More realistic civilian Ai?

[Paddy]

One thing I didn't like in cities 1 was that the city population felt lifeless. Yes each person could be followed etc but it was quite immersive breaking to zoom in on a kids playground at 2am to see entire families enjoying it having no regard for the time. I'd like to see more realism to the cities I'm building regarding civilian Ai. Entire families go about their daily lives. Go to work, go to amusement parks etc. Do you still think having Ai generated like this in an entire city is unrealistic?

I'd also like to see more crime being generated in rougher areas. To literally see the dark side of the worse off areas so you try and improve them. What do you guys think? Would you like more immersive civilians?

[Sticky Wicket]

Yes, theoretically but not sure exactly how you could logistically implement that.

The only way you could do that would be to have a day/night cycle that changed with each passing day. Given the speed at which a day passes even on the slowest speed it would be insane to watch; everything would have to happen so fast I think it would give you a headache. Game performance would also be an issue with that.

The other way would be to slow the day/night cycle down meaning the passing of time in the whole game would be much slower. This would also have the effect of slowing down the economy of the game since it is tied in with how many people are doing what.

I wouldn't want either of these things personally.

[FWSWBN]

Yes it will be in CS2

2023-08-21
Feature #10: Citizen Simulation & LifepathEach
citizen has their own Lifepath. They either move into the city or are born there. If they are happy, they will stay in the city and eventually grow old and die of old age.

https://www.paradoxinteractive.com/games/cities-skylines-ii/features

citizen will look how they get to work, to shopping and more.
it will have random events like car accidents.
driver of cars will act more naturally like looking which way they drive, which line and more.

ps: sorry, english isnt my native language, i hope you understand what i mean.

[Sticky Wicket]

Originally posted by Geist:

Originally posted by Sticky Wicket:

The only way you could do that would be to have a day/night cycle that changed with each passing day. Given the speed at which a day passes even on the slowest speed it would be insane to watch; everything would have to happen so fast .

The day and night cycle will takemuch longer this time. Money income is calculated by hour instead of week from what we can see in the videos. Therefore that should not be a problem anymore.

Nice. That sounds better

[ylij174]

Originally posted by Paddy:

One thing I didn't like in cities 1 was that the city population felt lifeless. Yes each person could be followed etc but it was quite immersive breaking to zoom in on a kids playground at 2am to see entire families enjoying it having no regard for the time. I'd like to see more realism to the cities I'm building regarding civilian Ai. Entire families go about their daily lives. Go to work, go to amusement parks etc. Do you still think having Ai generated like this in an entire city is unrealistic?

I'd also like to see more crime being generated in rougher areas. To literally see the dark side of the worse off areas so you try and improve them. What do you guys think? Would you like more immersive civilians?

You are absolutely right. Children need to sleep at night. But I'd like to be able to build curved platforms https://encrypted-tbn0.gstatic.com/images?q

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:JR-East-Tokyo-STA_Shinkansen-Home.jpg

[Mazisky]

Originally posted by Geist:

Originally posted by Sticky Wicket:

The only way you could do that would be to have a day/night cycle that changed with each passing day. Given the speed at which a day passes even on the slowest speed it would be insane to watch; everything would have to happen so fast .

The day and night cycle will takemuch longer this time. Money income is calculated by hour instead of week from what we can see in the videos. Therefore that should not be a problem anymore.

I made a calculation based on time passing on the gameplay footage and a single day should last 72 minutes of real time at x1 speed, which should be triple the duration of the equivalent of cities 1 day\night cycle.

[tom_mai78101]

Originally posted by Geist:

Originally posted by Sticky Wicket:

The only way you could do that would be to have a day/night cycle that changed with each passing day. Given the speed at which a day passes even on the slowest speed it would be insane to watch; everything would have to happen so fast .

The day and night cycle will takemuch longer this time. Money income is calculated by hour instead of week from what we can see in the videos. Therefore that should not be a problem anymore.

If day/night cycle takes much longer, does that mean the money income/expenses take a while to calculate based on the in-game hour?

Or does this mean the day/night cycle have a different way of calculating based on the hour?

(Assuming 20 real-life minutes = 1 in-game hour, does that mean +100,000/hr means you earn 100,000 per 20 real-life minutes?)

[King DaMuncha]

https://imgur.com/NtbPiqM

?

[tom_mai78101]

Originally posted by King DaMuncha:

https://imgur.com/NtbPiqM

?

That isn't really a civilian AI sort of behavior where you actually see them walking/driving around on the streets. That chirp is nothing more than an indicator that your traffic is jamming up somewhere.

[DarkMagic]

One of my favorite mods for cities 1 was the "Real Time" mod that made the days longer, much much longer. You didn't just rocket through each "day" in like 4 second on max speed, and it would cause better A.I., the traffic would calm down during the night and buildings would stop being built around certain hours rather then none stop till done. It made the game slower and therefor a bit harder but in some aspects easier. One problem with cities 1 is there is no real day or night and it's just running at 100% all the time, IRL things like traffic pick up in the morning and evenings but any other times is practically dead. Since it made each day several IRL mins long even on 3X speed each day felt nice and just fine, didn't have to worry about road management enough because it would soon calm down and pick back up. And the fact the game was much slower on progression ment it was real nice to just slow down and smell the flowers type of mod. I really hope to either see this as a base option in cities 2 to have "Real time" enabled as a game mode or to see this mod make a return after some time.

Oh something else I hope they touch on, I believe there was a mod that made the A.I. smarter IIRC were they wouldn't just B line it to the nearest destination if you had more roads leading to it. Right now your civilians will just B line straight to the destination regardless of other lanes, they could simply by pass a traffic jam for a 1-2 mins detour only to instead decide to wait in a traffic jam for 10 mins or more just to make a left turn. They would also cause a backup if they tried to turn into the turning lane but couldn't and other cars behind them couldn't get passed and were also stuck even if they weren't gonna make a left turn which causes miles of back up on the highways. Couldn't get into the city in one spot men every other entrances passed it was useless because 1 car was blocking like 400. Had a made that helped because it would force the cars to stay in one lane or to keep going rather then trying to merge whenever, however it didn't solve the problem of cars just going around despite having 3 lanes they all crowded 1 trying to merge over blocking all 3 lanes effectively and causing a long snake of cars.

A combination of these 2 mods basically fixed all the problems the vanilla traffic system had when it came to how dumb the A.I. was and it sucked because having to build based on how dumb the A.I. was really sucked when it came to city planning. causing the game to run at 100% simulation at all times was a pain but thanks to Real time for causing the A.I. to surge and slow down based on the time of day really did help a lot with traffic problems making them almost non existent but also controlling the lanes at which they use to turn or drive also helped relieve the flow of traffic, sadly real time stopped updating and no longer works so hopefully that comes back because even tho the A.I. was bad this helped fixed it's problem by simply staggering the simulation rather then full blasting it.

[King DaMuncha]

Traffic President had Dynamic lane changing option but turning it on slowed down the simulation and frame rate alot.