SighFye surprised me with Cities:
Skylines, a game I'd been eying off since its release. I love
simulation games such as Roller Coaster Tycoon (Did you know there's
a new one on the way? Check it out
here), Sim Tower and the Sims.
Cities: Skylines is a fun, addictive
and complicated city building simulation game. You must not only
build your city to your citizens heart's content but you must also
plan ahead. Every decision you make affects your city and it's
dwellers. These decisions range from your road layout and where you
put houses, shops, offices and industry etc. etc. Also where you
place water intake and sewage outtake, landfill, and power sources.
To what policies you, as Mayor, will decide to put in. Will you place
a smoking ban to better the health of your citizens while slightly
decreasing their happiness or will you create a no smoking zone? Will
you make green decisions such as wind power or will you pollute with
coal?
All of your decisions affect multiple
factors and have ripple effects. For example if you don't provide
adequate power to your city, people become unhappy and as people
become unhappy you begin losing income.
As I unlocked levels, some of the
decisions I'd made had to be changed. Since I'm a perfectionist I
kept restarting with the knowledge of the future unlocks and problems
I'd accidentally created and would plan ahead accordingly.
Sometimes you will come across problems
which counteract each other or you have no idea why they're
happening. For example, yesterday I created a forestry industry and
there were not enough workers. This was apparently because I had
adequate education so the educated citizens didn't want to work
there. I researched the problem and people had tried creating areas
of people who were well away from schools, however, those people
would make the trip to receive an education. I found two things which
helped, the first was to put more people to create a higher
population with less jobs available and the second was to wait it out
because the industry levels up and eventually requires educated
workers. At the same time, I had a problem in my low density
commercial zones, they were complaining that there were not enough
educated workers. What!? How was this so if the apparent first
problem was over-educated people?
When you're building away, you put
residential zones, commercial zones, industrial zones etc. Build
build build, up up up, your city goes.. hurrah! Then you realise by
the time you've unlocked and put in adequate education, the people
you first put in are too old for school and missed the boat and some
of them aren't having children either, they're seniors! So the timing
of your zones counts.
As I unlocked and put in offices, high
density commercial zones and high density residential zones, I
noticed the low density commercial shops were going down. As I'd
click them to find the problem, they were complaining that they
didn't have enough educated workers. I added in Universities and made
sure there was adequate education as in elementary schools and high
schools but this didn't help. I ended up demolishing them and
changing the zone area to high density commercial which seemed to fix
the problem, goodbye local deli, hello large corporate takeovers.
I now have a problem with my roads
jamming, another learning curve about planning ahead. The game
becomes more and more complicated and in-depth and I just can't get
enough. Everything is well thought through and as you zoom in you can
see people going about their daily business, kid's playing in the
park and the fire brigade putting out house fires. The wind turbines
turn and face the wind, the power cables sway in the wind and the
trees die if too close to pollution. There's enough different types
of houses to satisfy without it looking like houses are just cloned
down the street and the small details are great such as backyard
swings and garden chairs.
The game is confusing at first, but you easily catch on and as you watch your decision's ripple effects, you soon learn your best plan of attack plus it's a lot of fun being Mayor to your own city.
Cities: Skylines is a fun, addictive
and complicated city building simulation game. You must not only
build your city to your citizens heart's content but you must also
plan ahead. Every decision you make affects your city and it's
dwellers. These decisions range from your road layout and where you
put houses, shops, offices and industry etc. etc. Also where you
place water intake and sewage outtake, landfill, and power sources.
To what policies you, as Mayor, will decide to put in. Will you place
a smoking ban to better the health of your citizens while slightly
decreasing their happiness or will you create a no smoking zone? Will
you make green decisions such as wind power or will you pollute with
coal? 
