Citystate II News

[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.
  

[h2]NEW[/h2]

• Prisons: increase security and civil rights when not overcrowded. Can be upgraded to a second stage. By default 0.075% of the population is in a prison, this rate (shown in population stats) increases with lower economic freedom and higher income inequality.
  
• Gulag: Generates revenue based on the number of prisoners, decreases civil rights.
  
• Rehab Center: More expensive than prisons but gives a civil rights bonus.
  
• Summary of policies: displays total effects from all active policies (in the legislation panel)
  
• Inflation breakdown now displayed in budget panel too
  
• Overhaul of UI panels
  
• 2 new 4x4 parks
  
• Chinese Localization!
  

[h2]BALANCING[/h2]
Stabilizing the economic system so crisis are more manageable:

• Education has a greater impact on the industry. Inflation has a lesser impact on the industry. Unemployment and demands have a lesser impact on inflation.
  
• Participation rate can now range from 40 to 82.5% so as to stabilize the unemployment rate. The level of education has now a stronger effect on the participation rate (higher education => higher participation rate => higher unemployment), useful to make transitioning economies easier to deal with.
  
• Increase tax income from residential buildings, decrease tax income from businesses (so sudden changes of the unemployment rate has a lesser effect on budget income)
  
• Added an extra equation to help stabilize a bit the total tax income from businesses when the unemployment rate is high (not realistic but making it easier to handle economic crisis)
  

Abandonment mechanics:

• In bigger cities, buildings were too rarely being abandonned. Speed of decay increased.
  
• Commercial and Industrial buildings can now also decay because of insufficient land value, power or water shortages.
  
• Decay for insuficiant land value only happens if the value is less than half of the 'desired value' (colored in red in the census tool).
  
• Census tool was showing "Ducks have infested the building!" for some abandonned businesses. The true decay reason should now be displayed.
  
• Note: An abandonned building will get rebuilt if there is enough demand, enough power and enough water.
  

Other changes:

• Buying currency and printing money has less impact on the exchange rate
  
• Increased effect of education on the social ladder (+33%)
  
• Immigration: Increased Airport Capacity. Decreased civil rights score wanted by migrants.
  
• Maximum property tax is now 10%. Effect on approval rate and land value decreased.
  
• Changed the GDP per capita computation to be more realistic
  
• Changed the inequality index computation to be more realistic
  

[h2]BUG FIXES[/h2]

• Singapore achievement could not be unlocked.
  
• Parks could be built underwater
  
• Building a coal power plant was unlocking the legislation panel
  
• Residential buildings stage 5 and 6 had troubles spawning on custom density lots
  
• Requirements to unlock special buildings could never turn back red
  
• In bigger cities traffic data was taking too long to update (should be 8x faster)
  
• Optimized traffic pathfinding
  

Next update should come out by the end of March.
The economic system is pretty much working as intended at this point, you can expect much less changes in the future.
The level of difficulty is now more progressive and will not change much aymore but I might add new starting settings if difficulty is still an issue.

Spotted a bug? Please, send me an email!

• Carbon Capture Building (reduces nearby pollution).
  
• Edenium: a sort of sect that increases the birth rate but not religiousness.
  
• Custom density zones (to set the exact max stage a building can reach).
  
• 5 new growable buildings (low income stage 1, middle income stage 7, upper class stage 6, office stage 4, office stage 5).
  

• Political affiliations could sometimes change abruptly and even revert to opposite numbers. If the count was erroneous in your city, it will be automatically reset.
  
• Including special characters or leaving a space at the end in your Nation or City's name was leading to saving errors. Conflicting characters are now blocked.
  
• Stability was reset to 100 after reopening a city.
  
• Screen resolution was not being saved.
  
• Stats in news feeds were missing a space.
  
• Fixed GDP per capita displayed in stats and Nation (x10).
  
• The state media building was recognized as a religious building by nearby houses (not intentional), its monthly cost wasn't taken into account and census tool was erroneous.
  
• The pollution layer were showing very polluted tiles as non polluted.
  
• Road intersection tiles were not displaying data on the traffic layer.
  
• Riot messages were always stating "the riot is destructive" even when not.
  

• Immigration and policies now take longer time to influence political affiliations.
  
• New birth rate computation: religion, education and policies have less impact, health has more impact, default base rate increased.
  
• Doubled tax income from arcologies.
  
• Visual enhancements: post processing, reflections, lighting and materials.
  
• Doubled shadow resolution (on older PCs you might need to lower your shadow settings down to medium).
  
• Changed the sun position of day mode from 7am to 9am
  
• Multiplied by 3 the effect of airports on neighbor cities' immigration caps.
  
• Traffic layer now displays rail tracks usage.
  
• Doubled max limit when leveling terrain.
  
• Decreased frequency of fires.
  
• Slight decrease of riots frequency.
  
• Buildings now evolve faster in larger cities (up to 2x if > 250k pop).
  
• Further increased the positive effect of trees on pollution (x10) and slightly increased the pollution emitted by traffic and factories.
  
• Pollution now affects terrain color and propagates a bit farther.
  
• Religious buildings now have a small monthly upkeep cost.
  

[h3]NEW[/h3]
- Marinas and boats
- Library: speeds up the education level growth of nearby buildings
- Radius showing bus and train station serviced area
- Smooth terrain mode: can be activated in the gameplay settings menu, -before- loading a city
- Thai Localization (Special thanks to Cherdphong Sutithep, Plan Pimlada and Chinnapat Sawatwongvicha)



[h3]BUG FIXES[/h3]
- AM buildings could not progress to stage 2 and above if demand for BM was negative.
- Service buildings were sometimes very difficult to select.
- Destroying a large area while in pause and with a government building involved could make some buildings indestructible or stop the city's growth
- Gov headquarters stage 2+ could not be selected and opened (fixed for new headquarters or if still on Stage 1)
- Changing a lot zone type were causing some visual bugs, displaying wrong max stage and creating incorrect vacant lot size
- Parks monthly cost was not counted in the total expenses!
- In rare cases the power capacity of all cities could add up to zero and cause a divide by zero error.
- Destroying a train station could in some cases stop the city's growth.
- The broken water pipe visual effect was spawning in the air or inside buildings
- Unemployment can no longer go below -10% or above 99% to prevent "NaN" bug and extreme inflation and approval values.
- Pedestrian walkways button displayed wrong maintenance cost
- Ends of pedestrian bridges were misaligned
- Enact policy button tooltip was displaying incorrect stability impact
- A state owned building that was under construction when exiting the city was not reloaded at its correct position and could be seen floating above the map
- Additional safeguards to prevent infinite plane spawning
- UI volume setting was apparently still not saved

[h3]CHANGES/BALANCING[/h3]
- Participation rate now increases when the education level increases. Expect a slightly higher unemployment rate in educated cities.
- Removed central bank infinite money exploit
- Fasten the reaction of the economy to changes. The larger the city the faster demands can be impacted by changes.
- A lack of workforce was not decreasing the demand of commercial and industrial buildings
- Destroying and decayed buildings no longer give back business demand points (demand is recovered progressively by the economy anyway)
- Tax rates can now be increased even without enough stability points
- The student capacity of universities is now counted from all universities in the Nation (reloading cities with universities necessary). Universities working over
capacity now have a lower grade and a lesser effect on the education level.
- Improved bus and train usage (especially for cities with lots of stops close to each other).
- Added incentives for commuters to use highways and increased the capacity of highway access roads, now 30000 (before was 500 - need to be rebuilt to get the new capacity)
- Bankruptcy process no longer sells and destroys roads
- Bankruptcy no longer induces "free power" production situation
- Profits from sales of service buildings and private properties during bankruptcy multiplied by 2
- Improvements to road/avenue intersections to support more cases.
- Moved grass and tree tools under the terraforming section
- State owned buildings can no longer catch fire

[h3]NEW[/h3]
- Red-light district: once unlocked is free to research and build, can be built multiple times, generates 600 'retail' jobs.
- Parking lots: Instead of getting abandoned, high stage office, retail and residential buildings are replaced with parking lots. New buildings can then replace parking lots without having to restart from stage 1. Riots, crime and fire still cause abandonment.
- 5 new residential buildings: 2 new upper class stage 7, new lower class stage 2,3 and 4.

[h3]BUG FIXES[/h3]
- Schools stage 4 were not showing on the education overlay (your old schools could be invisible after loading, still functional but rebuild them if necessary)
- Intersections between gravel roads and streets with trees were creating invisible road tiles
- Starting a city with state owned buildings would cause the city's economy to stop working
- State-owned factories and retail were not generating any tax income.
- Immigration effect on political affiliations was not computed correctly and had instant repercussions. Now more progressive.
- Futurologist achievement could not be unlocked
- Added a second reference check to make sure 3x3 parks are saved
- Riot alert message title was not localized
- Riot alert message: "Move to riot" button was not visible enough
- The number of rioters in the streets was always higher than indicated in the alert message
- Fixed a bug affecting the duration of riots, possibly responsible for the riot sound never stopping
- Riots were spawning on walkways and rails
- Alert messages were not showing if the tutorial was stopped halfway through and alerts were still displayed even if turned off.
- Music were stopped in large cities with too many audio sources. New audio optimizations.

[h3]CHANGES[/h3]
- Added warnings in budget and policy when stability is too low to enact a policy, change taxes or print money
- Increased average approval of tax rates
- Increased base religiousness level and decreased effect of religion on political affiliations (large left leaning cities were having troubles expanding, more feedback still needed)
- In a new city, if residential lots were built on high value land, houses were not getting built. Removed maximum land value requirement in small cities.
- Approval rate from policy can no longer go above 100% or below -50%
- Decreased by 50% the effect of high demand on the inflation rate
- Minor visual changes to shadows and window textures