It seems to me that making a tile maintenance fee was just an easy button to increase the difficulty rather than fix the economic simulation.

This 24 developer company is debt free and making 2.5M profit each year so they have no excuses not to continue the active deveploment until everything is fixed. Their profit margin of 42% is crazy good and highlights that they should hire more people..

I started a new city for this update. It feels way more like a proper sim now. It needs some tweaks but it is way closer to what I was hoping the game would play like

Maybe they should add in city tech tree nodes that will reduce tile upkeep. It will add some depth because you will have to decide if you want to unlock new things or decrease ukpeek etc

Offices are just straight up unusable, which tanks your city. It isn't a game breaker, but it basically cuts off the second half of the economy. How did this get through? I can't believe 0 play testers zoned an office.

Even if your existing city doesn't really work anymore, I think that this update was for the better in the long term.

The water in the harbors looks like pool water not an ocean.

Based on newest available public tax records CEO of colossal order has received 590k compensation of her work yearly both in FY 21 and 22 translating into 49K euro monthly salary..

They should have a difficulty slider, easy for no upkeep cost, normal with moderate, and hard with high upkeep cost.

For me the weirdest thing is that terraforming is free but tile upkeep seemingly depents on buildable space. That sounds very odd to me.

Players: “it’s too easy make it more difficult!” Devs: *removes training wheels and makes game more difficult* Players: “Noooo now I have to actually think about the game how dare you!!!”

Constant Crime scenes and noooooo commercial demand are my main issues at the moment, even with trying multiple new maps, the no commercial demand at all is doing my head in 😅

I think this update is still fantastic for the game and will be great for the long term balance of the game. Imo, tile upkeep isn't the way I would've done it. I would've instead made road bulldozing and building MUCH more expensive, as it is in real life, and made their maintenance much higher, especially for highways and larger roads. This could've been a realistic way to offset difficulty and scale for late game but I'm sure CO will eventually balance the numbers on tile upkeep to be less punishing for modded maps. End of the day, I think the early access of the game is chugging along nicely! Weird that it's still being labelled as a "release version" but we move.

Been spending some time with the game. I'm enjoying the sense of accomplishment when I FINALLY get enough money to build something. Been using loans a lot more. I'm using the services sliders a lot to make money for a bit, then solve problems for a bit. All in all, more engaging gameplay to be sure, I'm thinking less about aesthetics and more about function which is a win. But my GPU keeps crashing every hour :(. That's new.

At this rate, Cities Skylines 2 will be the proper and good city management game that many wanted... some time in 2025

A good step into the right direction. Now add bike lanes and I'm buying the game back'

almost every single youtuber i saw loved the changes and thought the added difficulty made the game more fun as now they had to actually make decisions. of course, they could still brute force a square dystopian city into profitability easily, but a realistic city became much much harder to pull off and they all seemed to really like that. they even liked the tile upkeep

I'm all for higher difficulty and a larger emphasis on management. Even before it came out I was hoping CS2 would be a competitor to games like Workers and Resources, which is fantastic

Office level 5 building only max out at 5 employees now. The other reported bug that killed my city is the budget issue. In the budget, im at a surplus, but im hemorrhaging money for no reason. So i haven't been able to run a successful city since 2.0.

Hopefully a modder will kill those Tile Upkeep Costs and Tile Purchase Costs. Otherwise, I guess I'm playing with Unlimited Money. Option: provides sliders so players can adjust those costs. Those who want a challenge, crank them high. For others, lower them.

My frustration is that they made these changes but have not fixed issues that have been there from release. They should have focused on those before making major gameplay changes.

One of the most glaring issues after the patch (which highlighted this magnificently btw) is the need for smaller versions of services like schools, clinics, parking etc. People start demanding things that are difficult to afford initially let alone pay the upkeep and then reducing the funding to 50% only goes so far and has ancillary side effects. Exporting electricity does not even break even so it is always beneficial to set that slider at just the right point so you aren't giving away power to your neighbors for pennies on the dollar. Fires are still a problem if you play on a nice looking map with trees as opposed to a flat, green expanse of nothingness. The pacing of the game also sets you up to hate your citizens. Just about the time your make them happy on every front, they start bitching about wanting some new service. The mail was fine just a moment ago and now it's an apocalyptic problem in their minds. Maybe their only source of toilet paper are the ads and spam letters that make up 95% of snail mail and since they are mostly full of sh*t, I could see this being a problem. I think they need to spend some time creating and fleshing out the greater economy outside of your map. Right now it's best to just spam special industry everywhere and get that magic money from the infinite market. I had a city of 5k that had ALL special industry surpluses of 3 to 20 times my usage. It doesn't look right mainly because it's all crammed into the original tile with maybe 2 additional. Developing these resources and the markets for them should be a longer term goal and challenge and having all of them so quickly is a bit off.

I think they went too far with the economic rebalancing. I struggle to not go into a debt spiral when I start a new city. I can’t provide the necessary services with their new upkeeps, and get severely penalized when I do but slash their budgets because the city cannot afford it.

Difficulty increase is 👍!

My death wave came in two separate waves, profitability stayed relatively high but did drop by about 1/2. I was making about 1.2 million in surplus to 600k surplus, and the population has increased from 156k to 290k. The death wave sank the initial population by about 20k.

if you recommend your players to use "unlimited money" or "unlock tiles", then obviously you know what you have done is not working

Offices with only 5 workers just means AI and robots have taken all the jobs 🤣🤣🤣

A small confession... ever since I started playing CSII I have been on unlimited money exclusively. I got fed up with all the bugs and gliches too quickly back in October, so I chose to play an urban planner and a detailer game. Now, I might be ready to start my first 'real' city without any of the cheats turned on. Got to admit though, It was fun building a city with a half-million population on a new game that had way too many issues. Also, I still miss CS1

I'm thrilled with the changes and the challenge they potentially bring, but it's hard to make the needed money when your office spaces atrophy to 5 workers!

I think the tile upkeep is a nice feature to pace gameplay. Players have to use what they have, optimize their existing city and strategically think about where to expand to. More industry? Specialized industry? Flat land for residential? It makes for interesting choices and is way more complex than just a simple money sink. Custom maps have been screwed over, though. Playing on Magnolia County and I can't expand at all because every tile around me is soooo expensive 😂

achievements need to be earned, so I have no problem turning on "unlock all tiles" if I just want to build a fun city with little challenge. it would've been cool if they had this tile feature behind a difficulty setting instead, but I realize that have a lot to still work on in terms of balancing the game. I'm glad CO is still taking feedback into consideration for their updates, and I hope they can really turn this game around to the glory years with CS1.

I come to check in on this game every now and then so thanks for the update vids. While i feel that the game will most likely never live up to the hype i certainly am not wishing for it to fail. This game was the biggest gaming sequel letdown I've ever anticipated. It was heartbreaking to see how bad it was on launch. Hopefully it gets to where it needs to be, but the brand damage is done.

Hahaha you know what's funny my city has jumped from 2% unemployment to 59% unemployment however I've managed to bring that down to 37%. The economic 2.0 update really changed things for my city of 200,000 people and so have the budget, but I haven't experienced any bugs as of yet.

Not sure what I'm doing exactly, but my new city I started yesterday is fine. It has a population of ~42,000 and an income of nearly $300,000/h. The highest tax I have is 13% for C since there's so much demand for everything that I'm trying to mitigate. The best early money maker I've found is the logging industry you place down. It's best to also fill up an almost entire tile before buying a new one. It takes a while to build up at the beginning honestly, gotta be patient and try diff tactics.

If you actually fill your build space before expanding, the tile upkeep is not a problem at all in the early game. I haven’t played all the e way to the late game yet. Plus you can fill tiles with specialized industry.

The curve is a logistic curve. Basically, it moves at a slower rate from 0, then the rate speeds up through the middle (which is nearly linear) and then slows down again as it nears the top (1). Not sure exactly why they chose this function, but it is inherent to neural networks, and it is not a linear function. Not sure if that is helpful to game players but that is what I observed.

I ended up just making a new game on a new map, and really enjoying the slow build now. I actually have to think about what I am doing and not just paint a city with zero care about budget. I really like that medium and high density buildings are useful now, and I can build them in small towns with "suburb" areas of low density for my higher educated population. I'm also finding I can build a lot more office space which is making my city more interesting. Currently at 2500 population and a +40k month budget, but I do not have a high school, college, or a lot of services I would usually get. I get to decide if I buy another tile to fit these easily, or try to make my first area more dense.

Using the 529 tiles mod allows for the adjustment of tile upkeep, which can help until the game is patched again. I think upkeep in general should be based on infrastructure usage and not number of tiles or land quality.

Seems like easy fixes because the complex simulator didn't work. But the tile changes seem to hamper building wide. Now you have to build tall.

The mod Magical Hearse helps with the death wave. Just activate to clear the dead and then de-activate to let the game play as normal. May take a couple of goes though.

Started three new cities, city 1 went broke fast. City 2 profited then went broke. City 3 is now earning pre economy 2 levels of income and I am having alot of fun building it out

The real issue is that they are trying to solve for a city in isolation. If they'd simulate/account for a broader economy around our city then growth wouldn't be spammable and you wouldn't get brain dead upkeep/tiles. It's supposed to be a game, yes but the design has to represent some of the degrees of reality, if you omit any of them then you're going play catch up and piss people off. Everyone knows that the success of a CIty is predetermined by Colossal, that's why it gets the hate, whereas if you had a design of the outside world that didn't give you everything you wanted all the time then it would be on you the player to figure out what you need to do to attract whatever it is you want. I get that this is a casual game but that's why you have these issues.

Did they fix the fast forward bc it didn’t really fast forward

I'm looking forward to playing this, but I'm still holding off for the moment where it's all been sorted out.

The only alternative to a better CS would be something like what was done with Star citizen. From CO you can't expect anything more than what they offer.

High empty land upkeept sounds like a bad simulation concept as empty land while costing something, doesn't really cost much if it doesn't have anything on it. One you build on it tile upkeep should be lowered in relation to aervices cost for roads and city service etc. Meaning you should pay twice to upkeep a plot once for the land and another for whats on it. Should be either one.

Look on the bright side, at least it's not KSP2 🎉

I got death waves in a brand new city, not an existing. Sounds like you expect this to only happen in existing saves.

The tile upkeep mechanic kind of gives me "annexation" vibes, doesnt really work how annexation works in real life though.

So, to extend playtime, instead of adding more assets and content, they just upped the difficulty in every way.

My city basically got put on overdrive. Tax revenue skyrocketed and population growth went wild.

I am so happy I was able to return this before it was too late.

I just started a new city and it seems like the more I build, the higher the expenses become. the higher my city expenses become, people start leaving and i get less revenue from taxes. It's so frustrating that I enabled infinite money. They need to rebalance this update. It's too hard. 3 hours into a game and I'm still in the starting tile...

They need to fix Garbage pickup and the speed it is collected. We added so many Incinerators and Recycling buildings and they are barely sending out any trucks. City pop. 550k

Making insignificant modifications instead of proving that they are up to the task of giving the performance a better polish.

I like the change to tile purchasing/upkeep, but think it might need a bit of a balancing tweak. You can think of the spiraling costs as inflation, but also reaching the edges of the map will now be a challenge but for those who don't want it, the unlock all tiles option is always there. Who hasn't come to the point in the game where they say money is no longer an issue and you're almost always at $2 billion? The larger your city grows, the more challenging it should be. I play more on the gaming side than the painting side (although I am still demanding baseball fields and churches to make my city more realistic). How to make large city building challenging is an interesting issue and I hope the dev's continue to translate real-life issues into the game, like they did with homeless crime.

I tried playing this game alot like 4 months ago... i restarted fresh like 12 times, each time thinking ahead of things im going to need int he future like more space for wider roads and more fire deps etc. I followed everything it told me to do religiously and made sure i had redundant power and water setups and made sure i had double everything i needed ( power, water, sewer ) and my whole city would seem happy, then all the sudden people would be moving out and abandoning big buildings when it just 5 mins ago said they were happy, then the people in the city would complain about factory pollution, even though i had already thought of that and build all the loud and poluty things way on the other side of the map up wind from everything. I even made sure the garbage and sewer were downstream, I ran power lines alot larger than i needed and yet it still showed a break in the line or like it wasnt enough. It said i needed more of somthing, i added it but didnt seem to help. I tried and tried, watched videos, read up on the game and no matter what i did i could not sustain a happy population over 15k, it would be fine for an hour.. then without touching a single thing everything jusr got worse and worse

Despite being a dedicated fan of the original Cities Skylines game, where I logged over 1500 hours on Steam and extensively played on Xbox, I’ve unfortunately lost all enthusiasm for Cities Skylines 2. The sequel fails to captivate me for several reasons: every city looks indistinguishable, with monotonous street layouts and repetitive buildings that sap creativity. The simulation itself feels lackluster; public transportation has minimal impact on traffic flow, and performance issues persist, detracting from the overall experience. Moreover, significant changes to game mechanics were introduced despite ongoing issues since release. Graphical glitches, like pixelated reflections and unnatural water textures resembling plastic, remain unresolved. Parks and sports facilities lack activity, devoid of the vibrant life seen in the first game. Disasters, such as tornadoes, are poorly executed compared to their dynamic counterparts in Cities Skylines 1, where they were part of immersive weather events with lightning and rain. The game’s updates seem haphazard and fail to address core gameplay concerns, leaving it feeling unfinished and frustrating. At a price point of 60 euros in Germany, the cost feels steep, especially considering my experience with purchasing the Deluxe version after the standard edition, only to find missing content like landmarks and a Ferris wheel. Overall, despite initial hopes for improvement through patches, Cities Skylines 2 has fallen short of expectations, leaving me disappointed and regretful of upgrading from the first installment.

The developers say it takes a lot of time to make game adjustments yet modders can do it in a matter of days. It took almost no time for a modder to create a mod to adjust tile upkeep with a percent slider.

I believe they went to far. When unlocking say Schools, the gift input should cover purchase of basic Elementry and High like in SC1. Also yet to see any cyclists/dog walker on sidewalks/paths. Before patch was struggling to get solar array, now impossible without unlimited money. I prefer to avoid cheats

God those massive tower cranes for tiny houses look so stupid. Why don't they just ditch tower cranes entirely from lower density buildings??

My residential demand has been zero for ages lol I'm not sure what to do about it (it used to be high but dropped off somewhere around 80k fully on the new patch)

Homeless becoming criminals was a bug? Nahh there criminals😎

I’ve had massive issues with frame consistency. Constant hitching makes the game unplayable. Doesn’t matter if I have it set to favor simulation or frame rate. It also doesn’t matter if I have the graphics set to high medium or low. And my rig is no slouch. 64GB ram R7 5800x RTX4080. I’m sticking with CS1

Fix the traffic. Stop vehicles from turning at the last minute.

I guess I got lucky. I had no issues with the update. Homelessness is still a problem in my city but throughout the death waves, I expected my city's population to drop. It didn't. It was going up the whole time. I waited it out the two months that it was supposed to last. My population went from just a few hundred over 140k, to 200,000! Traffic was a huge issue. And I was expecting the tiles cost to break my city, but it didn't. I was making way more than my expenses and all my specialized industries are on a surplus (albeit, very slightly). I forgot that I would need more high schools when this update came, and I didn't place the one that I was supposed to place. But I was not counting on 60k people moving in! My schools were overwhelmed, needless to say! And even now I'm struggling to keep up. College and Universities were slightly over capacity originally, but now they hardly cover a fraction of what the demand is actually. The main problem I really have, though, is performance. I have a beefy computer but right now the game is starting to tank. Simulation runs slow most of the time now and even clicking on roads or buildings creates lag. I actually really like my city, so this is really sad.

I keep looking for a reason to buy this game, and keep not finding them... also all your cars are on the wrong side :)

After the update released I haven't gotten any medium or high density demand despite doubling my population. I gave up and just installed the infinite demand mod

Traffic was ruined, finding more and more issues as it goes on, and it becomes unplayable.

Another thing is for some reason the terrain tools absolutely TANK my performance

I dont like the changes. When starting a new city I lost money fast for a bit, but finally started turning a profit. The wind is not favorable for long term building, especially industy but I can't buy an additional tile to make the problem more favorable. We no longer recieve as much money for for leveling up, making the unlock tree relatively pointless, as sure, I can buy recycling but can I really? This update will make growing much slower and available space lower as well. Expand until 85% land is used then expand more, if not you may go bankrupt.

Maybe I’m a downer. Seems that the tile change might benefit those who like a small, rural build. It might negatively affect those like to build large. I think I enjoy building utopias. So maybe I’ll use all tiles or unlimited money?

still won't be playing until custom assets

There is some confirmed gamebreaking bug with offices where all my skyscraper offices have 5 employees in them which causes every other thing to fail. Last week: hello, sorry we are delaying the patch because of holiday with Midsommer so we can be all hands on deck next week if serious issues arise ... ... This week: hello, yeah we know about this serious game breaking issue but we don't have enough have time to fix it before the summer holidays Every post this company puts out is about going on vacation. No wonder this game has been delayed for years and released in the state it is in. I am all for work life balance but they should plan around all these known dates or hire more people. I won't give these people any more more money and if DLC's release someday after the promised ultimate edition and compensations, I will look for them 'elsewhere'

Great Depression DLC became free. Glad we didnt have to pay for this one XD

you got your axes the wrong way around at 5:50

The upkeep seems odd to me from an immersion perspective.

Closing off the unlimited money option is best way to play the game and challenge yourself.

Honestly, you shouldn't be playing the old cities. You should make a new one. If you have a giant bank account with millions of dollars in it, then the economy adjustments just don't matter for most cities. I find that new players have less issue with the new economy because they didn't learn to play on the old system. It's unlearning and relearning how to play now. Grow slowly. Don't purchase land you don't need yet, let your city develop and push you to where you need to expand. It requires you to play more like a real mayor would, than just a sandbox you can build whatever you want in. If you're coming from Cities 1, it will feel more familiar, but if you have quite a bit of time in Cities 2 before the 2.0 update, you're going to fail, a lot, trying to unlearn things that don't work anymore. That's why i tell everyone to start a new city, experience the way it works now BEFORE you go to your old city. Once you have a good grasp on the 2.0 game, then you should be able to save your old city from collapse.

Okay Jumbo what is going on here and why am I getting the opposite of you, City Planner Plays, and Biffa in terms of post Economy 2.0 Let me run a list 1) Deaths outweigh births two to one at the moment however, I have a massive population BOOM going from 35,000 to 76,000 in two hours of game play (10,000 people per time session moving in which masks the death wave) 2) Residential demand has absolutely cratered but seems still got lots of underused dwellings right now from when I did a massive build run just prior to 2.0 coming out 3) Industrial demand is through the roof but this seems to be with unemployment still at 0.3% from 53,000 jobs available but only 40,000 filled right now I say a lot of backfilling is being done although still zoning some more industry to get production deficits under control 4) I am using the Profit Based Industry and Office mod which has stopped offices crashing out and might have an impact with industry going nuts 5) Realistic trips is enabled which is causing some fun with commercial BUT it is the same situation as Real Time was in CS1 BUT with CS1 we had commercial and tourism districts that were 24/7 and counted things "closing" for the night 6) HOLY BATMAN my public transport is getting swamped all of a sudden. Suppose this is a good thing to have! All fun and games until your City Planners go HOLD THE PHONE!

If they didn't fix the dairy farm actually hiring people then I straight up don't care.

I think this misses the mark. If the intent was to make the late game more "interesting" then mashing the early game to bits isn't it. Time simulates so slowly in this, and all the upkeep costs are through the roof, so you just kinda have to sit around and do nothing, sometimes with issues in the city because you can't afford it and expansion to get more funds just makes more of the same issues. It creates a loop that involves being passive and waiting, but since half your city is unemployed, it just spirals down anyway

the tile update thing was just not well thought out. This is not how cities work. Cities don't pay for land to expand unless there's an eminent domain issue. If that were the case you'd be buying a lot or a house from the city. Cities pay to provide infrastructure to land they have annexed. Usually they annex only when property owners outside of the city petition the city to annex them. Cities don't pay taxes on land because they don't own land. The property owners pay the city taxes for the infrastructure the city provides. This update was a lazy way to arbitrarily increase difficulty. It needs to be removed. Even without it it's MUCH harder to grow a profitable city than it was previously... which is good.

i really looked to this company as one of the few good ones...that view has changed greatly and i have found myself playing games less and less in general. just tired of getting screwed over by game companies

Wot, your construction cranes move…

It feels like CO has a real lack of resources put into QA above all. Don't they play these releases themselves properly before releasing them, so that they can balance the game? I'm all for difficulty increases, but this tile thing feels like something slapped on just to make it more difficult, it doesn't feel integral to the game. I bought the premium pre-order edition, I was really excited for this game and at the beginning I defended CO at every turn, as a developer myself I understand the difficulty, but my patience has run thin and I'm losing hope for this game. I haven't played for months now but I try to keep up with the news to see if/when the time is right to start playing again. Perhaps a new player will emerge at some point to take on role as the pre-eminent city builder, just like CO did with CS1 after the disaster that was SC2013. I have been an ardent city builder since I was a kid in the early 90s and played through every iteration of the major city builders, one of the few games that I still play. I really do hope that someone will take the reins and build something really good.

Seems like a step in the right direction. Still not enough to make me come back to the game just yet. More wait-and-see for me.

Can't even start a game I go broke right away

glad the devs did something to take the fun out of the game. i tried for 4 hours to get out of the red but ended up switching to unlimited money. use the no deathcare, no garbage mods and things r better. maybe they can focus on more features rather than try to get us to quit the game again!

Post-patch a stable and profitable city has ground to a halt. 1. Unemployment, which was at 5%, is now at 40%. 2. Demand for commercial and office doesn't even register it's so low. 3. Industrial demand is still pretty high. Oddly, so is residential demand (all types). 4. Education, which was good pre-patch, has also cratered after the death wave and about 30% of my cims are now considered poorly educated despite my schools being packed full. I've let the sim run for a couple of hours to let the effects of the patch and death wave pass but something seems to be very off.

i just want to know when they are going to do workshop on steam, this game needs mods

This game is too ambitious and too complex for CO. They have no clue how to save it. Sad

Ive had to make industrial zones take up 2/3 of my overall city size. This is farcical. Also, paying upkeep for 3 additional tiles just to bring a highway ramp across to another part of the city is also ridiculous. Tiles don't work as a method of acquiring new land, its just not financially viable. New land should be acquired through a node and rubber band system, like the special industry and garbage dumps.

Welcome to Cities Skylines 2: Expensive Taxi paradise. cuz that the only way you going to make a profit xD

I still can't stand the perfectly aligned white road marks from cars in intersections, and giant industrial cranes being used to build every tiny residential house.

I mean I've been playing Elden Ring again so

Can you please update us when the game finally becomes playable. I am tired of getting disappointed each update….

First they bragged about how many tiles you can have in this game, and now this 🤣

I preordered the game and still haven't played the game because they still haven't fixed the game...