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I've tried Skylines a few times, but it always just devolves into traffic simulation, and I hate traffic. Last go I tried to set up a subway system, but lines c

by pkulak 4y ago

I've tried Skylines a few times, but it always just devolves into traffic simulation, and I hate traffic. Last go I tried to set up a subway system, but lines can't even cross each other and I gave up. They should really call the game "American Suburb Skylines".

darkteflon 4y ago
This is spot on. I’ve got some 50+ hours in C:S and it always degenerates into traffic management grind. Every time I come back to it I have another dig through the menus, thinking I must be missing something, but there’s no “car-free city” option. As far as I understand, the new Plazas & Promenades DLC does not actually address this either. Am I missing something? Why does the end-game always have to be traffic? Seems like a wasted opportunity.
- brailsafe 4y ago
  the wasted opportunity isn't C:S, it's a lack of a foundational sequel that attempts to learn from this.
- capableweb 4y ago
  Well, traffic is an essential part of city planning, which Cities Skylines is all about, so traffic is a part of that. You can avoid having to spend too much time on managing traffic if you follow some "design patterns", there is a bunch of them, so Google is probably your best friend. Although, there is a good comment on reddit that gives a quick overview, with links to more in-depth material, that might be a good starting point for you: https://old.reddit.com/r/CitiesSkylines/comments/m57lq8/how_can_i_reduce_traffic_in_this_city_i_am_not/gqzp5bl/ https://old.reddit.com/r/CitiesSkylines/comments/m57lq8/how_...
  - pm90 4y ago
    Well the problem is that this is what North American cities look like. But cities can be different. They can be mostly transit + bikes, but that seems impossible to do in CS.
    - massysett 4y ago
      As a North American, I’ve always thought Skylines looks like the European creation that it is. Skylines citizens flock to transit, will take multimodal trips, will walk a great deal, and will wait extremely long for transit vehicles to arrive. You can build a city in Skylines that is heavily transit-dependent in a way you would never see in America. However you do still need roads as businesses need them to ship and receive, and this is where traffic management counts.
    - ekidd 4y ago
      It's definitely possible to build C:S cities that are "mostly transit" (and walking). However, this only postpones the traffic nightmare. Eventually, the city grows to a point where the remaining ~20% of people using cars overwhelm even large, well-designed traffic systems. Honestly, this seems depressingly realistic? Paris has lots of public transportion and walkable areas, and the Peripherique is still a traffic jam from hell.
    - capableweb 4y ago
      No, plenty of places around the world where not every street is zoned, where there is space between industrial and residential zones for example.
- adventured 4y ago
  I've always found that going heavy with bike lanes in design removes a large share of the issue around traffic management in Skylines. If I don't feel like getting overly complex in designing for the traffic management, the bike lanes tend to relieve enough of the pressure that it isn't much of an issue.
- ehnto 4y ago
  There are strategies to remove cars and you can make effectively car free suburbs, but I'm not sure you can make an entirely car free city. The biggest issue is trucks, everything needs to be planned around getting trucks out of the places everyone else is driving. The other strategy is getting everyone onto bikes and onto public transport. If they can do it, citizens will prioritize public transport and cycling over cars. So once you get rid of the trucks, and design the city in such a way that citizens can cycle/train to work/commercial then you'll reduce heaps of traffic. Interestingly, I built high speed rail to a second town I built that's only connection is the railway, it's quite small but also very little traffic. Almost everyone takes the rail into the main city for work. I think better cities in the game would actually be to treat suburbs like a series of small towns, rather than lots of massive city blocks.
zwayhowder 4y ago
They can, you just have to sink them lower.
- pkulak 4y ago
  This is what Google told me too! But for some reason, despite all my tries with changing elevation, they always complained at refused to cross. I could have totally been missing something, or maybe my version had a bug.
ehnto 4y ago
On top of my other comment below, the game does lack medium to high density mixed zoning, and the transport and services used to serve that. Trucks also only do point to point deliveries which is not realistic. You end up with really tight city blocks, but instead of being full of foot traffic, bicycles and small delivery bikes or at least serial deliveries, it's full of cars and trucks moving a few loaves of bread between a factory and a deli. I think you need to plan your cities more like a small country town, and expect less density per meter of road than the game actually lets you put down. Rather than playing to the games metrics of population and income, just expect less of the city and spread it out more.

by pkulak 4y ago

darkteflon 4y ago

This is spot on. I’ve got some 50+ hours in C:S and it always degenerates into traffic management grind. Every time I come back to it I have another dig through the menus, thinking I must be missing something, but there’s no “car-free city” option. As far as I understand, the new Plazas & Promenades DLC does not actually address this either. Am I missing something? Why does the end-game always have to be traffic? Seems like a wasted opportunity.

brailsafe 4y ago
the wasted opportunity isn't C:S, it's a lack of a foundational sequel that attempts to learn from this.
capableweb 4y ago
Well, traffic is an essential part of city planning, which Cities Skylines is all about, so traffic is a part of that. You can avoid having to spend too much time on managing traffic if you follow some "design patterns", there is a bunch of them, so Google is probably your best friend. Although, there is a good comment on reddit that gives a quick overview, with links to more in-depth material, that might be a good starting point for you: https://old.reddit.com/r/CitiesSkylines/comments/m57lq8/how_can_i_reduce_traffic_in_this_city_i_am_not/gqzp5bl/ https://old.reddit.com/r/CitiesSkylines/comments/m57lq8/how_...
- pm90 4y ago
  Well the problem is that this is what North American cities look like. But cities can be different. They can be mostly transit + bikes, but that seems impossible to do in CS.
  - massysett 4y ago
    As a North American, I’ve always thought Skylines looks like the European creation that it is. Skylines citizens flock to transit, will take multimodal trips, will walk a great deal, and will wait extremely long for transit vehicles to arrive. You can build a city in Skylines that is heavily transit-dependent in a way you would never see in America. However you do still need roads as businesses need them to ship and receive, and this is where traffic management counts.
  - ekidd 4y ago
    It's definitely possible to build C:S cities that are "mostly transit" (and walking). However, this only postpones the traffic nightmare. Eventually, the city grows to a point where the remaining ~20% of people using cars overwhelm even large, well-designed traffic systems. Honestly, this seems depressingly realistic? Paris has lots of public transportion and walkable areas, and the Peripherique is still a traffic jam from hell.
  - capableweb 4y ago
    No, plenty of places around the world where not every street is zoned, where there is space between industrial and residential zones for example.
adventured 4y ago
I've always found that going heavy with bike lanes in design removes a large share of the issue around traffic management in Skylines. If I don't feel like getting overly complex in designing for the traffic management, the bike lanes tend to relieve enough of the pressure that it isn't much of an issue.
ehnto 4y ago
There are strategies to remove cars and you can make effectively car free suburbs, but I'm not sure you can make an entirely car free city. The biggest issue is trucks, everything needs to be planned around getting trucks out of the places everyone else is driving. The other strategy is getting everyone onto bikes and onto public transport. If they can do it, citizens will prioritize public transport and cycling over cars. So once you get rid of the trucks, and design the city in such a way that citizens can cycle/train to work/commercial then you'll reduce heaps of traffic. Interestingly, I built high speed rail to a second town I built that's only connection is the railway, it's quite small but also very little traffic. Almost everyone takes the rail into the main city for work. I think better cities in the game would actually be to treat suburbs like a series of small towns, rather than lots of massive city blocks.

zwayhowder 4y ago

They can, you just have to sink them lower.

pkulak 4y ago
This is what Google told me too! But for some reason, despite all my tries with changing elevation, they always complained at refused to cross. I could have totally been missing something, or maybe my version had a bug.

ehnto 4y ago

On top of my other comment below, the game does lack medium to high density mixed zoning, and the transport and services used to serve that. Trucks also only do point to point deliveries which is not realistic. You end up with really tight city blocks, but instead of being full of foot traffic, bicycles and small delivery bikes or at least serial deliveries, it's full of cars and trucks moving a few loaves of bread between a factory and a deli. I think you need to plan your cities more like a small country town, and expect less density per meter of road than the game actually lets you put down. Rather than playing to the games metrics of population and income, just expect less of the city and spread it out more.