4 ms·

City skylines has more than filled this gap imho. Great community. You should check it out if you haven’t yet.

mablopoule 4y ago
It's on my bucket list since, but I was afraid of falling down the rabbit hole, same as Anno, Civilisation and other cool games. I'm so glad City Skyline had such a success, because I feel that other Paradox Interactive games wouldn't have existed otherwise. As an avid player of Stellaris, and as someone eyeing the Crusader Kings series or Europa Universalis, I'm feel that Paradox games have DLCs done right. They are clearly on the expensive side, but they are contentfull, and feel less shameless than EA counterpart (especially with the Sims who has the same DLCs over and over again). On a side note, there is also Caesar III (& Pharaoh) on Gog, and it's still a gem.
- bee_rider 4y ago
  Is there some backstory to the crucial-ness of Cities Skyline? I thought they’d had a pretty good thing going for a while by then, with their various funky history simulators.
  - mablopoule 4y ago
    Maybe not then, I haven't done my homework on this subject to be honest. I mostly said that because of a gut feeling that CS is their main cash cow, while their others series are solid but with a more niche player base.
    - capableweb 4y ago
      > while their others series are solid but with a more niche player base Might have been so in the past, but Paradox games are relatively mainstream, although they seem a bit niche. Hearts of Iron IV is the 32th most played game at Steam right now (https://steamdb.info/charts/ https://steamdb.info/charts/), while Cities: Skylines is on spot 56. Might have something to do with recent news or released addons, but still, other Paradox games are wildly popular and Paradox would surely do just fine even without Cities: Skylines. More interesting stats comparing Hearts of Iron with Cities: Skylines > Cities: Skylines - 18,280 players right now | 24,541 24-hour peak | 60,386 all-time peak 8 years ago > Hearts of Iron IV - 32,652 players right now | 44,193 24-hour peak | 70,997 all-time peak 5 months ago
      - mablopoule 4y ago
        Interesting. Thanks for the detailed comparison, and glad to be proved wrong.
    - orwin 4y ago
      I think they improved their Clauswidtz à lot in the past 3 years. Really night and day in term of bugs. Idk what they did, better hire, better process or more people on it (or all 3), but it made multi-player bearable on EU4, and great on Hoi4/stellaris (I do not like the game that much, but it's a better MP game than EU4, let's be honest.) Anyway, Hoi4 isn't niche anymore. It's like top5 MP strategy game.
    - jcranmer 4y ago
      Cities: Skylines is published but not developed by Paradox. The games Paradox itself develops are the grand strategy games in the Crusader Kings, Europa Universalis, Hearts of Iron, Stellaris, Victoria, and Imperator: Rome lines. The flagship games here are the strongest games in the genre, and even among the broader category of strategy games, they're definitely in the most-played games, with the main competitors being the Civilization, Age of Empires, Total War, and Mount & Blade series.
  - capableweb 4y ago
    I don't think that has any merit, Paradox have launched and developed a bunch of successful (in their genre) games, and owns multiple studios while doing the publishing for even more. It's a successful company and would have been without Cities: Skylines as well. Probably parent meant the developer of the game, Colossal Order, which only developed Cities in Motion before, which was successful in it's own right but not on the scale of Cities: Skylines. But then "other X games wouldn't have existed otherwise" doesn't make sense, because Cities: Skylines is the latest game they've launched, and it was in 2015.
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
zymhan 4y ago
CS has never captured the "soul" of a city though. Your city doesn't feel alive at all. But it's a great city building simulator.
netruk44 4y ago
Cities Skylines is alright but my problem with it from when it launched is after about an hour into the game it stops being challenging and just becomes a zen city-builder-themed garden. There's really no chance of losing once you build any kind of cash flow, and as a result there's no obvious goal other than 'make big city' and then subsequently 'manage the traffic' SimCity on the other hand is challenging to keep going throughout. You need to make thoughtful choices on what you're building next and where or else due to some quirk of the Agent system you're going to be on the brink of collapse (Why won't the power go down this one street??) Obviously there's room for improvement on the SimCity front, but my point is that if you're looking for a challenging city builder, Skylines is not it unless you wanna spend time configuring mods.
- mcv 4y ago
  > a zen city-builder-themed garden Sounds like a great selling point to me.
  - netruk44 4y ago
    And that's why it's so fun for so many people. But not for me, that's not what I'm looking for in a city builder. Different strokes.
- loudmax 4y ago
  It depends on what you're looking for in a Sim game. There's no Ender Dragon to kill in City:Skylines, so the objective of the game is whatever you make of it. At heart C:S is really a traffic management game. Cash flow usually isn't an issue, but getting efficient traffic flow and minimizing traffic jams becomes a major issue when you build up a dense downtown area.
candiddevmike 4y ago
I struggle to get into CS because of the number of DLCs. I have no idea what ones you need to have a SimCity 4 experience, and they're all really expensive.
- Tijdreiziger 4y ago
  The DLCs add stuff, but you don't really need them to start out. The base game is great as-is. Other than that, you can see what's included with every DLC on the C:S wiki: https://skylines.paradoxwikis.com/Downloadable_content https://skylines.paradoxwikis.com/Downloadable_content. That way, you can decide which DLCs you care about and which you don't.
- jabroni_salad 4y ago
  The way CS does content updates, part of the update is free and part of it is paid. So, organically the best way to figure out what to pay is to play the game, see which features you like, and get the DLCs that expand the areas of the game you like the most. (I also recommend this method because if it turns out you dont like CS after all you arent too badly in the hole) They do occasionally go on sale, so you can always just wishlist something and come back later.
- bombcar 4y ago
  If you have Mods you don't even need ANY DLC, really, though the park ones make the "park problem" completely a non issue. Mass Transit is a joke, all the options are just memes.

It's on my bucket list since, but I was afraid of falling down the rabbit hole, same as Anno, Civilisation and other cool games. I'm so glad City Skyline had such a success, because I feel that other Paradox Interactive games wouldn't have existed otherwise. As an avid player of Stellaris, and as someone eyeing the Crusader Kings series or Europa Universalis, I'm feel that Paradox games have DLCs done right. They are clearly on the expensive side, but they are contentfull, and feel less shameless than EA counterpart (especially with the Sims who has the same DLCs over and over again). On a side note, there is also Caesar III (& Pharaoh) on Gog, and it's still a gem.

bee_rider 4y ago
Is there some backstory to the crucial-ness of Cities Skyline? I thought they’d had a pretty good thing going for a while by then, with their various funky history simulators.
- mablopoule 4y ago
  Maybe not then, I haven't done my homework on this subject to be honest. I mostly said that because of a gut feeling that CS is their main cash cow, while their others series are solid but with a more niche player base.
  - capableweb 4y ago
    > while their others series are solid but with a more niche player base Might have been so in the past, but Paradox games are relatively mainstream, although they seem a bit niche. Hearts of Iron IV is the 32th most played game at Steam right now (https://steamdb.info/charts/ https://steamdb.info/charts/), while Cities: Skylines is on spot 56. Might have something to do with recent news or released addons, but still, other Paradox games are wildly popular and Paradox would surely do just fine even without Cities: Skylines. More interesting stats comparing Hearts of Iron with Cities: Skylines > Cities: Skylines - 18,280 players right now | 24,541 24-hour peak | 60,386 all-time peak 8 years ago > Hearts of Iron IV - 32,652 players right now | 44,193 24-hour peak | 70,997 all-time peak 5 months ago
    - mablopoule 4y ago
      Interesting. Thanks for the detailed comparison, and glad to be proved wrong.
  - orwin 4y ago
    I think they improved their Clauswidtz à lot in the past 3 years. Really night and day in term of bugs. Idk what they did, better hire, better process or more people on it (or all 3), but it made multi-player bearable on EU4, and great on Hoi4/stellaris (I do not like the game that much, but it's a better MP game than EU4, let's be honest.) Anyway, Hoi4 isn't niche anymore. It's like top5 MP strategy game.
  - jcranmer 4y ago
    Cities: Skylines is published but not developed by Paradox. The games Paradox itself develops are the grand strategy games in the Crusader Kings, Europa Universalis, Hearts of Iron, Stellaris, Victoria, and Imperator: Rome lines. The flagship games here are the strongest games in the genre, and even among the broader category of strategy games, they're definitely in the most-played games, with the main competitors being the Civilization, Age of Empires, Total War, and Mount & Blade series.
- capableweb 4y ago
  I don't think that has any merit, Paradox have launched and developed a bunch of successful (in their genre) games, and owns multiple studios while doing the publishing for even more. It's a successful company and would have been without Cities: Skylines as well. Probably parent meant the developer of the game, Colossal Order, which only developed Cities in Motion before, which was successful in it's own right but not on the scale of Cities: Skylines. But then "other X games wouldn't have existed otherwise" doesn't make sense, because Cities: Skylines is the latest game they've launched, and it was in 2015.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]

zymhan 4y ago

CS has never captured the "soul" of a city though. Your city doesn't feel alive at all. But it's a great city building simulator.

netruk44 4y ago

Cities Skylines is alright but my problem with it from when it launched is after about an hour into the game it stops being challenging and just becomes a zen city-builder-themed garden. There's really no chance of losing once you build any kind of cash flow, and as a result there's no obvious goal other than 'make big city' and then subsequently 'manage the traffic' SimCity on the other hand is challenging to keep going throughout. You need to make thoughtful choices on what you're building next and where or else due to some quirk of the Agent system you're going to be on the brink of collapse (Why won't the power go down this one street??) Obviously there's room for improvement on the SimCity front, but my point is that if you're looking for a challenging city builder, Skylines is not it unless you wanna spend time configuring mods.

mcv 4y ago
> a zen city-builder-themed garden Sounds like a great selling point to me.
- netruk44 4y ago
  And that's why it's so fun for so many people. But not for me, that's not what I'm looking for in a city builder. Different strokes.
loudmax 4y ago
It depends on what you're looking for in a Sim game. There's no Ender Dragon to kill in City:Skylines, so the objective of the game is whatever you make of it. At heart C:S is really a traffic management game. Cash flow usually isn't an issue, but getting efficient traffic flow and minimizing traffic jams becomes a major issue when you build up a dense downtown area.

candiddevmike 4y ago

I struggle to get into CS because of the number of DLCs. I have no idea what ones you need to have a SimCity 4 experience, and they're all really expensive.

Tijdreiziger 4y ago
The DLCs add stuff, but you don't really need them to start out. The base game is great as-is. Other than that, you can see what's included with every DLC on the C:S wiki: https://skylines.paradoxwikis.com/Downloadable_content https://skylines.paradoxwikis.com/Downloadable_content. That way, you can decide which DLCs you care about and which you don't.
jabroni_salad 4y ago
The way CS does content updates, part of the update is free and part of it is paid. So, organically the best way to figure out what to pay is to play the game, see which features you like, and get the DLCs that expand the areas of the game you like the most. (I also recommend this method because if it turns out you dont like CS after all you arent too badly in the hole) They do occasionally go on sale, so you can always just wishlist something and come back later.
bombcar 4y ago
If you have Mods you don't even need ANY DLC, really, though the park ones make the "park problem" completely a non issue. Mass Transit is a joke, all the options are just memes.