Just bought the game: What were Your first impressions?

[scoobsuk 44]

Dangerously addictive. I had to turn it off before I got into mass transit because then I knew there would be NO sleep.

This is a great base game as SC4 was a great base game but what elevated that game (forgive the pun) was Rush Hour and the mod community.

This is already terrific fun but I can't wait to see where patches, expansions and mods can take it.

[hawkeyesforever 4]

Does this game have an Auto-save? Ahh if not it needs one! Lost a lot of progress from a video driver freeze!

 

anyway I have a lot of problems with traffic coming into and out of the city from my Industrial area, so this was my rough solution

The overhead ramp is for outgoing traffic, from the industrial area, via the roundabout

And I have a pedestrian bridge just behind it...

 

It doesn't look like there's an autosave built in, but someone posted a couple autosave mods on the Workshop.  One is for a 5 minute interval, another is for a 10 minute interval.

[Turjan 1,048]

Funny enough, ingame, even the agricultural areas look quite nice. I wouldn't have expected that. Still unrealistic, but nice, nevertheless.

 

Unfortunately, I cannot show any images. I made a beginner's error. I only saved once, very early. On Microsoft patch day.... 

I should have known better. But still...

 

 

Edit: Otherwise, I love the game. So I will just say two things I found slightly annoying:

 

1) The sequence of stuff you get to play with seems out of order. Agriculture comes after "generic" industry? You get metros before you get trains? A more natural order would be to start with agriculture and a train link.

2) I would like to be able to show the resources while painting a district or laying down roads. The way it is at the moment, I have to constantly switch view and remember where something was. I know there are some visual clues in normal view, but my color vision is somewhat off, so there's that.

[CoolColJ 42]

Press pageup/pagedown etc when building a road

 

 

 

On the other hand I haven't figured out how to build a street overpass (does it get unlocked later).

 

 

[ayryq 9]

I'm having lots of fun but I already have a bit of a mental wishlist. I wish I had more information exposed when I clicked on a building. Like "has water" or "too far from schools" or "poor fire coverage."  I'd love Caesar II levels of detail, but I'd take SC3k. I think any radii shown when placing a building (like noise pollution radius for windmills or street coverage for police stations) should be shown when I select it after placement as well. And in some cases I wish I could have more than one data view at the same time--it's hard to plan specialized industrial zones, for example, if you cannot see the resources while doing anything else. I'm finding chirper unhelpful too: Why doesn't it tell me there's an electricity shortage? But I have to hear over and over about how someone lost his wallet.

 

I'm sure I'll think of more but for now I'm going back to the game.

Replying to myself here... I found that if you mouseover the "advancement bar" thingy for a building it'll tell you what's holding up advancement, if anything.

[BlitzPackage 19]

I love this game.  I played it for 7 hours straight yesterday when I came home.  It is really dangerously addictive.  I too stopped playing before setting up mass transit as I knew that would easily blow the whole night away.  I am really excited about the mass transit system I will be building.  I even brought the map in with me to work to plan it out.  Amazing!

 

Additional thoughts:

1. I love how you have to plan ahead in this game.  Just plopping things down is not good because you really have to think about what you are doing.  I finally understand why we need city planners in real life - LOL!
2. The fire trucks are not good at all.  There was a fire about 3 blocks from a fire station, and with 2 of 6 trucks in use, it still took a while for fire trucks to come.  There was no traffic stopping them either.
3. I like how the money is not too hard to earn on the normal level.  This helps people like me who are getting used to these games again because it has a while since I played a city builder.  Making it harder to earn money on the normal level would be frustrating.
4. Chirper is actually helpful and funny.  However, it would be great to have more specific information in the game about where problems actually are at the time.
5. I can't say enough about how awesome this game is to play.  Colossal Order knocked it out of the park.

[JaWood 194]

Ok, my turn!

 

I installed this game right as I got home from work yesterday. Started playing at 4:00. Didn't stop 'till 10:00 when I finally forced myself to eat a late dinner.  I was able to build up a town of about 7000-ish in that time, straddling two city tiles. There are two highway exits for the town. The default T-intersection the game starts with leads into downtown, and a second diamond interchange on the left outskirts leads into a modern subdivision with grass curbed winding roads. Ok, here are my first impressions:

 

Overall, fantastic! The game is far from perfect, but because it's moddable and because Paradox is listening to us, it has a very bright future.  My number one favorite item is the curved road system, and road connections that actually work well and look good. I found myself at times wanting to have control over whether or not an intersection had traffic lights or not. That kind of control would be excellent! Elevating roads is easy and intuitive, and gives you wonderful freedom to make complicated systems.

 

I played without any mods on. Buildings were progressively locked and I had regular city finances, no unlimited cash. Perhaps I'm used to SC4, and that game has progressively locked buildings too, but the relatively small list of buildings to use was frustrating at times. By the time I got to 7000 population, still the only ploppable buildings I had at my disposal were limited basically to city services (police, fire, schools, medical, power/water utilities, busses) and some green-space park lots. There were some special building "categories" unlocked, but none of the buildings in those categories ever unlocked yet. They required milestones that I was far from achieving still, or would never achieve (cash of $-1, 5000 sick cims, etc.) Seemed a little odd.  No city hall, no mayor's mansion, no courthouse, no prisons, no libraries, no museums... And then the recreation category. Limited to tree plopping, pedestrian paths, and green park spaces. At 7000 population there were no zoos, aquariums, sports fields, pools, marinas, rec centers, stadiums, statues, etc.  That really surprised me.  Now maybe if I play with all buildings unlocked next time, things like that will appear, but I still feel that at least some of these items should be available in progressive mode for a town of 7000.  I hope some of them are available at all, but I don't even know that yet.

 

It was driving me crazy how many trash dumps I needed! I was up to four completely full lots with a need for a fifth soon, and my town size was nothing. If I fill up all 9 city tiles (or 25 tiles with the mod!) I'm going to need dozens and dozens of dumps to keep up!

 

The graphics are gorgeous! Tilt shift was driving me nuts to I turned it off completely. My machine can handle it.  Traffic movement is mesmerizing, people scurrying about on the sidewalks, trees swaying in the breeze. It all adds up to a terrific depiction of a living breathing city. The architecture of the buildings seems quite European to me, and that's to be expected from a team of European game designers.  I obviously prefer more of a US style, but I predict soon there will be plenty of custom modded architecture to choose from.  The building textures were ok. Some seem a little bland, other seem a little too colorful with bright green or pink house and shop exteriors.  Industrial textures in particular seem a bit too vibrant. Not dirty or grimy enough, for the type of structures they are.  The purple ground pollution has got to go. I would much prefer brown, or maybe tan to simulate dead grass, or even better, just show the pollution factor as brown haze hovering over the industrial sectors.

 

Towards the end of my playing time yesterday, I was able to dive in to bus routes. That was really fun to play with! I figured out the color coding, and I love how the bus's paint schemes reflect their routes. That makes it really easy to identify lines at a glance.  I had two lines moving people to and from work funded at 150% and still had full busses and long wait times.

 

Other things: I'd love to see a sewage treatment plant that helps clean up sewage before dumping it in the river. Most real cities have them.  I'd like to see the basic power plants like coal and oil to have a higher capacity. I had to build a few of them to supply my town of only 7000, when in realty I should only need one. I miss the commute path query from SC4 where I can see the unique path taken by a commuter to get to and from work. I know the data's there, we just need a way to show it visually mapped out for individual lots (as well as the current overall traffic layer that the game already has). In game terraforming has got to be an option! There were times I was finding myself frustrated with the auto-leveling that lots were doing to themselves and was thinking "I could fix that with some simple terrain tools"). Having to de-zone to re-zone was aggravating. And I don't feel low density buildings should disappear when replaced with high density zones, at least not until new construction replaces them. I'd love to see some simple freight rail, and have it available early on in the game to help alleviate the industrial "import/export" road traffic that seemed to be a major contributor to my city's congested streets.

 

Again, overall a fantastic product. I can't wait to get my hands on it again and start another new town. I learned a lot the first go at it and have some more ideas for my second city.

[Xenocity 343]

 

Press pageup/pagedown etc when building a road

 

 

 

On the other hand I haven't figured out how to build a street overpass (does it get unlocked later).

 

 

 

Thanks... But I'm on a laptop, specifically a Macbook Pro.

I don't have page up/down

 

Edit: I reassigned the keys.

[Azurespecter 506]

I will definitely be buying to see what all the fuss is about, but does it just turn into skyscraper after skyscraper, or can you make it a bit more of a natural evolution?  

 

You definitely have the flexibility to make gradual transitions to skyscrapers. One way you can do this is through the "No Skyscraper" Policy.

[AdoxxBE 289]

Man, I really like the game! The park creation is awesome, what I was missing in SC4

[TheeLord 42]

Am buying now due to the good reviews here, I trust you guys  =)  And some out of the box mod support is awesome!  I also know that Paradox does a great job with DLC.  Very excited to try this out.

[BlitzPackage 19]

You can create a park?  How?

[CoolColJ 42]

You can create a park?  How?

 

Use the tool/asset editor in the main menu I presume.

I made a small 4x4 park with gravel parking for 5 cars, plus benches etc - shared it on Steam Workshop

[SAGG 4]

I'm going to do two types of cities: One that's hard, and one that's easy. On my easy one, I have the unlimited mod money one (which came with the game, I might add), and I got a mod where I added 25 tiles to my one tile!  Now, my map is HUGE! I'm waiting for that mod that will open up the ENTIRE map (if they haven't added it yet)! My hard one will create my city vanilla-style, nothing fancy...

[LexusInfernus 908]

Deeply disappointed that my laptop isn't powerful enough to run it. 

 

Oh well, all the more reason for me to get an upgrade

[rsc204 21,855]

Man, I really like the game! The park creation is awesome, what I was missing in SC4

 

Check out the Lot Editor, it's a more general purpose tool so perhaps a bit harder to get into, but you can make anything you want that way.

[ghosty20 150]

Loving this game Cities Skylines it is everything and more, that SC2013 should have been..  Just got to the level in game of putting in public transport and talk about comprehensive love having to choose bus routes and love how when you look closely at you roads especailly the six lane avenues you can see the special lane at bus stops.. I love how on hills you don't have that ugly foundation bit that was in SC4 and more so in SC2013..  The road guide is excellent as it really allows you to squeeze ever foot of land for buildings and little to no wasted space..  All in all I am having a blast have not had so much fun since SC4..

[BlitzPackage 19]

The more time I spend with this game, the more it shines.  Great job CO.

[Mystrelia 57]

I downloaded yesterday so had my copy running right after supper time. I didn't do much more than mess around a lot so my first impressions are very early game play and so far overall I think it's great!

 

Because of EA's shenanigans I skipped SC:2013 so the last serious city builder I've played has been SC4 and of course the ones before it.

 

There are a few things that kind of bug me like I would prefer to choose which tile of a map I start with, and I didn't much like having to try to hook up roads to an already existing freeway system on the map I chose. That was just too much too soon. I suppose it also comes from living in rural USA but around here there are both highways and freeways, and the highways far out-number the freeways. Freeways aka Interstate (which is what we call those multi-lane, multi-road one-way roadways) are mostly used around and to connect highly populated areas whereas the highways are usually two lanes, sometimes three, and connect cities that are separated by long distances but don't have the high traffic volume of the more populated areas.

 

The early building selection felt really limited too. In my small town of 900 there were something like six General Stores. Haha. Having been a small-town girl all my life I can say without a doubt, six general stores are over-kill. I would've loved for a bookstore or arcade or even a laundromat to pop up. Ah well, I know there will be more buildings later--at least they didn't all look identical.

 

I think one of the things I love the best in this game is how the service buildings' coverage areas work. This is so much smarter than having a coverage area based on a radius around the building! It gives me much more freedom in how I do the lay-out.

[majortom1981 1]

I downloaded yesterday so had my copy running right after supper time. I didn't do much more than mess around a lot so my first impressions are very early game play and so far overall I think it's great!

 

Because of EA's shenanigans I skipped SC:2013 so the last serious city builder I've played has been SC4 and of course the ones before it.

 

There are a few things that kind of bug me like I would prefer to choose which tile of a map I start with, and I didn't much like having to try to hook up roads to an already existing freeway system on the map I chose. That was just too much too soon. I suppose it also comes from living in rural USA but around here there are both highways and freeways, and the highways far out-number the freeways. Freeways aka Interstate (which is what we call those multi-lane, multi-road one-way roadways) are mostly used around and to connect highly populated areas whereas the highways are usually two lanes, sometimes three, and connect cities that are separated by long distances but don't have the high traffic volume of the more populated areas.

 

The early building selection felt really limited too. In my small town of 900 there were something like six General Stores. Haha. Having been a small-town girl all my life I can say without a doubt, six general stores are over-kill. I would've loved for a bookstore or arcade or even a laundromat to pop up. Ah well, I know there will be more buildings later--at least they didn't all look identical.

 

I think one of the things I love the best in this game is how the service buildings' coverage areas work. This is so much smarter than having a coverage area based on a radius around the building! It gives me much more freedom in how I do the lay-out.

keep in mind you can download new buildings for free to help the building selection.

[Tropod 144]

*First impressions*

 

Awesome game. Feels very promising. However, some initial issues;

Why do I need 4 Coal plants for population of less than 9,000? Should not need to have this many for such small population.

Why is the following image, a problem? Far as I'm concerned, garbage for many of these should not be an issue yet it is.

 

 

EDIT: think I found the problem; lack of capacity/incinerator. In which case, same problem as Coal power plants. WTH do I need 4 of them for population less than 9,000 :/

warning; large image;

https://i.imgur.com/Tu4ZQsq.jpg- highlighted red square is working incinerator.

https://i.imgur.com/9WrcFq0.jpg

 

Makes me suspecious that pathfinding is off.

 

Given early days still I'm still happy I've bought the game. I just hope these issues can be addressed.

[ayryq 9]

Why do I need 4 Coal plants for population of less than 9,000? Should not need to have this many for such small population.

Why is the following image, a problem? Far as I'm concerned, garbage for many of these should not be an issue yet it is.

It has helped me to consider lot size for things like landfills and power plants. My county has two landfills, I think, but they're huge compared to the ones in the game. A single (real) coal power plant would take up half the tile with all its associated buildings and rail/river connections, etc. So if I have to build four of them in a square in the game, it just looks more realistic. Of course, I'd rather have a single big power plant with four times the capacity, as the graphics would be better, but it works out the same.

 

Also, I live in a town of around 5000 people, and we have three grade-schools (they actually closed the fourth a few years ago) and a high school. So that's not too unrealistic. What is unrealistic is the radius.

 

A real landfill can collect garbage for miles and miles around, and a real single grade school can bus in the whole town, plus people from surrounding rural areas, so long as it's within capacity. My town's three grade schools aren't distributed geographically; that would be silly. All the kindergartners from the whole district go to one school.

[LexusInfernus 908]

Alright, update, now that it turns out my laptop is powerful enough to run the game after all. 

 

Anyways, first impressions are very good. I love the game so far, and watching my city slowly grow larger and larger. Now I can't wait to include more stuff from the workshop

[Linoa06 1,374]

It's slow, it can get frustrating,; and the graphics aren't my taste at all. But it remains very addictive and in-depth enough and the challenges it offers are great so far.

[data7 98]

A real landfill can collect garbage for miles and miles around, and a real single grade school can bus in the whole town, plus people from surrounding rural areas, so long as it's within capacity. My town's three grade schools aren't distributed geographically; that would be silly. All the kindergartners from the whole district go to one school.

 

If You play game in RL pace one landfill would serve entire city without any problems... and traffic would almost dissapear.

But who would play in such turtle speed mode? It worked for CIM2 to make realistic lines and their usage, however it's city builder game, not transport tycoon.

[iceanimator 6]

I've been playing it alot. I love this game. 

[Sap59 3]

I'm having to update my video card so hopefully by next weekend I'll be ready to purchase and play, I'm stoked especially after reading such positive reviews from the city building communities. 
Congratulations Paradox and Colossal Order on what seems to be the best city building game since SC4. 

[Sabretooth78 808]

I jumped on the bandwagon tonight and spent about 3 hours; built what is probably one of the uglier towns I've ever built, but it's a start!

 

Overall, I'm quite impressed.  Very few actual complaints and didn't run into any showstoppers, but there are a few things that could use some work - note that I was more focused on getting acquainted with it so I didn't really get into anything super technical:

 

• Controls aren't always very intuitive.  I'm gradually remapping the keys.  That's probably just me.
• I added the view control mod that allows right-click-drag panning, but you need to be careful when zoning because the right-click will dezone.  Probably better to stick with keystrokes for panning.  This is a non-issue if you use edge scrolling, just that I usually disable it in games.
• Trackpad clicking seems to be a bit wonky.  Some actions seem to accept taps as clicks where as others I physically have to click the trackpad.  I wouldn't expect that to be a game issue but that's what it feels like it is.
• Speaking of clicking, Mac users listen up:  If you don't already have it, download BetterTouchTool.  You can configure it to give your trackpad a middle click (3 finger click).  I already had it configured for 3ds Max, so it was just a matter of loading it.
• Road, pipe, etc. construction takes a little getting used to.  It would be nice if you could drag across intersections.
• The whole UI takes a little to get used to.  I don't think it's poor design but rather that there is just a lot of it.  Like SC4, there is a lot of room for micromanagement, perhaps even more.
• It's a resource hog, but that is to be expected.  It's nice and fluid but at the same time it drives like an old Buick (disclaimer: I drive a Buick).  Tonight was probably the first time my laptop (MacBook Pro 9,1) got a solid performance stress test.  Aside from Handbrake DVD ripping, I haven't experienced that with a computer since probably buying SC4!

 

Before really diving in, I spent probably about an hour just tweaking the graphics settings to see how they affected performance:

 

• As with SC4, zooms, pans and rotates will get you, and it seems to be the most laggy right after load.  It seemed to get smoother over time.
• If you're like me and you don't spend a whole lot of time zoomed in all the way, use "low" or "medium" texture settings.  You won't lose much at all.
• Same thing with the detail settings.  I ran it on "very high" for most of the time, but "medium" and "high" aren't half bad either.
• Turning shadows off makes a difference.  I play SC4 without shadows, so I'm used to it.
• I couldn't really tell, but it seemed I may have had better performance running in a window.  Maybe it just seemed that way because the resolution was lower, which would obviously improve things.

 

I had to put it down because I was just getting too tired to wrap my head around the whole thing - if this wasn't the end of an exhausting work week I'd still be engrossed.  All in all, thus far I have to rank it as one of the better $30 I've spent.  Highly recommend - it really does seem like this could become that modernized SC4 we've been chasing for the better part of a decade.

[Mystrelia 57]

Now that I've actually had some hours to sit down and delve into building a city instead of just poking things here and there with my mouse I have more observations. These are the things that are freshest on my mind after having closed the game awhile ago and quite probably go a bit past first impressions.

 

It would be so wonderful if roads could cross each other when building them. It would also be sweet if there was some kind of grid and we had the option of snapping a road to the grid or not. It also seems like it's impossible to put down a single tile of road. When I'm building a town I don't lay out all the roads at once, I build them as I play then design as the mood strikes. I'm having a terrible time trying to get roads matched up to the ones I already have laid down in areas because of slight variances in the terrain that I can't see until it's too late. Another related thing is that placing roads like this ends up breaking a lot of the zoning squares so say I want a whole block of solid zones for offices for example, I end up with a 4x4 patch here, a 5x3 patch there, maybe a couple of 2x2s, a 1x3, etc. It makes an ugly, ugly mess.

 

Still with the road thing, I've noticed a toggle snap button. Is that supposed to turn the snap off so the road doesn't automatically want to grab on to the nearest end? Because if that's the case it isn't working for me. If that's not the case then I've no clue what the button is supposed to be for so wouldn't mind some enlightenment.

 

This I'm not sure if it's just my game or my computer or what but I'm running at the slowest speed I possibly can and all the Cims look like they're running down the street and the vehicles zoom everywhere. It seems like the slowest speed should be around half of what it is because it only takes a couple of seconds for a day to pass and it seems like these Cims are going through an entire life phase in just a handful of years. This is causing major problems with trying to balance the population and the workforce. I can spend hours (much of it paused) just getting enough jobs in place for more educated Sims, finally get my unemployment rate down to around 3-5% then run the game for a few minutes and have 14% unemployment again.

 

The capacities of buildings don't make any sense to me. As it stands right now I've a good amount of what should be single-family homes and a number of early stage apartment buildings. A good lot of the single-family homes house as many people as are in some of the apartment buildings. I mean one apartment in particular looks like it ought to easily hold a nine to twelve households yet it holds only four. A factory should hire more than sixteen people and an office building, even a small one that fits on a 3x3 lot, should employ more than six or eight people. I wish I could just convince myself the employee numbers are units of employees but considering sometimes more Cims live in a single-family dwelling than an entire office employs I just can't do it.

 

Oh yeah! I almost forgot this one! The font sizes on the info panels is so tiny I can't read it without putting my face up to my monitor (I don't have a large screen and I sit more than an arm's length away from it). Also, trying to click away the Chirps away on that teeny tiny arrow is high on impossible.

 

This really is an awesome game, I just think there are a few things that could use some tweaking.

[Sabretooth78 808]

Still with the road thing, I've noticed a toggle snap button. Is that supposed to turn the snap off so the road doesn't automatically want to grab on to the nearest end? Because if that's the case it isn't working for me. If that's not the case then I've no clue what the button is supposed to be for so wouldn't mind some enlightenment.

 

I played around with that a little bit too trying to figure out what it does.  Best I could tell is that it has nothing to do with road/vertex snapping but is rather something of an ortho/angle snap.

 

I agree though, more flexibility in the road tool would be desirable.  I had several instances where I wouldn't have an intersection because the road coming it was just too short (it looked like a curb arcing through the intersection) and it couldn't connect it to the cross road because the segment I was looking to build was too short.  Fortunately it's easy to delete a segment and replace it correctly, but it's still a nuisance.  Also nice would be the ability to drag over existing roads lengthwise - I found myself trying to do that a lot but not being able to.  It should allow you to do that and just not do anything (unless your roads start to fall apart due to budget like in SC4, and you need to re-drag it to fix it).  It's probably the same behavior that doesn't allow you to fully cross another road.

 

It's also a little to easy to accidentally add a segment of road once you're done (say the right click doesn't register) and blow out a bunch of development in the process.

 

I guess the answer to these right now is to slow down and take your time.  This all applies to pipe and power line placement as well.

 

As for building capacities, SC4 is all jacked-up as well in that regard.  I guess I've learned to accept it as an idiosyncrasy of the genre.