Mosaic tiles

[Impytus]

I've always preferred the idea of building organic cities.
Since building cities in a grid-like way seems to work more efficiently it is very difficult to avoid it.

The main reason this is prevalent in Cities:skylines is because usually cities arent just created from nothing. They are built up gradually over long periods of time, new buildings replacing old buildings, roads being replaced by bigger ones, etc...
This is nearly impossible to recreate in the game just because there is no sense of time or technological advancement.

Personally it feels too forced to build an organic city for the sake of it. There isn't really a logical reason to do it anyway.

The biggest problem I feel is that right from the start we get given a large square tile to build in.... Immediatey we can start building in squares and we probably will.


My suggestion is Mosaic tiles:

Small and rough shapes representing smaller bououghs and districts that have to be bought independently that almost entirely stop a player from being able to create grided cities.

I think it would provide a lot more challenge to the game and really aid people to build in a more organic way.

(I'm not saying that this system has to replace the current, but the option to use a tile grid like this would be great).

 

[Alex24]

Some other thoughts that come into my mind:

• Most cities have large suburbs and in the 1800s and 1900s a lot of suburbs were integrated into the city and so was their structure. (Atleast in Europe)
• There is no demand for density. It's not realistic that in a city of 20.000 inhabitants 80 % live and work in high-rises. It should be influenced by land-value and size of the city, wheter it's attractive to a build high-rise or not.
• We build new city areas where nothing has been before. IRL most areas were agricultural used and thus also having some kind of structure before.
• Everything is so cheap in this game, we just have to wait for some minutes. It should be expensive to build roads and especially tunnels. @co_martsu once mentioned that she would be interested into that, but the others not. I would really like to try that, because you would have to think about your investments. (A planning mode would be cool for that)
• Gentrification is not a thing in this game. We need hipsters! (nothing important though)
• ...

= cities would look more organic if there would have been some structure before and realistic costs.

 

[muttonnoir]

The growth & development pattern of a city is fascinating. Cites usually cluster and grow around an important geographical feature- a river, a sheltered valley, close to natural resources, a harbour. The small villages develop and grow economically by providing jobs and attracting businesses and a workforce. Often development is based on packages of land- usually (initially) an agricultural field/s. The developer's plan will be defined by the size and shape of the acquired plot. As the industrial revolution got underway many of the old grand houses and accompanying estates and land were prime development land. Reclaimed land from the sea. Old brownfield sites redeveloped for residential zones. New industrial zones, newtowns= so many excellent case studies that gamers can research while planning their next metropolis.

 

[boshk]

i liked the idea SC4 had where you had a large map and then smaller tiles to build your city on. i was hoping when SC5 came out they would expand on that idea and have each city connect and flow together better (ie you wouldnt need an airport, stadium, large hospital, etc in every city region). maybe something like you would still load a certain part of the region, but the difference would be that the regions were not individually selectable, but more like you would have a cursor (which you could change the size of depending on the size of the area and the power of your computer) that you would select and zoom into the area you want to work on. that way there woudlnt be all these weird connection points and land shifts between cities that you would get in SC4. then maybe we could actually build 1-1 sized cities instead of the odd scale city builders seem to be in (the 1-1 buildings people make in the workshop always seem way too big and out of place).