Cities: Skylines II News

We’re back with an update on Beach Properties in the Base Game.
Besides the refund and compensation, in our last update to our community, we promised to include everything that was in the Beach Properties Asset Pack to the base game.

As promised, with Patch 1.1.2f1, all assets from Beach Properties are now available for everyone! Read below on the new additions and what you can find.


[h2]Additions to the Base Game:[/h2]
[h3]New Waterfront Zone[/h3]
A Slice of Paradise
New Waterfront Zone for European Theme gives your city a touch of Southern European coastal city charm, and New iconic fences around the yards help tie the buildings together with the region's style.
New Waterfront Zone for the North American Theme brings an atmosphere of the Florida coastline to your cities, and new swimming pools in the backyards liven up the neighborhoods.

[h3]New Residential Signature Buildings[/h3]
Luxury Lifestyle
North American signature buildings take inspiration from the sun-kissed Florida beaches and villas.
Spanish styled villas can be found from the European themed signature buildings.
All these new luxurious signature buildings sure are a way to increase the sunshine in your city!

[h3]New Vegetation[/h3]
It's time to face the palm trees!
In the Vegetation menu is a collection of new Palm Trees to bring a cool ocean breeze and relaxed beach vibes to your city!


Besides the implementation of Beach Properties assets to the base game, patch 1.1.2f1 is live now on Steam & Microsoft with a bunch of bug fixes for the game and the Editor.

Read the full patch notes here

Dear Cities fans,

We see and understand the disappointment many of you have expressed after the release of Cities: Skylines II and the recent release of Beach Properties. We asked for your patience and support, and you’ve shown those. In return, we let you down. We thought we could make up for the shortcomings of the game in a timeframe that was unrealistic, and rushed out a DLC that should not have been published in its current form. For all this, we are truly sorry. When we’ve made statements like this one before, it’s included a pledge to keep making improvements, and while we are working on these updates, they haven’t happened at a speed or magnitude that is acceptable, and it pains us that we've now lost the trust of many of you. We want to do better.

The very first thing we’re doing is to compensate those who purchased Beach Properties. We will change the pack to be a free addition to the game, refund it to the extent possible, and provide additional content within the Ultimate Edition. Unfortunately, it will not be possible to offer refunds for Ultimate Edition buyers. This is due to the distribution of the Ultimate Edition across digital and physical storefronts, which create significant complexities for executing a partial refund. We realize that this is far from ideal, especially given the dedication those who have stayed with us since launch have shown. We are committed to repaying that loyalty, and therefore, we will compensate Ultimate Edition holders by adding 3 Creator Packs and 3 Radio Stations which, together, sum up to a value of USD 39.99. This solution hopefully ensures that you, regardless of purchase method, feel you receive fair compensation.

Looking ahead, we also want to make immediate and meaningful changes in the way we approach the game’s development and our communication with you. Firstly, this means a complete focus on improving the base game and modding tools, and secondly, we want to better involve you, the community, as we choose our priorities going forward. We will focus on additional free patches and game updates in the coming months before Colossal Order spends time on new paid content, resulting in a move of the Bridges and Ports Expansion to 2025. In addition, the aforementioned Creator Packs are being produced independently, and will not take any focus away from the work on improving the game. To make sure we focus on the right things, we’re putting together an advisory meeting, where a small group of player representatives, together with Colossal Order and Paradox Interactive, will discuss the development plan for this year. The people in this group are chosen for the size of their following within the community to represent as many people as possible. The teams from Colossal Order and Paradox Interactive will provide them with full transparency and answer any questions and critiques voiced. Our hope is that together with you, our community, we can make sure that we do not repeat the same mistakes we have made in the past and bring this game into a bright future.

We also want to address the pending Console release. As you know, our plan was to release in Spring of this year. We have been hesitant to communicate an actual release window because of the uncertainty we are facing, and to not make further promises we might not be able to keep. We have been struggling to get Cities: Skylines II to the necessary level of optimization for a console release, but are now hopeful that an upcoming build delivery in April will demonstrate sufficient progress for us to progress with a release candidate, and then a release build targeted for October. Before we have seen and evaluated the progress made in these builds however, we will not be able to confirm the release date, and even then, some uncertainty always remains. Our ambition is to deliver the experience that you all deserved at launch, but it will take time. It’s important to note that the team working on the console release operates separately from our PC development team, so it will be progressing without splitting our focus or time.

In closing, we want to reaffirm our dedication to making Cities: Skylines II the best city builder it can be. We appreciate your support and feedback, and hope we can regain your trust going forward. It’s our responsibility to earn it, and we hope these actions are a first step in the right direction.
We are deeply grateful for your continued passion for our game. Please stay tuned for further updates on the game and the refund process, and thank you for being a part of our community.

Sincerely,
Mariina Hallikainen
CEO, Colossal Order

Mattias Lilja
Deputy CEO, Paradox Interactive

[hr][/hr]
We have created an FAQ page with information on how your refunds will be processed and further information about release timelines.

Hi everyone. We have a small hotfix for you to address some of the reports we have received following the Modding Wavelet patch. We'll keep working on bug fixes and going through the feedback you share with us, but we wanted to get these fixes out as soon as possible.

Please note that we're still investigating the issue causing mods to not initialize when you first start the game. If you encounter this issue and no mods are shown, please restart the game. If that doesn't help, we would appreciate a bug report here

• Fixed crashes to desktop or other problems after starting a new game on a map that has pre-placed buildings with fences
  
• Fixed cases where logging out of the Paradox account would prevent accessing mods again
  
• Fixed issue causing no mods to show up in-game
  
• Fixed darkening of map thumbnail and preview images
  
• Fixed various localization glitches
  
• Replaced generic popup with a searchable popup for existing mod selection in Save/Map upload panel
  
• Updated Paradox Mods branding icons in various places
  
• Added badges for DLC content and Paradox Mods data source content in relevant panels (Load, New game, Asset picker etc..)
  
• Added page scrolling via mouse wheel in What's New Panel
  
• Added youtu.be and discord.gg to supported external link popup resolver
  
• Fixed issues where uploading images and previews containing space would fail in Save/Map upload panel
  
• Improved sanitization of version number in Save/Map upload panel

And here's the usual reminder that bug reports should go on the forum. Thank you for taking the time to report issues you come across, we really appreciate the logs and savegames you provide!
https://forum.paradoxplaza.com/forum/forums/cities-skylines-2-bug-reports.1162/

Hello everyone! With Beach Properties out, it’s time for a mini-series of development diaries covering our process and giving you a peek at the new assets. In this first installment, we’ll talk about what an asset pack is and how we approached the development of Beach Properties alongside the development of the game, modding support, and bug fixes.

Asset packs are a new type of official content that opens up the chance to add more building variations to the game and bring you more ways to let your city stand out. Our first pack, Beach Properties, has something new for your peaceful low density residential areas and while nothing forces you to zone these buildings near the waves, these assets might be just the touch your waterfront needs.


Beach Properties includes 60 new buildings across two new low density residential zones, one for North America and one for Europe. The zones contain the familiar 5 levels and using various props and decorations, we have managed to sneak in 24 additional variations for each theme. The pack also includes six glorious Signature Buildings plus a large number of props that will hopefully not only be nice to look at but also very useful when you get your hands on the in-game editor in the not-so-distant future.

Who doesn’t enjoy a waterfront view?

With the Ultimate Edition for Cities: Skylines II we have announced a few different types of DLCs, so let’s take a moment to talk about the two types we’ll bring you. Both asset packs and expansions present a way for us to bring you new content to enhance your cities, but they do so in different ways. Where expansions have a broad concept and bring you new gameplay mechanics to expand the game as a whole, asset packs take a more narrow focus allowing you to pick and choose exactly what fits your playstyle and cities. This allows our amazing art team to create stunning new buildings for you while our programmers have been working diligently on the performance improvements and bug fixes you have received since the game was released.

Before Cities: Skylines II was even announced, we had picked the concept for this pack, though work didn’t properly start on the assets themselves until closer to the release last October. As you may have already spotted from the names of the first DLCs, we have focused our attention on waterfronts and seaside cities. In Cities: Skylines we weren’t able to do much with the waterfronts, so going into Cities: Skylines II, it felt like a natural choice to start expanding the game there.

With the theme selected, our artists found references and started work on the pack. As it includes a new low density residential zone for each of the two themes, we already knew roughly how many buildings we would need. The next step in the process is what’s called “white boxing” where we outline the basic geometric shapes of the buildings, like a 3D draft that allows us to flesh out the scale and make sure it fits within the existing game assets.

Work-in-progress models for the European Waterfront Housing

From there we started to iterate on the details that are iconic for the architectural styles we were inspired by. We’ll explore that in more detail in the next development diary tomorrow as we talk about what inspired the Beach Properties and how we created the assets. Until then, we hope you enjoyed this peek at the creation of an asset pack.

[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]



Bring life to your city’s waterfronts with Beach Properties. Specializing in residential buildings that kiss the water's edge, this Asset Pack brings the tranquility and beauty of coastal living to your city.

https://store.steampowered.com/app/2427740/Cities_Skylines_II__Beach_Properties/

[h3]Waterfront Zone[/h3]
A new residential zoning option dedicated to waterfront buildings allows you to redefine your city's coastline.

[h3]Beach Properties[/h3]
Each theme adds growable residential buildings waiting to populate your new waterfront zone, from luxurious waterfront mansions to charming beachside cottages.

[h3]Signature Waterfront Buildings[/h3]
Tailored to fit into European or North American architectural themes, these signature buildings are crafted to highlight your city’s beachfront.



Beach Properties features 70 new assets, including:

• 10 North American residential buildings with three levels (30 assets)
  
• 10 European residential buildings with three levels (30 assets)
  
• Six signature buildings
  
• AND Four New trees
  

Beach Properties is also available as part of the Expansion Pass: Waterfronts, which is included in the Ultimate Edition. As our expansion pass journey has begun a bit later than we set out for during the fall, here is our updated roadmap.