produce everything itself, but the outside world is there to help you.

**So, it will be like other titles, where you develop just one big city? Or there are districts, or something like that?**

There are districts that you can set yourself and set different policies in the districts to make them be different from each other.

**Will there be any agricultural building/zoning options? If I wanted to make a small town with farm land surrounding it, would it be possible?**

Totally possible. Agriculture is in the game.

**This question is regarding how you plan on making cities feel like they are living in breathing. For example, in SC4, the NIMBY/YIMBY system was pretty powerful and made the city feel alive. For example, you could make buildings historical, or buildings would become abandoned if there were too many NIMBY's in the area, or the economy was bad. Furthermore, streetscaping would change based upon the wealth level of the neighborhood. I realize this is a somewhat complicated question, but what mechanics do you have in place to make cities in this game feel like they are living and breathing?**

Buildings level up, becoming more fancy. There's also low density zones for making places look more like suburbs and high density for creating a city center. It is possible to for example have an area of low level high density buildings that can look like a ghetto next to a city center of high level high density buildings. Abandoned buildings are there, and you can leave burned down buildings on the map if you like.
There are also little things, like if garbage collection facilities are overburdened, the buildings start to pile full trash cans on the curb. Or the fact that when the ground gets polluted around an industrial area, the trees on the ground become dried up and brown.
We really want the world to feel alive and are making many neat details to tell you who lives where and how they are doing!

Cities is built on Unity in the same way as CiM2

**So when you say hardcore, how hardcore are we talking? What kinds of things can we expect that will make this a truly immersive sim in terms of city building and city feel?**

Somewhere between SC4 and Cities XL? We don't want to go overboard and Dwarf Fortress it - but still allow depth. We expect modders to do really, really hardcore stuff. Depending on what people ask for we're shift post release content/feature in that direction. We are aiming to make a game that is easy to learn but has depth for players who really want to delve deep into optimizing the city. It's not so much the difficulty of the game, but the amount of things you can tweak in your city.

**As Cities Skylines follows Cities in Motion, how extensive will the transit infrastructure options be? E.g. dirt roads, streets, roads, one-way roads, avenues, highways, underground/elevated roads, trains, subways, monorails, maglev, ferries, helipads, various sized airports, etc…**

The only ones we don't currently have from your list are underground roads, monorails, maglec, helicopters and airport sizes, so I think we have a pretty nice amount of options! The different road types are very flexible and work for different things, I made a gorgeous and well working roundabout yesterday using the highway road type.

**Is there a option of naming and renaming streets? (at best, given evry a estate a number/adress - maybe automatically?**

At the moment there no street names planned. City districts can be created and named, and each building has a name automatically generated.

**Can you please explain a bit more what you mean with modding support? Will we (the community) be able to create and load own 3D-Models?**

Yes, actually, with specially designed tools We will reveal a bit more on the exact nature of the modding tools later, they are still in development. So, we are looking into that, but here is also where we really hope the community will go at it. The game will ship (according to plan) with built-in tools to import 3d objects, and to be able to share them easily on Steam Workshop.

**Will there be landmarks (Ie famous like the Statute of Liberty or Eiffel Tower)?**

What kind of city builder would it be if we didn't?

**Will there different road types (american, german, english etc) just like in City xl?**

We don't have roads divided by geographical location, but there is a nice selection of roads, like decorated versions with lower noise pollution of each type, highways and special highway ramps.

**How much will the game cost or what price range are you aiming for?**

We're looking at starting at $29.99 - that's HALF of some other management games. But we'll likely have some kind of Digital deluxe edition, or even a super collectors edition (if there's interest) - is there? No Early access. It'll be around $29.99 - half of some other management games

**This question is regarding parks. I think giving players robust tools for placing parks really can add realism to a city. For example, fountains, plazas, zoos, bike paths, and trails are typically found in real life cities. Will this game offer players multiple types of parks?**

Yes! We are working on a tool that actually lets you create unique parks with the game assets and place those. There are also pre-made parks, naturally. We want to give the player room to be creative with parks, just having the same few types is too boring!

**Are there plans to generate in-game maps using external map data (e.g. OpenStreetMap, Google Maps, etc)? Most of us love the idea of running our own home towns.**

As the basic goal in the game is to build a city we haven't planned that you could generate in game maps (road networks etc). However with the map editor you'll be able to create a landscape of your choosing to start building the city on. Importing a height map makes the landscape pretty realistic starting point.

**Would someone who was bored with Sim City a long time ago actually enjoy this game?**

For the record. I played and enjoyed the latest Sim City about 6 hours. We're building a game you can play for 600 hours.

**Will the game have regions like SimCity 4 and what will be the maximum city size?**

The map consists of tiles. Each tile is 2 km x 2 km and one city can have nine of those. You get to choose the tiles from 25 tiles on the map. The area is all seamless so you can have a pretty huge city! There are no regions, but there is a world outside the map that buys excess goods and ships resources if your city needs something.T he maximum city size is 9 map tiles, one map tile is 2km x 2km. You start with the first one and then get to unlock more land for your city.

**Will there be other types of transport than metro and buses? In DLC?**

When the game comes out there will be airplanes, trains and ships for outside connections. Currently buses and metros are only planned for inner city transport, because we felt having two options for transport on the roads might be a bit too much. Maybe later then, I love trams ;D

**Will there be beautification options for roads? i.e. having a garden along the middle of an avenue, having a street lined with trees, etc…**

Yes, there will be plenty of options for different road types.

**Will there be any future tech within Cities Skylines? E.g. fusion/microwave power plants, fully automated cars, personal air cars, arcologies, etc…**

The game timeline lets you go a little bit into the future, so there are plausible inventions like a fusion power plant.

**Coming from a transport focused playstyle, have you decided on whether you'll be keeping the same depth there? Or will you be making sure that players don't have to play a whole game (and spend their time managing it) within this game?**

Transportation is made lighter and more streamlined, since Skylines in not about it but rather the cities. We do have many options, like planes, trains, metro and buses, but you don't have to go to ticket prices or setting schedules.

**Will there be hand-made buildings or they will be procedurally generated?**

The buildings are handmade with love from our talented artists!

**Will it be possible for citizens from one town travel to another for work? So you could have a suburban area in one zone and people will commute to work in the main metropolitan city in another?
Will be there be a way to fill in oddly shaped gaps between buildings/roads with grass or pavement? I loved this feature in Cities XL.
Is building stuff zone-based (like Sim City), or you choose what to build and where (like Tropico), or somewhere in between?
The trailer looks fairly grid-based. Will you be able to rotate buildings/zones, and how flexible is rotating (ie: can rotate 45º like in Tropico, or free rotate)
Take your time with the game and make it the best city sim ever, I'm looking forward to it!**

Lets see if I can answer all of these! Citizens work only inside your city. But with the large map size you can have smaller cities on the same map. I like to do a suburb, then a city center and a industrial area separately. People move around the map and you just have to make sure to have good highway connections between your towns. You can place decoration items freely. We want to help fill the odd gaps, so our grid system is made to not create many gaps and the decoration tools that are still being worked on will help with fixing the few there will be.
Building is zone based, except for city services. Basically you mark zones for residential area, commercial area, industrial area and office area, and place things like hospitals, schools and police stations yourself. Building roads creates grid. The roads themselves are not ties to a grid, so you can place the roads in any way you want, including curved, and plop buildings next to them. Thank you, we are very proud of the game and want to make it great!

**Currently, There're no Linux/SteamOS in the system requirements on the game's Steam page. Will these operating systems be supported at launch (or later)?**

Linux/OSX will be supported!

There's many different road types: small, large, decorated version of each, highway, highway with noise barriers, gravel road... Transportation is streamlined from CiM 2, so the tool for making lines is easier and faster to use and no timetables or ticket prices need to be set. The timetable depends on how much budget you give to transportation: the depots get the amount of vehicles they can with the money and divide the vehicles to lines based on line length. You get income from tickets.

**How extensive and detailed will the taxation/ordinances/policies go?

I know it sounds like a weird question, but the big things that SC2013 and SCS needed was the schtuff that SC3000 and SC4 love to use: charts and graphs.**

Taxation and budget are all there, how much you want to fine tune it is a bit up to the player. Policies is something we are really sinking our teeth into, and hope to be able to deliver toons, from the really important like industrial policies, to the more mundane like pet ban.

**In Cities in Motion 2 you employ a brush style to determine fare zones - will this concept be implemented in Cities:Skylines? In particular for zoning, parks/greenspace, and identifying cultural / business centers?**

Yeah, this is done via the district tool where you can zone your city in different districts and set local policies and specialisations.

**I've never played any of your city games, although I've thought about it quite a bit and I really enjoyed SimCity even though lots of people hated it. Will I love this game? Can you explain some of the similarities and differences between this and SimCity?**

You are talking about the newest SimCity, right? Skylines takes inspiration from earlier SimCity games, so it's a bit less casual than the newest one and has more micromanagement, thought some of the optimization is optional so player who just enjoy building can play it "lightly", without going into all the details.

**Will it incorporate some kind of CiM public transport system or will it be more in the line of 'place bus stops in places and buses find their own routes'?**

The player is allowed to make bus lines by placing drops and drawing lines, but the vehicles go to the lines automatically from their depots.

**Are buildings dependent on lots (a polygon) or do they grow dynamically based on zoning? If dynamic, can roads expand lanes and not require the building to be destroyed?**

Buildings do have lots, but there are buildings of all lot sizes so there won't be any weird looking empty space left. If you upgrade or downgrade an existing road, the zoning is preserved but if the road size changes, buildings are automatically destroyed (only zoned buildings! You can't accidentally destroy for example a hospital) and new ones spawn.
 

[Mr Saturn64 742]

Sounds promising.

[AkemiAzula 280]

Sounds very promising.

[TekindusT 3,809]

Finally, a city simulator we can call!

[Terring 6,476]

[Roger51 381]

Hmmm, this does indeed sound very good  

[lucidus 69]

No early access. Bummer.

[Jimmy Buzaid 53]

I loved Cities in Motion 1 and 2, and both are very easy to mod. I hope the UI font is larger as well, is was small for CiM games.