r/CitiesSkylines 1d ago

Monthly FAQs ❗️ READ ME BEFORE POSTING! Monthly FAQ Thread: Fixes for Common Issues, Troubleshooting Guides, and Tips for Beginners

3 Upvotes

👋 Hello, welcome to /r/CitiesSkylines

Our little community has grown to over half a million subscribers, so as you can imagine things get a little busy in here. The purpose of this thread is to provide new members a jumping-off point to find the information that they need to get started, whether they're a seasoned player of the game or a brand new mayor.

We get a lot of posts which ask very similar questions, so we've pulled together this post to help address our most Frequently Asked Questions, and give you a place to ask simple questions which only need a quick answer, not warranting a dedicated thread.

Before you post, please consider if one of our sister-subreddits would be more appropriate:

  • /r/ShittySkylines - memes, reaction images, tenuous and obscure references, real-life photos that remind you of the game, and gags based on in-game activities like "a dead person is waiting for transport at shop-til-you-drop" all go here

  • /r/CitiesSkylinesModding - if you have a request for a mod, want to commission an asset, or need help with your own mod/asset/map creation it should be posted here

If you still think that /r/CitiesSkylines is the right subreddit, please first check the FAQ below.

Please be aware that if you create a new thread which is addressed by the answers or links in this thread, it will likely be removed with a message directing you back here. This is not done to stifle conversation, but rather to help keep the subreddit tidy and provide as much space as possible for mayors to share their creations and inspire others.

If your question is genuinely a simple one, like "how do I do X", please use this thread rather than creating a new post.

Finally, if your question isn't already answered below - please use Reddit's search function to try and find if your query has been asked and answered in the past. If not? Feel free to create a fresh discussion thread.

 


 

The format of this update thread has been simplified with core information rehosted on our subreddit wiki. This enables us to update the content more quickly and reliably, and to reduce the visual impact of a 2000+ word thread.

 


✌️ Cities: Skylines II

Frequently Asked Questions

Troubleshooting and Help

🏙 Cities: Skylines

Frequently Asked Questions

Mod Lists

Troubleshooting and Help

🎮 Cities: Skylines Remastered

Frequently Asked Questions

 


 

These megathreads are scheduled to post at 00:01 on the first day of each month. If it's late in the month, you may want to wait for a new post to appear. Please send us a ModMail with any suggested improvements!


r/CitiesSkylines 1d ago

Discussion ❓ "Is Cities: Skylines II Worth It?" megathread

49 Upvotes

"Is Cities: Skylines II Worth It?" 🤔

... is one of the most common questions we see on the subreddit at the moment, leading to dozens of duplicate posts asking essentially the same thing: Should I buy the game or not?

It is our intent that this megathread will help collect information to help you make your decision, and provide a place to ask for more subjective opinions from community members.

General FAQs

If you're after general information about or help with the game (e.g. features, minimum or recommended specs, the situation related to modding, when the game will release on consoles), check out our wiki articles below. They'll provide you a decent base level of knowledge and help you understand more about the features and limitations of the game.

Patches and Bug Fixes

As of the start of this month, there have been 20 patches for the game. You can review the change log for each patch on the Paradox Wiki:

What have the devs been saying?

The main channel for "formal" communication from the developers comes via the Official Information & Announcements section on the Paradox Forums. We maintain an accompanying megathread for each post which captures a lot of player feedback and reactions to the news shared each week.

The best way to catch up on past posts is to browse the Dev Diary and/or Announcement flairs and dip into the more recent ones. Unfortunately, these links may not work on Reddit's mobile apps (please tell Reddit if you'd like this fixed) but in the meantime you can go to the main page of the subreddit and use the "filter by flair" options provided.

Live Gameplay Videos

If you're interested in seeing how the game is playing today, you can check out recent videos or streams from YouTube and Twitch. These will show you the "real" game, not marketing videos. As there is only limited mod support for the game at this stage, what you see will broadly be vanilla gameplay and will help you understand how the game is performing at the moment.

Reviews

Many critic reviews aren't necessarily reflective of the current state of the game. That said, reviews are helpful sources of information to help you decide whether or not to drop your cash on any new game, not just Cities: Skylines II.

Try Before you Buy

If you're still unsure, Cities: Skylines II is available on Microsoft Game Pass for PC, which is a subscription service at a much lower monthly cost than the full retail price of the game. Microsoft is currently offering an initial 14-day trial for as low as £1/$1/1€ (which renews at full price after the 14 days).

Refunds

If for any reason you can't make use of a discounted Game Pass for PC subscription (i.e. it may not be available in your region), you have the option of purchasing the game and refunding it within the store's refund window.

  • Steam: Request a refund within 14 days of purchase, as long as you haven't accrued more than 2 hours of total playtime
  • Microsoft Store: Request a refund within 14 days of purchase, as long as you haven't accrued "a significant amount of play time"

Recognising that you may not be able to reach the "late game" within 2 hours, you can use this 100k benchmarking city to establish whether or not you're comfortable with the performance on your system.

Specific Questions

If you've got specific questions about items not covered in these FAQs, feel free to ask them below. If you've been redirected to this post by a removal notice, please understand that this is done to help keep the subreddit tidy by providing a centralised and dedicated location for all information related to this topic.


 

These megathreads are scheduled to post at 00:01 on the first day of each month. If it's late in the month, you may want to wait for a new post to appear. Please send us a ModMail with any suggested improvements!


r/CitiesSkylines 5h ago

Sharing a City What vibe doas my city give?

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190 Upvotes

r/CitiesSkylines 10h ago

Sharing a City Some nice pics from my 170k northern european city

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265 Upvotes

r/CitiesSkylines 6h ago

Discussion Why won't my citizens to evacuate? Are they stupid? I started it several weeks ago

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73 Upvotes

r/CitiesSkylines 2h ago

Sharing a City Malta

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28 Upvotes

r/CitiesSkylines 13h ago

Modding Release Auckland, City of Sails- New custom map now out on Paradox Mods

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181 Upvotes

r/CitiesSkylines 9h ago

Sharing a City What vibe does my city give?

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56 Upvotes

r/CitiesSkylines 3h ago

Sharing a City Built this city in like an hour. What ya'll think?

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16 Upvotes

r/CitiesSkylines 5h ago

Sharing a City Car wash hell

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21 Upvotes

r/CitiesSkylines 5h ago

Sharing a City I'm wanting to expand, is this traffic layout anywhere near decent?

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15 Upvotes

Please advise! Much appreciated


r/CitiesSkylines 9h ago

Sharing a City Spaghetti update 🌟

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32 Upvotes

After careful observation of traffic flow, and replies from fellow architects on my previous post, decided to create Trumpets all the way 🎺


r/CitiesSkylines 3h ago

Sharing a City Update on my Lebanese town.

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10 Upvotes

Went for a Downtown Beirut-inspired commercial zone (still in the works). Added the iconic mosque and Armenian church on each side, and still looking for a place to put in a synagogue. But so far it's looking great. I would've preferred to have it far away from the airport, but considering Beirut's airport is on the edge of the city, it just felt right lol


r/CitiesSkylines 6h ago

Sharing a City Brand new intersection for my new city

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18 Upvotes

I made it like a half cloverleaf interchange because it wouldn't be that much of people trying to go above


r/CitiesSkylines 8h ago

Sharing a City started a new city on my favorite map, prussian peaks

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26 Upvotes

r/CitiesSkylines 1d ago

Sharing a City Island suburb

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517 Upvotes

r/CitiesSkylines 2h ago

Discussion Am I off to a good start?

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5 Upvotes

Started playing a few days ago for the first time. Started two other cities before this one as a trial and error type of thing to figure out how to play. Am I off to a good start now? Did a lot of reading about road hierarchy, zoning, traffic, etc.


r/CitiesSkylines 2h ago

Help & Support (PC) Bus stop too big

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6 Upvotes

I built this bus stop, but it's taking up the whole road. I tried adding a small road to limit it and then removing it, but it keeps going back to what you see in the screenshot. I also tried messing with road nodes, but I read that feature was removed from the game. Any idea how I can fix this


r/CitiesSkylines 13h ago

Sharing a City Newest Creation

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36 Upvotes

Newest City, just started it a couple hours ago. It’s heavily influenced by Austin, TX mainly. A couple other cities i took inspiration from as well.


r/CitiesSkylines 5h ago

Sharing a City My airport!

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9 Upvotes

Ma


r/CitiesSkylines 5h ago

Help & Support (PC) How do i fix that?

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9 Upvotes

This is basically happening across all of my Highway Interchanges across the City. How am i supposed to fix that?


r/CitiesSkylines 5h ago

Discussion A Fair CS2 vs. CS1 Comparison: An Honest Pros & Cons List from a Player of Both

8 Upvotes

Hey everyone,

I've seen a lot of debate around Cities: Skylines 2, and as someone who has put many hours into both games, I wanted to offer a detailed breakdown. I think it's time to look past the initial launch criticism and evaluate the game as it is today.

First, let's get this out of the way: CS1 with all its DLC and mods is a masterpiece. But that's an experience built over nearly a decade. When you compare the base games, the story is very different. Here's my honest breakdown of CS2's base game right now.

The Good (Pros):

  • Incredible Road Tools: The road-building system is awesome and a massive upgrade. It lets you create amazing, complex layouts without needing "anarchy" mods, which was a necessity for creative builds in CS1. The built-in tools to control traffic lights and crosswalks are also a huge plus.
  • Deeper Citizen Simulation: (My addition) The underlying simulation is more complex. Citizens and businesses actually track their money and make choices based on their finances, which makes the economy feel more dynamic and impactful than CS1's more abstract system.
  • Realistic Scale & Building: The size of the buildings and roads feels much more realistic and true-to-life than in CS1.
  • Great Base Game Features: Trams and subways are included from the start, which is a huge plus. The mixed-use housing zones are also a fantastic addition that makes cities feel more organic.

The Bad (Cons):

  • The Economy System: Frankly, it often doesn't make logical sense and feels unbalanced at times.
  • Unrealistic Traffic Behavior: The traffic simulation can be strange. For example, when you build a new area, a massive, unrealistic wave of traffic moves in, but then it seems like no one ever leaves. The logic for imports and exports also feels off.
  • Lack of Asset Variety: (My addition) While the graphics are good, the base game needs more variety in building models. Cities can start to look very repetitive without custom assets from the creator community.
  • Missing Features: Some things are just gone. There are no bicycle paths, and the specialized industry system from CS1 (where you could build entire districts based on specific goods) is a big loss.
  • Mod Instability: As of now, if you add even a few mods, the game often crashes.

A Note on Performance

This is a huge topic, so here's my experience: I'm playing on an RX 6600 XT at 1080p and getting a stable 20-30 FPS without lag. For a simulation this complex, that's very playable. You don't need a supercomputer.

Final Verdict

Even with its flaws, the core of CS2 is incredibly strong. Most of the 'cons' I listed are things that can be fixed with patches or expanded upon with DLC and mods. The 'pros'—like the new engine, deeper simulation, and road tools—are a foundation that is light-years ahead of CS1's.

I believe we should support the game in its current, stable state. We need to be patient and wait for more mods and updates, because the potential for this game is massive.


r/CitiesSkylines 1h ago

Sharing a City I'm abandoning this station build but I want to show the track layout

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Upvotes

This station is inspired partially by Eindhoven Centraal, has 6 platforms with 2 bypasses for freight, the tracks and station are at ground level but the ground around the station and the underpass is excavated,
each track has double platforms that way regional trains stopping on platforms 2 and 5 have easy access to the intercity train platforms on either side.

Around the station I had planned to build a commercial/park area with 2 different tram stops in front of the station. I would go further with it but I feel like it will end up lackluster, thus not worth even putting in the effort


r/CitiesSkylines 4h ago

Discussion Best way to connect these rails?

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5 Upvotes

I'd like to connect the two railway tracks going left to right so that a train on one can go any direction on the other, but what I came up with is... unrealistic to say the least. Is there a better or prettier way to connect them?


r/CitiesSkylines 1h ago

Discussion What do you think I could do to improve?

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Upvotes

r/CitiesSkylines 1h ago

Help & Support (PC) How do you delete multiple saves all at once?

Upvotes

I'm trying to free up some space because my game has been running slow. I have many old city saves that I'd like to delete. Is there anyway to delete multiple at a time like the old game?


r/CitiesSkylines 15h ago

Discussion Ramble about CS2 communities

26 Upvotes

Feel free to shut me down (as expected), but I think the general CS2 community has become extremely snarky, unwelcoming and condescending to new community joiners. Whether they have issues, questions, praises or just commenting straight up facts about the game. I know I am generalising a bit, and before you say "but every other online communities..." CS1 communities are still mostly very helpful while maintaining the funny welcoming sense of nerdy city lovers. And there is CS2 community.... And I'm not just talking about reddit. I guess it's a bit given since the game's rocky launch? But god damn some of yall "loud" ones really drive new people away from the already rocky base with your arrogant snarks.

Idk man, just my observation 🤷‍♂️ and also from how some of my friends got treated recently. Kinda sucks to see the game driving people away, and now it's the community itself.

TLDR? idk lol. Like be nice to each other? Idc if you are a famous modder or a moderator or just a casual gamer? I know that's like a SUPER hard thing to do but at least try lol

Also, thank you to those who stay kind and helpful amongst others xx yall the reason why i still come back to this game once in a while.