Cities: Skylines II News

Hi everyone! We are back with another development diary for Cities: Skylines II and today is all about the game balancing. We want to give you a peek behind the curtain as we discuss our guiding principles and challenges in balancing Cities: Skylines II. Striking the right balance is always a challenge, but reaching a good balance for the various features is an important part of how the game plays and feels, and we believe it is especially important in simulation games.


[h2]GENERAL PROCESS[/h2]
From the start, the vision has been to create an accessible, yet deep game, that is enjoyable for both new and experienced players. As an example, we created Government Subsidies to ensure a smooth early game progression. This mechanic helps burgeoning cities to cover running costs while there are few sources of income in the city. Once the city has grown enough and become self-sufficient, the subsidies decrease and eventually cease entirely. This means that the gameplay is easy to get into, but keeps you learning new things.

Another guiding idea has been to emphasize realism in the game. How buildings function, service budgets, trade, and citizen consumption have all been designed to be closer to how they appear in the real world. As a rule of thumb in our balancing we have kept in mind a town of roughly 10k citizens and how we would expect the game to function in a town of that size. For example, in Cities: Skylines II many of the power plants require fuel. In addition to maintaining good road connections to the power plant so it receives fuel to keep functioning, you need to keep in mind that the fuel actually costs money which is added to the base upkeep of the power plant.

A game of this size requires appropriate tools to keep all the features and their values in check. A master sheet of all the building values has been built over the course of the development to track and adjust them as needed. With the master sheet, we can easily make changes to a large selection of assets as we can use our own in-house tool to sync the values from the master sheet to the project, or vice versa allowing us to bring data and new assets from the project to the master sheet. On top of the master sheet, we have a multitude of other sheets on various other balancing aspects.


[h2]GAME PROGRESSION[/h2]
A completely new progression system was developed for Cities: Skylines II. Milestones are unlocked by earning Experience Points (XP) as opposed to the population-based progression in Cities: Skylines which made the cities very similar to each other (requiring large cities to reach the final milestones). With active and passive XP you can create different kinds of cities, big and small, and still be able to achieve all of your goals. Balancing the progression, i.e. XP rewards is an important part of adjusting the pace of the game.

The game is paced so you always have things to do. In the early game, the XP progression has been balanced to allow you to experiment with all the newly unlocked features before reaching the next milestone. This allows the game to be learned and absorbed in good-sized chunks that do not overwhelm you but instead push you gently forward.

Balancing the XP rewards for building the city, placing buildings, and constructing roads was a tricky challenge. The XP rewards should be meaningful enough but not rack up XP too quickly so that the milestones aren’t reached in too quick succession. As an example, the road building rewards XP for each segment and if the amount is high, the road building alone can quickly fulfill the required amount to unlock the next milestone.

Adjusting the passive XP rewards was a new type of challenge for Cities: Skylines II. The passive XP route to unlocking milestones is slower than actively expanding the city, but it also fits quite well with the idea of small towns progressing slower than large cities in real life. Earning passive XP still has to be rewarding, so it can be a viable option to consider and thus balancing the passive rewards was crucial to get right.

While there definitely are ways to cheese the XP gains through just building buildings, as some buildings give more XP per Construction Cost, we have deliberately allowed that to keep the XP values in some sensical and understandable format. In our mind, it comes down to how you choose to play the game.

XP requirements for milestones increase exponentially and set the pace of the game


[h2]BUILDING STATS[/h2]
Another important aspect of the game that needed balancing was the building stats, which govern the entire functionality of buildings. City services have service-specific stats and each service type has required a separate balancing cycle to make them function as intended in different-sized cities. As city services are upgradable providing more meaningful choices in the long run, we had to not only balance the buildings’ base stats but also consider the effects of the upgrades themselves. This meant looking at for example how much the upgrades increase the capacities of the buildings, how potential new functionality affects the city, whether there are any overlapping effects, and what the building and upkeep costs are compared to building the same city service building multiple times.

Zoned buildings and signature buildings fall into different categories depending on their zone type. Each zone type has balancing values that govern the entire zone type automatically. These include multipliers such as the size of the building lot and the number of floors and apartments for residential buildings. For workplaces, the size of the building affects the number of jobs and things such as storage space and production speed/capacity.

Signature buildings follow the same stats as regular zoned buildings, but to give them more meaning they also have various different effects which benefit the city. Some of these effects can give a local boost and some can even have a city-wide effect. To balance the effects the unlocking requirements have been put so that it feels like a meaningful building to achieve.

EXAMPLE CASE: ELEMENTARY SCHOOL
The elementary school has a short service coverage range and a small capacity which controls how far the well-being bonus for families reaches, shown in the game as the green color on the road network when the education info view is open. Families with children receive a small boost to their well-being when live in the green area. The well-being bonus gives families a reason to relocate closer to elementary schools and this simulates the idea of families wanting to live close to schools in real life. The reason for the short service coverage range and the small capacity is that we wanted to simulate the idea of each district of the city having its own elementary schools.

The master sheet provides a quick overview of our education buildings and allows us to easily make changes and apply them to the game


[h2]ELECTRICITY PRODUCTION[/h2]
The last example of balancing we will look at today is electricity. The electricity production in Cities: Skylines II has been one of the most interesting and multifaceted things to balance in the game. In addition to the basic values for city service building and upkeep cost, we have had to think about how the availability of fuel and its price affects the functionality of the power plant and its upkeep cost (yes, this time the fuel used to keep the power plant running is part of its running cost!). We have also had to consider the building’s electricity output and fuel storage capacity as well as its pollution footprint.

One of the prevailing questions has been how to balance power plants that differ from each other quite a lot. As an example, we have the wind turbine which produces entirely clean energy, doesn’t require fuel, has a very limited pollution footprint (only noise pollution which in this case refers to it being a bit of an eyesore if placed in someone’s backyard) and is relatively cheap to build. We also have the coal power plant which in turn uses a lot of fuel, takes up a lot of space, and causes a lot of ground and air pollution, but it also has a higher energy output and, unlike the wind turbine, employs many workers.

Balancing these power plants requires a mix of mathematics and gameplay ideas. How do we compare clean energy and fossil fuel-based energy? How do we emphasize the pros and cons of the different ways to produce energy in a way that each choice you make is in itself a valid choice? And in the end, we also want to keep it grounded in realism: Coal is a more stable and high energy source compared to wind energy but on the other hand, it is far more polluting.

Balancing different sources of energy provided an interesting challenge

In addition to those considerations, we also want to keep in mind the different states of the city’s progression. Some power plants suit the different-sized cities better than others. A wind farm is an excellent and relatively cheap way to start a city but it can hardly power a growing metropolis by itself. And with the different power plants we want to provide you with the options to choose where to go from there and what fits your city’s needs and budget at any given time.

As you can tell, we put a lot more thought into balancing electricity production than just comparing the size and output stats of each building. We hope this leaves you with a lot of interesting and viable choices when you decide how to power your city, and as always, we look forward to hearing your feedback once you start building your own cities. Tomorrow, we switch topics and take a look at the technical side of Companies & Billboards.

Hello everyone and welcome back to another development diary. Today we’re sharing our plans for the Editor in Cities: Skylines II. Currently, the game does not include the Editor, but we will update the game post-release to include it as soon as it’s out of beta testing.

From the start, we knew we wanted to include an in-depth editor powerful enough to bring your ideas to life. This time around we have a good sense of what modders and creators may need, based on all the amazing things they created for Cities: Skylines, and our goal is to support that with the new Editor currently being worked on for Cities: Skylines II. We’re developing it in close cooperation with the modding community, and while the tools are something we’ll use internally as well, the goal is to offer you the possibility to create your own content for the game. That’s what the Cities: Skylines experience is really about: Freedom to create!


[h2]ONE EDITOR TO RULE THEM ALL[/h2]
In Cities: Skylines we had several different editors for different functions. If you wanted to create assets you would open the asset editor, and within it, you would select specific categories all bringing you a subset of features. If you wanted to work on a map, you would need a different editor to do that.

In Cities: Skylines II we have one Editor capable of everything. Whether you’re making a new map or creating a new building, you will enter the same Editor. This means you will have a lot of options at your fingertips, which can be a little daunting at first, but it comes with a lot of benefits too.

Your new building doesn’t exist in a flat empty world. You can load a map, place the building in the environment, and place other buildings or roads around it to get a better sense of what it will look like in your city. The same goes for maps. You can place buildings as you’re shaping the landscape to ensure the scale of hills and valleys is how you want them.

Preview your asset in the surroundings you want while adding finishing touches


[h2]ROADMAP[/h2]
The Editor is currently in beta and being tested by our modding beta group, which consists of seasoned modders and asset creators. The Editor will be released in several steps, the first of which will include map creation, asset import, code mods, and sharing those as well as savegames through Paradox Mods.

Creating custom maps in Cities: Skylines II includes what you might expect: Shaping the landscape, setting up water sources for rivers and lakes, painting in natural resources and forests, and setting up the basic outside connections for a city. But map creation also includes setting up the map’s climate, including its temperature variations and weather.

The initial release of the Editor supports the creation of custom buildings with more asset types to be supported in the future. It allows you to import custom .fbx files with a matching set of textures, set up color variations, decorate the asset, and tweak its stats to fit your new asset. You can of course also edit existing assets, giving your favorite building a new look through different color variations and decorations. All the technical information about modeling and texturing assets can be found on the official wiki, which will be updated as more information is available.

Last, but definitely not least, this update will support code modding. We have given a lot of the prominent modders from Cities: Skylines early access to Cities: Skylines II, giving them a chance to get familiar with the game and get inspired to create mods. That said, please remember that the game uses new technology and has a deeper simulation, so mods need to be created from scratch and nothing done earlier for Cities: Skylines can be used as such. We’re very excited to see what the modders create for this time around!

This first update will also enable sharing to Paradox Mods. Here you can share and download custom maps, buildings, and code mods, as well as share your savegame or download other people’s cities to explore. Paradox Mods will be available on all platforms, not just PC, within the limits of each platform. We’ll get into the details of what will be included for console closer to their release.

THE NEXT STEP
Following the release of the Editor our next goal is to expand its capabilities to include more asset types. We want to give you the ability to create your very own vehicles, trees and bushes, as well as the option to import custom citizen models. Both trees and citizens are more complex than their counterparts in Cities: Skylines.

As trees go through a lifecycle in Cities: Skylines II, from saplings to adult trees and eventually to dead trees, custom trees require several models corresponding to each stage of their life. Similarly, citizens go through different life stages which are reflected in their character models changing from children all the way to seniors. We’ll take you behind the scenes of character models in a future development diary which may help potential creators get a sense of what to expect once the Editor supports custom characters.



YOUR FEEDBACK
We have intentionally left our plans for the Editor open-ended. Besides the features we have planned for it, we want to leave room to implement improvements and features that will help you create modding content for Cities: Skylines II. While we of course cannot make any guarantees, we’re excited to hear your feedback and wishes for the Editor, both now and once you get your hands on it.

We’re very interested in hearing about your experience with the editors in Cities: Skylines. Which ones did you use? What worked well? What did you find challenging? And of course, we want to hear about what you would love to create for Cities: Skylines II, whether it’s among the items supported with the initial release of the Editor, something that will be supported down the line, or perhaps something completely different. Let us know in the comments below.

In the next development diary, we take you behind the scenes of Game Balancing, diving into the process and challenges that come with balancing a deep simulation like Cities: Skylines II.

[h2]We've written a new FAQ, this one specifically about Paradox Mods. We're looking forward to you all being able to experience it for the first time when it launches.[/h2]

Will Paradox Mods look different on Cities: Skylines II than on Cities: Skylines (1) or other games that already are on the platform?
We've been planning and working on the Paradox Mods platform for Cities: Skylines II from the very beginning of the development of the game, and will continue after it's release.

The version made for Cities: Skylines 1 was made so that a few hand-selected assets could be used on XBOX, and the idea for Cities: Skylines II is much grander. We want to make the creation, uploading, sharing, and downloading experience as smooth as possible for a community that enjoys modding as much as you do. We will have full freedom to make any changes, improve any feature, and take any suggestions and make them into reality, so when you get your hands on the platform we will be listening eagerly to all your voices!

How will the Paradox Mods as a platform perform on it's release?
As always, performance (download speed) all depends on how many mods the player is running and their size.

If a user has a significant amount of mods and a large portion has received updates when the game is started, it might take some time for those to download.

We are working on optimizing this process to allow for e.g. differential updates (basically meaning that only the new/updated part of the mod will actually be downloaded) and also being able to sync more than one mod at a time (aka parallelized sync).

Will you have to log into Paradox Mods separately from Steam or Microsoft Store?
As long as you have connected your platform (Steam, XBOX, PSN) account with your Paradox account, there is no need to log in separately to Paradox Mods.

Will Cities: Skylines II launch paid mods or Micro-transaction on Paradox Mods?
No. There will not be any paid mods for Cities: Skylines II on Paradox Mods.

How will Paradox Mods handle creations with updates? Do they download as soon as Steam is opened?
When any mod that you're subscribed to has an update it will start downloading and updating automatically once the game is started.

Will you be able to publish copyrighted buildings or copyrighted brands?
You are able to publish anything that you create, but if we receive a cease-and-desist it will be removed. It is the same process as on Steam Workshop.

Will you be able to vote, thumbs up, give stars to creations you like, and what consequences will that have?
You are be able to rate mods with stars from 1-5. This will impact "best" and "highest rating" sort orders.

Will there be any way to link two creations together if one needs the other, like Harmony Mod in Cities: Skylines 1?
Yes. Additionally, if dependencies exist, players will be asked if they wish to add the dependencies as subscriptions as well.

Is there any way to share comments on the page of a creation?
There will be a possibility to display links to common social channels such as Discord, X, YouTube - and Paradox Forum - for each mod. Eventually, a Paradox Forum thread can also be displayed directly with the mod, if the creator chooses to.

Who is handling the moderation of the Paradox Mods assets?
The moderation of Paradox Mods will be handled by Paradox, and all reports that are submitted will go through us. (This is also the case for Steam Workshop, so no change in the process).

How big will the game be when I download it?
The game will be about 50GB at release.

Will we be able to Pre-Load it before release?
No, we will not be able to offer pre-load.

[h2]We've written a new FAQ, this one specifically about Paradox Mods. We're looking forward to you all being able to experience it for the first time when it launches.[/h2]

Will Paradox Mods look different on Cities: Skylines II than on Cities: Skylines (1) or other games that already are on the platform?
We've been planning and working on the Paradox Mods platform for Cities: Skylines II from the very beginning of the development of the game, and will continue after it's release.

The version made for Cities: Skylines 1 was made so that a few hand-selected assets could be used on XBOX, and the idea for Cities: Skylines II is much grander. We want to make the creation, uploading, sharing, and downloading experience as smooth as possible for a community that enjoys modding as much as you do. We will have full freedom to make any changes, improve any feature, and take any suggestions and make them into reality, so when you get your hands on the platform we will be listening eagerly to all your voices!

How will the Paradox Mods as a platform perform on it's release?
As always, performance (download speed) all depends on how many mods the player is running and their size.

If a user has a significant amount of mods and a large portion has received updates when the game is started, it might take some time for those to download.

We are working on optimizing this process to allow for e.g. differential updates (basically meaning that only the new/updated part of the mod will actually be downloaded) and also being able to sync more than one mod at a time (aka parallelized sync).

Will you have to log into Paradox Mods separately from Steam or Microsoft Store?
As long as you have connected your platform (Steam, XBOX, PSN) account with your Paradox account, there is no need to log in separately to Paradox Mods.

Will Cities: Skylines II launch paid mods or Micro-transaction on Paradox Mods?
No. There will not be any paid mods for Cities: Skylines II on Paradox Mods.

How will Paradox Mods handle creations with updates? Do they download as soon as Steam is opened?
When any mod that you're subscribed to has an update it will start downloading and updating automatically once the game is started.

Will you be able to publish copyrighted buildings or copyrighted brands?
You are able to publish anything that you create, but if we receive a cease-and-desist it will be removed. It is the same process as on Steam Workshop.

Will you be able to vote, thumbs up, give stars to creations you like, and what consequences will that have?
You are be able to rate mods with stars from 1-5. This will impact "best" and "highest rating" sort orders.

Will there be any way to link two creations together if one needs the other, like Harmony Mod in Cities: Skylines 1?
Yes. Additionally, if dependencies exist, players will be asked if they wish to add the dependencies as subscriptions as well.

Is there any way to share comments on the page of a creation?
There will be a possibility to display links to common social channels such as Discord, X, YouTube - and Paradox Forum - for each mod. Eventually, a Paradox Forum thread can also be displayed directly with the mod, if the creator chooses to.

Who is handling the moderation of the Paradox Mods assets?
The moderation of Paradox Mods will be handled by Paradox, and all reports that are submitted will go through us. (This is also the case for Steam Workshop, so no change in the process).

How big will the game be when I download it?
The game will be about 50GB at release.

Will we be able to Pre-Load it before release?
No, we will not be able to offer pre-load.

Greetings everyone. We have a new mini-series of development diaries as we count down to the release of Cities: Skylines II. In this series, we take you behind the scenes of development sharing some of our processes and philosophy behind certain features as well as give you a sneak peek at our plans for the future.

To start with, we’re going to talk about modding in Cities: Skylines II. While modding isn’t supported at release, we want to share what modding means to us and how we approach modding support, so you know what to expect. Modding in Cities: Skylines played an important part in making the game a success, so it was obvious to us that Cities: Skylines II also has to be moddable, and we can't wait to see what the modders come up with this time around!


[h2]MODDING IN OUR GAMES[/h2]
Our journey with modding started in a somewhat unexpected way with our first game, Cities in Motion. Back then, we hadn’t initially planned extensive modding support, but as the game used our own technology and was very accessible to players, a modding community grew surrounding the game. While not intentional we soon discovered how much modding can add to a game with players customizing their gameplay experience, creating and sharing content with each other.

We carried that lesson forward to Cities in Motion 2, though it wasn’t until Cities: Skylines that we really realized the full potential of supporting modding. As we were developing the game, we had one of our two programmers focus on creating tools to mod the game. When Cities: Skylines was released, we had a map editor, that let you create your own maps to build cities on, and an asset editor to import custom 3D models to the game. These, along with code mods, could then be shared on the Steam Workshop and downloaded by others. Through the years we expanded the capabilities of the asset editor to include more options, and as map themes and scenarios were added to the game, we included editors to make your very own.

Today, the Cities: Skylines Workshop has over 400,000 mods with everything from maps and themes to buildings and code mods changing the rules of the game. We were absolutely blown away by the creativity and dedication of our modding community, and throughout the game’s lifetime, we have continued to improve how we interact with the modders.

The built-in editor and easy sharing through the Steam Workshop brought more modding opportunities to Cities: Skylines than our previous games had.

CITIES SKYLINES II
When we started developing Cities: Skylines II, we knew we wanted the game to support modding as much as its predecessor did. In 2019, as part of our 10-year anniversary celebration, we invited a group of prominent modders to Tampere to help us determine how we can best support their modding efforts. We introduced them to the features Cities: Skylines II would come to include, as well as the level of detail and realism of its art style. We discussed their experiences modding Cities: Skylines and they provided great feedback on how we could support the community in Cities: Skylines II. As an example, our map creators expressed a wish to be able to create taller mountains and deeper valleys, and as you may have seen from our Maps & Themes development diary, this is possible in Cities: Skylines II.

We support modding to celebrate the community and we want everyone to be able to take part in it. This is the reason why we focus on making sure that the modding tools are available on all possible platforms while respecting the limitations that individual platforms may have. To offer the same content for all the players we have chosen Paradox Mods as our portal for sharing your amazing creations across all platforms.

Access the Editor and Paradox Mods directly from the main menu


[h2]MODDING BETA[/h2]
We have always tried to offer as much support for the modders as possible and the modding beta was created for Cities: Skylines as a part of our efforts. The purpose of this was to ensure the modders could prepare updates for mods that might break with game updates. Having the opportunity to access the upcoming builds prior to release provided them time to familiarize themselves with the changes and work on and test updates to their mods.

As the Cities: Skylines Modding community grew, this group was expanded to include asset creators and its purpose expanded to provide direct feedback on the modding tools. The beta gave us the opportunity to get feedback on the road editor before it was released to the public and have direct conversations with our modders about what improvements to the game’s API would be useful to them.

As the updates for Cities: Skylines have ended the modding beta shifted more towards testing and providing feedback on the modding tools in Cities: Skylines II. Currently, the modding beta is testing the Cities: Skylines II Editor, which we'll dig into in the next development diary.