Citystate II News

[h2]Major fixes[/h2]

• Fixed a major error affecting the number of jobs created by the upper class (was 10x the intended value). A lack of workforce was probably affecting your city as soon as the upper class grew.
  
• Social class distribution % values were incorrect. Could lead to a negative incarceration rate. (Reported by Omnius, thank you!)
  
• The effect of policies on political affiliations was incorrect when the policies were mostly left leaning. (Reported by BiOxYdE, merci!)
  
• Effect of policies on pollution was incorrect! Eco-friendly policies now have greater effect on reducing pollution. Thanks to Alex Vagni for reporting this discrepancy!
  
• New algorithm for the propagation of pollution. Polluted areas were taking too long to clean up if pollution ceased. Pollution might get all over the place after loading your city for the first time with the patch, it'll take a few in game years to stabilize.
  
• Balanced the environment score (used for quality of life index and approval rate). Was wrong in polluted cities.
  
• Connected cities will now share jobs across borders when the unemployment is lower than 10%. Unemployment is no longer exported to connected cities, only jobs. Up to 10% of all jobs can be imported from a connected city. When the unemployment is too low, jobs from connected cities will no longer be available to dampen the lack of workforce.
  
• When upgrading a service building the employee current funding ratio is now preserved.
  
• The dollar reserve was not being saved when exiting the Nation or the game.
  
• Improved pathfinding significantly. Highways are used more often. Commutes can now be up to 2048 road tile long (640 before).
  

[h2]Other changes[/h2]

• Added some extra safeties to prevent the education score to go brrrr.
  
• If you had more than 1 million USD reserve the exchange rate could equal to zero.
  
• Doubled the area affected by the carbon capture buildings.
  
• Census tool now shows pollution rate on roads, rails and walkways.
  
• Changed the color of the pollution layer to be more visible.
  
• Increased prevalence of rare ore and offshore oil.
  
• Census tool was displaying "Insufficient Demand" for vacant lots even when the demand was high.
  
• Shorten display of trade capacity in Nation UI.
  
• Improved port placement tool. Have to be rotated manually like airports by pressing TAB.
  
• Census tool did not give any information for farming tiles.
  
• Increased religion effect on birth rates
  
• Population growth from neighbor cities was not taken into account.
  
• Slums now participate to the Lower Class natural growth rate (births).
  
• Removed "Too Steep" limitation to road building.
  
• Removed "Unaligned Intersection" limitation to road building.
  
• Updated PT-BR localization
  
• The demand for slums would never decrease when many low income citizens were getting richer.
  
• Corrected tooltip for the trade capacity in Nation view.
  
• Lack of workforce triggers building decay more often.
  
• Changed how commuters pick a workplace. Generally choose location closer to their home.
  
• Residential buildings under construction no longer loose their occupants during construction (the city's population stays unchanged). (suggested by raxo8888)
  
• Government type "Utopia" was not being displayed in the top UI (also reported by raxo8888)
  
• Volumetric clouds in city view are now turned on by default for the preset 'High'.
  

Much appreciation for everyone that took the time to email me suggestions and bug reports!

[h2]New[/h2]

• Added underground resources, 4 types: Oil, Gas, Common Ore and Rare Ore. Resources first need to be looked for using the prospecting tool (under the industry buildings tab). Depending on the ore available underground we can then place a mining lot which will instantly build 1 of the 5 mining buildings (an oil field, a gas field, an open pit mine, an underground mine and an offshore rig). Mines and rigs provide jobs, tax income and improve the trade balance.
  

• Added a container port and container ships. Ports increase the value of a city's exports. The trading capacity of ports is shared accross all cities (like power production).
  

• Added trade balance, takes into account the exchange rate, the trade capacity (from ports and airports) and of course the imports/exports ratio. The trade balance is NOT shared accross cities. The census tool will show the exports/imports balance for each commercial and industrial lot.
  
• Added alert icons over buildings. Will display one of the 8 most common problems: no water, no power, not enough demand, unemployment, no workforce, pollution, crime or 'can't reach workplace'.
  
• Added 3 farming variants
  

[h2]Balancing and Changes[/h2]

• New job creation / distribution algorithm to stabilize the economic cycles and facilitate economic transitions. (I really thought we were done with big economic changes but I discovered that some of the adjustments made previously were actually disregarded entirely once the game was initialized).
  
• New inflation and exchange rate system. A bit more complex but theoretically more realistic. Updated the economy stats panel.
  
• Enhanced spatial segregation of social classes (sorts lots based on their land value and picks the most relevant).
  
• Added the option to sell dollars.
  
• Added a dynamic representation of political affiliations in the approval stats.
  
• We can now reduce the tax rates and print money even if stability is at zero.
  

[h2]Minor Fixes and Changes[/h2]

• Replaced display of the exchange rate by the trade capacity (earned from ports and airports) in Nation UI.
  
• Improved Census Tool and Service Editor position. (solution proposed by GeneMonty, thanks!)
  
• A Stage 7 upper class building had a concrete texture instead of windows.
  
• Pressing escape while destroying a zone now cancels the action.
  
• Added tooltip displaying the reason why a building can't be placed (if no road access or insufficient funds or terrain too steep).
  
• Terraforming actions are now prevented when the balance is insufficient.
  
• Some residential sound effects were not being used.
  
• Lowered the quality score threshold for service buildings to reach grade A (visual only).
  
• The population amount coming from neighbor cities is now displayed in the population stats.
  
• Increased inflation effect on the social ladder.
  
• Decreased incarceration rate (-20%).
  
• Decreased number of students in high school and elementary (-20%).
  
• Decreased traffic (-15%) and pollution (-25%).
  
• Decreased land value requirement for advanced manufacturing (-25%).
  
• All menus can now be closed with the ESC key.
  
• In large cities new low class houses could sometimes never develop.
  
• New attempt at solving the ever disappearing airport stage 1.
  
• The red district was not keeping its initial rotation after loading back the city.
  
• Improved boat navigation. Should not sail on land anymore.
  
• Gained about 5 seconds on saving and loading Nation.
  
• Riots have a larger area of potential destruction.
  
• New residential buildings no longer start with an education score of zero, depending of the social class they will start with up to half of the current city's education score.
  
• News about prison overcrowding was triggered at 80% prison occupation.
  

[h2]Known Issues:[/h2]

• Placing the port can be difficult in small spaces. A large open shore is recommended. Build a road first.
  
• Helipad cannot be destroyed.
  
• Cars on service buildings disappear after reloading the city.
  
• Localizations other than English and French related to the new features are of mediocre quality (will be updated in June).
  
• Props and trees can clip into buildings for a while before getting updated.
  

Update 1.2.1 will add new lot sizes, possibly an option for larger maps, big changes to the bottom part of the UI, a revamped census tool, and new unique buildings. It'll take about 4 weeks of work.

A quick patch of a patch to fix the terraforming issue.

[h2]BUG FIXES[/h2]
- Terraforming tool was not functioning. Other tool such as bulldozer and road builder were not updating terrain.
- Updated credits and start screen
- Optimizations to the terrain updating process
- Commute types data in stats for air taxi usage was incorrect.
- Exchange Rate in Nation view was incorrect
- Props and parked vehicles took too long to update
- Trying to purchase a new city tile without enough money will now play the negative chime.
- Shadow quality "Low" settings will now disable all shadows completely (great for older CPUs!).

A couple of important bug fixes and other changes that could not wait for update 1.1.5 to be published. Air Taxis were sometimes not showing up and a memory leak has been finally solved.

[h2]NEW [/h2]

• - Bus and train stops can now turn a profit if enough commuters are using the service.
  
• - Abandoned buildings are now painted in red in the land use layer.
  

[h2]CHANGES[/h2]

• - Faster update of commute paths (x6). This should help citizens change mode of transport if a new one is made available.
  
• - Faster business demand evolution when points are added (x1.5), slower when points are subtracted (x0.75)
  
• - Faster spawn of new business buildings (x3 in large cities). Abandoned buildings can be rebuilt in less time.
  
• - Faster stability regeneration when no government buildings exist.
  
• - When a business is abandoned or destroyed 50% of the demand is now recovered (prevents fast unemployment spike)
  
• - Changed computation of the inequality index. Fixed approval rate from inequalities going over 100%.
  
• - Changed slum growth value in stats. Now displayed total current informal demand and correct demand change.
  

[h2]BUG FIXES[/h2]

• - Fixed a serious memory leak that was affecting the game since release. Up to 3GB of ram were getting eaten in large cities. This problem was mitigated until now by a manual unloading of unnecessary data every 4 in-game years, hence the slight freeze happening regularly. I'm keeping this unloading event for now but set it to repeat every 10 years, just to be on the safe side.
  
• - Air Taxis were not showing up if the amount of active vehicles was maxed out or if commute paths were not updated. They also might be difficulty to spot, pan down the camera as so to see the horizon and you should see them. Remember that only upper class citizens can use air taxis.
  
• - Fixed errors with the pathfinding algorithm. Reduced total traffic by about 20%.
  
• - Range of bus and train stops was erroneous. Expect higher public transport usage. (With access to both bus and train, 15% of the population will still prefer to walk or use the car.)
  
• - Removed the effect of demand on inflation. Will be replaced by the trade balance (coming up with version 1.1.5)
  
• - Starting Nation Treasury will now be identical to a new city's balance, matching the difficulty level.
  
• - Rocks were disappearing and sometimes appearing above ground in one of the map's corner.
  
• - Corrected job distribution graph in stats.
  
• - Nation loading crash handler: shorter wait time in case of corrupted data before forcing open the Nation view.
  
• - New attempt at fixing the ever disappearing stage 1 airport.
  
• - Clamped to 100% the immigration bonus from airport connections.
  
• - Difficulty level would default to easy if buttons were never interacted with.
  

Update 1.1.5 should come out in 2 to 3 weeks.

[h2]NEW[/h2]
- New Biomes: Arid and Temperate. Your Nation will now have different climates ranging from the North to the South with vegetation and terrain color progressively changing depending on altitude and latitude.
Closer to the North you'll find the temperate climate with spruces and yellow oak trees. In the center at lower altitude you'll find the sub tropical climate (the default existing biome).
To the South, a more arid, desert like biome with palm trees and cactuses. In total 6 new trees have been added.
Different types of trees are now assign to lots depending on their level of wealth. Trees on road sides are not affected by climate.



- New difficulty settings. The old options have been entirely replaced with new presets so that the easy mode is actually easy. 3 options:

* Easy: This is a difficulty level that could be considerate in par with today's other management games.
Starting Balance $100,000; Tax Income +30%; Approval +20pt.; Unemployment Stabilizer ON; Pollution Low; Abandonment Very Low; Birth Rate +0.3pt; Immigration +0%; Treasury +0%

** Normal: Recommended if you still haven't got your phD in economics.
Starting Balance $50,000; Tax Income +15%; Approval +5pt.; Unemployment Stabilizer ON; Pollution Normal; Abandonment Low; Birth Rate +0.1pt; Immigration +10%; Treasury +10%

*** Realistic: Slightly more difficult than the previous version. Existing Nations will automatically be set to this difficulty level. (To change it manually for existing Nations see details at the end.)
Starting Balance $20,000; Tax Income +0%; Approval +0pt.; Unemployment Stabilizer OFF; Pollution Normal; Abandonment Normal; Birth Rate +0.0pt; Immigration +20%; Treasury +25%

1, 2 or 3 stars will be displayed in the main UI depending on the level you chose.

- Air Taxi Station: Once researched and built, allows the upper class to use flying cars to commute. Reduces traffic congestion (in rich cities). This is the last special building to unlock in the research panel.



- Added a New Sports Car, a Pickup Truck and changed the bus model.
- Added 19 new city sound effects (total of 131 ambient effects) and improved audio management and mastering.
- Added 3 new materials and changed some buildings textures.

[h2]CHANGES[/h2]
[h3]ECONOMY[/h3]

• Increased minimum and maximum limits of the demands (the UI bars have the same maximum bounds but the values themselves can exceed their representation; the minimums have been changed both visually and in the data)
  
• When a residential building is now abandoned or destroyed: 70% of the inhabitants are added to the demand of the class below, 20% are added back to the same class demand and 10% leave the city. When a slum despawns, 100% of the occupants are added to the lower class demand. The city's population will no longer collapse!
  
• When a residential building was upgraded, the total amount of occupants were removed from the demand. Now, only the amount of additional occupants is removed from the demand.
  
• Changes to the population growth system derived from social mobility. Corrections to the demands algorithms (new population could be created outside of births and migration).
  
• A part of the demand was wrongly destroyed when a residential building was replaced by a different class type therefore distorting the social ladder system. Social mobility dynamics now operate in a closed circuit, theoretically.
  
• Houses stage 1 can now also be replaced by another class if the demands are unequal.
  
• An office lot can be replaced by retail and AM can be replaced by BM (Only the opposite was possible before). Conversions also happen faster.
  
• Various other changes to the demand system for industrial and commercial businesses to prevent overinvestment phenomenon (a new construction could create unwanted demand for other sectors which would be rectified later on and lead to abandonment). The economic system is now more stable and more precise.
  

[h3]TRAFFIC[/h3]

• Traffic data collection was erroneous. Ambulances, fire trucks and pedestrians were adding up to the congestion. Traffic from commercial buildings were not taken into account. Buses had too much impact on congestion. Increased the distance a citizen is willing to walk from 16 tiles to 19.
  
• New color gradient for the traffic layer. (green = not congested, red = 100% congested, purple = 200% congested)
  
• If a citizen has access to both a train station and a bus stop: 70% chance of using the train. 20% chance of using the bus. 10% chance of using his car.
  
• Roads with trees can no longer absorb all pollution emitted by traffic.
  
• Increased maximum commute distance to 640 road tiles. I recommend avoiding segregating jobs and homes or building any weird road networks that would force long commutes which will still lead to "Can't reach workplace" abandonment issues.
  
• Bus stops and train stations now increase nearby land value.
  
• You can now build bus stops and stations on roads with trees.
  

[h2]BUG FIXES[/h2]

• Added a fix to infinite loading screen when launching the game.
  
• Graphic settings were still not loaded correctly in city view and details distance settings were not applied immediately.
  
• Upper class buildings were never decaying when the demand was at its minimum negative limit.
  
• Parking lots were almost never replaced by new buildings even with positive demand.
  
• Vehicles were not spawning in night mode.
  
• Red light district economic freedom requirement shown in research menu was wrong.
  
• High Rises could not catch fire (either from Riots or low security level).
  
• High Rises being turned into parking lots will now decrease the stability score.
  
• All occupants of residential high rises turning into parking lots were leaving the city and none were added back to the demand.
  
• Residential UI demand bars pop up numbers were not displaying bounded values (happened in large cities).
  
• Corrected Arcology C requirement in Research Panel.
  
• The National Treasury bonus was incorrectly computed.
  
• Policy requirement to unlock government HQ stage 5 was erroneous.
  
• Jobs in arcologies were not being taken into account for the GDP computation.
  
• The state social media building were not affecting the Nation as advertised. Once built you can now expect: +10 approval bonus points, -2 education quality, +2 security level.
  
• The StateCopter was visible hanging under the map.
  
• National Treasury can no longer exceed 1 billion (this value was getting negative when exceeding 2.1 billion (integer overflow)).
  
• Ploppable buildings could be placed along rail tracks.
  
• Census tool was not showing the lot type of parking lots and abandoned buildings.
  
• Government buildings will no longer close if their road access is lost.
  
• Max Stage of government buildings were incorrect in the census tool.
  
• Removed requirement of Government HQ to unlock the immigration office.
  
• In custom policies list, the cost were shown in grey instead of red or green.
  
• Texture Optimizations. 500+Mb of ram saved.