How hard is this to learn?

[Tex]

I work 12 hr days and just want a chill game. Yea or nay?

[ling.speed]

The game is less city builder and more logistics sim, so it depends on your definition of chill.

You can turn off features to make it easier to start... it definitely can be chill game but it does not hold your hand much so learning it takes a bit.

There is many ways to enjoy the game so i believe it would be possible to enjoy it as a "come back tired, play for 30 minutes" but it would not play on the games strengths.
Also i'd say the game is a bit quirky still, in a fitting way to its aesthetics, so it works, but still dont expect CS with soviet visuals.

[Zerberr]

This is anything but chill in realistic mode. However it has all kinds of settings to make it easy playing. Full sandbox with unlimited money is actually quite relaxing to play.

[MG83]

Both Yay or nay. There are many difficulty/fetaures that you can enable or disable. So you can start very basic and have a chill game . Or enable all and detailed game. depends on your choice no judgement. Some players even play just like a painter putting nice buildings and roads next to each other just to have a nice city look. So its mostly upto you depending on what you would like to do :>

[Nightwolf]

theres a massive learning curve, no tutorial, the one there is basically says....with your mouse, left click to select this building. tutorial done. you will spend 12 hours on youtube and here just learning the basics. but you can turn all that off, which is boring and defeats the purpose of the game.

if youre looking of for a 2 hour game you wont find it here.

[Delle(DK)]

On the most easy setting this game is much like other similar games and i highly recommend starting that way. On the most easy you can quick build stuff and then you mostly just have to focus on buying vehicles and creating routes and logistics.. BUT its more complex than in other games no matter what.
But its the best place to start since you can try out stuff and faster advance and learn vs if you play on the mosth ard mode named realistic where things take allot of time since every single building block need to transported from a-b and workers need to work ect.

In general this is the kind of game that take time to learn, so trail and error and reading guides or watching youtube videos now and then are to be expected to learn the game.
There are a tutorial that teach you many things.

But how to setup things the best way and such things take time to learn and how big you should buidl things and how many people you need ect takes experience.
But in general all factorys operate 24 hourses a day so you need 3x8 houres working shifts.
So if you factory have room for 100 people then you need 300 and properbly more to fill it.

Another thing is that example garbage is not just garbage, it can be seperated into all kind of resources and burned, melted or composed to use as fertilizer.

Just saying its a complex game and not a fast game it take allot of time to play especially on realistic.. Just making your very first 1300 people city and some industry, logistics, water/sewage ect. take like 7 houres gameplay where you trucks go contstruct thing while you sit and wait and tweak things.
It might sound borring but its actually kind of facinating to see the little machines work and so on and your city/nation come to life. But also VERY frustrating that you spend 7-8 houres and go broke before you dont earn enough money to survive..
And then you start again and try agian.
My advice on realistic.. build 1 fabric factory- warehouse- 2xclothing factory and minimum 1300 people. + all other required buildings like water, sewage, houses, ect ect.
Such a setup can be done in about 2-3 years and you can earn a profit almost instant.

[Zerberr]

Originally posted by Nightwolf:

theres a massive learning curve, no tutorial, the one there is basically says....with your mouse, left click to select this building. tutorial done. you will spend 12 hours on youtube and here just learning the basics. but you can turn all that off, which is boring and defeats the purpose of the game.

if youre looking of for a 2 hour game you wont find it here.

Tutorial is quite helpful if you not rushing through it and actually trying to understand what you're doing. Didn't watch a single video, started exporting cars yesterday.
There are some things that are hard to grasp, but nothing crazy

[longshots444]

Originally posted by Nightwolf:

theres a massive learning curve,
if youre looking of for a 2 hour game you wont find it here.

And if you think this is being harsh just look through all posts in this forum to realise how hard it can be.

Many of the players tend to push their own agenda with their "tips and suggestions" but you would have to decide which entry road to take. After a 12 hour day do you want to start out with the "Easy" option and learn the basics or dive into the deep end and go straight to "Realistic".

[Zizo]

Pretty hard:) But you can choose how hard it will be, because it offers a lot of different options to play your way:)
But in one sentence: It is like a Dark Souls in city building strategy games:)

City Skylines is game to look on it and chill, Soviet is not much:)

This game doesn't forgive a lot of mistakes and quite simply, without realizing it, something can get stuck and your whole map will die and you can go all over again.
There is little time to chill and just enjoying how the games works, most of the time, your mind will not chill, but: thinking, thinking, planning, thinking... how to do it:)

Also if you will not google, watch tutorials for things, than learning that by trying-mistake will can make you really confused, so this game require quite a bit learning from YT, tutorials, how some things works, etc:)

[Superbest]

There's a lot of quirky mechanics that are not obvious. You will either have to figure those out by trial and error, or watch a lot of youtube videos, or spend a lot of time on this forum.

The charm is taking all the complexity and making your city do something. If you're planning to play, say, 2 hours a day, it will take you probably a month, probably more, before you've figured out how to make a city sustainable with most of the buildings in the game working.

It's chill in that you usually set some things up and then just sit back and watch it go. But figuring out how it works will take a lot of effort.

[Kingdark]

Just watch a let's play to form your own opinion. All of us here love the game. (or most of us do) The game isn't easy at all. I bought the game, very shortly after it released into EA and even now, I'm still learning.

[Laub]

Originally posted by Tex:

I work 12 hr days and just want a chill game. Yea or nay?

after learning, it's a good game to chill. you can set up a lot to make it easier or harder, it's up to you.

[Dr. Skooma]

It's not very difficult to learn. I basically do a couple tutorials each time and then try to apply them to my city afterwards. It's fun. Just needs more music.

[cdog]

It's been a while since I've played, so possibly some of the jank has been corrected, but upon release and a year after the game can be quite fiddly about, road, rail and building placement.

There are a lot of logistics involved: electrical grid, sewage, and getting workers to their workplaces. It's not like sim city, "Oh slap down a coal plant and some power line, run a road", it's much more involved. This is more of a nation state logistics sim than city builder. You have to purchase and route each truck hauling gravel, coal or lumber, each bus or train that brings your workers to their workplaces. It's very satisfying when you can get a production line set up, but there is a steep learning curve so IMO this is not a 1 - 2 hour play to chill after work kind of game.

[Catsander]

Depends on what you mean "learn". Learning how to start to play takes a couple of hours. But to learn everything with all features on could take several thousand hours. =)