Paradox Interactive Announces Cities: Skylines II

[GFreeman]

Paradox Interactive and Colossal Order today announced Cities: Skylines II, a revolutionary sequel to their hit city-simulation game. Cities: Skylines II offers the most realistic city simulation ever created, in which players can build any kind of city they can imagine and follow its growth from a humble village to a bustling metropolis. From individual households to the city's economy and transportation system, Cities: Skylines II offers a deep and immersive simulation that welcomes both new and veteran players. Cities: Skylines II launches on PC, Xbox Series X|S, and PlayStation 5 later this year.

A modern take on the city building genre, Cities: Skylines II lets players create and maintain cities that come to life like never before, complete with fully-realized transport and economy systems, a wealth of construction and customization options, and advanced modding capabilities. Revealed during the Paradox Announcement Show 2023, Cities: Skylines II evolves the city-building genre further, letting players build the cities of their dreams with the most open-ended city-building sandbox on the planet.



Developed by the critically-acclaimed developer Colossal Order, Cities: Skylines launched in 2015 for PC. Over the past eight years, it has expanded to numerous platforms with dozens of DLCs and over 12 million copies sold. The accuracy and depth of its simulation has earned the respect of professional city planners, who use Cities: Skylines to solve real-world problems.

"Cities: Skylines reset the bar for city building games when it launched eight years ago, and we are incredibly proud of its impact. We built a thriving community around Cities and introduced many to city building for the first time," said Mariina Hallikainen, CEO of Colossal Order. "Now, we've brought the years of experience we've gained to take a new step forward in the city builder genre, again, for our community and new players".

"The Cities brand has been an important part of Paradox's catalog of games for over a decade. Cities: Skylines is a profound success, selling millions of copies, welcoming more than 5.5 million new players just last year, and setting the foundation for Cities: Skylines II," said Fredrik Wester, CEO of Paradox Interactive. "With unprecedented amounts of customization and player control, Cities: Skylines II will continue to push boundaries for the city-building franchise."

To learn more, please visit the Cities: Skylines II website and stay tuned for further information and updates on the official forums, Twitter, Instagram and Discord. Fans can look forward to more reveals and gameplay in the coming months and celebrate Cities: Skylines' eighth birthday on March 10.

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[Bomby569]

looks amazing and i can't wait to play it. Now for the endless paid dlc that's another story

 

[lemonadesoda]

Is it just construction with NPC's roaming the streets? Or can you affect economics, politics and social behaviours too? Would be great to see the citizens rioting if you build a 5-minute city, or skid rows if you screw up unemployment and let law and order get out of hand. Or indeed holding fetes, carnivals and firework displays when you get it right. Online league tables for social credit scores. Rule the little people, Mayor of Cities!

 

[DeathtoGnomes]

Lets hope a repeat of the first launch doesnt happen again.

 

[stimpy88]

It worries me that there was not one frame of actual gameplay footage from the game...

 

[Frick]

Hoping for a bit more depth.

 

[Wye]

"Not actual gameplay" warning

 

[Octopuss]

looks amazing and i can't wait to play it. Now for the endless paid dlc that's another story

That's just a render, did you not notice the "not actual gameplay" text?

 

[Bomby569]

That's just a render, did you not notice the "not actual gameplay" text?

i know and it's obvious it's not gameplay, but i'm commenting on what i see, hoping it represents the actual game

 

[dragontamer5788]

More importantly, welcome GFreeman! I hope you enjoy your stay

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I've been personally more into Paradox Game's other offerings, like Hearts of Iron. But Cities Skylines came out at just the right time: right as SimCity collapsed about 8 years ago. And Cities Skylines managed to create one of the best traffic simulators in modern gaming (though I still prefer Factorio and OpenTTD's traffic algorithms, Skylines is clearly one of the best). Hopefully this continues in Skylines 2.

 

[Selaya]

Skylines is clearly one of the best

you mustn't have actually played the game like, ever then

 

[dragontamer5788]

you mustn't have actually played the game like, ever then

Cities: Skylines, good or bad, is almost 100% built up from its traffic simulator. Trash builds up based on how your garbage trucks visit your houses, which is based on traffic patterns. The Police's reach is... based on how far police cars can get in X minutes, which is based on traffic patterns. Growth depends on how easily citizens of one house (or industry) can reach a commercial building, which is based on traffic patterns.

The entire game revolves around traffic management.

As I said earlier: I think I do prefer OpenTTD's model (where you control every single train / truck / bus in the entire game). But Cities Skylines is a bit easier... but still a lot of strategy involved in the traffic planning.

 

[Bomby569]

The game isn't good or bad according to the type of game you prefer. It's a great game, regardless if you like the style or not.

 

[Selaya]

i know how cities:dlcs works, i must've clocked like 1,000 hours of it on record now
(i am also aware of its ancestry, thank you very much)
and i have modded it to the death basically (not [really] made any myself, too dumb for that but used like half of the mod catalogue, blah you get the gist)

it's just that ... w/o mods its traffic model is plain retarded and essentially unusable (hello cims here's a 3 5 8 lane highway oh no we all have to exit it to the right FUCKYOU MAYOR WE'LL ONLY USE THE RIGHTMOST LANE FOR THE ENTIRE FUCKING LENGTH OF THE HIGHWAY), and even w/ tm: pe you're looking at cims being idiots like this (see attached image below)

so yeah

 

[droid-I]

Hoping for a bit more depth.

From what I read of some Cities: Skylines II review, they have included more elements for more "depth". (but yes, I never really played that game).

 

[Bomby569]

i know how cities:dlcs works, i must've clocked like 1,000 hours of it on record now
(i am also aware of its ancestry, thank you very much)
and i have modded it to the death basically (not [really] made any myself, too dumb for that but used like half of the mod catalogue, blah you get the gist)

it's just that ... w/o mods its traffic model is plain retarded and essentially unusable (hello cims here's a 3 5 8 lane highway oh no we all have to exit it to the right FUCKYOU MAYOR WE'LL ONLY USE THE RIGHTMOST LANE FOR THE ENTIRE FUCKING LENGTH OF THE HIGHWAY), and even w/ tm: pe you're looking at cims being idiots like this (see attached image below)

so yeah

colossal order was not a big studio, i think it may even be considered indie when the game came out, not sure. Perfect? sure no. But damn good, and the mods fixed games like Skyrim so i don't see that as to outrageous here

 

[Selaya]

nothing to do w/ a studio's size. just look at all them AAA bugfests
if any, id expect a mediumsized studio to deliver better quality (less ass-head managers & inertia), but clearly software developement's gone fucking wrong a very long time ago.

 

[The Von Matrices]

Looking forward to this. 4022 hours on Cities:Skylines so far on my Steam account. Some of that is leaving the game in the background to grow, but it's still a massive chunk of my time.

My main feature requests:

1. Use 32-bit integers for limits on buildings and vehicles instead of 16-bit. The 65,536 unit limit is restrictive for large cities. I have a lot of cities that I've wanted to make bigger but can't due to the limits.
2. More intelligent sources of resources. When a building needs a resource, it currently just pulls it from a random building even if it's across the city, and that makes massive traffic problems. It should prioritize acquiring resources from buildings that are closer.
3. Better lane assignment of vehicles on multi-lane roads instead of having most vehicles use the outermost lanes. Even mods like TME don't get this perfect. In a real traffic jam, all lanes are used.

 

[Octopuss]

I am pretty sure they will address the most serious simulation shortcomings and majorly improve the engine, otherwise it would make no sense to release a new game.
I loved the game but only played it a little, because I am completely retarded when it comes to strategies, unfortunately

 

[The Von Matrices]

I am pretty sure they will address the most serious simulation shortcomings and majorly improve the engine, otherwise it would make no sense to release a new game.
I loved the game but only played it a little, because I am completely retarded when it comes to strategies, unfortunately

I hope they do because they (or modders) have fixed the easy bugs but things like the 16-bit limitation require a complete engine rewrite and cannot be fixed by mods. With the past expansions only making superficial changes I worry that a sequel may not make the core changes required. At the very least I expect this to be like The Sims where the sequels had many fewer features than their predecessors, and those features were only reintroduced through paid expansions.

 

[JAB Creations]

Damn, the editing on that trailer is insane.

My only gripe with all city building games is that you can't optimize the maximize realestate space back-to-back early on so you have to break a lot of stuff and rebuild.

 

[Octopuss]

I hope they do because they (or modders) have fixed the easy bugs but things like the 16-bit limitation require a complete engine rewrite and cannot be fixed by mods. With the past expansions only making superficial changes I worry that a sequel may not make the core changes required. At the very least I expect this to be like The Sims where the sequels had many fewer features than their predecessors, and those features were only reintroduced through paid expansions.

Maybe the development of the new game is part of the reason why there weren't any significant updates to the game tech. And what do you know, maybe doing major updates to the game code would have resulted in having to start a new game, which no sane developer wants to do unless absolutely necessary, because pissing the playerbase off has economical implications.