Pros and cons of CS 2

[Cochise]

Hello,
I played CS I for a long time and love that game. I am really on the fence with CS2 because it didn't really seem like an improvement but a step backwards.

Now that some time has passed, is this much better than CS1 with mods>?
What are the pros and cons of CS 2 and does it make sense to buy it yet?

[Stealthy]

No. It will take at least another year or 2 AFTER the full asset modding support comes to catch up to that level.

Right now this is very comparable to C:S1 with first 3 DLCs (minus bikes). Many mechanics are improved like road tools and allow lot of things to be done what aren't really possible on C:S1 even with mods.

There are things like parallel road tools, advanced tram AI, lite version of intersection marking tools built in (meaning automatic, improved markings), some level of special industries, trams, seasons, disasters etc.

Missing asset importing (only unofficial way is available right now) means that you can't add more buildings and various assets to the game leaving it feel a lot emptier. However, there is a lot more content in the game than what was in the base game of C:S1 within first couple of years. And when the asset importing comes, content creators will release those 2500 buildings as 8 area packs as free mods.

Upcoming Economy 2.0 patch seems to address many things including option to disable outside services from coming to your city and government grants have been disabled. So should get more challenging to play, but that can only be confirmed after the patch is out.

So if you do like all the extra assets etc. then no, this isn't the time yet. Maybe in 6 to 9 months, depending on when the asset importing comes available.

If you do like to spend time learning the game and getting a hang of the way it works with less focus on how many building variations you got and are ok with the missing asset support for a while, then this can be quite entertaining game.

[purrcat33a]

Game performance, especially with larger cities, is still an issue. Otherwise, if economy 2 is as good as the claims are, then it will have taken a decent step forward.

Personally, I find CS:2 a more interesting proposition than CS:1 - perhaps I have experienced too many of the positive attributes of 2 which make 1 a bit jarring for me.

[girlaroundthecorner]

Originally posted by purrcat33a:

Game performance, especially with larger cities, is still an issue. Otherwise, if economy 2 is as good as the claims are, then it will have taken a decent step forward.

Personally, I find CS:2 a more interesting proposition than CS:1 - perhaps I have experienced too many of the positive attributes of 2 which make 1 a bit jarring for me.

Agree

[Stealthy]

Originally posted by purrcat33a:

Game performance, especially with larger cities, is still an issue. Otherwise, if economy 2 is as good as the claims are, then it will have taken a decent step forward.

Personally, I find CS:2 a more interesting proposition than CS:1 - perhaps I have experienced too many of the positive attributes of 2 which make 1 a bit jarring for me.

Performance, yes and no. For me, it follows quite closely the same lines like C:S1 does. After 200k performance on both slows down quite a bit and over 400k is for me too slow on either game. Maybe it is the mods in C:S1 causing the extra load, maybe it is like that without them. Haven't tested for a while.

It still has its own appeal, but after getting used to road tools on C:S2 it is very hard to go back and play C:S1 for longer period. There is also other small things that you end up missing.

[purrcat33a]

Originally posted by Stealthy:

Originally posted by purrcat33a:

Game performance, especially with larger cities, is still an issue. Otherwise, if economy 2 is as good as the claims are, then it will have taken a decent step forward.

Personally, I find CS:2 a more interesting proposition than CS:1 - perhaps I have experienced too many of the positive attributes of 2 which make 1 a bit jarring for me.

Performance, yes and no. For me, it follows quite closely the same lines like C:S1 does. After 200k performance on both slows down quite a bit and over 400k is for me too slow on either game. Maybe it is the mods in C:S1 causing the extra load, maybe it is like that without them. Haven't tested for a while.

It still has its own appeal, but after getting used to road tools on C:S2 it is very hard to go back and play C:S1 for longer period. There is also other small things that you end up missing.

I found that with CS:1 as a reference for, say, a 200K city, CS:2 is similar in simulation speed.

The only difference is that I timed CS:1 with an R5 1800X and a 1080 Ti and CS:2 with a 14700K and a 4070 Ti. There is no way, in by opinion, that the simulation speeds should be similar given the differences in hardware.

[TheKillerChicken]

Interestingly enough, when I used a program to reduce my ryzen 9 7950x's logical core usage to from 32 to 16 in C:SII, I never noticed even a slight performance hit and I had 1 million squawkers. I wonder what the hell that code is actually doing then with a high core/thread count then?

[Cosmic Sea]

Game isn't even worth considering until asset editor is released.