Looks like the Crown has been passed....

[chocolate_city 93]

The sheer amount of fan based mods is increasing daily...  The game looks exciting,... more exciting than Cities XXL ... All the right things are there... I even have the game.... but I still hate the highway system...  I'm patient.   Anyone else think that Sim City 4 has found its rightul heir...

[Marc Collins 36]

Almost.  A few simulation "balance" issues to be resolved and one giant realism-killer that will prevent SC4 natural-looking cities from ever growing--the unfortunate 4x4 lot size fiasco.  By trying to shoehorn in every type of large building and facility on to ridiculously small and uniform 4x4 lots, no C:SL city will ever look realistic or be spatially anything like a real city, even with tons of beautiful buildings.

 

Until this is fixed (and I suspect only CO/Paradox could do this, not modders), SC4 will still wear the crown at my house.

[xonedl 342]

Probably will. Although sometime I still felt like stabbing someone when trying to construct some roads now, but the improvements is slowly crawling in especially from mods.

However it will be great if someone from the dev can take the role to moderate the mods, especially popular and important one - as stability is still a serious problem, crash, can't save, can't quit, etc...

Also someone gotta take charge to "unified" them, to avoid mod conflict. Eg: you can't use trafic++ together with lane changer right now.

[AkemiAzula 280]

definitely. If this was a kingdom the king would be far too old to govern.

This is the rightful fifth king methinks. The plot size is my main concern but hopefully can be modded

[cromabianca 158]

Almost, but no cigar for me!

Sure, the game is newer, shinier and with huge potential from he start and sure it WILL be SC4's heir one day, but even with all its limitations SC4 allowed for far better realism (whereas this games only visually shines "from afar"; in SC4 you could do great region shots and great details. I mean, here... not quite the same!)

But again: SC4 is 11 years old, so let's cut the kid a little slack, shall we?.

I'm sure one day the little princess will grow. And she looks gorgeous already

[mutton noir 170]

I agree with many of the points made in previous posts.

Ability to mod and share assets/maps a major win

Nearly 28,000 mods/assets after 3 weeks as opposed to 18,000 for SC4 over 11 years although many are useless and we really need some quality assurance to weed them out. Piddly little pointless Parks, ridiculous roundabouts, insane interchanges and mad maps of peoples faces etc.

The sheer scale of the playable area is impressive and viewing from a distance is awesome. Close up the cities look rough, nowhere near the polish and detail of SC 2013.

No night/day cycle- a major fail by CO

Fiddly awkward UI, small info panels with poor use of colour coding and unreadable text - worst part of the game by a mile -perfect example of poor design

Overall a great game with immense potential to become an iconic classic

[Mr_Maison 2,426]

My grocery list to consider it a proper heir....(not that I don't think this game is great. I'm loving it.)

 

I know these are said officially to be coming: Tunnels and W2W building support.

 

A Make historic button and the ability to plop RCI buildings individually.

 

2 way highway option for realistic bridges and better highway to road transitions.

 

As mentioned by others, the 4x4 lot limit must be lifted.

 

Park and Ride/Parking Lots support.

 

I wouldn't mind some fudging of residential numbers. 4 people in a 8 story building is ridiculous. We can still have the simulated population as it is now but maybe add some more numbers in some way to the pop count so the city doesn't look like a metropolis with only 10,000 people. Who's going to sit there and count every one?

 

Better textures support. Not sure if this is a Unity thing but the reflections on buildings need some serious love. I'm not sure how realistic we can get our custom texture maps to show so have to investigate this some more.

 

Day and night cycle. I can live without this though. It's not critical. I usually turn it off in SC4 when I need to see what I'm building but it would be nice to have. Especially to see the traffic break and signal lights as well as the buildings being illuminated.

 

 

To be fair, lets look at some things C:S have that SC4 missed:

 

Industrial and commercial interaction with goods and services being more realistic.

 

Cims don't just go to work and back home. They actually take trips to the stores and leisure places like parks. I observed a parked car with a student studying.

 

Dynamic water at any height that interacts with the city.

 

Very flexible road options. Could use some better constraining guides though. It's free but a bit wild.

 

Official sustained open modding support by the developers from day 1.

 

The ability to control mass transit routes with custom coloring of each line instead of just spamming stops. I love the way C:S changes the color of the mass transit vehicles to reflect the route they service.

 

 

There's probably more but I'm still playing my first city and have more to learn. I think this is the best next city builder since SC4. It doesn't take the crown yet, but if some key things mentioned by many players is addressed, this is no doubt it. For now I see it as another great city building game that's long overdue. And I thank CO for being the ones to finally listen to the fans of this genre and even gave us more.

[Marla_Singer 46]

but even with all its limitations SC4 allowed for far better realism (whereas this games only visually shines "from afar"; in SC4 you could do great region shots and great details.

You'll need to better explain what stands to you as "realism" cause I don't have at all that perception.

Since I've played Cities: Skylines, SC4 looks to me as dead as an animated gif. The level of simulation is to me far more advanced in Cities: Skylines. Everything is alive, goods are processed and delivered, services are operating, people are getting educated, found families and die. It's the exact opposite from the candy-eye animations in SC4 which were only pretending, with no consequence whatsoever in the actual game.

If you think Cities:Skylines "only shines from afar", then take a closer look, you'll be amazed.

[Mystrelia 57]

Oh man, what Marla_Singer said. Sure, there's a limit on zonable building sizes of 4x4 and I'm pretty sure most of us would like to see that increased. Sure, the game has a few problems and some things that need tweaked, but dog-gone it, please explain to me how "realistic" it is to plop down a school or police station and only have coverage within a perfect circle? How realistic is it for the mayor to add a neighbor connection to a small city with a garbage incinerator and a couple of dirty industry buildings for half of your population to suddenly leave jobs they've occupied for years on end to drive out of said city to jobs that don't even exist then have the mayor rating drop by 20% or 30% because their commute time increased? How realistic is it for a person to suddenly get rich, find a job across the street from them, then forever after not be able to get to their job again because they can't find it? How realistic is it for land values to always increase so high unless an area is kept under a cloud of pollution that only wealthy individuals live in a city? Those are just a few of the realities of an un-modded SimCity 4.

 

Now to the original question: is Cities: Skylines the heir to SimCity? My opinion says it's too early yet to tell but I know that so far it's my favorite city building sim since SC2000.

[ghosty20 150]

I agree with many of the points made in previous posts.

Ability to mod and share assets/maps a major win

Nearly 28,000 mods/assets after 3 weeks as opposed to 18,000 for SC4 over 11 years although many are useless and we really need some quality assurance to weed them out. Piddly little pointless Parks, ridiculous roundabouts, insane interchanges and mad maps of peoples faces etc.

The sheer scale of the playable area is impressive and viewing from a distance is awesome. Close up the cities look rough, nowhere near the polish and detail of SC 2013.

No night/day cycle- a major fail by CO

Fiddly awkward UI, small info panels with poor use of colour coding and unreadable text - worst part of the game by a mile -perfect example of poor design

Overall a great game with immense potential to become an iconic classic

On CSL not having a day / night cycle cut CO some slack you are talking about a dev team of only 13 people or so.. Compared to Maxis who at the time of SC4 were a lot larger and under the EA banner at the time..  To me I would rather have a game that I can play than to wait longer just for a day / night cycle..  Also bear in mind that SC, SC2000 and SC3000 did not have a day / night cycle the day / night cycle first showed up in SC4..  So I would think that now they have go the game out, that they can now do all those things in future updates just give them time..

[chocolate_city 93]

A lot of points are being made by all, but there is one point that has to be taken in serious consideration... look how far this game has gone in such a short amount of time... I just hope that they can come up with a quality control aspect to keep the crap from building up...

[Mr_Maison 2,426]

A lot of points are being made by all, but there is one point that has to be taken in serious consideration... look how far this game has gone in such a short amount of time... I just hope that they can come up with a quality control aspect to keep the crap from building up...

I'm hoping modding teams develop like NAM, RTMT and NYCBAT to name a few. I already got my eye on a couple of authors I know put their backs into their stuff.

 

To your point, I wonder what the landscape would look like if the low quality stuff was removed though. Quantity does not really mean anything if it's 75% amateur night. I think most authors really think they're contributing something to the community. We just need that Omnibus to spread around so 3D artists can be better informed.

[Cool_Z 1,547]

Quantity does not really mean anything if it's 75% amateur night. I think most authors really think they're contributing something to the community. We just need that Omnibus to spread around so 3D artists can be better informed.

 

 

Grumpy cat here...

 

Most of the custom buildings I have tried for now have major problems... mostly because the builders don't know or don't care about the lod model (the one that will be displayed when zoomed out)... and so they look fine in the preview but like a pile of rubble from far away.

 

And I'm not even talking about the hidden problems.

[cromabianca 158]

You'll need to better explain what stands to you as "realism" cause I don't have at all that perception.

 

Oh man...

I think you misunderstood. I'm not talking from a simulation standpoint: in that particular aspect this game is waay better than SC4, no question about that.

I'm talking about visuals. If you take a look at some of the SC4 CJs here on Simtropolis, you feel you're looking at paintings or even photos, in some cases, while here you can't shed that cartoonish look, at least in the close-ups. Sure, you have great area views, but when you get down to earth, you will see cartoon people, cartoon-pink hotdog vans (a lot of them) and washed-out textures on buildings. And over all too much saturation!

And don't get me wrong: I'm loving the game and I'm logging way too many hours on it and enjoying every single minute of it!

[Linoa06 1,374]

CSL is already queen of city builders for me. Sturdy mod and fan base, reactive devs, and yes some issues here and there but so was SC4. I'm sure there will be mods against the saturated colours (well, there ARE some already), though personally it's not so bad in the end...after all looking at browns and greens all day kind of gets boring. 

 

Just waiting for model mods though..

[jaredh 195]

Not unless they can seriously fix the following deficiencies:

 

1 - no night mode

2 - cartoonish textures

3 - 4x4 lock-down sizing

4 - low poly models

 

All of these pretty much have to be fixed before you can say Skylines is better than SC4.  3D is not a holy grail without all the utility and attractiveness these bring. 

 

And a note to the comment about 28,000 mods vs 18,000....the old EA SC4 site was over-run with CRAP.  They had maybe 50k SC4 Bats.  And you know how many were any good?  Probably 50.  As in fifty.  Simtrop, simpeg, and sc4d grew due to the silly lack of quality on the early EA site.  Skylines is going to have the same situation.

 

Also, I am not a fan of the population numbers in Skylines.  It should be fairly easy to get a city with hundreds of thousands of people.  A million should be within reach of a month's play or so.  I don't think I can do that in Skylines at all, and my goal in city building is mega cities with many millions of people, not a few hundred thousand.

[BlitzPackage 19]

Tough call but I will give CSL the edge and say it is the rightful heir of SC4.  That being said, for it to reign, not just temporarily supplant as heir, it needs to really work on the graphics and exceed SC 2013's graphics.  It definitely needs more polish in that area.  Others have also added some amazing insights there is no need for me to add to the laundry list.

 

It definitely is the heir, but now it has to show that it can reign, maintain its empire and expand to further entrench itself.

[ghosty20 150]

Not unless they can seriously fix the following deficiencies:

 

1 - no night mode

2 - cartoonish textures

3 - 4x4 lock-down sizing

4 - low poly models

 

All of these pretty much have to be fixed before you can say Skylines is better than SC4.  3D is not a holy grail without all the utility and attractiveness these bring. 

 

And a note to the comment about 28,000 mods vs 18,000....the old EA SC4 site was over-run with CRAP.  They had maybe 50k SC4 Bats.  And you know how many were any good?  Probably 50.  As in fifty.  Simtrop, simpeg, and sc4d grew due to the silly lack of quality on the early EA site.  Skylines is going to have the same situation.

 

Also, I am not a fan of the population numbers in Skylines.  It should be fairly easy to get a city with hundreds of thousands of people.  A million should be within reach of a month's play or so.  I don't think I can do that in Skylines at all, and my goal in city building is mega cities with many millions of people, not a few hundred thousand.

1: Give them a chance the game has not been out that long and I would think there are more important things for them to work on than a day / night cycle..

2: To each their own to me they are better than most..

3: I would gather they had a reason to do what they did and who knows they may do something about it in a later patch / dlc..

4: Well I would think they had a technical reason for the low poly models.. In that when you start to get a huge city going with a lot going on having high poly models would drag your system down to a crawl.. I mean we are spoiled with large maps (something that SC2013 lacked) that as a standard can be 9 tiles up to a possible 25 tiles (with a mod I think)..  There always has to be a trade off somewhere and for me I would rather have low poly models and a smooth running game over high poly models and laggy / choppy game.. 

 

I mean there is a mod out there that adds SSAO to the game and makes it look very nice but turn that sucker up to max and watch your framerate drop and more..

 

As for the population limit the population cap is 1 million again I would say for technical reasons, and unlike SimCity the population in CSL go through the normal life stages from birth to death.. I think no other city sim has gone to that extent..

[jaredh 195]

As for the population limit the population cap is 1 million again I would say for technical reasons, and unlike SimCity the population in CSL go through the normal life stages from birth to death.. I think no other city sim has gone to that extent..

 

 

A lot of people don't play city sims for anything other than city building.  The simulation is probably #4 or #5 on my list of desired elements.

[Linoa06 1,374]

Except a city is more than mindless buildings (unless you play CXL) and to some, managing elements like death are part of the fun. 

[copper121212 23]

You'll need to better explain what stands to you as "realism" cause I don't have at all that perception.

 

Oh man...

I think you misunderstood. I'm not talking from a simulation standpoint: in that particular aspect this game is waay better than SC4, no question about that.

I'm talking about visuals. If you take a look at some of the SC4 CJs here on Simtropolis, you feel you're looking at paintings or even photos, in some cases, while here you can't shed that cartoonish look, at least in the close-ups. Sure, you have great area views, but when you get down to earth, you will see cartoon people, cartoon-pink hotdog vans (a lot of them) and washed-out textures on buildings. And over all too much saturation!

And don't get me wrong: I'm loving the game and I'm logging way too many hours on it and enjoying every single minute of it! I don't understand this comment. Seems silly to knock CSL for looking cartoonish closeup when SC4 doesn't even give the option to do that. On the closest zoom of SC4 you get fuzz and fake animations, imagine what it would look like if you had the ability to zoom in like CSL.

CSL gives you legitimate moments of hesitation where you think you're looking at an actual real life city. SC4 at it's best has a model train vibe.

(not my city) Zoomed pics didn't work on this site

It all comes down to what fiter you use. Obviously if you are directly at street level there isn't much that can be done but that is asking an awful lot.

[iviaarten 534]

The realistic look from the high poly modeled and rendered 2D pictures in SC4 only really works in gridded cities to create realistic pictures though, something I've always disliked. I love that I can make realistic looking non-gridded cities in C:SL. More realistic textures and new models coming from the modding scene will only make this better with time.

 

SC4 will stick around, since it's got a good thing going after over 10 years of the community working on it. I'm glad to have a new toy to play with though. Is it the same? no. Is it better? In some areas it is, in some areas it isn't.

 

I'm sure though that with continued support from both publisher, developer and the community, we've found the next game that will be able to evolve like SC4 did, and will only become better with time.

 

If you're unsure, then try loading up vanilla SC4 without Rush Hour and all those mods, bats and assets. You'll quickly see what I mean

[Mystrelia 57]

I never bothered with day/night in SC4, it was too distracting to constantly have the lighting change while I was trying to build my city. However, do bear in mind that I get distracted by things like that far too easily.

 

 

 

You'll need to better explain what stands to you as "realism" cause I don't have at all that perception.

 

Oh man...

I think you misunderstood. I'm not talking from a simulation standpoint: in that particular aspect this game is waay better than SC4, no question about that.

I'm talking about visuals. If you take a look at some of the SC4 CJs here on Simtropolis, you feel you're looking at paintings or even photos, in some cases, while here you can't shed that cartoonish look, at least in the close-ups. Sure, you have great area views, but when you get down to earth, you will see cartoon people, cartoon-pink hotdog vans (a lot of them) and washed-out textures on buildings. And over all too much saturation!

And don't get me wrong: I'm loving the game and I'm logging way too many hours on it and enjoying every single minute of it!

 

That makes more sense. The vehicles are downright comical and I actually quite adore them. I think that there should be a way to make default replacements for the vehicles and/or their textures. Of course I haven't actually delved into the modding end of this game and most likely won't but I've done enough of that kind of thing in another game to think it has the capability, someone just needs to find it if they haven't already.

 

When it comes to the buildings, I just don't see a lot of non-realism there other than they aren't the dirty, grungy looking things I've seen in other games. I love that my city looks bright and clean, and like copper121212 just posted that screenshot, I often have to do a double-take of screenshots to see that no, those aren't actually real cities. I travel the world via Google Maps occasionally and most of the Skylines screenshots I've seen from a distance don't look a lot different.

 

I set my first city in a southern European climate and use the Boreal lighting on it. I may try some of the custom lighting mods at some point but for now it's pleasant enough for me.

 

 

Except a city is more than mindless buildings (unless you play CXL) and to some, managing elements like death are part of the fun. 

I would be one of those people. I have a rather morbid and dry sense of humor anyway so I find it very amusing that we have to deal with things like death of our Cims in this game. For me managing the city's infrastructure is part and parcel of a city builder. I'd lose interest way too quickly if I was just building. I love the creative aspect but I also want to have to think and puzzle over things that need improvements. Sometimes I just get lazy and throw down a bunch of zoning to satisfy a need then sit back and let things happen and deal with any fall-out from my poor planning. Other times I want to plan things better so they work from the start. Either way it's like a puzzle needing solved.

[Sabretooth78 808]

I've said before and will continue to say that CSL is SC4's successor but not its replacement.  Not having owned SC13 and not wanting to drag that fly-ridden carcass into the discussion I will say that it is my impression that CSL is a targeted successor and replacement for that particular title.

 

I own both and play both; there are things I like in each.  I like SC4 for being able to meticulously craft a huge yet plausible looking region.  CSL is great for when I want to leave "hobby" mode and just play a game and a darned good one at that.  In general, when I'm playing CSL I don't care about things like buildings and all that - the lack of variety doesn't bother me; not yet anyway.  SC4 on the other hand...

 

I have to say I agree with those criticizing the quality of CSL mods.  I have a few issues with the current arrangement:

• Sporadic freezing issues that while I haven't been able to nail it down (I can't even reliably reproduce it), I know it's caused by some mod and I don't even have too many.  I've only downloaded a handful of interface mods - the CXL stats window is great, purple pollution removers, etc. and I like the route query, lane changer and traffic light mods.
• Due in part to this, I have little to no faith in the control and coexistence of mods.  While I do enjoy the ability to selectively turn things on and off without reloading the game, that's where it ends.  Compare this with SC4 where in my case I've accumulated some 2,400+ packages over time, carefully organized and the game runs smooth as silk.  A CTD every once in a great while but I'm going to panic over that as much as I'm going to fret the next eruption of Yellowstone.
• Also, to me the authors are relative unknowns.  This will probably ebb over time, but it's not like in this community, SC4D or Simpeg where I feel comfortable with the products of certain if not most contributors.  Contrast that with the relative jungle of the steam workshop.

 

If I have one wish for CSL, aside from the more glaring bugs and limitations which others have expounded on in detail it would for the release of an equivalent to the Rush Hour expansion.  Think more road variety (2-4 lane highways, smaller one-ways, etc.) along with baked in traffic management tools such as the route query, traffic signal and lane changer mods.  (Too bad we didn't have the latter in SC4 as well?!)

 

My second wish for CSL would be preview images for custom content in the UI.  WTF?  Didn't take long for me to make myself a few custom intersections and promptly not be able to find them...

[iviaarten 534]

I think that some of the occasional slowdowns / errors with some of the mods currently is that authors are making and releasing them on the 1.07c beta patch, and they end up causing issues on 1.06b There should be a checkmark/label for patch version of the mods I think.

[Marc Collins 36]

 

You'll need to better explain what stands to you as "realism" cause I don't have at all that perception.

 

Oh man...

I think you misunderstood. I'm not talking from a simulation standpoint: in that particular aspect this game is waay better than SC4, no question about that.

I'm talking about visuals. If you take a look at some of the SC4 CJs here on Simtropolis, you feel you're looking at paintings or even photos, in some cases, while here you can't shed that cartoonish look, at least in the close-ups. Sure, you have great area views, but when you get down to earth, you will see cartoon people, cartoon-pink hotdog vans (a lot of them) and washed-out textures on buildings. And over all too much saturation!

And don't get me wrong: I'm loving the game and I'm logging way too many hours on it and enjoying every single minute of it!

 

 

+1 

 

And add that the spatial layout of the city is completely unnatural due to the aforementioned lot size silliness.  So combined, you don't get cities or communities that look at all realistic.  On the other hand, despite no curved roads and all sorts of other restrictions, SC4 with the right high quality mods can look photo-realistic at first glance and have an entire regional density distribution that could be a real city.  Close-up, buildings more often than not take-up a proportional and appropriate amount of land.  These are what make a realistic looking city.

 

And yes, the sim elements "under the hood" of C:SL are better than SC4, but still have some unrealistic aspects due to rushing the product out the door and "over-reaching" on some design elements (trying to reduce complex issues and relationships to simple algorithms).

[Titanicbuff 1,262]

I've been talking about doing a moding team for interchanges- anyone interested- please let me know. I am part of RTMT, if I knew how to mod bus stops I'd do a RTMT Skylines edition as well, but interchanges seem simpler to build.

Also I don't think the crown will be passed- SC gives the multi city ability to build large metro areas that Skylines lacks. Meaning on can only go so far with the game before you need to create a new city to continue with.

[aable 63]

+1

 

And add that the spatial layout of the city is completely unnatural due to the aforementioned lot size silliness.  So combined, you don't get cities or communities that look at all realistic.  On the other hand, despite no curved roads and all sorts of other restrictions, SC4 with the right high quality mods can look photo-realistic at first glance and have an entire regional density distribution that could be a real city.  Close-up, buildings more often than not take-up a proportional and appropriate amount of land.  These are what make a realistic looking city.

 

And yes, the sim elements "under the hood" of C:SL are better than SC4, but still have some unrealistic aspects due to rushing the product out the door and "over-reaching" on some design elements (trying to reduce complex issues and relationships to simple algorithms).

 

 

I understand where you're coming from with the criticism about building sizes, but other than that I can't help but totally disagree.

 

I've never seen a single screenshot from SC4, not even the heavily modded, heavily photoshopped stuff from all of the wonderful CJs here, that looks "photo-realistic". The isometric camera view was great for it's time but it's not 2003 anymore and at this point we're comparing apples and oranges. I understand that the textures and details on some of the models people have created for SC4 blow the models from C:S out of the water, but those buildings are for a 12 year old game with an isometric view. Again, apples and oranges.

 

To me,

 

 

 

CSL gives you legitimate moments of hesitation where you think you're looking at an actual real life city. SC4 at it's best has a model train vibe.

(not my city) Zoomed pics didn't work on this site

It all comes down to what fiter you use. Obviously if you are directly at street level there isn't much that can be done but that is asking an awful lot. 

 

This is a level of realism that SC4 can't compete with on a fundamental level. Vanilla SC4 didn't have much in terms of sprawling industrial areas or parking lots or all of the things that a lot of us like to add for realistic looking cities. These things are already arriving in mods for C:S as well.

 

I love SC4 as well and I will continue to play but to say it is more visually realistic than C:S is crazy.

 

[Sabretooth78 808]

SC4 is microscopically more realistic looking yet as a game has greater macroscopic capabilities (i.e. region play for instance).

 

CSL is macroscopically more realistic looking yet as a game has greater microscopic capabilities (i.e. creating bus lines for instance).

 

It's a rather pointless debate.  Both games fill some different niches and fill them well.

[MushyMushy 3,618]

Really it just depends. While I do give CSL credit for having some breathtaking shots at various angles, I think that if you were to pit a CSL screenshot taken at the same angle as the SC4 camera against a screenshot from SC4, one could reasonably argue that SC4 was better looking. Besides, SC4 has night time mode (frankly, I thought that was ubiquitous, so CSL really surprised me there). It's not like I use it while playing or anything, it's just there for screenshots.

 

Comparing the games is difficult. No matter how much of a lasting titan SC4 is in the city building genre, it doesn't change the fact that we're comparing an isometric game from 2003 with a full 3D game (that would make my computer spontaneously combust if I tried to play it) from 2015. The way I look at it, the two games have their own specialties...

 

SimCity4

I look at SC4 as more of a hobby or diorama type thing. It's for building photo-realistic shots of planned out cities (perfect for CJs). That's pretty much my indirect way of saying that actually playing the game for the sake of playing the game sucks. I love SC4 but I'll be perfectly honest, the simulation stinks in countless ways. Thankfully we have mods to fix that to an extent (like the NAM for instance.... practically fixed a broken game). SC4 is for building appealing cities rife with variation of all kinds: roadways (NAM / SAM / RHW / NWM), buildings (I think it's blatantly obvious that SC4 has more variation in it's buildings), automata (The base game had some decent vehicle variation, and all of the subsequent car packs have really made it great), and foliage (the base game had a few kinds of trees, but modders have really taken advantage of MMPs). SC4 is for meticulously building a big pile of eye-candy (intended as a compliment! ).

 

Basically, SC4 is for building realistic shots with superior texture and modeling quality (I learned about the modeling quality thing when Heblem took their old SC4 Home Depot model (which had polygons numbering in the hundreds of thousands if I remember correctly), and having to reduce the quality of it significantly so it would run in CSL. To those who keep dishing it out against SC4's isometric presentation, it has its pros. Since the game is really just showing you a picture of a model instead of a full-fledged 3D model, it can load far more buildings at a higher quality level with significantly less computer power.

 

As a closing argument, if CSL has so many mods, why can't it do this? You can't possibly tell me that none of these shots look at least mildly realistic.

(Click each for full size)

Whoa! Night time! Totally new concept!

 

 

Just the average mosaic shot. Since SC4 is isometric, mosaics are possible since everything is viewed from the same angle. That's the problem with full-3D.

 

Frankly I don't know what's so special about this image. It seemed to be liked a lot when I posted it originally so I thought I'd toss it into the mix.

 

Now, I can't defend SC4 on every point though...

 

Cities:Skylines

Don't get me wrong based on what I said above. I think CSL is a great game with a boatload of potential. It's certainly a full replacement of SC2013 (which if the trailer for CSL is anything to go by... that was their goal). I'm not entirely sold on its replacing SC4, but i think it could at some point in the future. The way I look at it... it's too soon to say it's "replaced SC4." CSL as been out for a month and SC4 has been out for 11-12 years now. It's more fair (to an extent) to pit it against SC2013 (although CSL totally beats that game in every way).

 

From my point of view, Cities:Skylines succeeds more than SC4 does at truly being a "game." I see people talking about the ups and downs of actually playing CSL's simulation. SC4's simulation pretty much stinks in comparison; I ceased caring about SC4's simulation many many years ago. I replaced that with meticulously building a moderately functional diorama-type city in SC4. CSL appears to be, sans some faults here and there, a very good game with a good simulation. It has some breathtaking low-angle shots (provided they are far enough away from buildings to hide the rather low texture quality) that SC4 can't compete with.

 

All in all I think that someday, when the painfully bright colors are done away with and when computers are powerful enough to handle better textures and such, the game could take the torch from SC4.