Cities: Skylines II is an upcoming city-building game developed by Colossal Order and published by Paradox Interactive. It is a sequel to Cities: Skylines, and expands upon many of the simulation factors such as simulated city and population sizes, and improved traffic AI and management schemes. The game is scheduled for release on 24 October 2023 for PlayStation 5, Windows, and Xbox Series X/S.[1]
Like Cities: Skylines, the sequel gives the player a virtual plot of land to create a city within. Players can lay down roads, zoning, utilities, and city services to bring in residents and businesses. The player can set city policies likes taxes and edicts to influence how the city grows as well as from which they receive funds to continue to expand out the city.
Initially the player will be limited to one tile of space to build on but can expand out by purchasing additional tiles from city funds. Whereas the first game was limited to nine tiles covering about 36 km2 of area (81 tiles with user modifications) and the remastered edition to 25 (100 km2), the sequel will allow players to build out to 441 tiles representing 159 km2 of area.[2] The game will also not have any limits on the number of citizens that are directly simulated by the game, outside of a player’s computer or console bounds, in contrast to the first game that was limited to around 65,000 citizens.[3]
Cities: Skylines II will improve and expand upon the robust city building mechanics fans know from the original, including fully-realized transportation and economic systems, enhanced construction and customization options, and advanced modding capabilities. [4][5][6] Players have more fine-tuning control on zoning of residential, commercial, and industrial zones, including more zone types such as mixed-used residential. Signature buildings can be unlocked through specific milestones and placed within zones to impact the quality of the zone.[7] Rather than purely distance as in the first game, the citizens of the game will use more intelligent methods to determine traffic routes, using route length, costs, comfort, and agent preference.[8] Services like police and fire stations can also be assigned to specific districts to improve their response times in contrast to the first game.[9] In addition to public safety services, education, and trash management, the sequel also adds in services for communications, welfare, and death management. These services can expanded through upgrades on the existing location rather than having to build a separate service building.[10] Public and cargo transport options will be more flexible, allowing for importing and exporting to other virtual cities, and rather than unlocking certain transport options based on city size, the sequel will have a technology tree that players can use development points to advance and unlock desired transport options.[11]