New to Cities: Skylines

[SimCityCommander 8]

I just started SimCity Complete.   I've built a city to about 600k in bank and about 18,000 in population.  I was just about to put down my Omega Factory when I looked at my city (Cape Trinity - Norwich Hills) and I still wasn't happy with it.   I quickly learned that you can't play on Cheetah mode; it will ruin the ability to grow your city...it did for me even though I was on the right path.  However, the goal of SimCity is to build neighboring cities with their own personality.  Norwich Hills is a very rich oil drilling area with a secondary ore mining site.   So it should be an industrial site with many industrial buildings, an oil drill with oil jacks, and eventually an ore mining facility.    Seven (7) times I had deleted and start over, with only one victory as I mentioned above.  

I loved what Complete has done to the SimCity franchise, but I dislike the automatic connection made with power, waiter, garbage and sewer.   I think only power and water had lines and pipes in SimCity 4.  It doesn't matter now because when I went to purchase SimCity4 from GOG only to find Cities: Skylines on Steam.   I decided to purchase the game and give it a try.

It's not as intuitive as SimCity...well, it is but I'm use to dropping just about anything needed: power, water, garbage, and other services even if they are not needed.  My limitation is simoleons and the necessary infrastructure for that particular service.

I did create a small city using Black Woods(?) - what I absolutely love about Skylines is that everything cost money to build and maintain.   It makes you plan and grow your city as if you were a city planner in real life.   The land isn't half baked like SimCity - the terraforming from SimCity4 is what made SimCity very popular.  I remember using GIS information and SimCity's terraforming format to create real cities based on GIS data.

I'm sold on Cities: Skylines and the small tutorial wasn't very helpful, but it did supply me with enough information to get going.   I love the Chirp - so much easier than to click on a voice bubble everytime someone wants something.

Now that I have a taste, where is the manual or even better some tutorials.   Youtube is an obvious answer and there are some guides on Steam.   Please list comments, advice, and other resources in a reply to this topic.

I still have a heart for SimCity, but I think Skylines is a much better experience once you learn the interface and economy.   It was just too easy to go from zero and 600k in SimCity on Cheetah speed.

CptStrategy

[perafilozof 143]

I will link you some guides and tutorials:

Traffic guide by Perafilozof:

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1831101257

How to fix Death waves and Cims dying at the same time

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2001650191

As for the videos:

here is a playlist full of tips, guides and tricks:

 

[SimCityCommander 8]

Thanks pera,

I appreciate the help!   So what is the consensus on which is better Cities or SimCity?   I'm edging toward Cities.

[perafilozof 143]

Honestly,

They are different enough games and each have shortcomings that I don't even look at them as competition.

Skylines is wide but shallow as a puddle when it comes to core gameplay. SimCity is very constrained but at least has deeper gameplay.

Skylines style is based on the unity engine which is basic to say the least. SimCity has it's own, Glassbox engine which has amazing capabilities but wasn't utilized. 

Skylines is open for both mods and assets and lives because of them. SimCity is locked tight, was planed to be DLC and asset shop, before EA abandoned those plans.

Both games fudge numbers, Cims/Sims and the underlining simulations are really far away from reality or logic. Both are glorified City paint tools.

My concussion is that developers in this genre have realized that the real city building players are really small in number while fans who can't design cities if they life depended on it are the norm. So, they streamlined, simplified and fudged the games into screenshot generators. They sell really well, and have many players but under the hood are very bad games.

I might get flak for saying this because it's a hard pill to swallow.

[SimCityCommander 8]

Pera,

That is the most honest response I've heard in a while.   Skyrim was a game that I played using the vanilla gamebase for many hours.   It wasn't until I started modding Legendary Edition that Special Edition was released.  I lost so many hours not playing mods like Requiem - LE's only hard core mod that is worthy to play...no SE for now.  Skyrim LE has many, many more mods than SE, but it is unstable after 50 to 100 loaded mods.  Skyrim SE is at the heart,  64 bit game.  It has much more depth and stability to the point where players were porting over mods that were easy to do so in the Creation Kit - just save as Form 44 and let CK do the rest.

Skyrim SE has more depth, for example, using ESL tagged files, can avoid the 255 limitation for total mods.  I'm currently modding SE and it is a long, tedious process to do it correctly.  I found Cities just after purchasing SimCity and I have found a new love for City building due to the very nice graphics, weather, and just overall game play.

I had a similar conflict with Legendary Edition over Special Edition.  Special Edition won because I found enough mods to make my game play the same as I would in Legendary Editioin.

SimCity Complete - very basic city creation that can lead to large cities relatively quickly.   Easy to make money as there is no construction costs for pipes, power lines, or roads.  Cities of Tomorrow expansion pack allows you to place assets that can turn your city into an efficient green energy and production city.  Coal, Ore, and Oil can make your city money quickly until you need to use it for say an Omega factory which will make more Simoleons  than drilling raw materials.   Complete does have expansion packs, not DLC's:  Cities of Tomorrow (flagship),  Airship (bring back the balloon ships), Amusement Park Set (looks good), British, French, German City sets (adding character and historic assets).  Digital Deluxe Upgrade Pack (the Big Daddy) Heroes and Villians plus the European City Set (British, French, German),  Skyclops Coaster Crown (Mega Tower addon), and finally the Nissan Leaf (Electric Car).

I can understand why you said SimCity has deeper gameplay; but without the expansion packs, the game play is very generic and doesn't come close to SimCity4 which Simtropolis provided what EA decided to abandon.  The Network Traffic Model is widely used in 4 along with other wonderful assets.  There was a time where you could terraform your local city by getting the GIS data and using it in game.  I did it for Seattle and it was cool to build my version of Seattle.  SimCity4 is still the best SimCity ever.   SimCity Complete is a very well written game that has a lot of feature rich content that is included in the game and supplemented by expansion packs.   There are some Simtropolis assets for SCC but I didn't care for any of them.

Cities - A learning curve existed for me when starting the game.  The one way roads presented me with a Rubik' Cube problem; how to bring a road into town.  A straight road going vertical across wouldn't work, and I never thought of a roundabout until I saw Move The Mouse tutorial on how to build a city.  The answer was there,  I just couldn't figure out the sequence..

After watching a few videos, I started to build my city, making mistakes along the way.  Saving at multiple completions (roundabout, road layout,  power-water-zones, etc).  Deleting saves.  It was an experience I could not share with SimCity.   I created, build, and deleted my cities, but the value wasn't as great as what I have in Cities.  Simtropolis, Steam Workstop, Community Players, have all contributed to Cities.  There is a Talk Cities To Me where a handful of active players built assets to enhance the game or provide unique historical buildings.  In turn this allows a player to recreate some of the cities in the world, such as Prague.

I have to say that I like Cities just a little more than SimCity, at least compared to the Complete series.   Even with the DLC's and mods for Cities, and the expansion packs for SimCity, the edge goes to Cities...just a bit better on the strategy and gameplay.

SimCity Commander