Zones & Signature Buildings in Cities: Skylines II

This week’s feature highlight is on Zones and Signature buildings which gave us quite a bit of info.

This was one of maybe 3 I was interested to learn more about, and it didn’t disappoint. Here is what stood out to me.

Zoning

I like the additions they’ve made to zoning in CS2. Now we get a whole bunch of changes to the density levels.

We have all the previous residential zoning types from CS1 along with the following new types:

• Medium density row housing with wall-to-wall homes 
• Medium density housing with apartment buildings
• Mixed housing with shops occupying the ground floor and apartments taking up the rest of the buildings,
• Low rent housing with large apartment buildings housing lots of small apartments

All of these sound really promising and I feel building a realistic looking city in vanilla will be so much easier.

In the blog post they confirm Commerical will only consist of high and low with the business types being quite varied. CO also specify the difference between low and high density for commercial is obviously the size of the buildings, types of companies and volumes that they will be able to sell.

Industrial is simply split into manufacturing and warehouses with both being quite obvious what they do and how they differ. They do state that industrial companies try to sell locally before trying to ship excess goods to outside connections which is good to see.

Last but not least, the feature says “office zones are divided into low density offices with small office buildings and high density offices featuring glass-walled skyscrapers and office towers”. It does seem offices work hand in hand with your industrial and specialization seems to still exist. They emphasize on software which I find interesting as in SimCity 2013 you had computer factories so this may be their take on that.

Demand

The blog post goes quite a bit into demand and explains that even taxes can be manipulated to increase demand for particular goods or assisting emerging businesses.

Residential demand is cited as being determined by a Sims age. The article states “families and seniors prefer large apartments, thus increasing the low and medium density housing demand. Single-person households and students don’t shy away from smaller apartments, favoring medium density apartment buildings and high density residential towers”.

It seems in this game, Sim age is a much bigger driving factor to the core mechanics of the game. One interesting thing to note in this section is that homes are build then occupied, much like in SimCity 2013. So we will hopefully see an animation of the house being built, then maybe a moving truck driving up to the house.

Industrial goods can increase commercial demand as companies prefer to sell locally which is one of the factors driving commercial demand. Having the correct amount of employees also helps the profitability of a company and demand can increase if they detect a larger workforce being available.

Like the above, industrial also relies on commercial requiring goods to sell and Sims needing jobs. Industrial also benefits from office zones in this game as when the latter develops software, it is then used by the former. Like the previous game, a Sims education level will determine their suitability for office work and a Sims age will determine which type of office they favor.

Lastly, the article mentions limiting city services in a particular district to keep land value low which does hint we may be able to make more ghetto type areas.

Signature Buildings

Signature buildings seem to replace “Unique Buildings” from CS1 and I think it will be a great change/addition.

In short these buildings can be all different types. In CS1 unique buildings were just that, a unique looking attraction that would add value to the area but served no other function. In CS2, signature buildings can be either residential, commercial, office or industrial. They not only function as these buildings but also could be tourist attractions or even provide a special bonus to nearby buildings or even the entire city.

One type of signature building I’d love to see is a haunted house. In many cities you always have a building that everyone claims to be haunted due to something that happened there in the past.

There was a small city I previously lived in that also had an office that people claimed was haunted. It was previously a children’s hospital that obviously many died in so there was a lot of creepy stuff that would happen there at night. This could work as a tourist attraction of sorts and be something that’s a real unique aspect of your city.

Some Small Points

Here’s a few points that I also seen which I felt didn’t require their own section.

• There is a confirmation that we’ll get homelessness in the game
• Abandoned buildings can be occupied by homeless Sims but will eventually collapse
• Building level effects costs such as electricity and water
• Rather than pure abandoned, buildings can also be unoccupied
• The lower the transportation costs, the more suitable a location is for the company
• Companies use any money leftover from covering the building’s upkeep costs to improve the building and eventually level it up
• There appears to be an optional tutorial mode
• Mods may be moved away from Steam

I’m sure there are plenty more but these are what really stood out to me.

Next Week Will Be Very Interesting

Next week’s feature will be on City Services and I’m very excited for this one as I’m sure they’ll go into more detail on limiting services to districts. We also seen in screenshots that there will be a City Hall which I’m eager to learn more about.

As always I’ll be sure to post some impressions about the insight video this week and the next feature. If you enjoy these and would like to be notified of future posts, please subscribe using the form below.

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