CO Word of the Week #11

[MTO35]

Thanks for the update! Anything that the provides any kind of insight into how the simulation is supposed to work is very appreciated.

In a future WotW, would it be possible to talk a little bit about how land value is calculated and how that affects assets and vice versa? I've made a table of some assumptions I've made for residential zoning based on how it's works in real life. Some of these can happen in different orders or multiple times, but generally it's the first row to the last.

Residential Zoning​

Real Life	In Game
A homeowner or a building owner makes improvements to their property or the value of the land has increased due to appreciation or other economic factors.	The building levels up after hitting certain dollar thresholds. These thresholds are indicated by the taxation levels based on the education level of the cims. These "taxes" are actually the day-to-day expenses of living in the city in addition to the actual rent of the buildings. Any monies left over at the end of the month goes towards increasing the building's XP.
The local municipality does a property value assessment.	Whenever a building is constructed, abandoned, or levels up, and external factors like pollution, access to city services, and/or other factors I'm not aware of change, the land value is recalculated.
The assessment affects the property tax the building owner has to pay. They in turn increase their rents to make the mortgage payment.	When a majority of the cims aren't able to cover their rent and/or whatever tax is assigned to that cim's education level, a high rent warning is generated.
People are either priced out of the neighborhood or figure out some way to pay the higher rent by getting a better/another job, roommates, etc.	Cims either make more money through a better job or become homeless and/or eventually leave the city.

Is this, in general, a correct assumption for residential zoning? I would assume it's mostly the same for industrial and commercial but based on workers, resources and profits.

Thank you again!




I respectfully disagree. If I buy something from Amazon, they have their own logistics to ship it to me directly. There is no interaction with the post office when an Amazon delivery driver in their own car or Amazon's own truck drops it off at my house.

Yes, I also find it very strange how the different living zones are regulated. In my city, either uneducated people or very poorly educated people move out of social housing and move into upgraded single-family houses of level 4-5 and then complain that the rents are too high and since the update you can now also see people in Parks, but for me it's mostly people who are either retired or just very well educated and have a good job but are homeless for some reason and probably live in these parks and sports fields in my city.

 

[Infixo]

Just for people intererested on the Paradox side of news. This is the comment from CEO of Paradox on CS2 in the investor report.

View attachment 1080777

Ah… corpo world is so easy… „we must do better”. Then you call Finland and say „do better”. Job done

 

[unmerged(524934)]

Ah… corpo world is so easy… „we must do better”. Then you call Finland and say „do better”. Job done

And what's even better, you then get the added benefit of being portrayed as the good guys, going in to bat for the poor disillusioned gamers

It's all become a bit of a mess hasn't it?

 

[unoace1006]

And this here is the reason why we need modding support like right now.. so we can change this poor design that basically removes the gameplay experience.

Well thought to implement something like online shopping, but teleporting goods is the wrong answer to that.

Keeping the wood example, the correct chain in this case should be:
FORESTRY EXTRACTOR -> SAW MILL -> PAPER MILL -> BOOKSTORE -> MAIL SORTING FACILITY -> CUSTOMER HOUSEHOLD
Should any of this links have been broken for any reason or the transportation be stuck at any point, the goods should never reach the customer households generating an informed issue that the player should figure out and fix.

Teleporting is either killing the gameplay, or simply a plain scapegoat to address the economy not working properly.

You can take this as a suggestion to improve the simulation, or just let the modders do it.

In essence, while commercial entities can complain about a lack of shoppers or goods; households will never complain about a lack of resources or an inability to obtain them.

They’ll just teleport resources if any link in the chain is underperforming or missing.

 

[tom_mai78101]

I wished we would have some of the dev tools used by the developers be enabled / ported over to the release builds of CS2.

As they say, Nintendo made similar decisions to port some dev tools (editing features) into Super Mario Maker when they realized it is so much fun to create and share custom Mario levels, than to play and beat them.

 

[tamsi99]

@co_martsu :
Thank you very much for this WotW, this is a great and appreciated way to communicate weekly if there are no news about new improvements, patches, releases.

Regarding what you explained, this is helpful. And I am a big fan of games with resources, production chains and so on. I only have one issue with this when playing the game:

I don't see it while playing and it does not seem to make a difference for me while playing.

Means, my city basically looks and behaves the same, no matter whether I produce something in my city or import it. No matter whether I have enough of a resource in the city or not. No matter whether the product chain as such works or not.

Yes, I understand the industry or commercials might be labeled differently, depending on what the production matrix identifies as the biggest need. But also this does not really make a difference in gameplay or meaningful visuals. The game always has a "plan B" in the background (this is what many users here refer to as the "fail-safes") to still get the city going with no impact, no punishment, no difference. Yes, maybe something is slightly more expensive but financials are no real challenge either, so it does not matter.

Given the great simulation details that CS2 has in the background, I would love to see more impact on the city, depending on how it goes. No, not a "game over" scenario, but a more direct feedback and impact if something is not that good. As an example, why would I care about having a forestry on the map if the game silently imports wood anyway with no further, noticeable consequence? Why do I care about having that polluting industry on the map if my commercial business is anyway importing all those goods silently in the background?

In short, a city that produces all goods sufficiently for all needs has to look and feel very differently from a city that mostly imports good and has incomplete production chains, etc. If you find a way to achieve that, it will lift the game to the next level.

 

[po3tik]

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.

View attachment 1079167

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

My number 1 concern is simulation speed. It can become almost unplayable at certain population levels. x3 speed can crawl along so slow, that after plopping down assets or zones, it can take real world hours to even see a house develop or in-game affects to take. Having an i9 13900k maxed out in a city with less than 70k pop can be disheartening.

That is probably the sole thing that makes it hard to come back to the game. Otherwise, the progress being made is definitely welcome and appreciated. Love CS and am here for the ride.

 

[dj97]

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.

So, could a citizen only shop at one type of store and achieve maximum happiness? Would they even need to buy a variety of resources?

 

[anydaytv]

My number 1 concern is simulation speed. It can become almost unplayable at certain population levels. x3 speed can crawl along so slow, that after plopping down assets or zones, it can take real world hours to even see a house develop or in-game affects to take. Having an i9 13900k maxed out in a city with less than 70k pop can be disheartening.

That is probably the sole thing that makes it hard to come back to the game. Otherwise, the progress being made is definitely welcome and appreciated. Love CS and am here for the ride.

Personally I think they sort of shot themselves in the foot with the clock time. I think it would've been a pretty unnoticeable change to have a slower clock rate and keep the overall simulation speed the same. "What's the difference then?", you say? On the surface, not much, but it would slow down the rate at which things need to happen, like people going to work, or a business needing to restock. After dealing with tsunami-level waves of traffic, I'm pretty convinced it isn't traffic itself causing sim speed slowdowns. It's definitely more related to background calculations, and more space on the clock would definitely alleviate that. People focused on building out their cities usually always have the night-cycle off anyway to see, as well.

At this stage, I'm not sure they could even think about changing it though.

 

[humorpalanta]

So, could a citizen only shop at one type of store and achieve maximum happiness? Would they even need to buy a variety of resources?

Yes. They randomly choose what to shop so it is actually possible that you have a household "living" just on books. Great design.

 

[sys_64738]

Hello Mariina,

I think this type of WotW to shorten the waiting for the next patch/feature release is a good idea.

I can only speak for myself, but this eases my anger and saltiness about the current situation a lot.

This way, you can stay in contact with us and tell us some stuff about C:S 2's inner workings. Maybe, as soon as it is feasible, you can slip some update news here and there.

In one of my postings, I talked about some kind of progress bar to keep people interested - well this is more like loading tool tips. I like it.

Don't get me wrong: I'm still quite salty, but this kind of communication soothes my temper and keeps me interested in the game.

Best regards,
sys

 

[humorpalanta]

Resources have „base consumpttion” assigned. It basically says how much is consumed by a cim in day. Based on that, the consumption for a household is calculated for each resource. There are factors that modify that base consumption, like age and wealth. Then a household decide which resource to buy. It uses those calculated consumptions as weights for a random roll. It then sends one of its members to purchase that resource.
The resource is consumed and then the process is repeated, another resource is chosen randomly using those weights.
In the long run, the resource that is supposed to be consumed more, is chosen more often, and statistically it reaches the desired consumption levels.
The bigger the city, and more households, the more stable and predictible it becomes.

Yes, statistically fine, however from a simulation point of view it is impossible to balance out because you could have households craving books 10000 times for a month and then 10 times in a month. Because it is random and they don't balance out each other. So you can run a sufficit of 500 and then suddenly a defficit of 500 because why tf not. It is random.

They should have designed it a different way. Just create a fake resource like "Household item" which is crafted from 3 food, 1 book, 2 clothes. (Just as an example) It is done in the commercial buildings, so the households would only store and shop the "Household item" and an adult would need 1 "Household item" a day and a teen half of it or smtg.

So the stores would bring in all the stuff to create the "household items" and then sell it to citizens living in the vicinity or travel close by. This would make it way more closer to reality and way easier to balance and track in the game what households have.

So there would be a strict equillibrium to build your city for because you would know what you need if 1 citizen moves in.

The current model is a total mess. Similarly the age groups and how households can be made up of whatever.

Also I think the simulation they built should make you pay retirement benefits to your cims. Right now once your cims get old, they are just taking up space and have no use from simulation pov.

 

[richyhx1]

Amazing, this was really good info. Thank you

 

[AGayRobot420]

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.

So, backpedaling yet again on your decisions, bringing absolutely no good news, and you finally admit that the entire simulation is faked because if goods can just get teleported then there's absolutely no need to even have roads in your city. Claiming this is an 'online shopping' feature is an insult to everyone's intelligence. Goods bought online are still shipped in trucks and create tons of traffic IRL. Dont try and say this is anything other than a way to cover up how buggy the simulation is. And again, not a single mention of any sort of compensation for the lies leading up to release, the delayed basic features and delayed dlc... Just keep it up, you're doing GREAT. I won't be paying for any more dlc for this game.

 

[Larva]

So, backpedaling yet again on your decisions, bringing absolutely no good news, and you finally admit that the entire simulation is faked because if goods can just get teleported then there's absolutely no need to even have roads in your city. And again, not a single mention of any sort of compensation for the lies leading up to release, the delayed basic features and delayed dlc... Just keep it up, you're doing GREAT. I won't be paying for any more dlc for this game.

Honestly, I am baffled to see how community is just standing in front of this all and like - thanks for explanations, it is all looking good, nono - teleporting goods are ok, this a failsafe, it just there to help the simulation running when it cannot properly run... Do you hear yourself, people? They sold us fake gameplay and explaining you why it is actually good to have it fake.

 

[ClemiMD]

Honestly, I am baffled to see how community is just standing in front of this all and like - thanks for explanations, it is all looking good, nono - teleporting goods are ok, this a failsafe, it just there to help the simulation running when it cannot properly run... Do you hear yourself, people? They sold us fake gameplay and explaining you why it is actually good to have it fake.

I'm fine with that.
It's clear from your post that you would do it differently. Well, I would do a hundred things differently in the game, and a thousand other people would do those things differently from me. You can't please everyone. Oh yes, you can, there are mods.

How about a shitstorm against the makers of Monopoly for pushing a game with lousy balancing, teleporting from prison and fake tax calculations on us? I've been waiting 30 years for bug fixes and even bought the DLC for my home town. Now that's what I call a scandal.

 

[Licenturion]

Another of the big creators and collaborator CityPlannerPlays made a video about CS2 and how his channel will slow down CS2 content. This comes after videos from Biffa, CitiesByDiana, FewCandy and a few others.

Their must be some NDA at play because the past week all those big CO collaborators and creators are coming out with their actual thoughts on the game, the impact on their channel and mental health. And how they will go back to CS1 content or do other games all together.

It will be very interesting to see the player number stats when mods/assets and DLC releases. I will still give the game a go then. But I am not planning spending money on CS2 anymore. I have every DLC/CP and radio of CS1. But that is where it ends for me too.

 

[unmerged(524934)]

Another of the big creators and collaborator CityPlannerPlays made a video about CS2 and how his channel will slow down CS2 content

Their must be some NDA at play because the past week all those big CO collaborators and creators are coming out with their actual thoughts on the game, the impact on their channel and mental health. And how they will go back to CS1 content or do other games all together.

It will be very interesting to see the player number stats when mods/assets and DLC releases. I will still give the game a go then. But I am not planning spending money on CS2 anymore. I have every DLC/CP and radio of CS1. But that is where it ends for me too.

https://forum.paradoxplaza.com/foru...about-cities-skylines-2.1623411/post-29396782

 

[LenKeith]

Thank you for the explanation. This is very helpful to plan the industries and commercials. Such technical information is much welcomed.

 

[CapnBludd]

Yeah, it's very likely performance related.

Tracking that per-household in a 1 million pop city means you're tracking a different basket of resources for something like 400k different households (since household size can vary from 1 to ...4? 5?). It not only would be a substantial amount of extra data in RAM, but there's some practical awkwardness with the time dilation and random placement of stores. If I need groceries, clothes, and a book, I can usually find all three in close proximity and make an afternoon shopping trip. Malls aren't really quite so structured in game, so you'd also be creating a bunch of individual trips for goods that zigzag everywhere since you have no control over where the individual companies set up. And honestly, from the player PoV, ensuring each household is buying every good in appropriate amounts is not something 99.999% of players are going to be paying a lot of attention to. If you can approximate it with a weighted purchase script like they are doing in-game, then in the long run goods are still purchased in the right proportions and you save the player a ton of calculation overhead for a system they're likely not even going to notice exists.

A colony builder will track individual good consumption, but your average colony game considers a population in the thousands to be a lot (and performance also tends to suffer at that range). A large metropolis is trying to simulate over a million pops, so you lose some individual details as you scale up.

They don't need to track everything, but they could have separated it into food, household supplies, and entertainment. That would have had a bit more depth and had some real management for the supply chain.