Where Can I learn the Game Mechanics?

[Darthclimo]

For example I'm about to plop my bus network down, but why? What are the implications of putting it down? How does it affect transportation costs? Does it help with pollution? What about effects on my zones?

Apply the same question to every new toy. I don't want to play a painter, I want to play a simulation. Without knowing the mechanics I can't make good decisions.

[icedude94]

I can enjoy building a city without any help from the outside such as subsidies and services.
Like more people taking public transit than there are people living in my city:
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3072765430

Because I have 30,000 tourists coming in every day:
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3072766046

Which maximizes profits for industrial, commercial, and office zones:
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3072766312

Which leads to a majority of zones being level 3-5:
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3072766687

[icedude94]

Oh look, I don't need any subsidies.
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3072771181

I guess my city must be so well designed, the simulation doesn't think I need crutches like a government subsidy.

[mrxak]

Originally posted by archonsod:

The tutorial, the dev diaries and good old trial and error. Oh, and read the tool tips, pay attention to the info view and overlays and whenever you have a moment, try clicking on a Cim or vehicle and just observe what they do. Note you get 75% of the building costs back when you demolish a building and most of them can be moved for a small fee to encourage you to play around with it.
A well designed mass transit system will reduce pollution, reduce traffic congestion and make travel cheaper for your Cims. A badly designed mass transit system will do the exact opposite and also put a hole in your budget. There's few universal principles that can be applied (well, outside of common sense. Buses obviously work better if they take Cims between the places they want to go rather than dumping them in the middle of nowhere) because it's heavily dependent on how you've built out your city. One simple example being the fact that a Cim taking the bus (or taxi, tram et al) hasn't got access to their car, which means as soon as you look at mass transit beyond the taxi rank the first thing you need to think about is how navigable your city is on foot.

The dev diaries were lies, though, we know that now. And YouTubers covering this series are mostly shills who are just city-painting instead of diving deep into the simulations.

[AchoKaracho]

That's not the point at all!
I've tested what works and no matter what I do I won't go bankrupt, even if my life depended on it.
I can do what I want,
That's the point.

My population 110042
Tourists 18104
Public transportation use 101305/month

Profit:
Commercial areas 99%
Industry 46%
Office 100%

Building levels
Residential
Level 1 8.8%
Level 2 15.7%
Level 3 29.9%
Level 429.9
Level 5 26.3%

Commercial
Level 1 2%
Level 2 26.1%
Level 3 15%
Level 4 42.5%
Level 5 14.4%

Industry
Level 1 12%
Level 2 26.2%
Level 3 28.5%
Level 4 25.4%
Level 5 7.9%

Office
Level 1 0.3%
Level 2 23.7%
Level 3 24.4%
Level 4 24.4%
Level 5 27.2%

Subsidies 3839833

To explain why my industry makes such a low profit.
I wanted more highly educated people in my city, so I set the taxes to maximum for the first 3 levels and 0% for the last two education groups
I wanted to see what would happen.
But then I forgot to set it back to normal
As a result, all the companies in my city now have a shortage of workers from the lower education levels
As I said above, I can do whatever I want, I will never go bankrupt because of this system
This has nothing to do with economic simulation, at least for me.
Ok, if we're honest, our politicians can do whatever they want and if they mess up, we'll just print new money.
I have that in real life, I don't want that in a game too.
There was so much praise in the Dev Diaries and in my opinion the result was a sham

[icedude94]

But if everything in the simulation was fake and nothing worked, it wouldn't be possible to build a city that didn't need subsidies, right?

Seems like the first mod that should come out is one that turns off all the subsidies. Then everyone will be happy...

[AchoKaracho]

Of course you can build a city without subsidies, no one disputes that
It is denounced that an economic system was touted that turned out to be hot air.
I could also build a city where I don't need subsidies
But I wanted to test everything, what is affected and how etc etc etc
I spent hours watching the post work to see how it worked.
Whether they can keep up with the work, whether I should build another garage or a new post office, or whether it's enough to put up mailboxes
But nothing worked properly (they were probably German postal officials, just a little joke)

Then I read that it was bugged
Then I looked at the transport system etc etc etc
I spent 129.5 hours in SC2 and I probably spent 3/4 of that time just observing.
I've seen the strangest things.
For example, in the Devdiaries it was said that adults prefer quick routes
Pensioners prefer to travel in comfort, etc

Why then does a working woman park her car on the side of the road 1.5 km away from her single-family home with a carport and walk home??

And these are not isolated cases
I observed one who parked his car in the parking lot at the supermarket and then walked 1km home to sleep, Even though he could have parked on the sidewalk in front of his apartment

An estimated 30-40% of my population from my largest district with 69k residents walk over 1km to my industrial area to buy goods from the producers there instead of going to the shop around the corner.
The shops around the corner scream at me for not having enough customers.
I mean wtf?

I think what upsets most people is that they don't get punished when they make mistakes
We basically have 2 game modes
1. Unlock all unlimited Money, adjustable
2. Without anything, but with an invisible nanny who gives you a hand and gives you a pacifier if things don't work

What upsets most people is that we were sold a highly praised deceptive package in which nothing works properly.
If I had wanted to play a game where I lay roads and paint areas, I could have reinstalled CS1

[Switchinzski]

Originally posted by icedude94:

That's because if you have zero residents, you get commuters. Then the game recognizes that you do have workers.

lmfao, give these a watch https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZVdi-R6xiAw
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GDwfik0p6oQ And make up your own mind

[icedude94]

Did the shop have goods to sell?
I know you can't check inventory without being lucky and finding one of their delivery vehicles. The game could use that as part of the UI and the devs seem to be working on that.

The warehouses in the industrial zones can store a LOT of goods, like 900 tons worth.

From what I've seen of the simulation, every commercial building has 1 vehicle which they can use to send to purchase goods at a warehouse. Every industrial zone has 2 vehicles. They can use one or both for getting resources from warehouses or exporting their products to a warehouse or cargo rail station. If cims, can't get the goods at the commercial building because it's out, they'll try to go to the warehouse to get it. If as much of your population as you say is going to the industrial area, then the commercial zones are definitely out of goods. I wonder if this is related to the recent patch they made that was supposed to increase the amount of time cims spend shopping for goods.

The "not enough customers" simply means they aren't getting enough customers to cover rent. People not shopping there could be from a lack of goods to sell.

I think they need to tweak when the commercial zones send out their vans to get more goods. They seem to wait till they have less than 1 ton left. I have noticed dense commercial has a larger inventory for goods.

I haven't seen the issue of any of my cims parking far away from their homes. Looking at my light residential subdivisions at night, when they are all home and sleeping I see very few cars parked on the street and I see a car parked on the lot for almost every home. I've also been pretty good at placing parking lots both where people live in medium and high density residential, where they shop in the commercial areas and where they work in the industrial zones.

You could actually tell in my city where the bulk of people are, be it at work, home, or shopping just by looking at the parking lots.

[icedude94]

Originally posted by Switchinzski:

Originally posted by icedude94:

That's because if you have zero residents, you get commuters. Then the game recognizes that you do have workers.

lmfao, give these a watch https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZVdi-R6xiAw
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GDwfik0p6oQ And make up your own mind

Yeah and his commercial zones when they run out of goods to sell generate zero taxes. Every video comes down to, "without government subsidies, I would eventually go bankrupt."

[icedude94]

Everyone else on the paradox forums has already figured out that it's the government subsidies. There's no limitations placed on it. They're all in agreement to just remove it from the game and that'll solve everybody's complaints about the game.

[Switchinzski]

Originally posted by icedude94:

Oh look, I don't need any subsidies.
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3072771181

I guess my city must be so well designed, the simulation doesn't think I need crutches like a government subsidy.

Lol show us a screen without an overlay so we can see all the icons, I wanna see how broken your mail system is an how much filth they r wallowing in due to garbage collectors on strike

[icedude94]

Originally posted by Switchinzski:

Originally posted by icedude94:

Oh look, I don't need any subsidies.
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3072771181

I guess my city must be so well designed, the simulation doesn't think I need crutches like a government subsidy.

Lol show us a screen without an overlay so we can see all the icons, I wanna see how broken your mail system is an how much filth they r wallowing in due to garbage collectors on strike

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3072853047

There you go. All the high rent residential are students who have no other income in their households. Then there's just a few buildings waiting for hearses.

[icedude94]

I wrote a guide on garbage management. You're welcome to read it. It's based on a theory that there's multiple types of garbage in the simulation being hidden by the vague UI. I've been able to avoid all the garbage problems other users report.

[icedude94]

Originally posted by Switchinzski:

Lol show us a screen without an overlay so we can see all the icons, I wanna see how broken your mail system is an how much filth they r wallowing in due to garbage collectors on strike

If the game didn't have the issue of households with children and teens living alone as students, I would have ZERO residential complaining about high rent and I wouldn't need welfare offices to keep them from becoming homeless. That's because I control the footprints of the residential zones to keep the rents from getting too high.
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3072853047

[fragbucket]

Originally posted by Achokaracho:

Originally posted by deekay:

But Cities Skylines 2 IS a painter, where the players' decisions have absolutely no impact on the city development and income. The whole economy part is just smoke and mirrors with built-in failsafe systems which prevent the city from failing. The “game” is basically a city painting tool with colorful, but meaningless statistics on top.

+1

+1