Such a thoughtful video with so many fantastic ideas! Thank you for putting this together! Like many others, I really, really, really want to do an island build and it's so close, as you demonstrate!
Well done dude this is such a great insight into a pretty big problem in CS2. There are so many fantastic ideas you’ve brought up I think would improve the game immensely. The videos awesome as well I love the music choices!
I would love to see smaller ferries, personally it doesnt make any sense for a huge cruise ship to pick up 10-20 even 500 passengers. I would love to see smaller ferries like we had in cities skylines 1 that have a capacity of anywhere between 100 to 500 passengers. Could also be useful as a method of public transportation. Because I think a small ferry transporting citizens across the river makes sense but not a huge cruise ship But this is a great video overall! Car ferries are a feature I always wanted in Cities skylines and I hope one day we will get them
In the same vein as smaller service buildings, I think for remote start builds having the balancing and game play overall allow for visible, stable, early game / small town stages of various aspects of the economy/simulation/etc. would be key. Having smaller scale development feel as in-depth, satisfying and viable as late milestone, large cities. Essentially allowing/encouraging a player to slow down, so that a small hamlet with a factory or two, some shops, and and a cluster of homes isn't a flash-in-the-pan that feels like it needs to grow quickly and constantly for the player to engage in other parts of the game or for it to even survive. Thinking specifically of this suggestion I had for 'Road Tripper' tourists that spawn no matter what is present on the map, acting like dummy traffic traveling from outside connection A to outside connection B unless basic services (parking, commercial selling convenience food and petrochemicals, basic parks) are present along their route. The point being that it's a low level, low threshold beginner stage of the tourism mechanic that doesn't require late-game milestones and development tree unlocks to engage in.
If they are to add these features, a large portion of them will probably be in the form of DLC’s. Things that expand gameplay but are not core to what all players want is the sort of content added in many DLC’s in the first game, such as in the Campus and Industries DLC’s. I am not saying this is necessarily how it should or shouldn’t be done, as many factors, especially economic factors and direction from Paradox will greatly influence the feasibility of adding such content to the base game.
I usually don't click on suggested videos of small creators with little views (not because I don't like them, but because there are too many suggestions by RU-vid). This time though, I found gold. Good video!
Great video Poplar! Some very interesting points to consider. Think smaller custom assets with less up keep etc a fairly simple thing to do 👍 I don’t mind the tunnels onto an island if needed, but in an ideal world would be better without for sure
I love the idea of having vehicle ferries! Would be such a game changer, even for regular maps. Would be useful as a means for travel between islands on same map as well. I like the idea of a port expansion for garbage removal, just make it a more 'expensive' means to remove garbage from the city. Great video 👍
Excellent presentation of the game deficiencies and a positive set of well thought out solutions. All great recommendations for an even more enjoyable game experience. Well done!
I'll just throw in my agreement on all the points, very well made, in this PP. And I'll take a look at a garbage harbour as well, although I will probably call upon Jay in the process. Oh, and maybe a _Medium_ _Trash_ _"Station"_ to go with the others...
I still think more small town assets would be awesome to make the early game more realistic, for me creating small towns is the most fun part of the game. Thanks for a great vid and providing good constructive feedback to CO!
As a "bundle" of new features, it sounds fine to be released as a DLC to me. Not everything that's not possible in the (vanilla) base game has to be patched for free. Remote Start can be just such a DLC, as it's for a much more specific purpose. It brings in money for the publisher and the developers, so they can tackle some important things "for free". Some of the suggestions in the video are (separately) good candidates for that, like smaller (and thus cheaper to maintain) services buildings; especially harbor, garbage, deathcare and airport. Also, indeed a better way to trade services.
I agree that some extra assets to make remote starts better could be part of a DLC. But I still believe an island build should at least be viable in vanilla. Right now it's not really possible without tunnels.
Great video PP! Although I don't have much faith left for this game or in CO/Pdx to improve it, I must say if even one of your solutions get included, it will bring so much to the game
I think a full remote city dlc is reasonable. Especially since it should include several new maps designed specifically for remote cities, mountains, islands, deserts, etc. Remote cities are a different approach to gameplay, which is fair game for a dlc imo, though for it to be a full dlc it would need to be properly fleshed out, of course, with some interactive mechanics.
I think with just a couple of minor changes to the code and couple of assets, it could be doable. I'd prefer it wasn't DLC. If they make it even better with more DLC assets, I'd be okay with that. But I still believe island builds should at least be feasible in vanilla.
Nice and complete video! Although at the moment I haven't yet tried to create an island build in CS2, I really like your ideas and solutions! Especially car ferries, that could also come in the form of an extra upgrade for the harbour we already have in the game. In that regard even train ferries can be implemented, maybe not in the base game, but I'm sure someone will work a mod for them 😂
Vehicle ferries sounds reasonable. Should come in different sizes for crossing rivers, lakes and seas. And if you really want a non-car island, getting bicycles into the game would help people to get around.
Yes, I'd like to eventually see car ferries of different size (like the examples I showed in the video). But I'll be happy if we just get one to start. Content creators can take it from there.
Great video and I wholeheartedly agree. I also made a remote island map "Addu City" and published it a few months ago. With Historical Start enabled the map worked quite well, even though it was a slow start. Back then I could get about 20-30... sometimes even up to 60... people to move in on each cruise ship, and vehicles did occasionally spawn when there was a car dealership in town. It was slow, but with patience it was viable. I relied heavily on taxi services and a bus system, so the town survived and grew slowly. Now... yeah, now however, I have the same issues. The immigration numbers per ship are way down, the upkeep costs for the harbours are crippling, and no vehicles spawn anymore. So ironically, before the 'bug' fixes, such starts were viable, albeit with the Historical Start mod. Now, they seem quite unrealistic. I hope that the devs are listening and take your suggestions to heart and make these starts viable again.
Thanks for the input! I'll have to check out your map. It's amazing that you got that many cims moving in and had a somewhat viable city. It's also very interesting that you had vehicles spawn.
@@PoplarPonderosa I guess a few tricks I used to keep in mind: I maximized the number of outside ship connections, but only allowed one ship on each line, so the number of passengers per ship would be maxed. Also, the higher number of passengers were a bit later on, once a few businesses/industry had set up shop, so some passengers were workers from outside connections rather than immigrants. But the immigrant numbers were still higher than in your example. But this was all around the time I published the map - things have changed since the latest patches and now things are as you outline in your video.
@@PoplarPonderosa I'd just say have a hard cap on the capacity, at least in the early game. Sheriff's offices usually have like 1/10th the capacity of regular city police offices
I've been wanting to make an island build for ages now, but it's just really difficult to do in a way that doesn't feel like cheating, in both cities one and two. Another really cool thing would be car trains. It is rather rare for a place to be accessible by train but not by car, but it does exist in some places, like the channel tunnel or the german Island of Sylt. It would also be really cool to see better support for single lane bi-directional roads and railways. This would be much more realistic in very rural and/or mountainous regions where two lanes would be overkill.
Great commonsense ideas. I WISH they would implement everything you've presented. I don't want random vehicles spawning but I like the idea of sims having to purchase vehicles from dealership, rentals, car ferries, etc.
@@PoplarPonderosa IMO Paradox should have gotten the community involved at the point of inception. When they knew, they were going to make a CS2 they should have gotten players involved instead of running roughshot. There was no need to keep it a secret all that time in development. That way when game released it would have been the game that players wanted not what they thought players wanted. I would have been okay with it being smaller in scale with more precise editing of buildings, design and function. Also, I love resource and economy management, so I was hoping for more elements like in V3 as far as economy. They could have used construction of building and homes as a pint in which real resources had to be used and managed, that could have also been tied into traffic like vehicles having to deliver materials to construction sites and workers having to actually travel to construction sites. I would have suggested a better real-estate system in which sims would actually purchase homes and there could be actual companies competing for homebuyers. So much lost potential. Glad people like you are out there putting these videos out to advocate for us regular folk.
@@spj4188 I still think of myself as regular folks 😅. I've never had any early access or contact with CO. I know they had some content creators and modders involved quite early. If they involved too many people, it would have been difficult to make everyone happy and implement all the ideas. The launch wasn't perfect but at least they got something out and can now iterate on it. We just need to be patient and supportive.
@@PoplarPonderosa I'm with you. TBH I have only played a few hours since December because of the obvious. This is probably the most complaining I've done. Try to always give positive and supportive feedback. Thank again for your post and replies. I continue to follow and like your vids.
Just found your channel and yes I did sub, because I think you're very talented and I've received a lot of inspiration from watching your videos. So please keep up the amazing work and I promise to keep coming back for more and plus I promise to share your videos with as many people as I possibly can because I think you definitely deserve all the exposure you can get. 🤟😉👍
Fantastic map, I used the broken one and got a ton of passengers, but only with a 2nd habour placed in the same bay. The first habour barely gets any passengers. I like that everyone uses public transport and there are no traffic jams caused by outside taxis.
That's an interesting observation. I didn't test out building a new harbour. I always assumed the harbour should come with the map because it's so expensive to build (and is locked).
@@PoplarPonderosa I tried to replicate the new habour theory by immediately replacing the habour, but to no avail. It seems that one of my four new outside connections is responsible for the better passenger numbers (top right corner, viewed from the start of the map rotation). It consistently delivers around 250 in the early stages, good for 1500+ in later stages.
Small and large car ferries, with a rail upgrade on the large one, would be great. The container port for a large city being the size of a small town is about right, but a smaller one would be good for when you don't have a large city. Throw in inshore and deep sea (requires a shipping lane) fishing harbours, a pleasure craft marina, and a boat ramp. Oh, and a dry dock as a special industrial building. Maybe some beach stuff at the same time.
@@PoplarPonderosa I used to live on a hill above a port. All this was just the everyday view. Bulk cargo terminals might be nice too. They tend to be specialised though, especially oil and coal.
Excellent well put together video. Exactly the issues ive been having trying to create my island map. CO should listen to this. P.s could they also fix the climate bug in the editor!
Island maps ♥️ And yes, climate settings is something I've brought up with other creators that give feedback to CO. I'm sure they're aware it's something we want. I imagine they'll fix it when the Editor comes out of beta.
Fairly certain those vehicles appearing was due to there being commercial businesses selling vehicles on that island. Edit: 6:30 maybe I'm mistaken? I always assumed this was how households created via cims growing up and moving out acquired vehicles at the least.
Another option for car import: The cargo harbor could have an 'upgrade' to allow for import of private cars. You can find areal imagery of massive parking lots full of new cars near harbors. Just something to think about for those who want to be car free. In addition: vehicle ferries are a legitimate for of daily commuting for people. Seattle has people car ferry from the west into the city, and Amsterdam has people ferry across the river to the north with their bikes, mopeds, and feet.
Yeah, an upgrade area for car import would be cool. I absolutely agree that some cims could be car free. Also, yes we have commuters in BC that use car ferries to get around. It would be nice to see them work within the map and not just to an outside connection.
I know this! 99% of the cars in regular cities are cars of households that moved in via highways. But every cim can also buy a car, but it’s extremely rare due to simulation speed. For a cim to buy a car: - City needs to be able to import goods. Otherwise you can’t spawn a gas station. I tested this a lot. No gas station = no one buys cars. - You need to have a car company in commercial zone. You need to re-roll until you get it, pure luck. - Cims needs to have a reason to buy car, so there should be a weak public transport and remote places to go As I said, even if you satisfy all these conditions, cims car purchase rate is so small it’s negligible.
I would love to see remote builds be made possible and feasible. There are some good suggestions here, although I don't think special-casing remote starts is the way to go. Also, while I would love this as a free update, I don't think having this as DLC (of some size) instead sounds unreasonable - depending on what exactly is included in the DLC of course.
I think it would be possible to provide some car transportation within the vanilla game currently with a taxi depot on the island. It would generate some extra cost ofc but taxis can turn a profit also
Yes you can use taxis, buses, etc but I've only heard a couple instances of people getting private cars to spawn on an island (and they don't know how or why they got there).
@PoplarPonderosa We have all kinds of other disasters. Why not add tsunamis? Stranded citizens and boats could require rescue from a coast guard helicopter?
I find it rather odd how the game has passenger ships that look like cruise ships, yet would often carry so few people. One would think that the ships used would be like the kind often seen carrying passengers and not cruise ships.
I take you live in Vancouver, per your photos and references. (Can't judge, Vancouver is the perfect CS2 city, not huge and extremely diversified infra)
Great video, and totally agree! In lots of stuff! It´s not ok to use so big assets from the start, even in a small city, the Cargo Harbor looks like a metropolitan harbor. Train harbour too. small boats piers and transports. everything you said. PD: Is Tigon going to upload his train assets to the Paradox Mods? I´m hoping to use them.
I don't believe they will be going on PDX mods; however, a link to them was posted in CPPs discord: discord.com/channels/774118086222675999/1274139369682370652/1276559434813800550
Does placing the Car Dealership/Auto Center create vehicles or only provide tax income and the %+ for various things? I'll try on this map right now and see.
In my testing, I did not see vehicle spawn from the dealerships. Maybe I wasn't patient enough but it should at least be more frequent. I did hear from at least one other person that they had vehicles eventually spawn. It's always good to have more people testing it. I'm interested to know what your results are if you give it a try.
These would be really great for the base game to enable remote and rural builds. I'm currently trying to make a map based in Alaska (same location as "Wildest Alaska" from CS1 workshop) where it would be very difficult to get road connections due to location and terrain, so things like mentioned in this video would be perfect for that.
An here I was sorta sad about CS 2 still being in my "extended" pile of shame. Making my mega island meccas became a thing in SC4, then CS 1. Can't do it in the new game yet? They really do need to iron out the kinks
Paradox already broke our hearts by lying to us before CS2 came out. They didnt have to do what they did in CS2. All they had to do was use the same code they had for CS1. Put in the mods that should've been in from the beginning, change the looks for the buildings and roads somewhat and go from there. 10yrs they had to listen to the community, the modders that made CS1 the game is today and they spit in our face, gave us the finger and said $ is more important than honesty, legacy, GREAT GAME. Shameful. 😢
I'd like to add some more to this comment of mine that I should've included. There are still MASSIVE bugs in this game. 1yr after this game was released. So happy I got my $ back.
@@PoplarPonderosa I've never played it, and prob never will to be honest. Perhaps if they hire bk the right ppl from the first game along with a few others in mind to work on the 3rd installment, but we shall see on there end.
