Dose the game perform poorly now in 2025?

[Arararamba]

This info is from 2023. I haven't fined any newer in depth analysis of performance and graphics. I would be interested if someone can point me to if they know.

Anyway in this link a guy tested the graphical aspect of the game. He didn't understand why the game is so demanding on hardware when it's not graphically nice compered to games released the same time. After his test his conclusion was that there is to much details and much of this details the player never have a chance to observe so it's pointless. For instance your hardware is processing the teeths of all your residents and you will never now that they actually hade teeths. This is just one example, but there is alot of similar things going on. Then also there was assets without lod. This info is from 2023 and my question is what is the current situation? Do we still have pointless details being processed or what?

Why Cities: Skylines 2 performs poorly

The teeth are not the only problem

blog.paavo.me

 

[Jeruntje]

No, it is better now. They added LOD's and they redid a bunch of assets to improve performance, Also with the last patch simulation speed has increased greatly. But to temper your expectations, the game still struggles to perform well when a city gets reasonably large and with a decent new graphic card (9070) I still can't manage to get 60 fps on 1440p on high settings.

 

[prismaticmarcus]

Performance is much better than it was a month after launch.

 

[nnnitram]

Not as bad as launch but still bad, especially given the mediocre visuals.

 

[Rostan]

Better but needs further optimization.

 

[Marcus Sands]

Yes it runs very well, which is pretty amazing given the beautiful graphics the game has and the amount of cims and objects simulated.

 

[tweety80]

In terms of GPU performance, the game improved a lot.
In terms of CPU performance, there may be a few improvements, but the game is agent-based.

I am using Linux, which is not a supported operating system, and the performance has significantly decreased. I could play the game for about 6 months, but one patch reduced the performance so significantly that playing became impossible. It is not a big deal because CS2 does not officially support Linux, so I cannot complain.

 

[Sacavain]

Depends on what you expect.

There has been some improvements since launch on several fronts and the game has been running better.
As their performance target is 30 fps on 1080p, if you're looking to play at 144hz on 1440p, you're setting yourself to be disappointed.
On my rig, it performs decently well but keep in mind that whatever you do, once you hit a big enough city, simulation speed will still slow down.

While I wouldn't call CS2 a decently optimized game, I'd say it's not a hot issue as it was on launch day. Still remain a demanding game nonetheless

 

[DarkMore111]

After the patch in March simulation speed has seen a huge improvement. Unfortunately some severe bugs to the economy have been introduced, which I hope will be adressed with the upcoming patch.

Well yeah, bugs and rogue traffic AI, that's the biggest issue for me right now. Other than that, fun and cozy game.

 

[pikachukaki]

Dose the game perform poorly now in 2025?​

yes

 

[Seneon]

However, the game can handle a very large amount of teeth and dogs.

 

[Seth C Triggs]

This game has been performing leaps and bounds better since launch (and a few regressions in intermediate patches). So I want to preface my remarks by saying "Thank you!" to the devs for getting after it and doing some badly needed triage.

There was a period (I want to say last year) that I could just get a game to crash just by looking at it wrong. Or panning the map too fast. Or clicking on the wrong building.
Also with how my first city grew (now to a population of 1.3 million) in earlier versions of the game the map wouldn't even load. Because of crashes I came very close to losing that city. Thankfully I had autosaves on.
The work on LODs alone has saved so many GPU or CPU cycles.

In my opinion there are some important bugs that CO are aware of and has perhaps triaged on the forum that I think would get us into a good position if fixed.

1. The transit loading bug (and vehicle loading in general) - because vehicles are holding up and/or despawning because they're held up too long, you're getting a whole bunch of people having to pathfind around the traffic jams. Or pathfind when their vehicle has despawned. I suspect that's sapping performance.
2. The eroding jobs at higher levels, (what some of us call the "5/5"bug) which create churn and unemployment that induce people to move or become homeless, adding another source of pathfinding woes. (Incidentally I think a number of facilities have too *few* jobs, which could probably help keep an economy more stable as they do in real cities)
3. There is a related bug to that about the stock of such companies becoming too large, which causes the job loss issue too. The company never vacates.
4. The tourism being too small for large cities causing issues with certain businesses collapsing (like lodging) are probably causing trips from people having to find new work.

That's just off the top of my head. But devs please keep getting after that. I appreciate your efforts!

 

[Seth C Triggs]

In terms of GPU performance, the game improved a lot.
In terms of CPU performance, there may be a few improvements, but the game is agent-based.

I am using Linux, which is not a supported operating system, and the performance has significantly decreased. I could play the game for about 6 months, but one patch reduced the performance so significantly that playing became impossible. It is not a big deal because CS2 does not officially support Linux, so I cannot complain.

I am curious, as I also play on Linux. What's your distro? I'm on a Linux Mint desktop and getting way better than my new Acer Nitro 5 laptop (which has an equivalent AMD Ryzen 7).

 

[Co Starring]

Base game: yes.
Mods from PDX : nope. (the game hangs/crashes with mods)

 

[[Delta ²k5]]

Mods from PDX : nope. (the game hangs/crashes with mods)

That's somewhat generalizing.
On my end the game does neither hang or crash while I currently use 40 mods in my active playset.

There surely are (outdated and orphaned) mods around which cause issues but this is nothing specific to the game or PDX mods.

From my personal experience the overall situation on performance and bugs got a lot better since launch. While some fixes introduced new simulation related bugs performance on CPU side basically tripled on my system and the overall GPU side performance also significantly increased.

Also since the last patches I had zero CTDs which were not caused by a mod that needed some updating.

 

[backface]

Graphic performance is ok now. Of course you won't be able to play at full with a Nvidia 1080 like most people want, but for the recommended specs, it's ok.

The problems come with simulation speed when you hit 100k people on the city.

 

[Co Starring]

That's somewhat generalizing.
On my end the game does neither hang or crash while I currently use 40 mods in my active playset.

There surely are (outdated and orphaned) mods around which cause issues but this is nothing specific to the game or PDX mods.

From my personal experience the overall situation on performance and bugs got a lot better since launch. While some fixes introduced new simulation related bugs performance on CPU side basically tripled on my system and the overall GPU side performance also significantly increased.

Also since the last patches I had zero CTDs which were not caused by a mod that needed some updating.

I have been on "forum vacation" for discussing this issue before.
Just the simple statement about mods not working and that it is very hard (impossible) to turn off updating of mods (which ended in the app hanging/no longer loading. Having to reboot etc.), even if you use the STEAM startup option for NO MODS. (needless to say that this didn't solve my issues with mods loading/updating)
And at no time and no place I was told there is the same option (to turn off mods) in the CS:2 startmenu.

FWIW No attacks were made in this post. No foul language was used in this post. No full caps in this post. But you simply can not point things out without repercussion.

 

[[Delta ²k5]]

And at no time and no place I was told there is the same option (to turn off mods) in the CS:2 startmenu.

It's an option directly in the launcher - at the arrow next to "Play":

For this the launcher itself has to be up to date obviously which normally is done automatically.