Economy 2.0 Dev Diary #2

[co_avanya]

Welcome back to the second dev diary detailing the changes coming in the next patch. If you missed it, check out the first part here. Today we are covering a few important changes not directly related to the economy and we’ll go over what you can expect when loading up your existing cities.

Let’s start with Rent. Most likely you have run into complaints of “High Rent” in the game, so let’s talk about it. To complement the Land Value changes in patch 1.1.0f1 in March, we have tweaked how Rent works. First of all, we removed the virtual landlord so a building’s upkeep is now paid equally by all renters. Second, we changed the way rent is calculated. For those interested, the calculation looks like this:

Rent = (LandValue + (ZoneType * Building Level)) * LotSize * SpaceMultiplier​

This of course affects the “High Rent” notifications you may have encountered, but we’ve tweaked those directly as well, so they are now based on the household’s income. That means that even if they currently don’t have enough money in their balance to pay rent, they won’t complain and will instead spend less money on resource consumption. Only when their income is too low to be able to pay rent will they complain about “High Rent” and look for cheaper housing or move out of the city.

Besides rent, households and companies need to pay for the building’s upkeep, which in turn affects the level of the building. When they pay the full upkeep fee, the building condition increases by a constant amount until the building levels up and the tenants start paying towards the next level. Similarly, if they cannot pay it, the building condition decreases by the same amount until it’s in such poor condition it collapses.

BUILDING UPGRADES UNLEASHED
From zoned buildings automatically leveling up to the City Service building upgrades you choose and place manually. While this update doesn’t directly relate to the Economy 2.0, it shares the same patch and deserves a little spotlight. Gone are the days when you had to bulldoze the entire building to remove, or just move, an upgrade. Now, all upgrades can be removed by selecting the building, finding the upgrade in the Selected Info Panel, and clicking the bin icon.

Deactivate or delete Extensions or relocate Sub-buildings through the Selected Info Panel

For sub-buildings, there’s even more control. They can also be removed using the bulldozer, you can pick them up and move them, or turn them on and off as needed. Moving them is particularly handy now as they don’t have to be placed in connection to the main building. As long as they are within the predefined radius and have pedestrian and/or road access, they will work like before. Sub-buildings like the Elementary School Playground just need a pedestrian path connecting them to the rest of the city, while sub-buildings like the Bus Depot Extra Garage will need road access to function. We’re excited to see how you take advantage of this new freedom in your cities, so don’t hesitate to tag us on social media if you’re showing off screenshots.


EXISTING CITIES
Now you might wonder how all of this affects your existing cities, so let’s get the most obvious question out of the way first. Saves from before the economy rework still work, though we expect they will have a transition period as the simulation adapts to the changes. When it comes to modded saves, we can’t make any guarantees, but keep an eye out for updates or instructions from the modders. Mods that affect the simulation are likely to be affected by the update.

When you load up your city (and unpause) there are a few things you should keep in mind. With Government Subsidies removed and City Service upkeep increased, the cost of running your city just increased. If your city relies on ambulances, hearses, fire engines, police cars, and garbage trucks coming from Outside Connection, make sure to enable the Import City Services policy in the City Information panel, but don’t forget that your neighbors charge a fee to help you out. All this is expected to create a negative money trend, but depending on your city’s finances, your tax income might be enough to offset the new costs once the calculations catch up. If you’re struggling for money, don’t forget that you can increase taxes, reduce service budgets, or temporarily turn buildings off to save on their upkeep cost.

Demand adjusts quite quickly, so don’t be alarmed if some of your demand bars empty or fill up when you start playing. With the increase in industrial manufacturing space, your industry will be on a hiring spree that’s likely to drive up your residential demand - unless your city has workers already looking for a job. We recommend giving it some time though as companies (commercial, industrial, and office) readjust their production and employee numbers to be profitable, which we expect will overall lead to an increase in unemployment in your city.

With the new calculations for residential density demand, your citizens may also start looking for different types of housing or move around the city. Thankfully, the new calculations for rent and resource consumption should help them afford the type of housing they prefer, and we expect most (if not all) of your “High Rent” notifications will disappear after letting the simulation run for a while. If you keep seeing these or they start to come back, then make sure to check your unemployment and provide citizens with jobs so that they can pay their rent.

With time and some tweaks, your existing cities should adjust to the changes, so you can get back to realizing their full potential. And as always, don’t hesitate to ask for help if you encounter any situations you’re unsure of how to handle and report any bugs you might run into here.


WHAT’S NEXT?
Before we finish for today, we’d like to share our plans going forward. We will of course follow discussions and read feedback you share as you play with these changes. We’ve done extensive testing to get the changes as balanced as possible, but we know that some tweaking will likely still be necessary once you all start sharing your experiences.

We’ve already started work on the next major patch which we hope to have ready for you in Q3, and we want to give you a little sneak peek at what you can expect. As previously mentioned, we want to expand the service import to bring you more control. We’re also looking at what we can improve in the UI and how the game relays information to you, so you have everything you need to solve issues in the game. We’d love to hear your thoughts on this topic. Are there any issues you’ve struggled to solve in your city? Any information you have been looking for but weren’t able to find?

Last, but definitely not least, the art team has been cooking up some new free buildings for you all. We appreciate each and every one of you for sticking with us and giving us a chance to make Cities: Skylines II what it can and should be. Your patience and support mean the world to us and we hope the new service buildings and vehicles can serve as a token of our appreciation. Thank you for being a part of our community!

A sneak peek at some of the new service buildings and vehicles you can look forward to

 

[co_avanya]

About those new buildings, are you going to add elevated metro stations?

Also it would be great to have more flexibility with underground metro stations, now that we have more freedom with sub buildings. It would be great to freely add new platforms for more lines.

We're still finalizing the list of upcoming buildings, so I can't reveal what's included just yet. But those sound like great ideas, so I'll make sure they at least go on our community wishlist. This likely won't be the last time we add more buildings as a free update.

Looking forward to the updates!! Had a question I don’t think I’ve seen an answer to just yet. With the change in the number of workplaces for industry, will we also see a change/increase in the number of workplaces for offices, specifically the high density offices? Thanks!

Not in this patch, but we'll continue to look at the feedback and see where we can make improvements. I'll make sure to share this with the design team!

So when is the actual patch coming?

We don't have a date yet, but we're still looking at the previously shared release window (so between now and June 19th)

 

[co_avanya]

1) Will the families / citizens now actively look for affordable housing instead of just complaining like they do now?
2) There is a lot of information what game omits and doesn't show. My biggest issue is with the unemployment data, which doesn't show the info based on education levels. One tab with Total amount of people in each education class, total amount of jobs for that education class and the difference. Now you can have 15% unemployment and lack of workers at the same time, but you got no idea which groups this involves. You can see the lack of workers from the workplace overlay but you'd have to assume which ones are the ones with high unemployment.

Also import / export data is somewhat abstract showing percentage rather than actual tons. You need to piecemeal a full picture from several places and that's not very fun.

Edit: Oh, and please stop the nonsense with building model changing with building level updates. It doesn't work like that in reality, it's not good looking either. And it reduces the amount of building models we have in our disposal. Initial building should always remain more or less the same, add some props / fine tune some small extension etc. but don't change the whole building. This way for example the beach properties would have added substantially more house models _permanently_ into your city rather than the 6 level 5 models.

1) If more affordable housing is available, they can move there. Otherwise, they'll move out of the city.
2) This is great feedback, thank you!

Can we get a future update that adds worn and torn decal textures to buildings and roads that are in bad condition. Cities skylines 1 really showed us how abandoned buildings looked actually abandoned.

We have a list of visual improvements we want to make, but we want to make sure the gameplay is in a good place before working on those. We'll have to see where we're at once this patch is live and we have had a chance to look at all the feedback.

Can't wait for this update! Will the asset editor be in the Q3 update?

We can't confirm it will be ready for that patch yet, but we're working on resolving the remaining issues as soon as possible, so you can start to create custom assets.

Checking the dev diary notes, I havent seen any mention on whether this patch will bring performance improvments.

Is it just assumed there are performance improvments coming with the patch, or does the fact that there has been no mention mean there are no performance improvments coming?

We have improvements to performance in this patch, along with some general bug fixes. All the fixes will be in the patch notes once the patch goes live.

Will you guys ever add a separate industrial zoning for manufacturing or warehouses with little to no pollution that can be placed in cities that wont cause major harm to its residents? You see this in many places like Lockhart FL and Jersey Village, TX.

Our focus right now is on improving the base game itself, so we're currently not looking at potential future content, but we're always interested in your feedback and wishes. I can't make any promises, but I can make sure this goes on our community wishlist, so we have it once we start looking at new content.

Thank you so much for a diligent and transparent update!

1) ’m wondering to what extent buildings with higher vacancy rates go abandoned or collapse even when existing residents ARE paying their rents and shares of upkeep. I’ve seen perfectly happy medium and high density buildings go abandoned and collapse for no apparent reason and hadn’t quite yet figured out the cause. I saw somewhere that this new patch will force existing buildings to become occupied before constructing new buildings of similar type. Will this solve the problem?

2) I really appreciate the explanation of how this patch will affect our cities’ economies. In short, this patch isn’t going to actually “break” current saves by making them completely inaccessible or unplayable. Although, it is apparent that we may have some significant work in our cities to make them fiscally viable.

3) I play 100% vanilla, but I’m wondering if you have pre-shared the beta with the modding community so that they can quickly release updated versions of their mods. I recall how well you coordinated the Sunset Harbor and Airport DLCs in CS1 to such an extent that our cities barely skipped a beat.

Thank you again for your sustained efforts to improve the game and your public relations. I love this genre and this game, and would be disappointed if it were discontinued because your fan base walked away completely.

1) When residents can't pay the building's full upkeep, like when only a few people live in a high density residential building or it's abandoned, the building condition deteriorates. If it keeps deteriorating for long enough, it will eventually reach the threshold for "leveling down" which is when it will collapse. As for why you had buildings become abandoned is hard to say without looking at the save. Off the top of my head, they may have found work or studied in Outside Connections and moved out, they may have been unhappy with the apartment size, or they may have moved elsewhere in the city. I'd expect you'll see less of that happening with the patch, but if you keep seeing buildings abandoned for no apparent reason, we'd love a report with a save, so we can look into it. Whether it's a bug or a question of missing information, saves are always helpful in determining how we can improve the situation.

3) Our modding beta group has early access to the patch, though of course I can't comment on whether they have had a chance to update their mods. It all depends on how many real-life obligations they have, but we always try to give them as much time with a patch as possible, so they can prepare.

 

[co_avanya]

Alright, let's remember to remain constructive and respectful to each other when posting. I don't care whether you support us or dislike us, you don't get to insult your fellow forum posters just because they have a different view of things. You're better than this! Be kind to each other. <3

And now to some questions. ^^

Will this solve high density residentials and commercials not leveling up? My city has 200k citizens. I haven't seen a single high density commercial or residential at level 5 (which are required for signature buildings)
Also will this solve mass high res abandonment? It's been reported with saves attached.

The problem I see here is that the buildings very often take the largest plot possible, resulting in long rows of identical houses, as there's rarely more than one model per plot size. Chance for smaller house built for - say, less wealthy family - on a larger available land is nonexistent. Especially problematic if building on a grid, the american way.

Also, any plans for traffic tweaks, especially the illegal moves in the foreseeable future? The things I've seen... Most of the traffic jams I see come from cars deciding to make a random u turn into already stationary traffic, blocking everything behind them and the nearest intersection or five. The values for illegal turns are way too high.

It should give your buildings a fighting chance to level all the way up. It may still take time depending on how the households and companies are doing, but if you continue to have buildings "stuck" at a lower level, please let us know so we can look into it.

As for traffic, it's a wish I see come up regularly, but I can't make any promises at this time. We'll have to look into what is possible and when we can dedicate resources to it.

Is FSR included in this patch? I'd love to have feature parity with Nvidia owners

Not this time around but it's being worked on.

This all looks great. I'm especially excited about the expansion buildings being detached from the main building. Also the economy changes are most welcome. Have you fixed the issue where taxes go bonkers and income goes nuts? That bug is really annoying.

Yes, no more randomly high taxes. That issue has been fixed in the patch.

Please, can you help me to better understand this? So does it mean that if household has barely to pay a rent, it won't buy any resources? So - for example - I could have a poor city where people can just pay rent without any more money to spend on resources so there wouldn't be any commercial demand... Or does a household have some minimum demand for resources which it requires? So it actually has to have money at least for the rent and this bare minimum of resources...?

Anyway, I appreciate your work on these updates - seems like a step to the right direction to me

A household will stop buying resources to pay their rent so they can keep their home. If they continue to struggle to make rent and buy resources, they will complain about high rent and look for cheaper housing or move out of the city. So it's less of a permanent state and more of a means to survive a potential rough patch.

 

[co_avanya]

Hi, this are great news. I've some question/suggestion about the transport aspects of the games.

The first ones is if the following station buildings will be added in the future:
- smaller bus terminals
- smaller train stations and an elevated and underground version
- elevated metro stations (if they could also be built over roads it would be fantastic!)

The last ones are about the road upgrade system, in a future uptade the following feature will be introduced?
- possibility to swap the parking along the road for addition vehicular or transit only lanes;
- having the possibility to have asymmetric avenues with medians;
- the bridge style dependent only on the road with and not its type (for example having the same bridge style both for the 2-way 2lane road and fot the one way two lane road).

The stations are on our wishlist but I can't give a timeline for when they might be added to the game. There's no denying that the transport buildings we added in the free patches for Cities: Skylines were popular, so it's definitely something we have in mind for future content. ^^

As for the road-related wishes, I'll make sure they're all on our community wishlist. No promise they'll end up in the game though!

Hi Avanya,

Thank you for the progress update in this dev diary, you guys are doing some promising work in terms of gameplay and simulation. I have maybe more of an abstract question, but you mention that when a building “levels down” it simply gets abandoned and collapses. Why not instead have the building actually level down so that its rent decreases again and it settles into some intermediate wealth level. It seems that building level is attempting to model different wealth/social class levels, but the discussion seems to be on trying to get every building to level 5 (high-class). I can imagine a situation in the game where a building levels up, tenants can no longer pay rent, the building gets abandoned and collapses, and a new building takes its place, rinse and repeat. It would make more sense it seems for a building to reach some steady-state at some intermediate level so that it houses an appropriate wealth class of cim. In real life of course, not every house is a mansion and not every high rise is luxury apartments, so it would make sense for there to be a multitude of different level buildings in your city.

Anyway, just some thoughts. Looking forward to playing the new update!

Both leveling up and down (=collapsing) takes time. Each month tenants need to pay for the building's upkeep. If they can afford it, the building starts to progress towards the next level. If they cannot, it progresses towards collapse. Buildings may move back and forth if the tenants can sometimes afford the upkeep and struggle other times, but if the tendency over a longer period is for one or the other, the building will eventually level up or collapse.

Typically, buildings settle at a level the tenants can afford, but of course changes in the city can affect that. I might build a new commercial area that steals customers from existing commercial buildings. They have less sales and then start to be unable to afford their building. Or I build a new highway through an office area, resulting in citizens becoming unemployed or getting lower paid jobs, so they can't pay the upkeep cost on their homes.

This looks really interesting, and it's nice to learn about some of the inner workings of things.

I have to ask, what the heck is the "space multiplier" ? Like, the amount of space around the lot you've zoned? And is that "free" space, or unzoned space or?

I'd love to see more of these functions being shown off and their components explained as I honestly didn't know some of those elements were impactful.

It's essentially a value that indicates the size of a building. For example, if you have two high density residential buildings the space multiplier to let the game know how many people should live in each building. It isn't necessarily tied to the size of the building but also represents the variations in apartments inside the building. And as that affects the number of tenants, it's included in the rent calculations.