Forced to build Suburbia?

[kilésengati]

Does the game actually force players to build miles of suburban hellholes?

You gotta start with low-density zoning: Fair enough, but shame there is no low-density wall-to-wall option. But "what gives" (fellow kids), throughout the game you are severely incentivised to keep on building suburbs.

First of all, demand for single-family homes never seems to drop off. It's all people want and they rarely even settle for a row-house, let alone a flat. Plus, it seems like one of the few ways to level-up your city quickly enough, so you get to unlock useful stuff and extra money to actually build the city you want. (Which, spoilers, you don't because you end up building more suburbs instead!)

Short of a very small city centre, my supposedly "European" city of 10k ended up a lot like a "'Murican" car city straight outta the 60s. Heck, even with the problems of such a design!
The city centre is struggling for no apparent reason. I got it hooked up with busses, parking spots and even a tram now (which is absolute overkill for a 10k city, btw) and all the amenities really, yet buildings still get abandoned. Shops in mixed-use buildings complain there are too few customers or too high rent (whatever they feel like), despite being situated at a bustling mall, immediately next to the city's central transport hub and a bunch of potential customers living right above them. Same issue with the few social and high-rise dwellings I managed to grow, situated in the best places around the city.
There is absolutely no benefit in growing a mid-to-high density city centre. It really leaves me no choice but to condemn it to be replaced with yet another suburban hellscape.

Factories on one side of the river, housing with some shops and offices sprinkled in between on the other. All connected nicely through some motorways and local trains.
The city kinda works, but it's boring af the only viable option to grow your city seems to be by placing down endless suburbs.

Single-family, detached housing has it's place, but it appears to be the only reasonable way to play this game, which doesn't make sense in real-life and neither feels organic let alone fun during gameplay.


Mixed-use zoning with wall-to-wall buildings, alongside lane-based road planning (which they only implemented half-cooked as well), was one of the novel features that made CSL2 interesting to me to begin with, but at the end it's barely useful during gameplay.
And what happened to all the innovations from the previous game anyway?

This game has many problems, as expected, but its gameplay loop is up on the same chore-like annoyance level as Ubisoft's signature open-worlds. Prior to CSL2, I couldn't even imagine a city-builder being on the same level as their open-world games.

Well, at least I can now connect my suburbs with quirky interchange designs created easily thanks to the new lane-based road building system… which only really works decently with motorways… :/


TL;DR:
Stuck in a suburban nightmare gameplay loop.
How to break free from it?

[Leptoon]

I see this issue reported a lot, and I haven't even slightly experienced it. Very strange...

[Tsubame ⭐]

Yea, pretty much. As you develop you get a substantial amount of medium density residential, though too little of high density demand to my liking. Even then, low density residential demand never seems to abate.

I do believe they should be all a single demand, in the interest of a sandbox experience. And many cities - or their inner areas anyway - do have substantial walls of high rise residential buildings.

Well, mods will probably take care of that later.

Many, but not all, of the features from DLCs and what not, are implemented in this game.

My main issue with the game is that, just like CS1, all problems except traffic are exaggerated way beyond any resemblance of reason. Air pollution covering the whole map upwind, you need a ton of service buildings to service sick/dead people, etc. In CS1 I used mods to get rid of these issues, and I cannot wait until they are available here.

At least traffic amount seems to be a little more subdued and reasonable in this version.

[JackedPunk]

has to do with taxes and students
to encourage medium density and high density just set the tax level for -10 for uneducated or poorly educated and set high taxes for educated

[kilésengati]

Originally posted by Tsubame ⭐:

Yea, pretty much. As you develop you get a substantial amount of medium density residential, though too little of high density demand to my liking. Even then, low density residential demand never seems to abate.

I do believe they should be all a single demand, in the interest of a sandbox experience. And many cities - or their inner areas anyway - do have substantial walls of high rise residential buildings.

Well, mods will probably take care of that later.

Many, but not all, of the features from DLCs and what not, are implemented in this game.

My main issue with the game is that, just like CS1, all problems except traffic are exaggerated way beyond any resemblance of reason. Air pollution covering the whole map upwind, you need a ton of service buildings to service sick/dead people, etc. In CS1 I used mods to get rid of these issues, and I cannot wait until they are available here.

At least traffic amount seems to be a little more subdued and reasonable in this version.

Yeah, it would be good if demand wouldn't be separated by density, but rather by expense. Social housing is already an option, but it doesn't seem to do anything and gets abandoned quickly anyway.

Whilst I hope mods will take care of it, I do think it's a massive shortcoming from the developers and given their experience, it shouldn't have happened. The game just feels lacking compared to its predecessor.
Unfortunately, at this point, there's no word on when mods will finally be a thing to begin with.

And for my 10k city, there's still a lot of traffic and way too much happening in general.
The entire city behaves like a metropolis for no reason.

Originally posted by JackedPunk:

has to do with taxes and students
to encourage medium density and high density just set the tax level for -10 for uneducated or poorly educated and set high taxes for educated

If that's the premise the simulation is based on, then the game is broken beyond repair.

What does density has to do with tax/income/education cohorts?

[Kedryn]

I have never had this problem.

I don't know why others do.

[culsu]

How often do you see a residential skyscraper surrounded by wilderness in real life?

You can sort of grow an urban core out of a big suburb, but I get the impression you are supposed to use and cover most of the unfilled area with low density sprawl.

I do not particularly like doing that, and did not do so much of it in my first city, but I think that is the intent, it is somewhat realistic, and I will probably plan for that in my second city.

It is also a lot of households for each high density building. It is easy to address demand by zoning just a little bit more than you need, where low density takes real space for the same amount of demand.

[The Quiet Cab]

Originally posted by Kedryn:

I have never had this problem.

I don't know why others do.

Because it seems to be made too complicated. It's either a lack of a tutorials or false expectations. There is even a button left to the demand you can click and see in + and - values why the specific demand is low or high. More + is good, more - is bad, right? Yes, there are bugs but overall the game is easy and readable.

[icedude94]

Originally posted by kilésengati:

Originally posted by Tsubame ⭐:

Yea, pretty much. As you develop you get a substantial amount of medium density residential, though too little of high density demand to my liking. Even then, low density residential demand never seems to abate.

I do believe they should be all a single demand, in the interest of a sandbox experience. And many cities - or their inner areas anyway - do have substantial walls of high rise residential buildings.

Well, mods will probably take care of that later.

Many, but not all, of the features from DLCs and what not, are implemented in this game.

My main issue with the game is that, just like CS1, all problems except traffic are exaggerated way beyond any resemblance of reason. Air pollution covering the whole map upwind, you need a ton of service buildings to service sick/dead people, etc. In CS1 I used mods to get rid of these issues, and I cannot wait until they are available here.

At least traffic amount seems to be a little more subdued and reasonable in this version.

Yeah, it would be good if demand wouldn't be separated by density, but rather by expense. Social housing is already an option, but it doesn't seem to do anything and gets abandoned quickly anyway.

Whilst I hope mods will take care of it, I do think it's a massive shortcoming from the developers and given their experience, it shouldn't have happened. The game just feels lacking compared to its predecessor.
Unfortunately, at this point, there's no word on when mods will finally be a thing to begin with.

And for my 10k city, there's still a lot of traffic and way too much happening in general.
The entire city behaves like a metropolis for no reason.

Originally posted by JackedPunk:

has to do with taxes and students
to encourage medium density and high density just set the tax level for -10 for uneducated or poorly educated and set high taxes for educated

If that's the premise the simulation is based on, then the game is broken beyond repair.

What does density has to do with tax/income/education cohorts?

Low residential housing with a large footprint in an area with high land value has high rent. If a cim has trouble affording rent, they will seek housing with lower rent such as in medium or high density housing.

Those buildings as a whole charge much more in rent but that rent is shared between all the households who are tenants so each one pays less than they would a suburban house.

When players chase the RCI demand meter and keep zoning endless low density residential, they are keeping the housing supply high and rents down so there is never any demand for medium or high density residential.

Now when it comes to education/income/students:
Sims with better education can get better paying jobs so they can afford higher rents.
Students have no income and are attending school and paying rent using stored up wealth. That way they prefer low rent high density residential zones. They don't mind living in a tiny apartment because they are alone.

Single adults in the workforce also prefer normal high density residential in cities for the same reason.

Once cims get married and start families, they actually get a happiness penalty from living in a cramped apartment and start seeking medium density or low density housing that is more spacious and they can usually afford the rents better with a 2 income household.

Does that make sense now?

[kilésengati]

Originally posted by culsu:

How often do you see a residential skyscraper surrounded by wilderness in real life?

You can sort of grow an urban core out of a big suburb, but I get the impression you are supposed to use and cover most of the unfilled area with low density sprawl.

I do not particularly like doing that, and did not do so much of it in my first city, but I think that is the intent, it is somewhat realistic, and I will probably plan for that in my second city.

Often. In Europe, we do have a lot of satellite cities with high-rise commie or cappie blocks built "on the green field". And there are even smaller towns and larger villages with these types of neighbourhoods and/or city-like wall-to-wall buildings around the core but still a minute or two of walking distance to the middle of nowhere.

Anyway, I also managed to grow an urban core (although a struggling one), but the amount of suburban sprawl I had to do to create for this is unreal. For every block of mixed-use and high density buildings, I had to build at least ten of suburban type. This is not what a 10k city looks like, let alone a European one.

[MasterStonerOG]

dont build low density, build industrial and commercial only until the demand of high density rises. i did it like that and didnt care about the low density demand

[Kedryn]

Originally posted by MasterStonerOG:

dont build low density, build industrial and commercial only until the demand of high density rises. i did it like that and didnt care about the low density demand

Yep. Keep giving the kids candy and they won't want anything else.

[kilésengati]

Originally posted by icedude94:

Originally posted by kilésengati:

Yeah, it would be good if demand wouldn't be separated by density, but rather by expense. Social housing is already an option, but it doesn't seem to do anything and gets abandoned quickly anyway.

Whilst I hope mods will take care of it, I do think it's a massive shortcoming from the developers and given their experience, it shouldn't have happened. The game just feels lacking compared to its predecessor.
Unfortunately, at this point, there's no word on when mods will finally be a thing to begin with.

And for my 10k city, there's still a lot of traffic and way too much happening in general.
The entire city behaves like a metropolis for no reason.




If that's the premise the simulation is based on, then the game is broken beyond repair.

What does density has to do with tax/income/education cohorts?

Low residential housing with a large footprint in an area with high land value has high rent. If a cim has trouble affording rent, they will seek housing with lower rent such as in medium or high density housing.

Those buildings as a whole charge much more in rent but that rent is shared between all the households who are tenants so each one pays less than they would a suburban house.

When players chase the RCI demand meter and keep zoning endless low density residential, they are keeping the housing supply high and rents down so there is never any demand for medium or high density residential.

Now when it comes to education/income/students:
Sims with better education can get better paying jobs so they can afford higher rents.
Students have no income and are attending school and paying rent using stored up wealth. That way they prefer low rent high density residential zones. They don't mind living in a tiny apartment because they are alone.

Single adults in the workforce also prefer normal high density residential in cities for the same reason.

Once cims get married and start families, they actually get a happiness penalty from living in a cramped apartment and start seeking medium density or low density housing that is more spacious and they can usually afford the rents better with a 2 income household.

Does that make sense now?

No, it does not make sense.

Formal education doesn't immediately translate to income. I betcha a lot of undergraduates can sing you a song about that.
And some of the most expensive housing is in well-serviced, inner-city, high-density developments.
Take away the well-serviced part and you end up in an unbearable ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ - though with the current housing market still an expensive ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥.

Wealth is not a defining factor for density, And connecting higher-density housing to lower-income households indivisibly doesn't make for a realistic simulation but turns RCI-chasing into the only viable way to beat the game in a reasonable time frame.

Originally posted by MasterStonerOG:

dont build low density, build industrial and commercial only until the demand of high density rises. i did it like that and didnt care about the low density demand

That's a good hint for Schönbau (with unlimited resources and all unlocked), but when playing the game as a game and not as a canvas (nothing wrong with that, just not what I'm talking about), you'll start with low-density buildings and stick with low-density buildings for the most part.
Problem now is that demand for industry, retail and offices doesn't go up much and is quickly met with just a few buildings. And even if high-density housing is built, it quickly gets abandoned. Everybody just wants more suburbs. Suburbs! Suburbs! Suburbs!

[icedude94]

Originally posted by kilésengati:

Originally posted by icedude94:

Low residential housing with a large footprint in an area with high land value has high rent. If a cim has trouble affording rent, they will seek housing with lower rent such as in medium or high density housing.

Those buildings as a whole charge much more in rent but that rent is shared between all the households who are tenants so each one pays less than they would a suburban house.

When players chase the RCI demand meter and keep zoning endless low density residential, they are keeping the housing supply high and rents down so there is never any demand for medium or high density residential.

Now when it comes to education/income/students:
Sims with better education can get better paying jobs so they can afford higher rents.
Students have no income and are attending school and paying rent using stored up wealth. That way they prefer low rent high density residential zones. They don't mind living in a tiny apartment because they are alone.

Single adults in the workforce also prefer normal high density residential in cities for the same reason.

Once cims get married and start families, they actually get a happiness penalty from living in a cramped apartment and start seeking medium density or low density housing that is more spacious and they can usually afford the rents better with a 2 income household.

Does that make sense now?

No, it does not make sense.

Formal education doesn't immediately translate to income.
And some of the most expensive housing is in well-serviced, inner-city, high-density developments.
Take away the well-serviced part and you end up in an unbearable ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ - though with the current housing market still an expensive ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥.

Wealth is not a defining factor for density, And connecting higher-density housing to lower-income households indivisibly doesn't make for a realistic simulation but turns RCI-chasing into the only viable way to beat the game in a reasonable time frame.

" Children always go to Elementary School if one is available, while Teens and Adults have the freedom to choose whether to go to school or switch to working. Teens can go to High School while Adults have the option to either go to College or one of the Universities available in the game. When choosing between school and work, citizens calculate which is financially more beneficial for them: to start working now in a lower position and earning money, or studying for a higher possible position earning them more money. Some citizens also simply choose to study or work depending on their inherent interests."

Source: https://www.paradoxinteractive.com/games/cities-skylines-ii/features/city-services-districts-policies

"New residential zone types include medium density row housing with wall-to-wall homes, medium density housing with apartment buildings, mixed housing with shops occupying the ground floor and apartments taking up the rest of the buildings, and low rent housing with large apartment buildings housing lots of small apartments. Low rent housing is especially useful for low-income residents such as students and young adults who have moved out of their parent’s house to live in their own first apartment.


cities II housing
Medium density row housing consists of narrow wall-to-wall buildings

Low and medium density housing tend to have larger apartments which most residents find appealing. However, the cost of living is usually higher in smaller buildings such as detached houses, row houses, and medium-sized apartment buildings as the costs are divided among fewer households. Increasing Land Value also affects smaller buildings more as it affects the size of the rent in general. On the other hand, high density housing can fit a lot of people in a small area but its main negative aspect is that the apartments are usually small. Conversely, the rents are more affordable as the building’s upkeep is divided among a large number of households."

Source: https://www.paradoxinteractive.com/games/cities-skylines-ii/features/zones-signature-buildings

If you still hate it, then you have a problem with the game's design.

[Gamers Delight 4541]

I have 210,000 people in my city, Low resident stays at 100 percent demand with nothing else moving. I am also having an issue with creating cargo routes for ships. I can't delete the hub or even move it. I have 0 routes, Because i keep getting an error that says no pathway. Once i hit 150,000 people, I started getting an error on the screen that says pathway error with a bunch of garbled text with it. It says save game and quit, Continue, or just exit game. I filled almost my whole map with low resident's, Because of the Demand bar. Another issue i have is with garbage. It quit exporting to other cities once i built a landfill and Incinerator. I now have 6 Incinerator's, 5 Land fills, All in districts with all the upgrades , and still garbage is piling up. The game is not finished in my opinion. I have had alot of fun no doubt. This game really needs some work. I have all my settings on high, with all special features disabled such as clouds and volumetric's. I am still holding onto 45 fps on a 4070ti at 1440p. The game just looks like CS1 with even shadows disabled. I just wanted to post my issues i have at 210K population.

[icedude94]

Originally posted by Gamers Delight 4541:

I have 210,000 people in my city, Low resident stays at 100 percent demand with nothing else moving. I am also having an issue with creating cargo routes for ships. I can't delete the hub or even move it. I have 0 routes, Because i keep getting an error that says no pathway. Once i hit 150,000 people, I started getting an error on the screen that says pathway error with a bunch of garbled text with it. It says save game and quit, Continue, or just exit game. I filled almost my whole map with low resident's, Because of the command bar. Another issue i have is with garbage. It quit exporting to other cities once i built a landfill and Incinerator. I now have 6 Incinerator's, 5 Land fills, All in districts with all the upgrades , and still garbage is piling up. The game is not finished in my opinion. I have had alot of fun no doubt. This game really needs some work. I have all my settings on high, with all special features disabled such as clouds and volumetric's. I am still holding onto 45 fps on a 4070ti at 1440p. The game just looks like CS1 with even shadows disabled. I just wanted to post my issues i have at 210,000 people.

Make sure you submit a bug report.

Also people need to stop following the RCI demand bar. It's just telling you what has good conditions to develop if you build it. You have no obligation to follow it and I think it's a bad habit people have from playing other city builders.

Right now I've got a city with maxed out demand for low, medium and high residential and just a tiny sliver of demand for commercial and industrial with most things at level 4 or 5.

It's got perfect equilibrium right now. Industry is commercial is able to satisfy all residential needs and industry is able to satisfy all commercial needs. Happiness is through the roof because everybody is extremely wealthy so all I have is just people want to move in.