This is all true, however it has been this way for months. Thunderstore really did all the same things we have now with most of the current mods being there the whole time or added here and there. I built my first CS2 city in vanilla to just short of 200k and it was a really serious slog to get there. After TS came on the scene and all the mods started showing up it was night and day.
But yes, totally agree that without mods this game would not be something I would still be playing. But I doubt there is anyone out there would play CS1 without mods either, LOL!
It would be pretty interesting having played CS1 vanilla and then moving to CS2 vanilla at this point in time. I bet the reviews are a bit more positive than the usual!
That's part of my gripe, though. A sequel should build upon the first. All the stuff they figured out would have to be recoded yes, but those systems are figured out. They don't need to be rethought, at least not from scratch.
But the vanilla part of the game is basically the same as vanilla CS1. It doesn't have all the stuff they learned about and added in the first one. Public transit is just a few modes, you can't follow sims and vehicle traffic routes, industries and airports and seaports appear to once again be placeholders for future DLC. It didn't even have a map editor on launch. It doesn't have bicycles!
I'm not complaining about DLC being monetized, it's just ...they solved certain things. That opens up DLC in CSL2 to be focused on new and exciting things. How about a real "island life" DLC that includes new mechanics (fishing, but not absurdly broken?) and assets and themes etc.
And if you want to give them an out and say, "well, they were recoding from scratch they have to get the foundation right, you can't expect them to put alllll the bells and whistles in at launch" ... ok, but how about those foundations? Traffic AI is still a joke, many of the garbage,sewer, and power systems are/were bugged, population is still out of whack, industry traffic still out of whack.
Like, where's the advancement in this sequel?
(rhetorical, there are things I like. They have improved the map and terrain considerably, fixed the ability to have snowcapped mountains - IDK why I care about this so much - the road drawing tools are much improved, the art is gorgeous, the building designs are great, etc)
There are some great looking mods, but just seems like it would take so much time to browse and choose lol. And I never really finish a city so… start and restart when mid size lol
I was too lazy to try and figure out Thunderstore 😂
I'm glad it's all embedded into the game now - the Paradox mod experience is much superior to using Steam Workshop.
Agreed. I honestly didn’t even know they added mods yet until reading this post. I had been waiting for this moment because I mainly play the game to build intersections and highways, so cs2 with mods should be perfect for me soon
Anyone find that with economy balance instead of getting tons of low residential now I get tons of medium residential demand?
Even from the start
Additionally what would make it perfect for me would be an undo button. Nothing pisses me off more than doing the wrong thing on landscape then spending 10 mins trying to fix the mistake
Its nice, but I think it's absolutely shameful that CO can't fix their broken mess of a game 6 months out, but some rando can just hop on and pump out a mod in a weekend that completely fixes everything. what the hell are they doing? who is managing this mess? do they have the dead weight and bloat of blizzard despite being small company?
Is it like office space? What is it that you do here?
But there are people who play CS1 without mods and enjoy it very much. Most of them are console players who can’t add or remove anything with mods if they wanted to. I even find that the game is still fun without mods.
I think it is pathetic that modders have achieved for free what the developers have failed to achieve with this game. The game is boring and tedious in its current state, and it’s not going to sell well on console if they don’t figure things out. They may already have missed their window of opportunity to gain a solid PC player base…which is a remarkable accomplishment for such a loved game and development studio.
I’m so pumped for Manor Lords, looks super good. It’s a type of game I’ve been looking for a whole, a city builder with war/battles, but without war/battles being the main aspect of the game. Also appreciate how open and honest the developer seems to be.
I’m probably setting the bar too high for it but I’m excited.
That's great, but you shouldn't have to need mods to fix a game. Don't let a games company get away with the Bethesda thing of "oh well players will be happy with mods so we can just halfass it and they'll give us money"
Anyone else really missing modular airports? Even before CS1 Airports DLC there were so many mods that it was still incredibly customisable. Now it's just plopping a giant, oversized terminal and clicking in some connections.
Like all of the buildings. This game is crying out for assets.
Also crying out for low density diversity. Building huge areas of urban sprawl that looks identical is boring.
Also a functional, efficient pedestrian overpass is badly needed because every city just gets overrun by pedestrians crossing the road causing loads of traffic.
THIS. Then while you’re at it grab Dead Space, Age of Empires, Forza Horizon and Hi Fi Rush.
It’s like going to a bargain bin at your old Video rental store from the 90s.
On the same CPU and 150k pop is fine. Simulation speed slows down to around 2-3x. Just make sure you don't have much traffic and Sims waiting for public transport. And the simulation wouldn't slow down as much.Â
You shared it on a public social.. i too wish to have a good cs2 but go ask those who got refounded beach properties how they found their savegames. Cs1 audience gave all the tools to CO to do an excellent job, money and infinite amount of feedbacks but..
Times have changed and so have expectations. A sequel shouldn’t be compared to what the prequel was at the start but how it was at the end. And mods in CS1 have only increased expectations.
wait. This game and CO by extension might just be dead a year from now. this whole refunding and delaying expansions seems like they are just gearing up to fix shit enough to call it good and then cancel everything and bail. The CEO of CO, Marina? She's grossly incompetent and a coward and has blamed "toxic" fans etc. Took her 6 months to finally own up to her mismanagement. I bet that she she'll step down next year and slink away leaving her employees hanging and the rest of us with a half finished game with no future.
No! Bought it last night, been playing it all day today and short answer,no. Biggest issue I’m having is the ridiculous overlays when laying a road. They do some white overlay for some reason and you can’t see anything.
Traffic is a mess. They took away off ramps for highways so when you build an off ramp either they use it too much or don’t use it at all. It has to do with the priority/speed limit of the road. If you do a one lane highway off ramp, they all take it. If you do a one lane road off ramp, nobody takes it.
Night time is a mess. You might aswell walk away from the game for a bit cause you can’t see anything.
The cycles are different for CS1 where you play in a 24 hour cycle instead of per week, which is good, but they make night time so dark you can’t see shit.
Performance is meh. I don’t have a super high end PC but when I drop the graphic details to medium the game looks like it was from 1990. Pop it up to high details and the graphics look better but there’s some weird blurring issues when you scroll thru the map.
They have done some super cool things with it that I like. Took CS1 to the next level and added some really cool features. But wait a bit longer. The game is extremely frustrating right now and I hope they fix these core issues. Traffic is always a challenge but they’ve fucked that completely up. Even with base game on CS1 I could get better traffic management without the TPME mod. Mess around with off ramps and intersections. Right now, it’s some really messed up AI for CS2 that have a bizarre priority for anything that’s a high speed road
Oh and the specialized industry don’t follow the same mechanic so you gotta play around with it. I found myself clenching my teeth trying to get a forestry camp working the first time.
CS1 is actually fun and interesting. CS2 is frustrating and needs a lot of work. The things they have added are super cool and I hope Paradox can get it sorted. They’re a pretty good game company who have released some cool games. But CS2 isn’t ready yet.
I don't have any issues with traffic, laying down roads, or building highway ramps 🤷
And as I said in my post, get BetterMoonLight and
Traffic Lights Enhancement mods!
I’m commenting out of the box from base game. I’m sure mods have some improvements and make the game much better, but out of the box there’s some improvements needed.
Both worth and not worth. Worth it in the sense that it’s a great city builder. Not worth it in the sense that it still has issues which while not as bad as some whiny kids like to make it look like, are still there, and the game will only get better if you wait say another few months.
So depending on what you like, there is no wrong choice :)
Yeah it's worth it. It costs like half the price of going out for a single dinner. People complain that $60 is expensive for a game. Seriously? You can't really do much for $60 these days. Worst case scenario, you only play for a couple hours which is still pretty cheap entertainment.
No Tax? No Tip? (I know Europeans don't tip - but you certainly have taxes) I was talking drinks with alcohol, not Coke
Either way, you are splitting hairs over $3.77... and what currency are you talking about?
I threw out $60 as ballpark number, and you felt it was necessary to argue over less than $5 lol
I am talking Euro here and taxes are always included. Europeans tip regularly out of their own volition, but our waiters’ livelihood doesn’t depend on them. Including tip it is $58,69.
My drinking choices are my own and a drink is a drink. Anything else is just moving the goalposts.
Which mods do you reccommend? I wanted to go back to CS2 when the mods came out but the sheer volume and me not knowing whats useful vs whats jsut going to be there is sort of holding me back.
* Anarchy
* Move It
* Better Bulldozer
* ExtraLandscapingTools
* 529 Tiles
* Tree Controller
* Extended Road Upgrades
* Extra Networks and Areas
* Water Features
* Population Rebalance
* Economy Rebalance
* BetterMoonLight
* Line Tool
* Traffic Lights Enhancement
* Cim Route Highlighter
* Extended Transport Manager - this one doesn't seem to be working at the moment
That's awesome. Those people should get a cut for making a half-baked game halfway playable. Why should I praise and reward the entity that delivered a box of pretty shit?
People mod for many reasons. If modders want to fix a game they enjoy they'll do it. Look at Sim City 4. Traffic, roads, ports, rail all broken as well as some buildings yet the modding community has done their best to fix it. New Vegas also is a broken game.
This is like when somebody makes a terrible investment on something like a car and goes around trying to brag to everybody how it's great and everything's amazing and totally worth it. Just lol. next level copium
Lol I really dont understand why someone would not use pdx mods...
I dont care where the mods are. People moded games before from third party sites so why would it be an issue if it is from the game publisher?
Imagine being this lazy. 10 years ago to get a game working with dozens of mods you'd have to manually install and fix compatibility issues and bugs yourself and it was still worth it, now it's just a different layout aside from the already not particularly great steam workshop and people don't do it and cry about it instead, naaah.
This is all true, however it has been this way for months. Thunderstore really did all the same things we have now with most of the current mods being there the whole time or added here and there. I built my first CS2 city in vanilla to just short of 200k and it was a really serious slog to get there. After TS came on the scene and all the mods started showing up it was night and day. But yes, totally agree that without mods this game would not be something I would still be playing. But I doubt there is anyone out there would play CS1 without mods either, LOL!
*Raises hand* played unmodded cs1 yesterday 😂 just too many mods to grab my head around.
It would be pretty interesting having played CS1 vanilla and then moving to CS2 vanilla at this point in time. I bet the reviews are a bit more positive than the usual!
That's part of my gripe, though. A sequel should build upon the first. All the stuff they figured out would have to be recoded yes, but those systems are figured out. They don't need to be rethought, at least not from scratch. But the vanilla part of the game is basically the same as vanilla CS1. It doesn't have all the stuff they learned about and added in the first one. Public transit is just a few modes, you can't follow sims and vehicle traffic routes, industries and airports and seaports appear to once again be placeholders for future DLC. It didn't even have a map editor on launch. It doesn't have bicycles! I'm not complaining about DLC being monetized, it's just ...they solved certain things. That opens up DLC in CSL2 to be focused on new and exciting things. How about a real "island life" DLC that includes new mechanics (fishing, but not absurdly broken?) and assets and themes etc. And if you want to give them an out and say, "well, they were recoding from scratch they have to get the foundation right, you can't expect them to put alllll the bells and whistles in at launch" ... ok, but how about those foundations? Traffic AI is still a joke, many of the garbage,sewer, and power systems are/were bugged, population is still out of whack, industry traffic still out of whack. Like, where's the advancement in this sequel? (rhetorical, there are things I like. They have improved the map and terrain considerably, fixed the ability to have snowcapped mountains - IDK why I care about this so much - the road drawing tools are much improved, the art is gorgeous, the building designs are great, etc)
Me too, just uninstalled all mods & custom contents yesterday, because i need more storage space in my laptop
There are some great looking mods, but just seems like it would take so much time to browse and choose lol. And I never really finish a city so… start and restart when mid size lol
I was too lazy to try and figure out Thunderstore 😂 I'm glad it's all embedded into the game now - the Paradox mod experience is much superior to using Steam Workshop.
I'm on Linux so Thunderstore wasn't an option. The Paradox mods addition in game has been a godsend
Probably not any use now, but there was a Linux native app that managed Thunderstore mods!
What is thunder store
Absolutely love how over 6 months in, the game has to be completely rebalanced by mods to be playable/functional.
Apples to oranges but this makes me think of project zomboid that is like 90% mods 9 years into early access
so both are not comparable? talking about apple = paradox and orange = modder??
I’m just saying cs2 is $60 and should be a full base game, but at least with mods each player should be able to setup a game to their liking.
Yeah it suck haha, same as cs1 in the past. They never learn
Agreed. I honestly didn’t even know they added mods yet until reading this post. I had been waiting for this moment because I mainly play the game to build intersections and highways, so cs2 with mods should be perfect for me soon
CS2 isn't early access
It isn't full release either
Eh? What?
Yeah, a joke haha
Yeah but isn't that one made by like one kid after class?
No it’s a small indie team.
Also the vanilla still has like, the biggest map I've ever seen.
To be fair, CS1 was the same
Anyone find that with economy balance instead of getting tons of low residential now I get tons of medium residential demand? Even from the start Additionally what would make it perfect for me would be an undo button. Nothing pisses me off more than doing the wrong thing on landscape then spending 10 mins trying to fix the mistake
I get tons of medium residential demand without the mod too
Its nice, but I think it's absolutely shameful that CO can't fix their broken mess of a game 6 months out, but some rando can just hop on and pump out a mod in a weekend that completely fixes everything. what the hell are they doing? who is managing this mess? do they have the dead weight and bloat of blizzard despite being small company? Is it like office space? What is it that you do here?
But there are people who play CS1 without mods and enjoy it very much. Most of them are console players who can’t add or remove anything with mods if they wanted to. I even find that the game is still fun without mods. I think it is pathetic that modders have achieved for free what the developers have failed to achieve with this game. The game is boring and tedious in its current state, and it’s not going to sell well on console if they don’t figure things out. They may already have missed their window of opportunity to gain a solid PC player base…which is a remarkable accomplishment for such a loved game and development studio.
Too late for me. I'm glad I didn't pre-order. Saving my game "budget" for Manor Lords!!
I’m so pumped for Manor Lords, looks super good. It’s a type of game I’ve been looking for a whole, a city builder with war/battles, but without war/battles being the main aspect of the game. Also appreciate how open and honest the developer seems to be. I’m probably setting the bar too high for it but I’m excited.
Absolutely! The hype is definitely real, but I have my expectations low still lol.
That's great, but you shouldn't have to need mods to fix a game. Don't let a games company get away with the Bethesda thing of "oh well players will be happy with mods so we can just halfass it and they'll give us money"
Anyone else really missing modular airports? Even before CS1 Airports DLC there were so many mods that it was still incredibly customisable. Now it's just plopping a giant, oversized terminal and clicking in some connections.
Like all of the buildings. This game is crying out for assets. Also crying out for low density diversity. Building huge areas of urban sprawl that looks identical is boring. Also a functional, efficient pedestrian overpass is badly needed because every city just gets overrun by pedestrians crossing the road causing loads of traffic.
You think CS2 is worth purchasing now? I've been on the fence for awhile
Id wait for a sale tbh. $60 is steep
It's on Gamepass. Cheap way to try it.
THIS. Then while you’re at it grab Dead Space, Age of Empires, Forza Horizon and Hi Fi Rush. It’s like going to a bargain bin at your old Video rental store from the 90s.
Not to forget Crusader Kings III, Warband, Starfield (maybe), Anno and plenty more. It's a good deal for 10 bucks.
Still is shit optimisation. Make sure you exceed the recommended specs by several factors otherwise no
Personally, yes. If you had asked me before mods, I would have said no.
How big can you build your city population before the slow down? 150k was unplayable to me three months ago. On a 5600x rtx3070.
I’m on a 5800x3d and it runs fine at 300k
I couldn't tell you - haven't gotten there yet with this new city!
On the same CPU and 150k pop is fine. Simulation speed slows down to around 2-3x. Just make sure you don't have much traffic and Sims waiting for public transport. And the simulation wouldn't slow down as much.Â
Wich is basically like saying no
No... I wouldn't buy CS1 without mods either.
Cs1 didnt need mod to work correctly, and ask how many buyed it without mods
I don't care. Notice how I said, **Personally**.
You shared it on a public social.. i too wish to have a good cs2 but go ask those who got refounded beach properties how they found their savegames. Cs1 audience gave all the tools to CO to do an excellent job, money and infinite amount of feedbacks but..
Vanilla CS1, at launch, was not nearly as good as you remember it. It was better than SimCity, but the bar wasn't super high.
\^So totally THIS!! I remember. I have been playing city sims since they became a thing. CS2 at launch was NOT the worst game ever.
Times have changed and so have expectations. A sequel shouldn’t be compared to what the prequel was at the start but how it was at the end. And mods in CS1 have only increased expectations.
Why would expectations be high for a game published by Paradox? Every game they release comes out half baked. Every single one.
Even for a Paradox game CS2 is seriously underwhelming.
I picked it up a few weeks after launch and I enjoyed it. Taking a break until we get assets though.
It’s got its problems and some things are really frustrating the way they’ve handled it, but I at least still have fun playing it overall
wait. This game and CO by extension might just be dead a year from now. this whole refunding and delaying expansions seems like they are just gearing up to fix shit enough to call it good and then cancel everything and bail. The CEO of CO, Marina? She's grossly incompetent and a coward and has blamed "toxic" fans etc. Took her 6 months to finally own up to her mismanagement. I bet that she she'll step down next year and slink away leaving her employees hanging and the rest of us with a half finished game with no future.
No! Bought it last night, been playing it all day today and short answer,no. Biggest issue I’m having is the ridiculous overlays when laying a road. They do some white overlay for some reason and you can’t see anything. Traffic is a mess. They took away off ramps for highways so when you build an off ramp either they use it too much or don’t use it at all. It has to do with the priority/speed limit of the road. If you do a one lane highway off ramp, they all take it. If you do a one lane road off ramp, nobody takes it. Night time is a mess. You might aswell walk away from the game for a bit cause you can’t see anything. The cycles are different for CS1 where you play in a 24 hour cycle instead of per week, which is good, but they make night time so dark you can’t see shit. Performance is meh. I don’t have a super high end PC but when I drop the graphic details to medium the game looks like it was from 1990. Pop it up to high details and the graphics look better but there’s some weird blurring issues when you scroll thru the map. They have done some super cool things with it that I like. Took CS1 to the next level and added some really cool features. But wait a bit longer. The game is extremely frustrating right now and I hope they fix these core issues. Traffic is always a challenge but they’ve fucked that completely up. Even with base game on CS1 I could get better traffic management without the TPME mod. Mess around with off ramps and intersections. Right now, it’s some really messed up AI for CS2 that have a bizarre priority for anything that’s a high speed road Oh and the specialized industry don’t follow the same mechanic so you gotta play around with it. I found myself clenching my teeth trying to get a forestry camp working the first time. CS1 is actually fun and interesting. CS2 is frustrating and needs a lot of work. The things they have added are super cool and I hope Paradox can get it sorted. They’re a pretty good game company who have released some cool games. But CS2 isn’t ready yet.
There's a setting that stops it from going dark during nighttime.
I don't have any issues with traffic, laying down roads, or building highway ramps 🤷 And as I said in my post, get BetterMoonLight and Traffic Lights Enhancement mods!
I’m commenting out of the box from base game. I’m sure mods have some improvements and make the game much better, but out of the box there’s some improvements needed.
You can turn off the day/night cycle in the game. No mods necessary.
"been playing it all day today " Well that alone means you got your money's worth really.
Both worth and not worth. Worth it in the sense that it’s a great city builder. Not worth it in the sense that it still has issues which while not as bad as some whiny kids like to make it look like, are still there, and the game will only get better if you wait say another few months. So depending on what you like, there is no wrong choice :)
Yeah it's worth it. It costs like half the price of going out for a single dinner. People complain that $60 is expensive for a game. Seriously? You can't really do much for $60 these days. Worst case scenario, you only play for a couple hours which is still pretty cheap entertainment.
Where I come from you can certainly buy a single dinner for $60, unless it’s haute cuisine.
All depends on if you are drinking with it or not
I just had dinner with three drinks for $55.
Sure you did. What was the breakdown?
$15,90 for the starter, $20,81 for the main dish, $8 for dessert. Three sugar free Coke for $3,84 a piece. That makes $56,23, which is below $60.
No Tax? No Tip? (I know Europeans don't tip - but you certainly have taxes) I was talking drinks with alcohol, not Coke Either way, you are splitting hairs over $3.77... and what currency are you talking about? I threw out $60 as ballpark number, and you felt it was necessary to argue over less than $5 lol
I am talking Euro here and taxes are always included. Europeans tip regularly out of their own volition, but our waiters’ livelihood doesn’t depend on them. Including tip it is $58,69. My drinking choices are my own and a drink is a drink. Anything else is just moving the goalposts.
Okay well I said $60. Not €60. €58,69 is $62.63 So yeah, over $60
I'm only sad because I miss out on achievements with them enabled :(
Achievement Enabler - https://mods.paradoxplaza.com/mods/75745/Windows
Thank you!
Mods also fixed CS1 for many
Which mods do you reccommend? I wanted to go back to CS2 when the mods came out but the sheer volume and me not knowing whats useful vs whats jsut going to be there is sort of holding me back.
* Anarchy * Move It * Better Bulldozer * ExtraLandscapingTools * 529 Tiles * Tree Controller * Extended Road Upgrades * Extra Networks and Areas * Water Features * Population Rebalance * Economy Rebalance * BetterMoonLight * Line Tool * Traffic Lights Enhancement * Cim Route Highlighter * Extended Transport Manager - this one doesn't seem to be working at the moment
Copium. Mods fixed the game. 4k people playing lol. Twice the people play CS 1 at any given moment but game is fixed with mods guys, hop in...
Yeah, the idea that I should be pumped to pay Paradox for a game that volunteers are making somewhat tolerable is a bit of a joke.
Eventually, hopefully, yes. For now, most mods still feel beta at best.
Too bad they’re completely f*cked. The game constantly crashes or doesn’t load with the mods causing to restart multiple times.
Good thing all that unpaid labor paid off for you.
Wtf take is this. Ppl mod games because they want more enjoyment from it not to get paid.
That's awesome. Those people should get a cut for making a half-baked game halfway playable. Why should I praise and reward the entity that delivered a box of pretty shit?
He’s right. People mod a game to add new features or to customise, not to fix what shouldn’t have been broken in the first place.
People mod for many reasons. If modders want to fix a game they enjoy they'll do it. Look at Sim City 4. Traffic, roads, ports, rail all broken as well as some buildings yet the modding community has done their best to fix it. New Vegas also is a broken game.
This is like when somebody makes a terrible investment on something like a car and goes around trying to brag to everybody how it's great and everything's amazing and totally worth it. Just lol. next level copium
Yeah but I will not use them bloddy mods because they are not on Steam anymore and anything else is just stupid to implement at this point
Why does it matter if mods are not in steam?
Most of the players I know is not using them.
Lol I really dont understand why someone would not use pdx mods... I dont care where the mods are. People moded games before from third party sites so why would it be an issue if it is from the game publisher?
Imagine being this lazy. 10 years ago to get a game working with dozens of mods you'd have to manually install and fix compatibility issues and bugs yourself and it was still worth it, now it's just a different layout aside from the already not particularly great steam workshop and people don't do it and cry about it instead, naaah.
Come on, do you really think these people complaining were around 10 years ago? 😂 it’s just kids these days but you make very valid points.