- Government Subsidies have been removed to make the economy more challenging and transparent
- Importing City Services from Outside Connections now has a toggle and a fee
- City Service Upkeep costs have been increased
- Calculations for Demand have been improved
- New calculations for rent and household spending allow citizens to afford to live in Low Density Residential
- The production chain has been rebalanced to bring tax income to a more reasonable level
THE ECONOMY
A key point in the feedback we received was that the game didn’t challenge many of you when it comes to managing the city’s finances. Striking the right balance is hard. We want new players to be able to dive into the game while still providing players from Cities: Skylines or long-term fans of the city-building genre a challenge. We introduced Government Subsidies in Cities: Skylines II to act as a helping hand as your city got established, allowing them to scale with expenses. But they also removed agency and consequences from the game. Why build a city with a well-balanced economy if the government will cover all the expenses of your Utopia? We considered several approaches to Government Subsidies but in the end, we decided to completely remove them from the city budget. This puts you in full control of your city’s finances and gives you a reason to consider what you spend your money on and when. It will be up to you to create a profitable city, and when you succeed, you get to take all the credit. If you struggle to get the hang of it, the in-game tutorials are there to help you out and the tips can always be accessed through the Advisor (the question mark in the top-right corner of the screen). And of course, you can always ask us or your fellow players for help. MONEY Money makes the world, or in this case the city, go round. In Cities: Skylines II, money circulates both within the city and in and out of the simulation through money sources and sinks. We work with 4 entities in Cities: Skylines II:- You, the player/the city
- Households
- Companies
- Abstracted investors
CITY SERVICES
As you can see, City Service construction and upkeep, along with roads of course, are where most (if not all) of your money goes. In Economy 2.0 we’ve rebalanced the costs of City Services which includes a significant increase in the upkeep costs. Our goal here is to give your choices more meaning as your city grows. Is your city’s economy strong enough to afford a University or will you have to increase taxes to pay for it? Can you afford to improve the city’s mail service to make citizens happy or will that have to wait until your economy is more stable? These are the kinds of questions we hope you will be asking yourself as you play with the update.
But services aren’t just available locally in your city. Your neighbors can provide you with garbage trucks or ambulances from Outside Connections if your city isn’t quite able to provide those for your citizens yet. With our initial design, the only cost of importing services (excluding Electricity and Water and Sewage) was the time it took the service vehicles to arrive and perform the needed tasks. Economy 2.0 changes that by adding a fee for importing services, which scales with the city’s population.
Now, we can’t add a fee and not give you a way to avoid it, so we have added a new City Policy called Import City Services. It works as a toggle: When it’s enabled your city can and will import services that are lacking in your city, and when it’s disabled, which is the default, your city relies on what’s available locally. In its current form, it’s an all-or-nothing toggle, but we are considering expanding the service import to give you more control. What do you think, any particular direction you would like us to take? We’d love to hear your thoughts.
City Policies can be found by clicking the City Information button next to the demand bars
