After a lukewarm sequel launch in 2023, the city-builder series Cities Skylines has made its redemption intentions clear with a huge new update to Cities Skylines 2 released to celebrate its 10 year anniversary.
The original Cities Skylines launched in 2015, replacing EA’s Sims City title as the standout city builder in many fans eyes, with its large maps, complex road planning system and peaceful graphics.
The sequel, Cities Skylines 2, launched in 2023 to ‘mixed’ steam reviews and falling short of the expectations of many fans. This has not deterred developers Paradox Interactive however as they have committed to releasing new content and updates to fix various issues, the most recent has come to celebrate 10 years of the iconic city-building series and has brought a host of exciting improvements and new content to the game.
Cities Skylines 2: New Features
The game will welcome 10 new parks to celebrate its tenth anniversary, including the chirplet and chirper parks, referencing the original game’s iconic mascot and social media source Chirper.
The game will also now be playable on two new modes, easy and normal. Easy mode will see you start with more money, recieves subsidies to make building easier, and earn six times the usual amount of cash when expanding the city. Refunding buildings will also give you more money back, pollution levels will be lower and easier to contain, and new map tiles will be free to maintain.
Bug Fixes and Improvements
Paradox claim to have fixed many of the bugs plaguing Cities Skylines 2, including increasing capacity of garbage collection services to prevent the constant trash buildup experienced by most late-game players, while traffic flows and citizen path finding have also been improved.
The headline bug fix however relates to the homelessness mechanic, with the problem seemingly having no remedy in previous versions of the game no matter how many strategies you try.
A key issue with this was that as soon as young citizens became adults, they would immediately move out of their parent’s house, even if there were no affordable homes available. This issue has now been partially resolved as new adults will now only move out if they have a job and will remain at their parents until they have enough money to leave.
There are also a host of smaller bug fixes relating to the user interface, traffic and transport simulation, citizen AI and behaviours, crime and a number of other changes made to prevent random in-game crashes.
