Where The Game Really Shines

[BlitzPackage 19]

There are some things about this game that make it pure gold and truly shine.  Below are the things I think it does exceptionally well.

1. I love following my cims around - either the individuals or the vehicles.  I often get lost in doing that and one time I even found myself thinking, as I was following a cim, "I sure wish that bus would come". LOL!  Following the cims around and seeing your city from the eyes of the inhabitants is truly awesome.  It is really great for the immersion factor.
2. I love how the city seems so alive.  The trees sway, the vehicles move is if they are real - when the vehicles turn or stop they tilt in the expected fashion.  You hear the sounds of life.  The firemen pull out their hoses to fight fires.  People walk and go to places.  They catch the bus, get off and walk to work if they don't drive.  They attend the university from across town.  It is truly beautiful.
3. I like how you can have different bus and train lines.  It is so awesome to see the different bus lines.
4. I like how the city grows organically based on how you direct it.  It's so great to see it come alive and you know it is your own creation.
5. The game is fun and entirely addictive.

Does anything shine through for you?  Anything that really makes you think, wow this is so awesome?

[simonmd 6]

Agree with all the above. What I love is constantly discovering more little things. Like the other day, I saw someone walking their dog, that was cool enough but the dog was Cim too, I could click on it and rename it if I wanted! 

 

Also, have you followed the hearses? When they stop, two men in black get out, no not Tommy Lee Jones, returning a few secs later carrying a coffin!! 

 

The point is, they didnt have to put stuff like that in, no one would have come on here and said "why dont we see coffins getting loaded?" but they did anyway.

 

The biggest mindblow for me though is the water, it, er, works! I actually had to move some water intakes because the level in my river had dropped so much because I was draining it,  wow, just WOW!

[iceanimator 6]

I love to follow my buses around the city, It is like taking a ride down town in real life. To view the nice scenery and enjoy the city!

[Mystrelia 57]

Of course anyone who knows me in real life knows there are times when I'm entertained by the smallest things and some of the things in CS I like the best are seemingly small, well-thought details. Like you know how service buildings are really expensive? Yes, they're expensive but if you're redoing an area you don't have to bulldoze them and build new, you can just pick up and move the one you already have!

 

I also like the free zoning and demolition. When I implement what I've thought out for city planning I always make a ton of mistakes. I love not having to make the tax payers foot the bill for all of my blunders.

 

I really love the aspect of producing goods in my city and seeing those goods being delivered to market places. Last night I got a huge grin when I built a new commercial zone and as soon as the buildings went up trucks started coming in from the industrial area with everything from ice to fish sticks. And a fish stick factory--seriously? Honest to Pete to me that is one of the funniest things ever. (I just hope they're not catching the fish near the sewer outlet.) Come to think of it, fishing could be a fun resource to have in this game.

 

I'm not sure what in the heck is going on at the Garments Ltd. factory because I've seen everything from hot dog to bug spray trucks coming from that place. Shoot, the bug spray truck was even making a delivery to the organic grocery store. That gave me pause to wonder.

 

Probably the single biggest source of awesomeness for me is how service buildings work, how their coverage is based on road access, not some coverage radius that could include areas completely unreachable by vehicles from said service.

[BlitzPackage 19]

What is so cool is that I followed a cim and they transferred from one train to another to get to work and home.  That is so awesome.  I also noticed that traffic goes where expected.  I have a road for dump sites and the only things that go down that road are dump trucks because that is the only thing on it.

 

I also saw that cims jaywalk.  How cool is that!

Agree with all the above. What I love is constantly discovering more little things. Like the other day, I saw someone walking their dog, that was cool enough but the dog was Cim too, I could click on it and rename it if I wanted! 

 

Also, have you followed the hearses? When they stop, two men in black get out, no not Tommy Lee Jones, returning a few secs later carrying a coffin!! 

 

The point is, they didnt have to put stuff like that in, no one would have come on here and said "why dont we see coffins getting loaded?" but they did anyway.

 

The biggest mindblow for me though is the water, it, er, works! I actually had to move some water intakes because the level in my river had dropped so much because I was draining it,  wow, just WOW!

 

Wow indeed!

[Sabretooth78 808]

Here's another one - before I discovered the little arrows denoting flow direction (I could see the flow visually at least) I ended up pumping my sewage to what turned out to be a stagnant inlet and the pollution just kept building up.  So I moved the discharge, and since there was no flow, the pollution wouldn't clear out.  The solution?  Place a pump on it, put a discharge near some good current, power and connect the two by pipe (separate from your distribution pipes for obvious reasons) and - you guessed it - it sucks out the pollution!

[BlitzPackage 19]

Man, pumping bad water out is awesome.  This game just keeps getting better the more I play it.

 

I just saw that seniors use canes.  I was also at a train station and looked like somebody dropped something and they picked it up.

 

The whole living, breathing city feel is awesome.  I also love how when you zoom down out of God mode and put the camera on a certain part of town, it becomes so real and sucks you in and you begin to think "...wow it's so real like this is a real living breathing area".

 

Oh, almost forgot, I saw turning signals on the bus!  Wow!  This game just rocks.  I can't wait to see what the improvements are in this game.

[TekindusT 3,809]

Well, I love breaking the grid. After so many years stuck to the grid in SC4, and with only a few workarounds for it... Now I can't resist the temptation of laying winding streets one after each other, my residential neighborhoods looks like real labrynths!

[BLANKBLANK 4,414]

You can build massive cities, not only 6 by 6km, but with a mod 10 by 10km! Close up there is some real beauty to the game. It's too much awesomeness!

 

Oh yes... There are already a ton of new (modded) buildings, fillers and useful mods.

[Sabretooth78 808]

Yeah, I just tried one of the street level camera mods (basically U-drive-it) and I was surprised by the sheer number of grumpy looking old men ambling about.  Better start saving for more cemeteries...

 

Edit:  I was indeed an area with many seniors.  3 hours later, I'm literally watching the neighborhood rejuvenate with families.

 

Also I've noticed that if you delete a road out from underneath a queue (don't you just hate when that happens?) and there is another road nearby, they will drive over the grass to that road.

[Mystrelia 57]

Today I started on a new map. It's a very poor little town with lots of farm and industry and only basic services like police, fire and garbage dump. I was about my business when I saw a weird sign over one of the businesses on Main Street. I looked closer and it was red with some kind of skull thing. I clicked the building to see what was going on and someone had died in the store! This wasn't an old age death (hadn't played long enough to have any elders yet), just a spur of the moment happening.

[arthurMM 3]

I love the game becuase cims are alive, they go to schools and parks and offices, as well as they grow and die.

 

Once while I was making an interchange and I didn't pay attention to the neighbourhoods, the pumps were intruded by dirty water and HALF of my cims passed away... the population dropped from 40k to 20k.

 

The buildings started to be abandoned and I had to download the auto-bulldoze tool to clean things up. It was a great lost, but regeneration is fast, the population grows again to 45k in a short period of time.

 

Few years later I encountered a problem again. 1/4 of the population now in the city are elderlies, and population starts to drop as death rate raises rapidly. I've never imagined I have to deal with ageing problem in a city builder game before!

 

I have no idea why death rate increase... may be that's related to the water crisis before.

 

Oh... would children and elderlies be more vulnerable to sickness in the game? And those who survived were all strong adults and now turning to seniors?

 

Wow this simply rocks!

[xonedl 342]

Well, I love breaking the grid. After so many years stuck to the grid in SC4, and with only a few workarounds for it... Now I can't resist the temptation of laying winding streets one after each other, my residential neighborhoods looks like real labrynths!

 

Yep, I didn't played any of the "modern" city builder but jumping straight from SC4 to this, it feels like................................................................. (you expect me to say "flying"?  )

For the first few tries I often went way too over do with those curve. It's not really too realistic, so now I mix up with grid.

It's amazing to have such freedom of construction, and pedestrian lane is amazing!

[Sabretooth78 808]

Gerrymandering.  Otherwise known as an "earmuff district".

 

[BlitzPackage 19]

So, I had my sewage downstream from the water intakes.  At first, that was not an issue.  However, I noticed that as I placed more water intakes in the same area, the current became strong enough that it started to suck, up-stream, the sewage.  I thought, wow that's cool.  I used a water filtration system to clean it up.  I am also going to start placing water intake pumps elsewhere.

[lew1984 231]

I'm pretty sure I saw a cim doing tricks with a skateboard by a park when I zoomed in up close recently, that was pretty cool :-).

[rpc180 9]

I love how they incorporated relationships beyond the staple RCI.  After discovering offices cover industrial need for educated workers (my city had good elementary, HS, and university capacity) converted all my industrial over to it.  Then the commercial areas started complaining about not having products to sell!  So started to build industry but couldn't find workers - eventually tying into external railroad connections and ship docks closer to the commercial areas helped balance that out.  I still maintain industrial zones now and also have a "lets not educate everyone" mentality.

[Ray Oliver 1]

Having offices as a separate zone from commercial is awesome. It gives you more flexibility and doesn't necessitate having a ton of ugly and pollution filled industrial zones.

 

The large maps are great. When I first started playing I built my city dense with little to no open space because that's what was necessary in SimCity if you wanted a reasonable population. But in CS you don't need to do that and as a result you can create much more attractive cities.

 

Decoupling street types from zone density is also more realistic.

[BlitzPackage 19]

I love how they incorporated relationships beyond the staple RCI.  After discovering offices cover industrial need for educated workers (my city had good elementary, HS, and university capacity) converted all my industrial over to it.  Then the commercial areas started complaining about not having products to sell!  So started to build industry but couldn't find workers - eventually tying into external railroad connections and ship docks closer to the commercial areas helped balance that out.  I still maintain industrial zones now and also have a "lets not educate everyone" mentality.

 

Indeed the constant need for balance is truly what makes the game challenging and fun.  I can't say enough how they did such a great job with this game.

[BlitzPackage 19]

I just saw two fire trucks respond to a fire and they were from two different fire stations.  That was so cool.

 

I also just found out that when following people or vehicles, you could click on the name of their locations (e.g. where they live, what store they work at, etc...) and it will take you there.  That has really helped me a ton.

 

The depth of the simulation is awesome.

 

I could just sit down and enjoy life in the city all day.

[Mr_Maison 2,426]

I like the water physics! I would've never thought we would have dynamic water to play with in a city builder.

[Deed_Poll 32]

The biggest mindblow for me though is the water, it, er, works! I actually had to move some water intakes because the level in my river had dropped so much because I was draining it, wow, just WOW!

Yeah I agree the water is great! I was working on a city that had gradually grown out from the middle tile along a river and didn't move my sewage outlets or water pumps. I had just built a bunch of filtration pumps and the sewage was already receding back downstream towards the sewage pipes, sewage treatment well in the green etc.

Then I made the mistake of building a dam way further (maybe 3 or 4 tiles) upstream - big error! As the water level dropped after the dam it created a low tide and the dirty water tracked back upstream eventually killing about 30k people! This happened gradually enough that I assumed my traffic network was to blame and went around dropping emergency crematoriums like a headless chicken. When I saw what I'd done I was strangely overjoyed that it was my fault after all and could be avoided!

[Don Giro 0]

Agree with all the above. What I love is constantly discovering more little things. Like the other day, I saw someone walking their dog, that was cool enough but the dog was Cim too, I could click on it and rename it if I wanted! 

 

Also, have you followed the hearses? When they stop, two men in black get out, no not Tommy Lee Jones, returning a few secs later carrying a coffin!! 

 

The point is, they didnt have to put stuff like that in, no one would have come on here and said "why dont we see coffins getting loaded?" but they did anyway.

 

The biggest mindblow for me though is the water, it, er, works! I actually had to move some water intakes because the level in my river had dropped so much because I was draining it,  wow, just WOW!

 

I haven't seen the hearses yet, since I only just placed my first cemetery yesterday, but I followed a siren that turned out to be an ambulance heading for one of the many garment factories I have in one of my industrial zones.  I couldn't get over how when the ambulance pulled up to the factory, two EMTS got out and RAN into the building.  They re-emerged seconds later pushing a patient on a stretcher!

[Mystrelia 57]

It's entirely possible I may've said some of this same stuff before but I don't remember for sure.

 

Last night I didn't have a lot of time to play and most of what I did was spent trying to clear out some landfills to make my garbage system more efficient. While waiting on that I was doing little things around town like planting some trees, zoning a little extra housing areas, deciding what my next zoning project would be, etc. At some point I decided I'd best tear out a section of the six-lane road and raise it up because I wanted some low-density commercial where one of the garbage dumps had been. While I was in the process I managed to burn down someone's house because I forgot to put a road back in under the raised six-lane highway and along the way I saw another house where someone was sick and that was also the first time for me I saw the guys with the gurney from the ambulance go in and take the sick person out to the ambulance.

 

I was telling my son that I find Cities: Skylines to be way more fun than SimCity 4 because I don't just feel like I'm just building a city. With the way everything from the industries to health care works I feel like I'm very much involved in these tiny pixel people's lives. You get some industry going and you zone some commercial and a couple of businesses build and the first thing that happens is delivery trucks start driving up to their doors so they're stocked for business. You hear a siren and you can find out what's going on.

 

There are also so many things I find funny in this game. Last night I saw a chirp that said something like "Flying cars a hoax, thousands still waiting for hoverboards. #backtothefuture". (That's a shortened version but it's the important bits.)

 

I chuckle every time I see a bug spray delivery truck heading from one of the so-called garment factories to a store. I declare, those garment factories have got to have some kind of laundering scheme going on. If I could, I'd dispatch the local police to find out why exactly it is bug spray comes from a garment factory.

 

I love that the traffic has real visual representation, not just cars buzzing to and fro randomly. It adds so much believability to what's actually happening in my city. I remember constant car crashes in SC4 at intersections that hardly had any traffic at all. In Skylines, if traffic looks like it's backed up for miles it really is.

[BlitzPackage 19]

You are so right about the city seeming alive. Far more than I ever did with SimCity, I feel in this game that the city is alive and I am creating a world with people with lives and communities.

[rpc180 9]

If you haven't tried it yet, the first person camera view has made an update that now lets you do the same for cims, cars and trains!  When you click on an object a little video camera button is now visible that lets you see the world through their perspective.  It really makes the city seem alive!

 

As always, the details that the devs put in is kind of crazy; cars have working brakelights and turn signals (something you'd probably never notice without this mod).  Also following a cargo van on its route through this view was a lot of fun once you didn't have to worry about directing yourself on the ground.  I recognized intersections and neighborhoods I built from street level while driving around - I should expected this but was surprised about it!

 

One thing that I discovered that is related to traffic planning was why some delivery vans showed up in my far away CBD from an industrial area that was accessible by cargo train.  I was using this first person view with a van enjoying the ride and rather than taking the cargo train, the van made multiple deliveries in a run (I thought it was simple 1-to-1!).  Following a few more, some went down the street to the local town and then continued via the nearby expressway to the CBD which is why I saw them at the CBD!

[Mystrelia 57]

So last night I started playing with my first cargo depot. Having played various versions of SimCity for so many years I was expecting to hook it up and see visuals of trains automatically take off. When that didn't happen I was thinking somehow it wasn't working. Then I started seeing trucks and delivery vans pull into the terminal and it dawned on me. Yes, I had a momentary lapse that cargo vehicles in this game travel for a reason. :kitty:

[BlitzPackage 19]

I actually think the simulation in this game is probably one of the deepest I have ever played.  The people and vehicles are just there for decorations, they actually are "real", impact their world and are indeed being simulated.

[packersfan 666]

I have to say, I'm not in a hurry to drop SC4...I'm quite invested with a city journal...but I more than likely will pick up Skylines sooner or later.  I'll probably wait until a Steam sale (I spent too much on games this past month), but I'm excited to play a breathing city-builder.  SC4 has become a little stale in the sense that it offers me a huge canvas to paint on, but the cities really aren't alive anymore (since that would hurt my vision...the life SC4 wants to give them, I mean).

Then again, I might not even make it until a Steam sale if I keep reading about all these fun things, haha.

[Mr_Maison 2,426]

I have to say, I'm not in a hurry to drop SC4...I'm quite invested with a city journal...but I more than likely will pick up Skylines sooner or later.  I'll probably wait until a Steam sale (I spent too much on games this past month), but I'm excited to play a breathing city-builder.  SC4 has become a little stale in the sense that it offers me a huge canvas to paint on, but the cities really aren't alive anymore (since that would hurt my vision...the life SC4 wants to give them, I mean).

Then again, I might not even make it until a Steam sale if I keep reading about all these fun things, haha.

Some of those CJs and upcoming mods might throw you over the top. I bet you'll have it sooner than later.