Diorama-Builders vs. Simulation-Lovers

[boformer 3,169]

I like discussions, so let's start a new one.

I noticed that a lot of people play C:SL (and also SC4) only for the looks, with excessive "detailing".

With in game prop placement and ground texturing, C:SL offers a lot of tools for these player.

On the other side, there are players who want to build functioning cities, optimised for the simulation. I fell that this is a smaller group.

And there are players like me who want a bit of both. I'm playing the game for the challenge, but I also want a realistic and visually appealing city.

Personally, I'm refusing to use any prop placement mods because it just takes too much time to go into detail, and there is no simulation behind props.

I would love to see more detail in my cities, but these elements should also serve a purpose, or be auto-generated by the game.

Some ideas:

- A parking simulation with parking zones, parking garages etc.

- Automatic filling of empty space between buildings with props and ground textures, like fences, hedges.

- Modular building concept from SC13, which allows you to add small details like signs, extra building parts and integrated networks.

- Skins for bridges, power lines, roads.

[Avanya 2,605]

I love how beautiful this game can be and detailing with props and the like add to that. That being said I really prefer things to be useful - I fill in plazas with paths and custom parks to have people hang out there so there's life. I'd love some automated filling for sure! We can easily drown in parks if we need something to fill every little space. I think that's what I really like about Rush Hour's effect on parking - empty parking lots just don't feel that real, but when cims needs to park, they come to life.

For me the detailing as also added an extra level to the game - I did the large functioning cities with no cheats, so more realistic and detailed cities was the next step for me.   In short I love a mix of both worlds, though I'm prob leaning a bit more to the "painter" side than you Boformer.

[matias93 7,535]

Hailing from SC4, I think there is much of peer pressure (or to keep up with) about the theme of detailing and esthetics: being this a modders community (or one built around creators), the tacit objective is to create the most realistic possible city, taking advantage of all the custom content.

That obviously implies to simulate realistically the city fluxes, but always prioritising to look real: on the other extreme, the people that had tried to maximise the simulation have created unreal and rather absurd cityscapes, way over the maximum RL densities. 

Being conceptualised as 'a game that cannot be won' city simulators also tacitly encourage cheating*, because the objective is to create a customised result, not to compete in equal conditions with other players. Most tutorials for SC4 indeed include references to custom content that alter the game rules, which are widely accepted as fair play: cheats are simply another tool on the toolbox for everyone.

Is that bad? I don't think so, even is sometimes there is friction about the frontiers between playing and other forms of creation, like the controversy on the SC4D image competition when Korver presented an image of Sydney so close to an aerial photography that many forumers thought an important part of it was photoshopped instead of built in-game (it was built, even if every piece of it was custom content, obviously).

For my part, I prefer to play cities that feel real, more than looking real: creating different neighbourhoods, simulating urban problems and inequalities, having traffic as closely related to population and work offers as possible, etc. Basically, to use the game as a sandbox for urban management, rather than as an art application or a game of resources' maximisation.

*: I call it cheating because it is how is called, as in SC4 Extra Cheats Plugin DLL, not because I'm doing some kind of moral judgement about it. It can well be called debug mode tools or whatever.

[mutton noir 170]

I aim for a "healthy balance". My builds must be both functional AND aesthetically pleasing. If the city is well planned and executed "rather than jumping in at the deep end" with time spent considering road layouts, public transport systems and positioning of services and amenities etc then the city should (in theory) be efficient. It;s much easier than trying to retro fix major headaches! The principles of design are important and specific architectural styles and historical periods employed to create a unique identity for each city. I tend to create a number of focal points in each build where I spend time carefully detailing to a high standard but the majority of the map does not receive the same attention- the city is mostly viewed from  a high vantage point and thankfully I don't have extreme OCD that would require me to obsess over minutiae. The very precise equi-distant placement of highways and slavish precision in placing props tends to drive me crazy! The slavish levels of symmetry & perfection sought by many  doesn't appeal to me- real life has lots of flaws! The great thing about the game is that there are as many ways to play it as there are players! The creativity and skills of the modding community are truly impressive and have transformed the game- I love it, warts and all!

[Linoa06 1,374]

4 hours ago, matias93 said:

Hailing from SC4, I think there is much of peer pressure (or to keep up with) about the theme of detailing and esthetics: being this a modders community (or one built around creators), the tacit objective is to create the most realistic possible city, taking advantage of all the custom content.

That obviously implies to simulate realistically the city fluxes, but always prioritising to look real: on the other extreme, the people that had tried to maximise the simulation have created unreal and rather absurd cityscapes, way over the maximum RL densities. 

Being conceptualised as 'a game that cannot be won' city simulators also tacitly encourage cheating, because the objective is to create a customised result, not to compete in equal conditions with other players. Most tutorials for SC4 indeed include references to custom content that alter the game rules, which are widely accepted as fair play: cheats are simply another tool on the toolbox for everyone.

Is that bad? I don't think so, even is sometimes there is friction about the frontiers between playing and other forms of creation, like the controversy on the SC4D image competition when Korver presented an image of Sydney so close to an aerial photography that many forumers thought an important part of it was photoshopped instead of built in-game (it was built, even if every piece of it was custom content, obviously).

For my part, I prefer to play cities that feel real, more than looking real: creating different neighbourhoods, simulating urban problems and inequalities, having traffic as closely related to population and work offers as possible, etc. Basically, to use the game as a sandbox for urban management, rather than as an art application or a game of resources' maximisation.

I don't call it cheating if your goal is to ignore the simulation entirely. It's not a bad thing.
However, personally while I strive to build a diorama, I put both RL and gameplay considerations first. That means playing with a budget, even if it takes 100s of years to get anywhere.

Also, my cities don't have to LOOK real, just have a lifelike feeling, even if it means a lot of less-than-optimal configurations and not exploiting the game's rules to the max. I honestly don't want to play a simulation just for the sake of the simulation - I got enough min-maxers losing sight of the greater scope on FFXIV already. Interestingly, in CSL the peer pressure swings the other way, but personally I need CSL to stay CSL, not just become some handy 3D city painter - that's why I always keep vanilla assets on, and the simulation must still play a big role in running my town -- but if optimizing requires destroying seven city blocks to make way for some underused motorway because "everything must use a motorway" then I am not going to optimize. If optimization means reaching 500k inhabitants by stacking them on 7 impossibly dense tiles, then I'm also not going to bother.

This is also the reason why I never use metro and only use trains as urban transit : not only metros are underground and invisible, they're also far too easy to build and in my opinion trivialize a big part of the simulation. If metros were 20 times more expensive, then maybe I'd consider them as it would bring a much more lifelike challenge. Likewise with demolitions; in SC4 you had to pay for buildings you removed and if you built a lot over existing construction it could potentially amount to quite a lot of cash - especially if you keep low tax rates. If demolitions were more expensive, then to me that would reconcile simulation and gameplay with lifelike consequences.

This is what I miss most about SC4 : the game FORCED you to have guetto areas, and neighbourhoods that were full of problems. In CSL, well it does look like every building eventually moves towards being a condo, everyone eventually becomes well educated (why do you think I never fund my education system) though it's nowhere as bad as SC5, with few options beyond themes and manual plopping of RICO buildings, but all of that is mostly aesthetic rather than a genuine aspect of the simulation.

That goes for both SC4 and CSL  anyway. My cities need to have a story, and some amount of realism, or more accurately authenticity but that story has to come at least partly from the simulations and challenges in juggling its needs. 

[Kaschperl 92]

To me one aspect of CSL ist really attractive, and that's visual city size. That means my cities don't have to have lots of inhabitants, they merely have to look like they do. A major part of the cities I build are sprawling low-density suburbs while the CBD is rather small in comparison - that's how many real cities look. CSL in my opinion is really good at presenting cities that cover a lot of land. And working on an area that vast, it's hardly possible to pay a lot of attention to every tiny spot in the city, that's where automatic fillers would help. I remember that they were used in the game "City Life" and I loved them!

[Abrams 1,744]

I'm definitely the Type 2 guy,I not only focus on detailing every possible aspect of my city to make it look real,but also function great,Cims must have jobs,they must get to their work effectively,and the list goes on.When i see a traffic jam I immediately start brainstorming on a new type of layout for that segment,or a new interchange if needed.While that,i also focus on to make the interchange aesthetically pleasing.I always keep an eye on realistic slopes,and if it isn't perfect,then i tinker with MoveIt! until i get it to my likings.

For transit options i always choose the best and most effective option,like damn,i won't put a 6 lane highway in the middle of the desert,except if the traffic is very high and the upgrade is needed.I think what makes the game great is that it has a basic level of detail like cims go to work,they use parking garages,they go to landmarks to have fun,they wait for the bus,or they just walk around the city.

Buses,Metros and Trams is for when i reached a point where my cims need to have them,for example at a certain population,or just they are further away from their workplace.When they are working as intended,I love that because it's so satisfying to see my cims use a well planned transport system to it's full potential.

While SC4 missed some of theese,i think that game is still one of the best city builders out there

[matias93 7,535]

2 hours ago, Kaschperl said:

To me one aspect of CSL ist really attractive, and that's visual city size. That means my cities don't have to have lots of inhabitants, they merely have to look like they do. A major part of the cities I build are sprawling low-density suburbs while the CBD is rather small in comparison - that's how many real cities look. CSL in my opinion is really good at presenting cities that cover a lot of land. And working on an area that vast, it's hardly possible to pay a lot of attention to every tiny spot in the city, that's where automatic fillers would help. I remember that they were used in the game "City Life" and I loved them!

In the other hand, I feel that city simulators, in general, are somewhat biased into north American city paradigms, so when one plays along the simulation the logical result is a small CBD of exclusive uses and a wide suburban sprawl around, with radial and orbital highways marring it all. To try to create a city outside this paradigm requires much more effort and to recur more heavily to custom content. 

Think, for example, on what would take to recreate something like Buenos Aires: a 15 million population city, without skyscrapers, but based on narrow W2W mid rise mixed use buildings, distributed on a myriad of mashing grids, with hundreds of thousands of people living on non-structured slums, even under highways.

Over a certain threshold, the simulator simply gets bored of following this scheme and begins to spawn high rises anywhere it wants, or to mix social classes on neighbourhoods that ought to be segregated.

In fact, I think one of the reasons many players are compelled to use more custom content and to restrict the simulation is precisely because it is simulating a city on undesired parameters.

[.Del 53]

I'm more of somewhere between the center two. I for one like to have my city look like real cities, but at the same time also want them to be functional as well. This is one of the few reasons I can't get into C:T YouTubers unless their design impresses me enough to over look that theyre always in the reds. In fact, Flux is the only YT to have done this since in his Rhinestone Island series, he's able to both have a beautiful and detailed city but also a functional one that is actually in the greens. (Well most of the times) Because for me, using infinite money feels like cheating (well, it is). 

[Judazzz 1,936]

I get a lot of joy out of trying to make my cities look as realistic as possible, so propping up the place takes a big chunk out of my hours spent on this game. Other things that fall within this category are the distribution of different zoning types (I never 'just' zone my roads, I think about where residences would be situated, where businesses and factories would be, how these zones are located in relation to each other, etc.), the way the road network is laid out, where I place ploppables (parks, sport facilities, schools, service buildings, landmarks, the whole nine yards - some are typically located in or near residential, commercial or industrial area's, others are far removed from urban cores - there's a lot to consider when placing them).
However, I do strive to create a functional city as well: traffic needs to flow freely, complaints will be addressed, etc. The one thing I don't care about is finances, for the very simple reason that that limits my possibilities.

So in short, I would consider myself a sandbox player with a hole burnt in my pocket, but who still has eye for my city's wants and needs.

[Turjan 1,048]

I guess I'm somewhere between positions 2 and 3. I voted 3, but when I look at who else voted 3, I guess 2 would be more to the point, mostly because I don't play the game for the challenge (honestly, you figure that out once, and after that it's on auto-pilot and nothing but a boring wait). I sometimes use unlimited funds to jumpstart the city, and when I switch that off, I'm usually in the green and making a good profit, because that's one of the points I always have as a goal.

Which already says it: my cities are supposed to work. I'm not happy if they don't. My beef with unique buildings was always that they don't do much, but the RICO mod has got rid of that concern.

I like detailing, but I keep it to a rather limited degree. I always have the game limits in view, and every tiny shrub or small prop counts against the rather strict limits. Well, I feel the limits, as my cities tend to get big. When I look at examples of ultra-detailed city spots, I always ask myself, how much of the city you can actually treat that way.

So I guess somewhere right in the middle would be the place for me to be: I'm fine with a city painter, but it has to function.

[gfvsims 169]

I like my cities to look good, but they also have to function. I love playing with transport lines, for example, and when I see a traffic-flow problem, I love trying to fix it. I can also be a bit lazy when it comes to placing props. Some areas end up nicely detailed but not all. I guess if I had to choose, I'd class myself as more of a "diorama-builder". But I like to think I have a balanced approach to playing.

[Libertyville 164]

I'm somewhere in between. But at a minimum, I must have a functioning city. Aesthetics and function require two different types of talent.

For aesthetics, the player must be familiar with how things are in real life, be it a port, a stadium, or a yacht club. This actually requires the player to also know how these things work. But the keys to make that happen are the right custom assets and mods, and the time to do it. It's actually not so challenging, but just fun and satisfying. 

For functionality, the player must create a multi-faceted system in both urban planning, policies, and people's life. The efforts that go into this are not as readily visible as a beautiful garden of props. But they are much more demanding and more difficult.

I believe that functionality is what this type of games will lean toward, and it is best at demonstrating the power of a game. It is also more challenging than placing pretty props without budget concerns. In real life, functionality comes first. The real impressive cities of our world, be it Singapore or Shanghai, are the ones that make it work first, before they make it aesthetically pleasing. They are the ones who start with formidable disadvantages and found a way around them.

Placing pretty props requires many clicks and fine tuning. But it gets boring quickly. You can always make something look pretty and prettier. It's repetitive. One of the ways that demonstrate an excellent player is how the transit/transport system works in the city, with its many functions. Unfortunately, screenshots and videos do not demonstrate them. Few players are interested in showing them. Transport systems are one of the most enjoyable aspects of the game for me.

I do not create cities that have perfect highways, all symmetrical designs, a cluster of unbelievable skyscrapers with no life around them. I think Photoshop can do that.

[Ltw 401]

23 hours ago, Libertyville said:

I believe that functionality is what this type of games will lean toward, and it is best at demonstrating the power of a game. It is also more challenging than placing pretty props without budget concerns. In real life, functionality comes first. The real impressive cities of our world, be it Singapore or Shanghai, are the ones that make it work first, before they make it aesthetically pleasing. They are the ones who start with formidable disadvantages and found a way around them.

Interesting point of view. However, there are also plenty of failures of this functionality-aproach. New capital of Birma Naypyidaw for instance was designed for functionality. However, nobody is willing to move there, which leaves a city with huge empty highways and weigh less citizens than it was meant for. Brasilia is also a city that was build up from a functionality-aproach. However, commute-times are longer which means that people need to get the car more often, these distances could also lead to disadvantages in the social sphere. Therefore, (even though there are some success-stories) looking for functionality first could have some downsides in some cases as well.

This leads me to the cities I really like. In real life I prefer cities that were made functional even though they were not in the beginning. Good examples are New York and Paris. In order to cope with extensive population-growth the entire road-network of New York was being changed into a grid-like pattern in the 1900s. An evenly drastic change happened in Paris with the new patterns with avenues done by Haussmann. Changes like these seem that drastic that would be almost unlikely that someone would do it. However, they did because it was needed. And that's what I like in a city, building something that was meant for a certain population and finding out that you miscalculated that. And that's how a lot of cities work, I really like the fact that something is not perfect and that I would have to cope with these problems. This also means that I have less time for finetuning and details. However, I do like it to make sure something looks nice, but I don't prefer making really nice dioramas of my entire city, simply because I don't have the patience to work in such high detail. This perspective places me somewhere inbetween 2 and 3. Sometimes I really like to work in detail and sometimes I don't do that too much, the temporarity of some places also have some influence in this regard.

[Badi_Dea 476]

I think you may have countered your own statement.

52 minutes ago, Ltw said:

However, there are also plenty of failures of this functionality-aproach. New capital of Birma Naypyidaw for instance was designed for functionality. However, nobody is willing to move there, which leaves a city with huge empty highways and weigh less citizens than it was meant for.

Seems like no one moved there because there was not reason to move there, the very antithesis of a functional approach.

52 minutes ago, Ltw said:

In real life I prefer cities that were made functional even though they were not in the beginning. Good examples are New York and Paris. In order to cope with extensive population-growth the entire road-network of New York was being changed into a grid-like pattern in the 1900s. An evenly drastic change happened in Paris with the new patterns with avenues done by Haussmann.

If we 'gamify' the real world situations at work here, it sounds to me that 'player' for Naypyidaw started with everything unlocked, drew some massive highways, layed everything out, and zoned everything, and is now waiting for it to fill in. They are playing creative mode.

Paris and New York started with only basic roads unlocked, so they had to make due with what they had at the time. When they unlocked all the milestones, they redeveloped where necessary.

The problem we have now is that there are no repercussions for anything you do in game (outside of the early game money crunch) because the taxes keep flowing in while you neglect the city for 30m. We need to be forced to either chose between keeping garbage services going or keeping the university open, we need to be punished for building an international airport for 10k citizens, or building an 8 lane bridge to nowhere.

I think my greatest hope for C:S is the new scenario editor in the upcoming expansion.
Why? Not because of a win condition, that's for sure. It's because we will be able to create scenarios where we need to make interesting and complex decisions.

Imagine a scenario where there are a set of conditions that fire:
Industry tiles > 500 = -25 happiness
Residential Tax rate > 8% = -25 happiness
Happiness < 70 = Global land value - 10%

Now, what happens is that you can't easily sustain enough industry to employ people and generate enough tax revenue to stay afloat. So you need to raise taxes, but you can't! That will make your citizens mad. You may be able to get away with one of those triggers if you've done a good job and everything is perfect, but not both; the repercussions would be an almost inevitable death spiral leaving you in worse shape than if you would have just tried to squeak by with what your people are demanding.

This is New Game ++ here! this is the saving grace of those of us who care more for mechanics than Photoshop! And I am absolutely stoked for it!

 

[Whitefang Greytail 45]

I'm that weird person who tries to maximise population and happiness. I also tend to try to build with a density of Coruscant everywhere I am able to, whether or not it's Sim City 4 or Space Empires or Civilization 1 through 5. It's the reason why I was willing to take the torch for the population mod.

So I guess that puts me in the last category.

I always feel that while tons of decorations are fantastic, it can get too much. I do think the game should take care of that for me, which I think it kind of does when it places down random trees for residential areas.

 

[Ltw 401]

11 hours ago, Badi_Dea said:

I think you may have countered your own statement.

Seems like no one moved there because there was not reason to move there, the very antithesis of a functional approach.

Interesting argument. However, I think that functionality and willingness to move somewhere are not entirely connected to each other. The huge twenty-lanes highways in Naypyidaw are still very functional, but they're not needed at all. The authorities therefore only thought about functionality without thinking about the needs of the city. And who knows, maybe this city will grow a lot in the future, but for now the layout of the city is ridiculous. The thought behind this aproach is kind of interesting. A lot of Asian cities witness a huge growth, which can't be handled because there is a lack of proper urban development laws, this also leads to unwanted situations such as slums and smog. By making a layout which could cope millions of inhabitants they were already taking account for a huge growth in the future. However, this hasn't happened (yet).

There could be more challenges in Cities: Skylines indeed. I would really like it if they would implement more of a social challenge. I never got too much problems with money, also in Simcity 4 I could manage revenue-streams quite well. I'm not really bothered by that. However, what I do like a lot about Simcity 4 is the fact that the population was divided in poor, medium and high income. Poor people tend to go by public transport more often while rich people are mostly likely going somewhere by car. You could influence the number of rich/poor people living in your city by building zones with different grades of desirability. And getting only rich people isn't what you want at all, because you need people of every income-class. This distinction is something I really miss about Cities: Skylines and what would make the simulation so much better. It is not only about travel-patterns but also about choices people make, poor people for instance tend to spend less at commercial zones, may have worse health than rich people and might be more involved in crimes than average. They also require less services since they can't afford high housing prices and might have to travel for larger distances. Rich people have a lot of standards in terms of services and are willing to pay for high housing prices. They also need more room and use more water and electricity. They go by car more often and are traveling by plane to other destinations, which has some environmental effects. In my opinion these distinctions are needed in order to build a city which is close to reality without having to push that. You can do great things by going into detail and building neighborhoods that are realistic but it should make sense that some buildings are popping up somewhere and entirely different buildings are popping up somewhere else. Colossal Order did some great things by introducing districts but I think they could finetune it further by implementing these distincitons as well. That way you can make something realistic without having to focus on the details too much.

[Ocram's Razr 963]

What doesn't make sense to me are the purely aesthetic builders who completely ignore Cities XL. Cities XL is designed for diorama builders and aesthetically-focused city journalists while Cities: Skylines has a richer, deeper simulation and lower quality art (the lack of intermediate LODs ensures this).

[Badi_Dea 476]

@Ltw I think you hit it on the head with your whole second paragraph. Are we back and the old argument that there is simply not enough simulation complexity to make C:S anything other than a city painter?

@OcramsRzr Good point about C:XL, the problem there is that it's a fundamentally broken engine, let alone game. It's not a good anything when it suffers from memory leaks the size of the gash in the Titanic.

Do you think that perhaps the best thing that could happen to C:S is when CO/Paradox decide to end support and stop publishing DLC? I'm sure @boformer could speak to this better than anyone, but it seams to me that modders would be much more willing to override the world and make much more game changing mods when there is no longer a looming threat of a new update/DLC breaking months of hard work?
And of course the other pain point, should modders really be the ones responsible for creating all these amazing things? Wouldn't the developers be the ideal people to add some game changing features and enhancements? *insert link to the has CO lost touch thread* (personally, I am trying real hard to be objective about the whole thing. I think at the core CO really does understand what we want but are beholden to internal politics and timelines; I don't want to be overly critical nor fanboyish)

When it comes down to it, I am glad that we at least have the flexibility to make this game appeal to two entirely different groups of people. Even though it would be very nice to have a little bit of game logic doing the heavy lifting and handling at least some of beautification programmatically.

[boformer 3,169]

On 11/08/2016 at 5:37 AM, Badi_Dea said:

@Ltw@OcramsRzr I'm sure @boformer could speak to this better than anyone, but it seams to me that modders would be much more willing to override the world and make much more game changing mods when there is no longer a looming threat of a new update/DLC breaking months of hard work?
And of course the other pain point, should modders really be the ones responsible for creating all these amazing things? Wouldn't the developers be the ideal people to add some game changing features and enhancements? *insert link to the has CO lost touch thread* (personally, I am trying real hard to be objective about the whole thing. I think at the core CO really does understand what we want but are beholden to internal politics and timelines; I don't want to be overly critical nor fanboyish)

I'm not really afraid that the game breaks, but that CO is having the same idea, e.g. I see a high chance for water traffic and larger farms in an upcoming DLC.

Personally I'm afraid of game-changing (game-breaking) mods because it makes cities unplayable when the mod is no longer available.

There are also problems with compatibility between mods. For example, my larger zones mod is incompatible with BuildingThemes, 81 Tiles and various other mods.

[Tomas13TO 11]

16 hours ago, boformer said:

I see a high chance for water traffic and larger farms in an upcoming DLC.

Why do you think so ?

[boformer 3,169]

4 hours ago, Tomas13TO said:

Why do you think so ?

It's just a logical conclusion. The base for these features is there.

[Tomas13TO 11]

11 hours ago, boformer said:

It's just a logical conclusion. The base for these features is there.

That would be great. I would like to see ferries as another transport system.

[Ltw 401]

On 8-11-2016 at 5:37 AM, Badi_Dea said:

@Ltw I think you hit it on the head with your whole second paragraph. Are we back and the old argument that there is simply not enough simulation complexity to make C:S anything other than a city painter?

Partly, yes. I think this is mostly caused by the fact that computers are limited. Agent-based simulation (like in Cities:Skylines) is quite demanding. The fact that they could've implement challenges like I described in my previous post is also due to the fact that simulation-dynamics are weigh different in that game, simply because agent-based simulation like this wasn't possible to do back then. And don't forget about mods like NAM and CAM, without mods like that the game would've been abandoned a long time ago. This leaves us to the question you're asking right here, which is a very good question to ask: Is C:S more than a city painter?

In my opinion it is more than a city painter, but there are some serious issues that need to be addressed. I'm not a programmer so I don't know to what extent this is possible but I think it is. If others have attributions to my thoughts feel free to add them. Every citizen is being simulated, meaning that you can follow every single person. These people have certain characteristics, such as for instance age, happiness, education-level and employment. My suggestion would be to add wealth to this list. The direct implication of wealth would be the place people choose to live, if they are poor they would live in cheaper districts and if they are rich they would live in more expensive districts. This also means that people from different income-classes have a different incomes. We don't need to express this in terms of money, but in the implications wealth has. Right now if you look at lots that offer jobs it is divided in education-level. If someone is over-educated it is mentioned in the information of the building. However, what kind of results has being over-educated to that particular person? If wealth is being added to this it would mean that in this particular case the person would earn less than he potentially could, decreasing wealth and decreasing happiness. I've also talked about spending in at commercial buildings in my previous post. It would be great if they could implement that directly but I could imagine that that would be harder to do. Another thing that I would like to add to this is the preference of commercial zones by poor people. Poor people would most likely go to zones with lower housing prices instead of zones with high housing prices in order to do shopping. Furthermore, they might go out for goods less often than wealthier people. This way poor people have another effect on commercial revenue without giving them an income expressed in a certain value.

In my view this would be possible in the simulation of Skylines, especially since certain characteristics such as education are already implemented in the game. You could go further with the simulation of wealth and the results of this but I tried to stick to the current simulation dynamics as much as possible. This way I tried to show that it seems possible to do such a thing. Adding this could also improve realistic city-building a lot, there is another reason to make something less desirable. Mainly the need for less wealthy people. The lack of attention to wealth in the current game is in my opinion influencing this quite a lot. And not in a particular good way. I really like the game, but it could be something even better. And implementing wealth could be one of the things that makes it better.

[Ocram's Razr 963]

@Ltw Wealth is barely simulated at all in Cities: Skylines but enough of it is that it can be modded to be fully simulated. Commercial buildings level up if they have wealthy shoppers and demand higher level goods (made by leveled-up factories). With residential buildings L1 is low wealth, L2-L3 are medium wealth, and L4-L5 are high wealth. By separating wealth from growth stage, as @boformer plans, upgraded low wealth would have different needs from unupgraded high wealth (though medium wealth might have similar needs, and therefore unupgraded medium wealth could coexist with upgraded low wealth).

[Badi_Dea 476]

On 11/5/2016 at 7:54 PM, Badi_Dea said:

I think my greatest hope for C:S is the new scenario editor in the upcoming expansion.
Why? Not because of a win condition, that's for sure. It's because we will be able to create scenarios where we need to make interesting and complex decisions.
...snipped...

This is New Game ++ here! this is the saving grace of those of us who care more for mechanics than Photoshop! And I am absolutely stoked for it!

I just had to admit somewhere how wrong I was...

Now that the DLC is out, and we can mess around with the Scenario Editor; I have to admit that I am extremely disappointed.
I was expecting so much more... The condition statements are rudimentary but serviceable. The effect statements are a complete travesty!

How can CO release scenarios as a free update when, in essence, the only thing you can do with it is call disasters that are only included in the paid DLC?
If you haven't looked at it yet, your options for conditional effect statements amount to: Win, Lose, Get Money, Lose Money, and Call Disaster...

Taking a realist perspective, I bought the DLC because of the sunk cost fallacy. I'm too invested in the product to not buy it on the ever diminishing chance that it impresses me.

There is no other reason to play this game as anything other than a city painter, the developer is either unable to unwilling to include anything but the most basic mechanics.
It's not what I want, it's not even what I want to admit, but now that we are approaching close to 2 years after release a trend has been established that has a low likelihood of reversing.

[Linoa06 1,374]

On 11/5/2016 at 0:01 AM, Libertyville said:

I'm somewhere in between. But at a minimum, I must have a functioning city. Aesthetics and function require two different types of talent.

For aesthetics, the player must be familiar with how things are in real life, be it a port, a stadium, or a yacht club. This actually requires the player to also know how these things work. But the keys to make that happen are the right custom assets and mods, and the time to do it. It's actually not so challenging, but just fun and satisfying. 

For functionality, the player must create a multi-faceted system in both urban planning, policies, and people's life. The efforts that go into this are not as readily visible as a beautiful garden of props. But they are much more demanding and more difficult.

I believe that functionality is what this type of games will lean toward, and it is best at demonstrating the power of a game. It is also more challenging than placing pretty props without budget concerns. In real life, functionality comes first. The real impressive cities of our world, be it Singapore or Shanghai, are the ones that make it work first, before they make it aesthetically pleasing. They are the ones who start with formidable disadvantages and found a way around them.

Placing pretty props requires many clicks and fine tuning. But it gets boring quickly. You can always make something look pretty and prettier. It's repetitive. One of the ways that demonstrate an excellent player is how the transit/transport system works in the city, with its many functions. Unfortunately, screenshots and videos do not demonstrate them. Few players are interested in showing them. Transport systems are one of the most enjoyable aspects of the game for me.

I do not create cities that have perfect highways, all symmetrical designs, a cluster of unbelievable skyscrapers with no life around them. I think Photoshop can do that.

I think not everybody has the same definition of aesthetics. For me, I need the city to look life-like, without having to resort to cheap metros or destroying an entire district and displacing 50k people free of consequences; others prefer custom assets everywhere. I personally try to strike a balance - I'm trying to place more props, and I refuse to play "excellently" because I don't play CSL to "achieve" any sort of skill ceiling or whatever, that's what World of Warcraft is for. If the game's rules dictate that the most "efficient" way to build a city is to spam ugly solutions to "make it work" and be "excellent" then I'll stay a casual and not bother thank you very much. 

I would also disagree that placing props is "repetitive", in fact you can always find areas of a city to embellish and to be fair, street signs and the like would also be part of proper city building and proper pathfinding.  Now it is true I often find myself slightly disappointed at these massively beautiful shots of cities which turn out to be little more than staged shots with the rest of the city woefully empty if not unfinished, there's a huge appeal to the game in fine-tuning your city. However, I will put its looks first simply because the game with all its simulated rules can lead somebody to different conclusions than the same real life situation - something fairly obvious in the fact after a few years you're just swimming in cash. I would also disagree that somebody just knows how something is built to copy it aesthetically - I see so many so called "airport masters" fail to even number their runways properly, though in fact maybe that feeds into your point that because you can make something look like something doesn't mean you know how it works.

That's where I need to strike a balance. I want to build a metro, and I'll build it - using conventional rail, which needs actual construction and money and debating pros and cons rather than just spamming underground metro stations that in real life would put my city's budged irredeemably in the red, and which serves as both eye candy and functional asset to the simulation . I want to upgrade my central thoroughfare, I'll do so - but I will certainly not demolish all the buildings around it in the process. I'll design flawed looking intersections because real life intersections would work that way, or the intersection was built that way with little room for demolition, etc. I will certainly not have a master plan to keep to as if I began building my city in 2016. 

Having said all that, I do think the city must be functional, maybe not flawlessly, and it's always more fun with more restrictions than the game offers, but as I said there's little more disappointing than a nice looking area turning out to be staged with little else built on the map or resembling a city.

To several people, the aesthetic part of the game comes from the cities looking and feeling lifelike, but that is not mutually exclusive from finetuning the simulation, far from it. You can have pretty props /and/ a fine tuned simulation. It's not a zero-sum game.

[omnivoreceo 54]

I'm somewhere in the middle. The simulation part is really the strongest part of the allure for me. I love the detail of being able to name things and get as immersed as I want to, but also..I like that the game can just operate without a lot of micromanaging. Skylines has done a great job balancing that for me, by and large, and of course thanks to the mod community it makes the game a lot more playable. 

But I don't really like injecting a lot of chaos into the city unnecessarily, I think it's less "diorama" and more "legit simulation" where I can model different things, ideas and see how they work, etc. For instance, the past few months I haven't even resumed building my own cities from scratch. My new model is downloading saved games from the Steam Workshop of cities people have built and then basically becoming mayor and doing things like modifying neighborhoods and rebuilding transit infrastructure.

This was something we really couldn't do much in SC4 and it's breathed new life into C:S for me, because honestly after 20 years of city building, there is only so much you can do without feeling like it's old news. Plus, I don't have the time to play like I did when I was younger. 

[cromabianca 158]

I don't care about the simulation AT ALL! Also, I don't get why people call it cheating... that's actually really childish and annoying! For me these kind of games are kinda like railroad modelling... not a lot of simulation there, is it?

Having said that, I also enjoy playing a little vanilla SC4 every once in a while... just because I enjoy watching the city coming along and stuff... but yeah, generally I'm all for te looks and making the most beautful city I can.

So I'm one of the (spolier!) very few that voted n.1

  Edited December 12, 2016 by cromabianca  
typos

[Ocram's Razr 963]

I have yet to see more than a neighborhood in any region consistently look good because the best screenshots are merely one of up to a small handful of Obsessively Crafted Dioramas. It's like the diorama builders have an Outright Compulsion to make something that looks good in screenshots from a narrow range of angles, leaving an empty, Dysfunctional region, seemingly from a disordered mind.

 

Cities XXL vanilla is perfect for diorama builders and has tools to make it easier built in. Unmodded Cities: Skylines has a decent simulation but is IMPOSSIBLE to make dioramas with. Prop Anarchy, Ploppable RICO, and Move-It are required to make diorama building possible but do not make it easy. I use Ploppable RICO in order to have lowrise high wealth condos, and highrise public housing projects, but separating of wealth from density, combined with deeper zones would take away my demand for Ploppabe RICO for most cases (except for functional landmarks).