Giveaway: Celebrating 4 years of Cities: Skylines

[boformer 3,169]

Cities: Skylines is turning 4 years old on March 10th!

To celebrate it, Paradox gave away 1200 Free Radio Station DLCs to creators and streamers! I got a few (15x) and want to share them with you, my favourite city builder community!

Post a brief story about your CSL experiences, a screenshot of your city, some CSL artwork, or your top 5 workshop assets.... and the number of hours you've played. As a reward, I will send you a key for one of the following radio station DLCs (please specify which one you would prefer)!

I will give out the keys on sunday evening. If there are more than 15 replies, I will try to get some more keys!

Update: Go ahead, there are still keys for all 3 stations left! I will keep the thread open until all of them are gone

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Template to participate in the giveaway:

Your story/screenshot/thoughts:

Total playtime on Steam:

Preferred Radio Station DLC:

[  ] All That Jazz
[  ] Relaxation Station
[  ] Rock City Radio

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Other things going on:

• There's also a Design a Chirpy contest on Facebook, and various streamers are also giving away keys!
• And if you are still missing some of the DLCs: There's a big sale going on in the Paradox Store!

[pf234 6]

Your story/screenshot/thoughts:
My first city on CSL was over 200k when I decided to return to have a life since I was playing it every day for over a month and over 400 hours already. 2016 wasn't a good year for many reasons and at those times all I wanted was to stay home and play it. I currently cannot load that city anymore because of the changes in the game, but no screenshot would do justice to it's beauty and complexity. So that's not what I'm sharing here. A few months later I decided to just make a new city and never save it, just for the fun of making it. I don't even remember if it had a name but I made some screenshots in the end just to see how it was. I liked this one and so I attached it here.

Total playtime on Steam:
560 hours

Preferred Radio Station DLC:
Rock City Radio

[Strdate 16]

I don't know what this is all about, but I've just released a new mod, can I get a cookie?  

For you I went to check how many hours I have on record and it is feeble 157 hours. On Cities in Motion 2 I have 152, rest in peace, I wish there was modding support at that time...

I would take the Rock City Radio if there is something left!

[Joshmaul 23]

Your story/screenshot/thoughts:
I picked up Skylines in September 2016, looking for an alternative to the horrifically limited teensy-tropolises of SimCity 2013 (not to mention the unstable nature of Origin, then and now). I forget who ended up suggesting it to me - someone in an SC group on Facebook, I think? - but of the games I have played, this has proven to be the one with the biggest scale. My "capital of capitals", Underwood City, has been worked on in various forms since 1996 (including being remade three different times in this game alone - twice due to hard drive death), and this game is the first that's made it feel "real". Plus, a bunch of the mods from the Quad Rioters collection - like the old Arcologies and such - are a friendly reminder of my dream city's "humble" origins in SimCity 2000.

Total playtime on Steam: 168 hours

Preferred Radio Station DLC: Rock City Radio (as it's the only one of the three I don't have, heh)

[boformer 3,169]

First wave of keys is out. Check your PMs

 

[Dashie14 3]

Story:

I don't remember when I actually started playing CLS; maybe it was back in 2017. I'll be honest, I started playing a cracked copy of the game. Not anymore though :3

Watched a couple of Let's Plays and found out the game had several DLC. Of course the cracked copy I had didn't have any DLC so I tried searching for one with all the DLC. Found one, installed it... Boy that was a mistake... Who knew DLC actually increased the resource requirements of the game? My potato laptop, which was barely able to pull through the base game, just flopped when I loaded up this copy with all the DLC. It took, and I kid you not, about 30 minutes to an hour to actually start a new game and move past the loading screen. You know the crazy thing? I actually had the patience to wait for it ;_;
Give or take a couple months and the Mass Transit DLC just got announced. I was hyped! I really wanted to build monorails and blimps and stuff. Yeah, no cracked with Mass Transit unfortunately ;_;

Give or take a few more months and the game was on sale on Steam, so I bought it (Yay no more cracked for me). Was so happy to have an official copy, I decided to add a whole bunch of assets from the Steam Workshop. Yeah, my laptop didn't like that as well
I'm currently forced to use no assets and only the Mass Transit DLC if I even want to play the game at a "playable" frame rate.
Hope I can get a better computer soon so I can play with all the DLC.

I played a bit this weekend and created a city I'm pretty happy with. Forgive me for the terrible lighting from the picture, that's the best my laptop can do ;_;

Total playtime:

+200 hrs cracked ):
34 hrs as recorded on Steam

Preferred Radio Station DLC:

Relaxation Station

[boformer 3,169]

1 hour ago, Dashie14 said:

I'm currently forced to use no assets and only the Mass Transit DLC if I even want to play the game at a "playable" frame rate.
Hope I can get a better computer soon so I can play with all the DLC.

Thanks for sharing your story! Sending out the keys to you!

The game was really not made for laptops   It might be possible to upgrade the RAM of your laptop

I'm not sure if you already know, but it might help to disable the "Euro/Vanilla" building style in content manager and only play with one high density style.

Also, while assets might be too heavy for your computer, you can still install a few visual mods to improve the light settings. Those don't require any extra RAM or graphics processing!

I would start with these:

• Daylight Classic
• Softer Shadows
• Clouds & Fog Toggler
• No Radioactive Desert And More!

Loading Screen Mod might also help to speed up the loading time, even without workshop assets. Give it a try!

You can also get mods like Move It, Fine Road Tools or Fine Road Anarchy without having to worry.

 

 

[Alek_builder 3]

Your story/screenshot/thoughts:
Hi! I've been building cities almost my entire life, and I've started with simcity2k. There were some dark moments - not to make the same mistake twice - no preorders after the disaster of SimCity(2013). Also my faith in city builders was pretty low back then. Not my brightest moment - but after the lunch of CS I've borrowed  it mostly to flame on it  with guys at work. Was wrong. Bought it next day. I'm all in with CS since then, and love it even more with every update! Hope that the game and the community will continue to thrive!

CO & Paradox - you rock!

Total playtime on Steam:

469h and counting

Preferred Radio Station DLC:

[  ] All That Jazz
[X] Relaxation Station
[  ] Rock City Radio

[Gazza18 4]

Your story/screenshot/thoughts:

I was a big fan of city building games ever since SimCity 3000, I always enjoyed using my imagination to form and create something new. I cannot consider myself a hardcore gamer like in the old time, but still games like Cities Skylines allow me to forget about everyday issues and relax a bit in front of the screen.

 

Total playtime on Steam: 36 hours

Preferred Radio Station DLC:

[X] All That Jazz
[  ] Relaxation Station
[  ] Rock City Radio

[boformer 3,169]

Thanks everyone for sharing their stories, and thanks for actually putting some effort into this! I really enjoyed the read!

If you still want a key: There are still a few left! Post your reply, and I will send you all 3 of them

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Now is the time for my story:

I've almost enjoyed city building games. I started with SimTown and SC2000 when I was 4 or 5 (too hard for me at that time), then came SC3000 and SC4. I probably spent a thousand hours in SC4, with and without mods. From a gameplay perspective, it is still one of my favourite games! In many regards, it is so much better than CSL, even today!

Insert rant about SC2013

Then came Cities: Skylines! I don't even remember how I found it and what happened in the first few weeks, but it looks like I enjoyed it a lot! I quickly started to use mods to fix some of the shortcomings of the game (unable to reverse one-way roads etc...). At some point I was unable to find a mod that does what I needed: I wanted to replace the default roadside trees with palm trees to fit my tropical city. And so my first mod was born: TreeReplacer. And it wasn't meant to be my last mod

While the game is wonderful and I put hundreds of hours into it, my true passion is mod development. Maybe it's not even the development itself, but the collaboration with other creators and the interaction with the community that made me stick for so long. I've had the honour to collaborate with BloodyPenguin, SamsamTS, MrMaison, Ronyx, TPB, AJ3D, Quadrioters, Klyte, Judazzz, rik4000 and many others. To all of you: You are easily the best people I've met in the jungle of the Internet, and I'm looking forward to see some of you in Finland this summer (more on this soon...)!

Steam says that I played the game for 1099 hours. Probably half of it was debugging and testing

A screenshot from my last "real" city, Koko Head, taken in 2016:

[Androv 6]

I've played SimCity since my old SimCity on a floppy disc on my MacPlus ... about 30 years ago now I think.  Always a bit on and off.

I've also tried City Life (?) and Cities XL and the various incarnations of that producer.

Cities Skylines is very good; I miss the region play of SimCity 4 which allowed for even greater cities to be built but it was also quite buggy.

I've included a shot of Tristan Island in the Atlantic.  I downloaded the terrain from terrainparty; the main problem is that there is (was?) no way to have an island city without a road connection; to that end there is a hidden motorway bridge on the far side of the island to the city.

When building cities I like to built flat rather than build tall; I find cities of 10,000 people with 10-story apartment buildings very odd and unrealistic.  However this seems to cause problems with services which in almost all games seem to have a very limited range.

I only have 244 hours logged.

All that Jazz would be the one for me.

 

[Fox 1,444]

Your story/screenshot/thoughts:

I've been playing city building games since SimCity was released in 1989, followed by SC2k, SC3k, SC4k and a few other various city builder games until Cities Skylines was released and I've been playing ever since. I love the traffic management, the design aspects and just making things look pretty and functional. I love finding all the quirks and oddities like burning ferris wheels and confused tourists as well as exploring the lighting in the dusk and dawn phases of the game. Favorite buildings include One Liberty Place, John Hancock Center and KK100 as well as Dexter's intersections and your Mods .. hehe.

Total playtime on Steam:

2341 hours

Preferred Radio Station DLC:

Rock City sounds interesting.

 

[boformer 3,169]

4 hours ago, Androv said:

I've included a shot of Tristan Island in the Atlantic.  I downloaded the terrain from terrainparty; the main problem is that there is (was?) no way to have an island city without a road connection; to that end there is a hidden motorway bridge on the far side of the island to the city.

Actually it is possible. With mods you can place a cargo harbour and a passenger harbour (or airport) in the map editor. The outside connection can be a single highway loop in the edge of the map, though there are also ways to remove that requirement. If you ever want to restart, send me a message

 

[cristianomr 2]

Your story/screenshot/thoughts:
This is my second map,  was a challenge map about the sewer pollution, that i had to solve.
I bought recently a new graphic card, so i try to find some games that I used to play yearsss ago, like SimCity.
So I find CSL, and it's amazing!!

Total playtime on Steam:
123 hours

Preferred Radio Station DLC:
Rock City Radio

[OasisArchitect 11]

Your story/screenshot/thoughts: This is only my most recent city, Sydney; I've made and lost many more. I've been playing this game since I found out about it in June 2015 while watching playthroughs of SimCity 2013 (anyone remember that game?). 150+ mods and 3.5K+ assets later I'm still here, wondering how my computer hasn't exploded yet.

Total playtime on Steam:
3247 hours

Preferred Radio Station DLC:

Relaxation Station

[Somnolence 81]

Is it 4 years already?!  

I don't want any more radio DLCs btw, but your stories and screenshots are amazing.

[Alvaron 1]

I'm rather a casual player. I play on my laptop and it heats drastically when I play. Because of that I can only play in sessions of 2-3 hours a day to not destroy it entirely. I play with Snowfall, After Dark and Mass Transit DLC's and I find it enough content for me. 
I'm not good at this game, by cities tend to have traffic jams and pollution level is very high. i had however one city that I loved to build, but I got a bug and I got megalopolis milestone with about 4000 population and it spoiled the game for me for some time. I try my best and I hope to keep getting better and better with each city!

I still enjoy Cities Skylines and would like Relaxation Station dlc. I don't have a lot of playtime (18h on Steam + a lot more during offline mode to not overload my laptop) but I want to make up and play it soon again.

[boformer 3,169]

One set of keys is left!

[Turjan 1,048]

Hmm, just stumbled on this. Whether this is really still open or not, here's my thoughts.

Your story/screenshot/thoughts:

My first city builder was the original SimCity from 1989, and I loved the idea already then. My enthusiasm cooled down somewhat when I discovered that that game had an optimal, but nonsensical solution (don't interconnect the road network!), and I took a break from city builders for quite some time. It was only in 2012 when I got to play SimCity 4 for the first time, and wow, did I get hooked. I clocked more than 1600 hours on Steam alone, and I still love the game to bits, as I still think it's a better city simulation than C:S. However, I also love traffic management, and I also put several hundred hours into each of the prior offerings by Colossal Order, the two Cities in Motion titles. Both games had their limitations, but CiM2 had already some rudimentary "city building" included. When CO announced a real city builder, I preordered the game.
My first contact with computers was only late at university, and I never really learned any programing (my little brother already got a C64), which means I only ever am a player. My first city in Cities Skylines grew to close to 400k inhabitants, and I  basically stopped when I hit the inbuilt limits. This first city only slowly introduced some of the wonderful assets created by the community, but this always stayed in the range of a few dozens. My next cities were heavily modded and used thousands of workshop assets, and I really love what the community brought to the table here. The pic is from my latest larger city, which only sports vanilla assets, but still made use of about 100 mods that make city building so much easier (the city loads without mods though):

Total playtime on Steam: 2875 hours

Preferred Radio Station DLC: All that Jazz

If I'm too late, that's also fine. If not: I already have the Relaxation Station.

[boformer 3,169]

5 hours ago, Turjan said:

If I'm too late, that's also fine. If not: I already have the Relaxation Station

I will send you the last set of keys. You can send the relaxation station to a friend

Btw, that's a really impressive city!

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Thread is now closed. Thanks everyone for your replies!