Sim City 4 is the best version of the Sim City games, and is 75% off on GOG right now, $5 / £4.
Cities Skylines 1 is the best modern city builder, 3D and a lot of fun plus well designed. But only really worth it when it’s on sale; lots of DLC and overpriced as a package when not on sale. Avoid Cities Skylines 2 - it’s just not fun and hasn’t been fixed - maybe they will one day fix but I doubt it 2.5 years in…
The original developer has literally been pulled off of Cities Skylines 2. Maybe the little developer that Paradox put on it to crank out DLCs will do a good job and fix it, but I doubt it.
And don’t forget the Network Addon Mod for Sim City 4. Improves traffic simulation and adds a whole bunch of new sorts of transportation stuff. It’s really the expansion pack Sim City 4 never had.
IMO the painful thing about it is that it was clearly just too ambitious of a simulation and they made it unmanageable, so then they backpedaled and made it too easy by having a lot of the systems automatically balance themselves (electricity from neighboring cities, for instance)
Yeah, Cities Skylines had traffic that was reactive to design. I’ve played some CS2, and while some things are improved (like lane connection), it feels like the traffic is just simulated sprites based on a traffic congestion variable for the area or something. Upgrading roads sometimes helps, but providing better routes doesn’t always help like you would expect. It feels very disconnected and rewards linear progression rather than skillful or smart gameplay. I still play CS1 and I check in on CS2 once or twice a year to see if it still sucks. I did enjoy the bike patch to some degree, but the gameplay in general just seems artificial and lame. CS1 may be old with mediocre graphics, but it’s still a 9/10 game in my opinion and you can buy in cheap nowadays to get caught up on DLCs and such. I have nearly everything except the radio packs. The menus are inconsistent and the way they organize things doesn’t always make intuitive sense. I think they would be better off recreating CS1 on a more modern engine than trying to reinvent a masterpiece. For me CS2 was the biggest disappointment of the gaming decade. With that said, lots of games sucked on release. Fallout 76 grew into it’s shoes, Stalker 2 was panned at release and is now much more highly regarded. I hope CS2 finds its way back into sync with the community, but I’ll be enjoying CS1 and other games until that happens. Thankfully MS hasn’t completely destroyed Minecraft. I practice city design on a much smaller scale on there (more “place making”, less traffic management, more roleplay, less mechanics).
This is the part in Sim City where I restart.
Aw, now I miss Sim City 2000
Sim City 4 is the best version of the Sim City games, and is 75% off on GOG right now, $5 / £4.
Cities Skylines 1 is the best modern city builder, 3D and a lot of fun plus well designed. But only really worth it when it’s on sale; lots of DLC and overpriced as a package when not on sale. Avoid Cities Skylines 2 - it’s just not fun and hasn’t been fixed - maybe they will one day fix but I doubt it 2.5 years in…
The original developer has literally been pulled off of Cities Skylines 2. Maybe the little developer that Paradox put on it to crank out DLCs will do a good job and fix it, but I doubt it.
Imagine what Cities Skylines could have been without Paradox’s super monetization plan
Lol I was just thinking “this sounds like Stellaris” then you say it’s Paradox
Pssst…just pirate it with all DLC.
And don’t forget the Network Addon Mod for Sim City 4. Improves traffic simulation and adds a whole bunch of new sorts of transportation stuff. It’s really the expansion pack Sim City 4 never had.
Cities and Skylines isn’t too far off from that sim city 2000 vibe, if you need a fix
The GoG version of SimCity 2000 runs fine in wine. The originals, not so much.
https://appdb.winehq.org/objectManager.php?sClass=application&iId=504
I’ll check that out! Thanks for the rec!
Just avoid cities skylines 2. It’s just a cash grab
IMO the painful thing about it is that it was clearly just too ambitious of a simulation and they made it unmanageable, so then they backpedaled and made it too easy by having a lot of the systems automatically balance themselves (electricity from neighboring cities, for instance)
Yeah, Cities Skylines had traffic that was reactive to design. I’ve played some CS2, and while some things are improved (like lane connection), it feels like the traffic is just simulated sprites based on a traffic congestion variable for the area or something. Upgrading roads sometimes helps, but providing better routes doesn’t always help like you would expect. It feels very disconnected and rewards linear progression rather than skillful or smart gameplay. I still play CS1 and I check in on CS2 once or twice a year to see if it still sucks. I did enjoy the bike patch to some degree, but the gameplay in general just seems artificial and lame. CS1 may be old with mediocre graphics, but it’s still a 9/10 game in my opinion and you can buy in cheap nowadays to get caught up on DLCs and such. I have nearly everything except the radio packs. The menus are inconsistent and the way they organize things doesn’t always make intuitive sense. I think they would be better off recreating CS1 on a more modern engine than trying to reinvent a masterpiece. For me CS2 was the biggest disappointment of the gaming decade. With that said, lots of games sucked on release. Fallout 76 grew into it’s shoes, Stalker 2 was panned at release and is now much more highly regarded. I hope CS2 finds its way back into sync with the community, but I’ll be enjoying CS1 and other games until that happens. Thankfully MS hasn’t completely destroyed Minecraft. I practice city design on a much smaller scale on there (more “place making”, less traffic management, more roleplay, less mechanics).