Performance mods

[Famous Bull]

So this game chugs even with a very good setup which must just be an engine limitation at this point.

Are there any performance mods to recommend, or even something as simple as a config edit?

Also, side note I noticed some showcase cities where the graphics look much better than mine even with everything turned max so I’m guessing these are also mods so on the opposite end, is there any mods which make it prettier to recommend? I found one but it causes all sorts of issues.

[MaxFX]

There are many mods that can improve the way the game looks. There are very few mods that improve performance. And even with those the game will run choppy at high population levels.

You can use the 'FPS Booster' mod for example, though it's effects differ depending on your system.
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2105755179
I've found that by lowering the simulation speed of the game to about 60%, the game runs a lot smoother. This makes sense as your CPU now has more time to do all the necessary calculations. You can lower the simulation speed to lower settings than the default settings using this mod: https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2983036781
With the 'Lumina' mod you can also improve a lot of graphics settings.

As for the way your game looks; You can improve graphics settings with a mod like Lumina, but if you improve the graphics of a turd, you're still looking at a turd.

The Vanilla game has a lot of 'simple' looking assets (vehicles, buildings, props, trees). This is done on purpose to reduce the system requirements for this game as these simple models don't require a lot of computing power from graphics cards. Nice for gameplay, but bad for your eyes.

Over the years I've changed many of the Vanilla assets to assets from the Workshop. So in my cities you'll see good looking cars and trucks driving around instead of donut-, and bugspray vehicles.

Getting yourself some good looking trees to replace the ugly Vanilla ones helps a lot to how your city looks and feels.

But one of easiest, quickest and biggest improvement to the way the game looks can be done by changing the way the map itself (the terrain and water) looks by using map-themes from the Workshop.

I recommend you try a game with the 'Nature Reserve T' or 'Owl's Albedo' map-theme active. These really improve the look of the terrain compared to the Vanilla map-themes. You can change, switch, alter, combine map-themes in-game with this mod: https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3031623332
Off course you'll need one or more map-themes from the Workshop. Now here's something to keep in mind. The texture files for map-themes are really big! So don't subscribe to lots of them you're not going to use, as they take up valuable disk space. They probably get loaded into memory as well, taking up lots of RAM. You can see the filesize of each map-theme on the right side of their Workshop pages.
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1367973971&searchtext=owls+albedo
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?

Here's a screenshot with the 'Nature Reserve-T' map-theme active and with the cars, trees and buildings I talked about: https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3477502524

[Famous Bull]

Originally posted by MaxFX:

There are many mods that can improve the way the game looks. There are very few mods that improve performance. And even with those the game will run choppy at high population levels.

You can use the 'FPS Booster' mod for example, though it's effects differ depending on your system.

Oh wow thanks for all this it’s amazing I’ll be experimenting with these. I also experimented with a few workshop trees but the few authors I used their trees had terrible LOD and didn’t render at half the distance form base game.

[MaxFX]

Originally posted by Famous Bull:

Oh wow thanks for all this I’ll be experimenting with these. I also experimented with a few workshop trees but the few authors I used their trees had terrible LOD and didn’t render at half the distance form base game.

You're welcome. With the 'Visibility Control' mod you can alter the LOD distance of different types of objects.

But beware, if you have a lot of (highly) detailed trees on your map it could slow down performance if you set the LOD too far. The more trees are in view/range that need to be displayed in high detail, the bigger the strain on your GPU.

If you're going to increase the LOD setting of trees I advise to use 'low-poly' trees as filler trees. (i.e. use these trees to fill up large empty spaces on the map or in your city (like a forest)). They don't look very good, but rendered in full detail they're better looking than the LOD versions of the highly detailed trees.

Use the highly detailed trees for beautification of buildings, parks and streets. (Where you want these good looking trees to stand out.

I use the 'Mesh Info' mod for more info on which assets are friendly to use, and which ones are heavy duty for your PC. The mod gives you info on the triangle count of different 3d models compared to the size of the model. https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=453956891

As for Workshop trees. I highly recommend the following authors:
Pdelmo
MrMaison
Greyflame
Smillies