Listing the biggest details about one of the most anticipated sequels this year: Cities: Skylines 2 . Here’s everything new coming to City Skylines 2
As far as city-sims go, few have succeeded quite like Cities: Skylines. The first game back in 2015 blew expectations out of the water by providing a completely open-ended experience of managing an entire city, from guiding its urban development to mapping out public transportation. Needless to say, fans of the genre were hooked. Veterans and first-timers who jumped into Skylines were each handed the reins to design and maintain the metropolis of their dreams. As a result, it quickly became one of the most popular city management games, even surpassing venerable titles in the genre like Sim City.
Now that we’re only a couple of months away from the exciting release of Cities: Skylines 2, we compiled a list of the biggest things to look forward to in Colossal Studios’ grand follow-up. Here’s everything we know about Cities: Skylines 2.
Smarter AI
Cities: Skylines 2 has significantly improved the AI of the characters operating in your city. Everything from the way they behave to how they move on the road have been reworked for the sequel, all of which depend on overall cost of travel.
Pathfinding in Cities: Skylines 2 is influenced by cost of money, time and comfort. In other words, your civilians will take the easiest route while travelling to their destination. Numerous city structures can also affect this, noise pollution, parking spots and gas prices to name a few.
In a feature highlight, the game’s new traffic management system was also showcased, detailing the new ways to unclog the frustrating jams on the road.
Bigger Map
Cities: Skylines 2 will be 5x bigger than the first game. Measured at about 159 km², or just over 60 square miles (that’s bigger than some cities in real life!) With these proportions, players will have all of the building space they need to realize the city of their own design. Additionally, the roads you lay will now distribute its own electric grid as you develop your infrastructure.
However, bigger isn’t always better. As your metropolis grows, roadside accidents will become more frequent, and more city services will need to expand their operations. What’s more is that natural disasters can also occur, hitting not only your carefully-planned city districts but also your economy at large. No one said that managing your own city was going to be easy! That said, progressing through the game’s milestones gives you a ton of perks and newer ways to grow to help you weather any storm.
Straightforward Expansion Mechanics
It wouldn’t be a proper city-sim if you couldn’t expand your territory, but in the case of Cities: Skylines 2, it isn’t just simple real estate; it’s simpler. Players of the game will be able to unlock large city tiles filled with important resources when they reach new Milestones. And while keeping your citizens happy lets you earn XP passively, completing major achievements gives you huge amounts of both Expansion Points and Development Points. The former can be used to further broaden your ever-changing capital, while the latter builds the bedrock of your city.
User-Friendly Economy Manager
A mainstay in any city-building sim. Cities: Skylines 2’s economy screen gives you all the information you’ll need to guide your city towards prosperity. The choices you make for your economy dictate your success in what is arguably the most important factor of the game. Balance supply and demand, monitor exports, invest in development and manage the taxes of an entire metropolis all in one, simplified menu that reflects the core principles of national finance.
Overhauled City Services
City Services in Cities: Skylines help you provide essential services to the people in your city. These can range anywhere from district schools to hospitals and police stations. In the first game, players were required to build several copies of the same city service building to cover multiple districts as your city grew in size. Luckily, Colossal found a way to improve this mechanic by changing the way city services work.
In Cities: Skylines 2, players will only need to upgrade a singular City Service to widen its reach. By renovating already-existing City Services, Cities: Skylines 2 makes it easier to save space while managing the needs of a city’s inhabitants in the long run.
New Housing Types
A city is nothing without the people living in it. When Cities: Skylines 2 releases on October, make your city the best place to live by building new housing buildings to satisfy the need of the market.
For added realism, the design team led by Henri Haimakainen wanted to create more types of housing to make the element more true to life. As such, the next Cities: Skylines entry will now have 6 residential zone types, 4 more than what the first game had!
Apart from the low-density houses and tall condo towers that we see in every city-builder, Cities: Skylines will also have medium-density apartment buildings and high-rises that you can build if you want cheaper living costs. Lastly, Colossal has also added mixed housing, unique properties where residentials and everyday shops rub elbows.
Groundwater
Lastly, another interesting new addition to the city-building hit is Groundwater, an underground resource that replenishes itself overtime. Obviously, inland districts can benefit from this by pumping the precious resource directly out of the ground, but there’s a few things you need to watch out for. For one, groundwater is directly affected by ground pollution, which can spoil its purity. At the same time, if you pump out too much too fast, you might end up draining the entire rock layer dry.
Final Notes
Cities: Skylines 2 seeks to raise the bar for the city-builder genre. Building on the success of their 2015 breakout hit, Colossal Order has revealed numerous upgrades for their sequel’s release. Among these are smarter pathfinding for the AI, expanded development mechanics and a gigantic map. Within, players will find new mechanics, like new natural resources. Development trees to give you access to new ways to add value to your metropolis are also in place to unleash your creative freedom to build the city only you can.
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