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CO Word of the Week #11

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.

Production chain.png


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
 
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As someone who plays these kinds of games for the fun of the simulation and management aspects, learning about this is quite interesting. But for me it also highlights one of the biggest problems with the games currently for me personally, which is that I have to go to the forums to have it explained, when the game should be doing it for me.

Right now there is no way for me by just playing and studying my city to figure anything out. How does the supply chain work? How does it matter? How can I interact with it? To me it doesn't seem like any of it is of any consequence, my city will thrive regardless of whether I care about stuff like this or not. This makes the game feel very empty and lifeless, and I ask myself why even have a simulation is if it is not presented to the player in any meaningful way? The numbers might as well be faked, and I get the feeling it's all window dressing.

Now granted maybe there is a simulation going on, but I am not experiencing any of it, what's the point?
 
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Teleporting goods...in a next-gen city builder...

I wonder - why my Factorio base does not require teleporting goods of any sort to properly function?
 
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I think the format of a small update on the progress of behind-the-scenes stuff, combined with a deeper dive into the inner workings of the game works well for the time being until more progress is made. I think a Trello board would also be nice addition to visualise what bugs are being fixed and tracked at present.

On the next post, could you please go into detail on higher density housing & office demand please.
 
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Thanks for this! Lots of good stuff assuaging my fears for the future of the game. Good to see that y'all are aware of these issues. I imagine I'm going to see a lot more traffic once they're fixed :p (not a bad thing)
 
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Thanks for this! I love this kind of stuff and was hoping to get more explanation of how the simulation is working, although modders have kind of figured out some of this stuff already. This has already got me thinking of improvements. For example, there is a mod right now that breaks down demand, and you can see when a warehouse is demanded over something like a factory. I think it would be great if we could zone warehouses, or plop them, and have separate demand or notification for warehouses. Right now it isn't very transparent whether you need warehouses or not unless you have a mod, although the game does a pretty good job of spawning warehouses when they are needed.

I'd also like to see a WotW that breaks down parking mechanics, as well as breaking down when a citizen decides to go shopping vs work.
 
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As someone who has been very critical, I appreciate this.

So this is how it’s supposed to work, is it currently working this way in the game?

One of my biggest frustrations is the simulations dont all seem to be working.

Which ones aren’t and are y’all still working to improve?

Thanks again.
 
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Useful info. Insightful. However, without reading this I would never have seen or guessed how complicated this facet of the game is. It would be nice to interact with those systems more. The industry DLC of CS1 did it better IMO. It showed clear numbers, graphs, goals and sliders to minipulate things while still being macro management. I am not saying to just copy that. But now the chains and numbers are just that, numbers and agents behind the scenes.

Another of these guides for high density would be helpful. That is also a bit unclear how all that works behind the scenes.

Also one of your famous collaborators (Biffa) posted a very great video which capture a lot of pain points. Super constructive as well.

Maybe something for Avanya to take some notes from. It really captures a lot of questions and issues.

 
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"Industrial and commercial companies move into the city with starting resources"

This is a terrible game design. At least tune it down to 20% of storage and then immediately start asking from warehouse.

Soo, Cargo terminals are basically buffers? It is fine however it would be nice to have some power over storage space generation because right now it is a total mess.

Also it would be nice if the industries within the city would live with the city. Because currently you start without oil resource so your industry will generate biofuel factories which stuck with you forever, even after you produce a huge amount of fuel.

"Households only have resources and do not count individual resource types."

Sooo, the whole majestic economy is totally made up then. How do they decide what to purchase? How does the need for these products occur? We have a statistic stating deficit or sufficit from each type. How is this decided? Where does it come from?

What a terrible design choice...

As per citizen shopping, I don't mind the "teleportation" mechanic because the time diletation you chose... Which is also a terrible mechanic... But whatever at this point... Might add some multiplier to post offices though to somehow counterbalance the "online" part and show some actual deliveries.

I just don't understand like 90% of the decisions that went into the game... Literally almost always decided with the worse possibility.
 
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Thank you for the explanations, it is very much appreciated !! I also prefer to have timely news every week. It’s a bit of a little Monday surprise and a good start to the week

I would very much like to have more information on the management of the choice of housing for residents, or the choice of public transport over car more in-depth. How can we use thé info on % use, Line stops etc... to make the most efficient pubic transport !
And what makes people go to the park or not (independently of the bug that I have on my games which means that I have no one in my parks except in the elementary school park)
 
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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.
I'm glad that Paradox stepped in and told you to start answering our questions
 
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This is definitely a step in the right direction. Glad that you decided to continue with word of the week. Also great to hear more about what is going on under the hood of the game as these aren't readily apparent while we play.
 
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Hi! I had no idea the patch would be out last Wednesday, a pleasant surprise to learn about.

Would you ever consider a gamemode or something similar based on cities developing around an industry? Like where specified industries and/or freight rail is unlocked right away?

Also, would there ever be asset packs of older styles of buildings? It would be cool to have older buildings in our saves to represent cities that have been growing for a long time.

Thank you for the update, and I’m glad the Word of the Week will remain.
 
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Thanks for the update. Good idea to have WoWs about game features, now that PDX is forcing you to keep doing them :p .
 
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Would you ever consider a gamemode or something similar based on cities developing around an industry? Like where specified industries and/or freight rail is unlocked right away?
I would love this.
 
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Thanks for this insight, but what about the balancing of import/export? It's a great help the cargo harbours/stations have large warehouses as buffers (do these always demand until filled to 50 % oder just take up the surplus and handle the company-requested imports until they're distributed?), but I'm pretty sure I saw precious raw materials being exported, which are hightly sought after by my own industry and in return products being imported that are in the biggest surplus. I can imagine that a certain company X had a demand where the local ressource wasn't as close as the outside connection, but shouldn't be there a weighting in a sense that a company will always prefer to "buy locally"?

Also it's very difficult to manage industry by taxes only, albeit I understand the "realism" behind it. Unless in Socialism the administration doesn't get to decide about each individual firm to settle but the biggest ones like signature industries. But the ingame flow chart seems to be inaccurate then. I thought it was timber or paper from wood, like in CS:1, but now it appears to me that my encouragement for timber production caused many paper companies to spawn, which now take away the timber from the furniture production, hence to counter this I would need to raise paper tax and lower furniture tax? This wasn't clear in the diagram.
 
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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.

Households go shopping when the AI detects that it lacks resources. It then checks the household members and their product preferences and chooses a product based on the preference weights. Once the product type has been selected, it picks one of the household members who then travels to a shop selling the desired product and makes the purchase. Once the purchase has been made, the product is transmitted to the household’s resources.

Im curious why this design choice was made but I guess an educated guess would be efficiency. I think it would have been cool to have households purchase and keep track of food, paper, etc. and have their utilization of those resources drive their buying decisions in the future. But again, that sounds computationally intensive.

1. Is there a limit to how much resources a household can have or store?

2. How is the consumption rate determined? Is it static or dynamic?

3. What’s the threshold for when the AI is triggered to purchase resources?

This is fascinating stuff.
 
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Useful info. Insightful. Another of this for high density would be helpful.

Also one of your famous collaborators (Biffa) posted a very great video which capture a lot of pain points. Super constructive as well.

Maybe something for Avanya to take some notes from


Thanks for the video, I watched it and I agree with everything. I haven't played as much as Biffa, so I still marvel a lot at what there is to see in the game and I'm less eager to see assets. Additionally, creativity can have many different forms. This is the only point that differs from his point of view and mine.
 
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First of all, thanks for not shutting down communication. Actions speak louder than words, but when your next action is several weeks away, words are appreciated :)

Second, all those explanations about the mechanics should be available to us in game.

Third... Did you see the video of trying to run a 1M city on an overclocked 96 core Threadripper? Do you still think simulating every cim was a good idea? We know there's already a function to reduce traffic based on population, but a big enough city (remember, you advertised larger maps...) will push every machine to its limits, no matter how much you optimize your code. We wanted more than the 64k agents from CS1, but having no limit is counter-productive - maybe adjust the limit to the available computing power?

If we have affordable quantum computers during the lifetime of CS2, you can remove those limits ;)
 
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