Cities: Skylines II News

Thank you for all the positive feedback on last week’s word! It’s great to hear you like the format so we’ll stick to it for the time being. While the tech team is hard at work implementing the code modding support, we can focus on the economy in Cities: Skylines II in today's WoW. At release, the economy did not meet the quality standard we strive for and I apologize for the frustration this has caused. In the post-release patches, we have included fixes for issues present in the economy implementation, but some still remain, and we’re working on resolving those thanks to your reports. The fixes will focus on the underlying system as well as how the information is presented in the game to achieve more clarity that helps you understand the economy better. We’ve received many questions about what parts of the game’s economy are working as designed and what we’re working to change, so let’s dive in!

What is the impact of the specialized industries on the local economy?
Providing raw materials locally means companies using them do not have to import them as much from outside connections (or at all), which leads to those industries being more prosperous. Importing from outside connections is a more expensive choice than local availability, so local resources benefit companies’ bottom line. The design team will look into how to make it more clear which companies are importing or exporting, and how you can affect that.

Why are some services free to import while others have a fee?
One part of the Budget panel’s Expenses is the cost of service trade. Only part of the services are charged when traded, and these are electricity, water and sewage. Other services do not cost you anything to import. But why? The cost of these traded services comes in the form of time, as it will take a long time for them to arrive at their destination. This increases the negative effects on the city. For example, a citizen waiting for an ambulance for a long time increases their probability of dying when their health is low for a long time. Additionally, when a citizen is waiting for treatment, they can’t go to work, giving the company a penalty to its Efficiency.

How is “profitability” determined?
In the game, the company's profitability is calculated from the company's revenue and expenses, which include employee salary, resource buying, tax-paying, and daily production. The profitability indicates the possibility for a positive income, and it varies between 0 and 255. When there is no income for the company, and it still needs to pay a lot of expenses, the profitability can become 0. But it doesn't mean the company currently doesn't have any money, but rather predicts the value of revenue or loss of money. Issues like the lack of employees and the lack of input or output resources can cause profitability to fluctuate. When it comes to the profitability of the company, the calculations may change after we evaluate the complexity of the entire economy based on the feedback we’ve received.

What does the monthly balance show?
The game’s user interface includes tools for you to observe and control the overall economy of the city. The monthly balance in the City Economy panel’s Budget tab counts the current Revenues and Expenses together. It shows what is currently the estimated amount of money the city will gain or lose in the current month. Note that one day cycle in the game equals one month! The City Economy has been affected by bugs that caused the expected income (or loss) to not match the actual monthly income of the city, and we’re working to resolve the remaining issues with industrial tax reaching high values for no apparent reason.

What does “9% interest” on a loan mean? How is it calculated?
It will add a Loan Interest to the Budget panel, which is a monthly fee that will apply to your city’s money. It is calculated by the formula LoanRemainAmount * InterestRate every month, and as the remaining loan amount decreases each month, so will the amount your city pays.

We have also received questions about Land Value, so I want to share a quick update about the current state of both the Land Value and Demand systems, as both will have changes and fixes included in the next patch to the game. The Land Value system has been worked on for a while now, with the first improvements available in patch 1.0.19f1, and the demand system will be improved to make it easier to understand. Fixing major systems like the land value takes a bit more time than the usual bug fixes because these elements are connected to the other parts of the game’s economy system. Our goal with these changes is to make the systems more user-friendly to work with so, for example, it’s easier to understand what causes the high rents and how you can affect it. We’ll go over the land value and demand system improvements after all the changes are in, so stay tuned for that.

That’s it for this week. Have a lovely one until next time!

Sincerely,
Mariina

Last Monday I said we would be taking a break from these weekly posts due to the lack of concrete news and that we would come back when there’s something to share regarding updates to the game. On Tuesday I received a call from Sweden. It seems there was an overwhelming amount of feedback from you wanting to hear from us developers weekly. Thank you for all the lovely messages, we really appreciate it! So let’s get into it:

Patch 1.0.19 came out last Wednesday and you can find the full patch notes here. More bug fixes will be patched into the game with the first modding support features - code modding and Paradox Mods - as soon as they are ready for Public Beta. Now that’s a Word of the Week I can’t wait to write! Steadily working on the game and bringing improvements to it is now the best way to showcase our commitment to Cities: Skylines II and you the community.

We have been wondering what type of information would be relevant for you to hear about and that we can share freely while waiting for confirmation on the updates for the game. Therefore I asked co_avanya to provide a list of questions we have received since the release that take a bit more time and effort to answer than a quick reply on social media. Together with the team, we looked at your questions about how the Industry and Goods simulation works, and here are the answers.

How do importing and exporting actually work and what are the thresholds for exporting goods?
The city can import and/or export goods when sufficient connections to the outside connections have been created. Some city service buildings also require resources to operate. These buildings can import those resources from outside connections if the companies in the city can't provide enough of that resource. The city’s companies can also import or export resources as they see fit, which depends on many different factors. The threshold for exporting goods is whether the company is able to make more money by exporting those goods or if it earns more profit by selling them to companies in the city. Additionally, when the companies’ storage capacity goes under 50% they start to import resources from outside connections.

So what is the flow of the resources in the city?
Industrial and commercial companies move into the city with starting resources, while storage companies start empty. That way the new companies don’t need to wait for the first resource transportation before they can start operating. The companies won’t get more “free” resources after that so they need resource deliveries to operate. Companies need one or more input resources to work and they can get the needed resources from the city’s industry factors or outside connections. The companies use the employees to generate production and refine the input resources into new resources (output) which can then be shipped to outside connections, other manufacturing companies, warehouses, commercial companies, offices, or directly to households. The new resources will be shipped either directly by trucks or by transporting them to cargo terminals. Cargo terminals can transport resources within the city as well as to outside connections.

Here is an example of wood’s possible production chain. There are three options where to get the wood in the first phase: forestry extractor, outside connections, or a storage that includes wood. One of these options sends the wood resource to a sawmill. The sawmill uses the wood to produce timber. Timber can then be sent to a paper mill which uses timber to produce paper, which in turn can be exported, sent to a warehouse, or sent to a bookstore. A bookstore then stores the paper until a customer comes in and shops there. The bookstore's storage on paper is reduced and the customer’s household gains resources. Households only have resources and do not count individual resource types. This means that they do not look at how much "paper" they have, just only how much resources they have.



An important part of a successful production chain process is resource transportation. The physical resources (goods) are always carried by truck in the end and they’re deducted from the storage when a pickup is scheduled, so trucks don’t travel in vain. When a building spawns a delivery truck to send out its output resource, the storage should go down, but there’s currently an issue with the synchronization, so the resource is deducted before the truck spawns. We’re aware of this issue and looking into a fix, so things are synced up correctly. It’s also worth noting that if the vehicle carrying the resource is stuck then it will despawn and those resources are sent back to the owner's building where it will try to send a new vehicle to forward those resources.

The system tries to always go with the physical transportation of goods, especially when it comes to business-to-business. With citizens the requirement is less strict and they can either go to a place to buy goods or they can basically order them through the teleport (representing online shopping), so to speak. Teleporting is a secondary option but sometimes the agents just can't get to the place they would go to buy their resources and in these cases, the resources are teleported to their household.

What about if the city has a deficit or surplus of some product?
During the deficit, there should be more companies spawning that can produce the resource that is in deficit. If some product is in deficit, it means that the citizens and/or companies are consuming more of that resource than the city is producing. In that case, the city is importing that product more from outside connections which can create more traffic. During surplus, the opposite happens, where the city is producing more of the resource than the citizens or companies are using so the extra products are exported to outside connections.

That’s it for today's Word. Did you enjoy reading more about the inner workings of the game? I’ll come back next week with a new Q&A. We have a handful of other topics in mind that we can cover, and you are of course very welcome to share any game topics or questions you are wondering about. Until then, have a lovely week!

Sincerely,
Mariina

Hi everyone! Patch 1.0.19f1 is ready for you. As always, please note that simulation fixes are expected to take a little while to properly take effect, so the game will need to run for a while. Similarly, fixes to buildings may need the buildings to be rebuilt.

If you experience any new issues or still have trouble with something that's been fixed, we'd appreciate a bug report on the forum with the save and Player.log (found here: C:\Users\%username%\AppData\LocalLow\Colossal Order\Cities Skylines II) attached. It helps us pinpoint the cause, and we greatly appreciate you taking the time to report issues you come across.


[h3]Gameplay[/h3]

• Fixed crash to desktop when selecting "moving in" household
  
• Fixed crash to desktop when modifying road with pedestrian path connected in specific way
  
• Fixed crash to desktop after modifying roads with citizen group at specific stat
  
• Fixed velocity map not loaded properly when starting the game Paused
  
• Fixed ResourceAvailabilitySystem causing some wrong data when loading the game
  
• Fix for some industrial material taxes may randomly start charging money in the opposite way than it is set.
  
• Fixed warehouses not levelling up
  
• Fixed a potential error during saving process related to XP
  
• Fixed an issue where building Extra Incinerator Furnace upgrade to Incinerator Plant would cause the Incinerator Plant to produce less electricity.
  
• Fixed coverage of the City Services buildings exclusive for the pedestrians is not affecting part of the one-way roads
  
• Fixed Maintenance vehicles getting stuck.
  
• Fixed train & ship vehicle Selected Info Panel not labeled with correct destination name
  
• Fixed building relocation incorrectly changing refund amount for bulldozing
  
• Fixed objects with stacked parts (cranes, pillars) missing collision in some cases
  
• More fixes for forgotten dogs
  
• Fixed some photo/cinematic camera properties missing localization
  
• Fixed One of Everything achievement requiring medieval castle
  
• Fixed Wide Variety achievement
  
• Improved parking space searching
  
• Adjust the teens & children spawn rates to balance the lack of teens in education
  
• Adjust the enter probability to allow more teens to enter high school
  
• Cargo station pathfinding update to reduce traffic jams when accessing the buildings.
  
• Forced no word wrap on tutorial page label to fix layout breaking in some tutorials on 2560x1440 resolution
  
• Increased A Little Bit of TLC achievement increment step from 1 to 1000, and fixed achievement progress buffer only updating an achievement if the progress hits exactly a multiple of the increment step
  
• Added more user-friendly message when account linking functions fail due to a network error
  
• Added new translations (missing text, text fixes, translations).
  
• Added support for overriding "switch user" action hint for platforms that do not support switching users (ie. Steam, Epic) with added support for Steam overlay
  

- Statistics fixes & improvements:

• Fixed bug in statistics panel whereby chart data was not updating properly when manipulating the time scale slider
  
• Fixed bug where Water fees were shown incorrectly in Budget tab of Economy panel.
  
• Fixed garbage and public transport fees not being recorded in statistics
  
• Fixed age statistic not being displayed correctly.
  
• Fixed District Selected Info Panel showing incorrect amount of residents
  
• Fixed incorrect amounts being shown for taxation estimates in Economy Panel
  
• Fixed bug whereby changing the timescale caused some data to display incorrectly
  
• Fixed incorrect money amount in 1st sample
  
• Fixed mismatched position of samples in chart
  
• Fixed incorrect progress amount in under-construction section
  
• Statistics panel menu items remember their expanded state based on selected stats upon re-opening the statistics panel.
  
• Changed Income and (hidden) TaxableIncome statistic type from Point to Daily (shows the cumulative amount for the past day)
  
• Hide Households in Selected Info Panel and Household sidebar until they move in.
  
• Added an extra data point outside the visible range, and used it to interpolate the position of the first point in the chart, thus avoiding gaps and visual stutters (fixes half of the chart being used only)
  
• Make datapoints clamp to chart area(avoid line extending outside chart)
  
• Deleted Budget group since it is not needed, and moved Income and Expense groups directly in Finances category
  
• Hid money statistic from panel when playing with Unlimited Money option
  
• Reorganized statistics menu
  

- Land value improvements

• Land value will be affected by ground pollution. The ground pollution will first slowly reduce the land value increasing, and when the pollution gets worse it will start to decrease the land value.
  
• Land value won't decrease to 0 even with heavily polluted land.
  
• Land value will increase according to the industrial company's profitability value.
  

[h3]Performance[/h3]

• Added SchoolSeekerCooldown to avoid too many pathfinding queries when the city doesn't have enough schools
  
• Improved shadow culling optimization
  
• Faster and more stable simulation speed in very large cities
  
• Minor optimization and leak fix for pathfinding
  
• Optimization: Reordered some rendering-related systems to reduce waiting in the main thread
  
• Optimization: Eliminated unnecessary main thread waiting in ModificationEndBarrier
  

[h3]Graphics[/h3]

• Added snow on impostors (trees)
  
• Changed outline color and fill color of districts for better visibility.
  
• Changed the color of Mailbox- and Bus Stop markers. Changed the bus stop, Busline and Routetool icon colors to correspond new marker colors. Adjusted the district area colors for better visibility in bright snow
  
• Tweaked road/rail shadows to be less aggressive
  
• Fixed bus shelter icon color and default bus line color to be consistent with other bus line icons
  
• Fixed visibility distance calculation bug (Mostly affecting power cable shadows with certain camera angles)
  
• Fixed the texture of the Nuclear Power Plant's concrete floor can extend beyond the building into a conical shape
  
• Fixed terraforming, propping, and pedestrian access for multiple assets.
  
• Fixed floating props on Technical University
  

[h2]Hi Everyone! Let’s talk about the patching process and upcoming patch landing soon for Cities: Skylines II.
[/h2]

Generally speaking, patching the game is something we usually try to combine with upcoming releases, and only work on solely bug fixing patches if we don’t have a suitable release we can wait for. Or the fix is critical to release as fast as possible - a so-called hotfix patch. You may remember the free updates associated with the DLC releases in Cities: Skylines and in the long term that is the goal with the sequel as well. It’s a good way to sneak in some cool features and improvements to all the players, beefing up the base game, and making certain features part of it while the paid content expands on those new features allowing us to continue developing the game forward. One of the first examples of this approach was After Dark where the free update added the day and night cycle to all players and the DLC itself had specific content and features for the nightlife.

So we are working to improve the quality of Cities: Skylines II, just like we did with the first game, and this includes both improvements to the base as well as creating new content as paid DLC. We worked at a fast pace after the release last October to get as many fixes in as we could. Patching the game so often does take resources in itself so we opted out for a less frequent pace to focus on bigger additions and more impactful updates in the future. Therefore the upcoming patch 1.19.0 is the last “stand-alone” bug fixing patch for now. Next time the bug fixes will be joined by the first of the modding support for the game, albeit it will not be the final version but a public beta one as mentioned last week.

We’re working on a wide variety of fixes and improvements on top of the missing modding support and platforms. We have a list of reported issues from both you, QA, and the team here at Colossal Order. These issues are sorted based on the level of their severity and the time it takes to implement them so that we can churn out as many improvements to the game as possible with the time and resources we have available.

In practice, the patching process starts with the build version being locked so that no more changes are committed to it by the devs. The build goes through at least one QA round, where the listed issues are verified as either fixed or still occurring. Any new issues with the build are reported as well. Any outstanding issues are fixed and the new locked build version goes to QA. This step usually takes less than a week but can take longer depending on issues found and how quickly those are fixed. After the devs are happy with the build version it's sent to the publisher for their checks, including submissions to each platform and setting the patch ready to go live for the public. This can take a couple of days to a few weeks depending on the size and content of the patch. The release is always aimed so that it wouldn’t be right before the weekend, just to make sure that if any issues occur on the public release there is a team available to check it out. In the meantime, the devs are working on the game toward the next release whether it be fixes, improvements, or new content.

Patch 1.0.19 will include a collection of fixes for issues we’ve discovered internally or have been reported to us by you. Thank you again for all the reports, it’s much appreciated! Full patch notes will be available when the patch is released, but here’s a little summary of the things we’ve been working on.

Improvements to the gameplay are mainly focusing on the land value:

• Land value will be affected by ground pollution. The ground pollution will first slowly reduce the land value increasing, and when the pollution gets worse it will start to decrease the land value.
  
• Land value won't decrease to 0 even with heavily polluted land.
  
• Land value will increase according to industrial company's profitability value.

Land value is likely to receive more love in future updates, but more on that in the future.
On top of these, we’ve also improved the search for parking spaces. Anyone who is driving a car in a bigger city knows how tricky it can be!


Some balancing work went into the Incinerator Plant as building the Extra Incinerator Furnace upgrade would cause it to produce less electricity, the opposite of what the effect should be, and little tweaks were introduced to the resources to avoid traffic jams at the cargo stations. Then there was the appropriate care put into the youth as the teens and children required balancing for their spawn rates and now more teens are entering the High School to get educated. Think about the children, they say!

No patch without some focus on the performance. This time we’ve optimized shadow culling, pathfind scheduling (especially visible as faster and more stable simulation speed in very large cities), added cooldown to avoid too many queries on citizens seeking education when the city doesn’t have enough schools, and reordered some rendering related systems to reduce waiting in the main thread.

Last but not least, the patch fixes issues in the statistics panel, multiple cases of random crashes (crash to desktop when selecting "moving in" household, after modifying roads with citizen group at specific state, and when modifying road with pedestrian path connected in a specific way, to name a few) as well as added some missing text and translations.

The devs at Colossal Order are fully focusing on improving Cities: Skylines II further after patch 1.0.19 is out. Actions speak louder than words so we’ll pause these weekly posts and be back when we cover the content of the next patch/release for the game. Keep following our social channels for the latest updates and have a lovely week!

Sincerely,
Mariina

Welcome back to the weekly update on what’s happening at Colossal Order and what to expect for Cities: Skylines II. Last week we had in-depth conversations with our publisher Paradox Interactive on the priorities and goals for Cities: Skylines II for 2024. There’s really nothing new when it comes to the previous statements: Modding support, console versions, and the Expansion Pass content are to be worked on and released during the year. From the great discussions emerged an important decision however: the modding support will roll out gradually as the features enter beta and we won’t wait for all of them to be fully completed before setting them live.

What this means in practice is that we’ll start giving the mod creators early access to the modding tools as soon as the code modding and Paradox Mods are ready for testing. If everything goes as planned a Public Beta version of the code modding and Paradox Mods will be available a couple of weeks after that. We’ll continue to work on the Map and Asset editing as they require a bit more attention still. Map editing is expected to be available sooner than the Asset editing, but at this time it comes down to iteration time and the feedback we’re getting on the usability of the tool. Asset editing is unfortunately suffering from technical issues and as long as players are unable to save and share the assets there’s no point publicly releasing the tools. We do have a plan for the fixes, but it might take months in the worst case I’m afraid.

To summarize on the priorities of the modding support:

1. Public beta version of Code modding and Paradox Mods will be available in the live build by the end of March
   
2. Public beta version of Map editing available in the live build together with code modding or soon after
   
3. Public beta version of Asset editing to be announced, only after the technical issues are sorted can we roll out the tool
   
4. Continue to work on the modding support and get out of the Beta stage during the Finnish fall.
   

We’ll keep resources on the modding support throughout the entire lifecycle of Cities: Skylines II as we know there are many improvements and feature requests we can work on to help the modders achieve their goals even after the initial Beta release.

The work on the console versions is ongoing and while gated by the modding support we’re making progress. We’re not committing to any timelines as there are too many unknowns at this time, but we’ll keep you updated and will communicate the moment we have something to share. For the Expansion Pass, the artists have the Beach Properties content almost ready and we’re on track for its release.

Before those bigger releases, we’ll have one more patch coming out. After this, we’ll include the bug fixes and performance improvements in the releases to reduce the amount of individual patches. Patch 1.0.19 is going through its first round in QA at the moment and will be released after it passes the checks. Full patch notes will be released on the day the patch goes live, but you can expect fixes for stuck maintenance vehicles and an additional fix for abandoned dogs, who will now be returned to their homes. While the work still continues on the land value, we have an improvement so pollution properly affects the value. And last, but definitely not least, we’re currently testing a fix for the tax bug with crazy high or negative numbers.

Keep following our social channels for news about the patch release and hope you enjoy the game in the meantime. Have a lovely week!

Sincerely,
Mariina