Completely agree. Overall, I really enjoy this game. As a professional city planner, I would give it a lot of praise as the best city-builder out there.
However, I find that at a certain point (around 50k population) I find myself needing to build anywhere from 40-50 office towers to employ the population, and with each additional 10k population, I need about 10 more towers. At a certain point a good 1/3 of the city becomes office towers, which is very unrealistic for any city, let alone a city with under 100k population. It makes it difficult to build the types of cities I want to build, and I get disillusioned with the city.
For comparison, the city I live in (roughly 300k population) has around a dozen high density office buildings downtown, ranging from 3-10 storeys in height. Each of these buildings can handle many businesses and well over the 150-ish employees the typical high density office building gets in CS2.
I have the following suggestions for the office zones:
1. High density office buildings should be able to handle anywhere from 800 (low end) - 2000 (high end) employees. The typical heights for these buildings range from 20-40 storeys in-game, and this is a more realistic number for the amount of employees a building that size could hold. If this means that they are not suitable for cities until later in the game than currently available, then perhaps they should be unlocked later than milestone 10.
2. Add a medium-density office building zone. In-game models could range anywhere from 4-10 storeys and house anywhere from 100-400 employees each. If this zone is added - it is critical that the numbers for these buildings ALSO be realistic. This could replace the high density offices currently unlocked at milestone 10.
In my opinion, these changes are critical to the long-term viability of the game.
Other suggestions/nit-picks:
3. Please, give the player the option to remove taxis from public transit lanes - or just remove them altogether. I'm sick of my trams/buses being clogged up behind taxis. I click on the average taxi in-game and they typically have 1 occupant. This is not public transit.
4. Families live in apartments, too. The idea that families with children need to have low-density zoning available reflects an antequated planning ideology that is not the case in the majority of countries around the world. Consider increasing the amount of children that live in medium and high density residential/mixed use buildings.
5. Add a zone for high-density mixed-use buildings. I'm a big fan of the zone currently, having windows on only 2 sides of the buildings makes it easy to place buildings adjacent to each other and still create high-quality urban design. The tallest mixed-use buildings are currently around 7 storeys, which is a nice typology, but mixed-use buildings can function economically in high rise buildings - and actually function more economically in high rise forms.
In my opinoin, these changes would significantly improve the quality of life.
