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[PTTG??]

Apparently it's pretty cool. Hopefully they'll have traffic schedules change depending on the time of day.

Also I suspect that this will make all existing mod structures obsolete since they'll need emmissives now.

All that said, it's an impressive and ambitious next step.

[Vendayn]

So, I never made a city that big. But, my friend got to a city of 300k and he said the game is really bugging out on him. The traffic doesn't match a 300k city at all, people aren't going to work properly, he is losing a lot of business because people aren't going to their jobs. And he is experiencing a lot of "weirdness". He didn't really explain, but something he said is buildings aren't being built anymore...dunno what he means. (edit: He never showed me screenshots, I told him to take one and he hasn't yet. So could be partly on his design. But he said he has no traffic issues barely at all, and he (supposedly) designed the city with population in mind. He used the typical grid layout of the big cities he has seen people make)

I did research for him, and supposedly 65k npcs are max limit of a city or something. And after a certain amount of buildings are built, you can't build anymore? And only 65k citizens can be active at once?

I told him that and he said if true, he is gonna return the game to steam. He has until tomorrow to get it returned and go back to playing Sim City 4 where he can make "real" cities (his words). So was the information I gave him wrong? Or is this game really not able to make grand cities like in sim city games without bugging out with hardcoded limits?

Cause if that is true, that pretty much kills the game for me too. But its way too late for me to take it back. I just won't be buying DLCs for it lol. That is why I liked sim city, making huge amazing cities...even though each citizen wasn't actually "really" part of the game world, it felt like real cities. I thought 1 million was the cap, which is fine enough, but if only 65k are able to be used...that is not a city at all. In california, that would be considered a large town lol. San Diego feels small, and its still vastly more populated and active than 65k...

(edit: Well I do really enjoy Cities Skylines. Played 300+ game hours, so obviously I got my money out of it. But, knowing there is such a small hardlimit on actors kinda ruins the entire game for me. I wish I didn't even read that as I really enjoy the game till that. But 65k is nowhere close to the 1million pop limit lol)

[Rose]

No, the pop limit is a million. There's 65k limits on other things, though.

[Vendayn]

No, the pop limit is a million. There's 65k limits on other things, though.

are you sure? My friend said the game started getting really weird after he passed 200k and he is at 300k now. Like things aren't being done properly, and traffic never increased at all. I read on reddit  through many posts, and pop IS a million...but there can ONLY be 65k actors on the roads and doing jobs/delivering stuff. Which if that is true, that explains why my friend is losing a lot of business and running into weird things.

(edit: If that is true, a million population city would look like there is only 65k people in it. But I've seen pictures of the large cities, but can't really tell. Is that wrong information on reddit then?

[Shooer]

The game does not simulate your exact population (would be worse than the last sim city if it did).  The actors you see are the ones the games chosen to use to represent a much larger number.

The issues your friend is having is him having issues with the game.  Not every city that ran well at 150k will have the road network to support 300k.  The game takes planning, and the game is kind of easy enough to get to a point were you can tear everything down and build it back up and still have a few billion in the bank.

Edit: Also tell your friend "Yeah a real city, where no one actually gets on the road and just teleports to work.  Were the roads just tell you they are stressed."

[Vendayn]

Well, from this thread (and there are a few others)

https://www.reddit.com/r/CitiesSkylines/comments/2znnr2/the_journey_to_over_1_million_lets_discuss/

A one million pop city will only ever have 65k people out in the city at one time. That is what the game only simulates. So after reaching a certain amount of population. the city will look roughly the same, except it will be bigger on the game map. After a certain point (past 300k or so according to that thread), traffic never increases, which is what my friend encountered. But he probably has other issues.

Still, if that thread is true at all, I think I liked Sim City 4 a LOT more. It didn't really simulate millions of people either, but when I played it, it sure felt big and populated. But maybe it would end up the same as Cities Skylines and I'm just remembering with rose colored glasses

[Chiefwaffles]

Well, Sim City 4 doesn't have the same problem because it's really more of a spreadsheet visualizer versus the agents Skylines uses.

[Vendayn]

Well, Sim City 4 doesn't have the same problem because it's really more of a spreadsheet visualizer versus the agents Skylines uses.

Yeah, I understand that part. In some ways Skylines uses a far more advanced and realistic system. But, whenever I got a huge city in Sim City 4 (and I'm so bad at city builders, took me ages to finally get a good city) it still "felt" (key word is "felt) huge and not empty. If what my friend is saying is correct in his game, and what I'm reading...a huge city in Skylines is not going to feel the same at all and will feel empty. Especially if its only 65k people active at once.

If that is the case, I probably like the way sim city 4 does it to be honest. Even if its a lot more simple. At least in SC4 it always feels crowded and busy.

On the other hand, its nice to make larger towns in Skylines. Its nice being able to build in the mountains and stuff on custom maps. But if 65k is the actual active agent limit, I'd rather play SC4 to make the big cities and Skylines for larger towns and smaller rural towns.

[Vendayn]

So, I ended up getting some cheat mods and using that infinite money mod that comes with the game.

I blitzed up to 800k pop, using a typical grid setup I've seen in screenshots and parts of my city...looked really empty...

Like, there was no life at all in parts of the city. (edit: Not to mention, my industry and everything was starting to come crashing down because too many businesses and not enough people using them, even though I had tons of people that were out of work, but weren't being used because there is only a 65k actor limit)

Also, for some reason even though the population on the map never went up, FPS went down to 2-3 and the game became unplayable. It started getting laggy around 600k population.

I think its because so many people are stuck "waiting" to be used in the queue (the game uses a queue of which person does what), that the game became very script lagged. That is what happens in a badly modded Skyrim. Scripts start delaying, causing more and more lag.

I think I might stick with Sim City 4 and see if Cities Skylines doesn't improve over time. Sim City 4 never lagged and at the time, I had a 100 dollar laptop (off craigslist lol) that was pretty bad, and I often got huge metropolises (that also never were empty) and FPS was still good. SC4 of course is pretty old, but my current PC is really good and shouldn't lag like that. The only explanation is the game can't handle anything large population wise (maybe I need a even BETTER PC) because it starts getting script lag of some kind like if I was playing Skyrim and modded it badly.

I do really enjoy Cities Skylines. But, I kinda like having big cities in these kinda games. Not one million pop cities, and then having the city be mostly empty lol.

[Putnam]

You're really jumping the gun on explaining what you're seeing.

[Vendayn]

You're really jumping the gun on explaining what you're seeing.

Well, I got to 800k pop in a pretty short time. And I saw no increase (like was reported in the thread I linked) in increase traffic/population at around 100k pop...I didn't really notice the 65k limit before then as I was building fast. After a while, traffic just was never an issue at all. Literally the game would get super easy at that point, as traffic becomes not an issue at all. The same spots had the same amount of traffic. No new traffic areas ever popped up. Some parts of the city saw not a single car except the occasional one. Increase in people on sidewalk was unchanged. And I didn't see any increase in people working, leaving businesses to shut down and a lack of supplies being sent around the city.

I left it running for 3 hours at 800k pop, and when I came back to see the results, I saw that FPS was pretty dead and actually, well...not sure how long the FPS was bad, but it wasn't in the 15 minutes before I left to do other stuff. But heat wasn't an issue (GPU at 63 degrees, CPU at 72 degrees)...but I did notice my CPU being pretty heavily taxed.

970 GTX 4gb factory overclocked
i5 660 CPU 3.3 Ghz (not the greatest CPU, could be a reason for the FPS)
ssd
12 gig ram
Windows 10


Was there something I missed in what I experienced and posted about? Think I pretty much covered it, especially whatever I missed that is in this post.

[Putnam]

Your explanation (script lag) is not the only explanation (and AFAIK might not be possible at all, since C:S doesn't use scripts like skyrim does), but you seem to have stuck to it already. That's what I mean.

[Vendayn]

My friend experienced about the same thing in his city. But he stopped at around 200k population, cause he started noticing weird stuff happening, like no increase in traffic and people not going to his businesses so not enough workers. And he was pretty sure his city wasn't seeing any increase in activity. So it isn't just me. And he uses no mods at all.

Is there something else that could be going on? Is the game supposed to run things in the background and everything (traffic/people etc) that you see are just "illusions" so to speak? Cause for both me and I think him as well, it started getting rather weird after I passed 100k pop.

Also, I can't take a screenshot as any time I load up the city, it takes 5 hours to load...and still keeps loading...no idea what that is about. But my friend couldn't load his city as well. So maybe something related? He returned the game though, so he can't play it anymore to test it out more.

(edit: Well it was just an example. Like if things get "stuck" in the background like it does in Skyrim, it can cause lag and other weird issues. At least it does in Skyrim. Skyrim also gets infinite load screens when that happens, like me and my friend saw in our own cities).

[Putnam]

The civilian vehicles are just filler and don't affect anything AFAIK, the service vehicles are proper agent sims.

Skyrim and C:S use utterly different engines, so it similar symptoms might not have similar causes.

[Vendayn]

Ah, wonder what is going on then in large cities. Cause I can have a bunch of small towns and what not, and there isn't any issue at all.

And yeah I understand, two completely different games/engines. Its just weird that after a while, at least for me and my friend, cities skylines just gets infinite load and doesn't at quite right in large cities. Small cities are no issue, if I keep population below 100k there isn't a problem at all.

Wonder what it could be.

In any case, I DID send my test results along with my friends feedback to their support area. So hopefully they get the email and respond. Something weird is going on.