Cities Skylines 2’s massive Economy 2.0 overhaul has arrived

The awaited Economy 2.0 update for Cities: Skylines 2 has arrived. With it comes a massive slew of changes to the underlying systems for the game which will have a massive impact on how it’s played.

I haven’t really touched Cities: Skylines 2 since the debacle of its launch. Most of my major complaints about it were in regard to its visuals and its unavoidable litany of bugs. I would, however, probably have some difficult in differentiating whether any given issue was working as intended or just bugged. Mechanically, however, I thought things were fine.

But while I didn’t see any deep issues with the economic simulation, the Economy 2.0 patch notes make me question if I should have. Many of the facets of a city’s workings have been completely revamped in a way that feel like they should have been designed in the first place, such as “rich households prefer larger homes in attractive neighborhoods.” They didn’t before? Others have just had their values change for a more balanced game.

The patch notes and materials leading up to the release also mentions that existing city saves will go through a catastrophic adjustment period as all the underlying revamped mechanics are applied. In particular, many will die because of changes to the age at which your citizens kick the bucket. Taxes and costs are also changed, so your budget might not be so balanced after the changes.

I created a singular massive and successful city before quitting due to the frustration around unavoidable bugs. I plan to return to it just to see the effects. I mean, theoretically, I think my urban design is sound, but my zoning was built in relation to demand driven by the now outdated economic model.

Anyway, in closing, I’ll leave you with the patch notes:

Building Upgrade Rework

• More control over upgrades from the Selected Info Panel of City Service buildings.
  • All upgrade types can be removed from the Selected Info Panel of a City Service building.
  • Sub-buildings can be removed by using the bulldozer as well.
  • Sub-buildings can be relocated.
  • Sub-building can be turned on/off.
  • Sub-buildings can be selected.
• Sub-building upgrades can now be placed freely within a radius limit from the main building.
• Updated City Service tutorial.

Economy updates

• Government subsidies for the city have been removed to make the economy more challenging and transparent.
• Taxes and Services tabs in the Economy panel now unlock at milestone 1 and the Production tab unlocks at milestone 2.
• Added “Import City Services” city policy to toggle import of city services from Outside Connections.
  • Separate imported service items in the budget panel.
  • Outside Connections won’t send service vehicles if the policy is toggled off.
  • Added imported service expenses for ambulance, hearse, fire engine, garbage, and police. The fee scales with the city’s population.
• City Service changes:
  • Increased chance of entering and graduating both Elementary School and High School.
  • Adults can now apply to High School if they didn’t finish it (1% chance, can apply 3 times).
  • Garbage accumulation accounts for students, employees, prisoners, occupants, and homeless people in the calculation.
  • Balanced garbage city service upgrades.
  • Buildings now pay a fixed fee for garbage collection instead of a variable amount based on garbage collected.
  • Adjusted garbage accumulation values.
  • Adjusted upkeep costs of most City Service Buildings.
  • Wages for city service employees are paid from player money
  • Increased electricity import price.
  • Increased the time it takes for Ambulance and Hearse notifications to appear.
  • Adjusted the Service Fee curves for efficiency and consumption.
  • Adjusted water service fees (With old saves the game will force reset the value to the new default position).
  • Increased the amount of workers for
    • Medical Clinic
    • Small Coal Power Plant
    • Police Station
    • Cemetery
    • Fire House
    • Landfill
• Demand changes:
  • Residential density depends on household wealth and family size.
  • Household spawns are based on average citizen happiness, homelessness, tax, available student positions, and available jobs.
  • Commercial companies spawn based on household needs, reducing how often the same companies appear in the city.
  • Commercial and industrial demand has been adjusted to avoid “Not enough customers” complaints for newly spawned companies.
  • Taxes now have more effect on demand.
• Employment changes:
  • Workers from Outside Connections no longer pay tax.
  • Workers from Outside Connections are not included in population or workplace infoviews.
  • Workers from Outside Connections will look for new job more frequently.
  • Workplaces in Outside Connections are less desirable than workplaces in the city.
  • Only citizens who don’t have health problems (such as Sick or Injured) count as valid employable citizens.
  • Citizens can only receive unemployment for a limited amount of time. When they run out of unemployment, they will complain about “High Rent” and move away.
  • Fixed population jobs & workers amount issue.
• Households & happiness changes:
  • Households without adults will now move away.
  • Rich households prefer larger homes in attractive neighborhoods (higher land value, good service coverage, etc), poor households prefer cheaper houses and don’t mind services being far away.
  • Household needs are calculated based on their spendable money (what’s left after paying rent), so they now spend their money more reasonably.
  • Reduced the number of senior citizens moving into the city.
  • Adjusted wealth happiness factor to a reasonable value.
  • Low happiness affects the chance a household will move out of the city.
  • Households consider the garbage fee when calculating their spendable money.
  • Added curve parameter to death rate to smooth the death of senior citizens (existing cities will experience an immediate death wave)
• Production and Company changes:
  • Adjusted values for:
    • Resource production.
    • Resource price.
    • Household wages.
    • Tax income.
    • Resource price now has two parts, a lower one for industrial processing, and another for commercial companies’ service prices. Customers (households) pay full price, which is both parts combined.
    • Changed the workforce needed per unit for resource processing to a preconfigured amount instead of automatically calculated at the start of the game.
    • Companies now go bankrupt instead of looking for new locations if their current property isn’t suitable for profit.
    • Changed Industrial Manufacturing space multiplier from 1 to 5 to allow more workers per grid so fewer buildings are needed.
    • Adjusted office employee amount.
    • Adjusted amount of work required per product to decrease city income.
    • Adjusted simulated service prices.
    • Improved companies to move away not just because of bankruptcy, but also because of the tax rate and workforce factors.
    • Rebalanced Extractor Resource greatly reducing profitability.
    • Balanced Industrial and Office companies Default Output Amount, Max Workers Per cell, Resources Initial Price, and Work needed per unit. Increased Space multiplier of Industrial and Office zones.
• Rent and Building Level changes:
  • Removed the virtual landlord so building upkeep is now paid equally by all renters.
  • Added new rent calculation: Rent = (LandValue + (ZoneType * Building Level)) * LotSize * SpaceMultiplier.
  • Tweaked “High Rent” notifications to be based on the household’s income. Even if they currently don’t have enough money in their balance, they won’t complain and will instead spend less money on resource consumption.
  • Building level is now based on whether renters can pay the upkeep fee. When they pay the full fee, the building condition increases by a constant amount, if they cannot pay it, the building condition decreases by the same amount.
• Crime rate adjustments:
  • Fixed police service coverage for zoneable assets. The police station will patrol regularly to decrease the crime rate, and all zone type buildings will increase crime rate depending on the police service coverage.
  • NA and EU PoliceVehicle02 Crime Reduction value changed to match the NA and EU policevehicle01 value.
  • Removed crime scene pathfinding limitation of building’s crime rate to avoid all criminals having the same pathfinding result to queue up to do crime.
  • Added new crime factor to lower crime probability in cities with larger populations.
  • Lower crime recurrence probability due to criminals needing to wait a long while to remove criminal tag.
• Increased the cost of purchasing Map Tiles.
• Added upkeep fee for new map tiles
  • The 9 starting are excluded and do not have have map tile upkeep fee
• Added option to “Unlock all map tiles” (also disables achievements and the tile upkeep cost)
• Increased construction cost and upkeep costs for roads.
• Moved upkeep breakdown from Tooltip to Selected info panel.
• Reduced the amount of money the player gets back from bulldozing roads and buildings.
• Adjusted the max shopping amount of the household from 4000 to 2000.
• Adjusted Specialized Industry Unlocking to start from milestone 0.
• Fixed taxes being collected after bulldozing the entire City.
• Fixed Citizen Wealth Infoview not highlighting households with ‘Wretched’ wealth level.
• Fixed the wrong moving away statistic data being displayed.
• Fixed a newly spawned company complaining about a lack of workers.
• Fixed commercial zones incur massive amounts of debt for the citizens.
• Fixed refund inconsistencies when replacing roads and stops.
• Fixed high death possibility issue:
  • Fire accidents now will only cause 1% death compared to the previous 50% death of an on fire medium/high density building.
  • The building’s destruction event will now cause 50% death compared to previous 90% death of citizens who are still in it.
• Fixed Outside Connection workers won’t find a job.
• Fixed trade cost divided by zero bug.

Modding

• Updated mod publisher to use auto login from Paradox SDK.
• Updated Paradox Mods to Version 1.5.2
  • Added new feature: Mod details will now show what dependencies are installed and if any are missing
  • Improvement: When started, it will now try to go online again if being offline before
  • Improvement: Change the close X hover effect when using a gamepad
  • Improvement: Improve text on empty state when on library or playset details when offline
  • Fix: Offline mode will now start with your active playset
  • Fixed double back click from following creators view
  • Fixed broken bumper navigation when offline and using a gamepad
  • Fixed gamepad legend when offline on library or playset details
  • Fix: Pressing the B button on a gamepad will now close the Sync modal
  • Fixed a warning with font weights
  • Fixed a warning with height not being set correctly in scrollbars
• Added support for custom units for sliders used in mod settings
• Added support for keybindings for mods:
  • Mods can introduce their own input action which are integrated into the game input system.
  • Added key binding field to the automatic option which allows mods to provide key rebinding for their actions.
  • Added built-in conflict detection between the game bindings and mods bindings based on action usage.
  • Added warning sign next to each binding which has conflicts.
  • Added main menu notification if a mod has a key binding conflict.
  • Added support for 3 different types of actions: press (1 button), axis (negative and positive button), vector (up, down, left, right buttons)
  • Added the ability to set separate keyboard key and gamepad button for one action.
  • Added the ability to use built-in and write custom processors and interactions for actions.
• Fixed issue where downloading a certain number of mods in a specific way resulted in a crash to desktop.
• Fixed a bug where SettingsUISetterAttribute could not use private methods and properties
• Fixed installing notification getting stuck when downloading a mod failed.
• Updated notification texts.
• Updated “mod loading error” dialog to show the error.
• Fixed issue with mods not loading if playset was changed using the web version or there are mod updates.
• Fixed some cases when mods are not loaded or “enabled code mods are changed” notification does not appear.
• Fixed “mod page” and “disable” buttons being visible on mod loading error message box with local mods.
• Fixed endless “mod loading…” notification if mods failed to load.
• Fixed Unity installation not being found if the game is running on a different account than the one who installed Unity
• Fixed issue where modding toolchain install/uninstall warning dialog overflows when the list of dependencies is long by making the panel scrollable

Performance

• UI performance optimizations for the economy panel.
• Other UI performance optimizations with audio bindings, rendering, cursors, and updating panels.
• Performance optimization for Chirper panel.
• Optimizations for particle effects.
• Optimizations for audio memory usage.
• Optimized placement to improve FPS when placing complex buildings or roads.
• Fixed job-finding performance issue when there were no available workplaces and no employable workers, causing endless job pathfinding queries which heavily affect the performance.

Fixes & improvements

• Unity update 2022.3.29f1
• Fixed a crash to desktop when using the quick load function while relocating and rotating a building.
• Fixed a crash to desktop after deleting Train Station with a broken Subway connection and trying to place new subway tracks.
• Fixed crash to desktop in SetupFindHomeJob
• Fixed crash to desktop caused by removed renter.
• Fixed crash to desktop when resizing oil extractor area so that some pumps get deleted
• Improved likelihood of household members traveling together as a group.
• Improved hue, saturation, and randomness values of tree leaves.
• Improved collision radius for BirchTree, PineTree, and SpruceTree to better match the visual empty space. The bushes etc. can now be propped closer to the trees.
• Improved citizens and delivery vehicles pathfinding to take building construction time and path duration into account to avoid arriving at construction sites.
• Ambulances transport some patients in emergency mode (randomized with health level).
• Lowered building fire spreading probability to other buildings.
• Changed default glass material from tinted brown to non-tinted.
• Updated EU and NA theme icons.
• Improved wealth info view color and citizen wealth state parameters.
• Fixed wealth info view color not matching household wealth, changed it from household member based wealth to household based wealth.
• Improved Airport development tree node icon.
• Adjusted XP values for low construction cost building.
• Fixed depots so trains/subway can now only drive through them by using dedicated by-pass track (the track without “No Track Connection”).
• Fixed Several Signature Buildings don’t get occupied (must be rebuilt for the fix to take effect)
• Changed signature building info view color priority higher in RCIO infoviews
• Fixed Ludo Square and Cane Residences signature building bonuses to be more consistent.
• Fixed issue with some settings not getting saved.
• Fixed achievements progression on saves that have used mods not being disabled.
• Fixed specialized industry main building missing.
• Fixed Forestry and Ore Industrial Storage yard props not showing.
• Fixed farming extraction area color so it’s visible on fertile land with the info view open.
• Fixed crematorium sub-building car access when snapped to the main building. Main building or sub-building(s) need to be moved/replopped for this to take effect.
• Fixed specific situation causing taxis from Outside Connections to get stuck for a long while.
• Fixed wrong passenger count/capacity displayed for personal cars that have a trailer attached.
• Fixed driver not included in passenger count and capacity for personal vehicles.
• Fixed vehicles driving through parking facilities or transport stations without intending to use their services.
• Fixed citizens parking their cars at public transport stations without the intention to board a transport line there.
• Fixed traffic jams occurring inside Parking buildings.
• Fixed airplanes driving through the runway without landing at the airport.
• Fixed issue where fire engines are unable to react to and extinguish the additional buildings from the specialized industry areas
• Fixed Garbage Trucks collecting garbage outside their operating district if their way goes through different district.
• Fixed resource piles on spawnable storage yards not instantly updating when delivery truck unloads cargo.
• Fixed trucks keep going back and forth between commercial and industry.
• Fixed commercial companies accidentally exporting goods to other companies.
• Fixed broken pathfinding warning after rebuilding destroyed service building that has extension upgrades.
• Fixed mail getting stuck due to heavy traffic at the cargo terminal by adding a trip needed buffer amount as another cost in resource trade pathfinding.
• Added a penalty for resource pathfinding when the cargo station has more requests or sent out most of the vehicles.
• Fixed Water Tower’s viewing upgrade not providing entertainment.
• Fixed Hospitals and Clinics not refilling their pharmaceuticals storage
• Fixed cargo train terminal left and back paths not connecting to roads too
• Fixed City Policies not clearing properly and carrying over between different save game loads
• Fixed The Deep End achievement not unlocking at exactly 200000 loan
• Fixed citizens stopped finding jobs when unemployment was high
• Fixed high unemployment rate issue by adding variety to the citizen education levels when spawning
• Fixed population infoview jobs didn’t match workplace info view’s data
• Fixed discrepancy in workplace count by excluded the Outside Connection workplaces from population’s calculation
• Fixed DateTime overflow error by reducing the max starting year for a map to 3000.
• Fixed floating prop issues with Deuclidia Apartments, Nuclear Power Plant and Technical University.
• Fixed hotel renter deserialization bug causing unknown mayhem for tourist / hotel logic.
• Fixed tourists with “Leaving the city” status not leaving the hotel.
• Fixed Parallel and grid roads misplace connected road lane.
• Fixed Roundabouts disappear when connecting roads at a certain angle.
• Fixed track slope causing tight curve warning / no connection when built a certain way.
• Fixed connection notifications with buildings over a train truck tunnel.
• Fixed net-tool replace mode is enabled when no compatible assets exist.
• Fixed destroyed buildings still create Noise Pollution.
• Fixed ‘No Pedestrian Access’ warning appearing for Medical University after adding Extension Wing upgrade
• Fixed issue where the cost of purchasing multiple map tiles varied depending on the order in which the map tiles were selected
• Fixed workplace links in citizen Selected Info Panel not working when the workplace was a service building.
• Fixed screen resolution set in the launcher right after the game launch not being applied.
• Fixed all overlay shaders broken when using dynamic resolution scaling.
• Fixed minor inconsistencies with infoview coloring for cables/pipes/lot for buildings under construction, destroyed or otherwise without mesh.
• Added secondary infoview background color so that roads don’t disappear on terrain.
• Improved RCIO tax statistic colors to correspond zone colors
• Removed car paths and parking on NA_MixedRight01_L1_4x6 (and L2) and NA_MixedLeft01_L1_4x6 (and L2) to prevent pathfinding fails due to how the buildings can spawn
• Several improvements and fixes for controllers:
  
  • Added more controller hints.
  • Improved options navigation with controller so that moving between page content and search is consistent when tabs or advanced options are visible
  • Improved multiline text to be focusable so that scrollable panel can scroll to it while using a controller
  • Fixed navigating with the controller over an upkeep section required multiple up/down presses on the controller.
  • Fixed options menu controller navigation issues when “Show advanced” toggle is present.
  • Fixed not all locked toolbar items were focusable with the controller making it impossible to see the conditions to unlock a given feature.
  • Fixed requirement tooltips for placing a building not updating properly when moving the building with a controller
  • Fixed an issue with controller that it was impossible to scroll to the end of the building info panel list if the building did not have any upgrades
  • Fixed tooltips not rendering properly on top of the controller hints.
  • Fixed issue with opening mods UI profile page with gamepad
  • Fixed issue where names of tabs inside the City Services panel cannot be accessed when using a controller
• Fixed building effects not rendering correctly in the UI.
• Fixed a bug where placing a road could cause tooltips to jump between their target positions
• Fixed building effects when viewing detail tooltip where placing a building could overlap with building icon
• Fixed options slider field slider position not updating properly if its value was changed outside of the options menu – ie. changing radio volume in radio panel
• Fixed issue where closing citizen lifepath detail view the list would not re-focus on the last focused entry
• Several fixes for UI interface scaling when using bigger text size.
• Fixed UI disappearing on some tutorial step transitions.
• Fixed UI disappearing on closing signature building unlock dialog.
• Fixed options description not changing after scrolling certain dropdown lists.
• Fixed loading warning popup staying on top of the frozen/busy state of loading screen and not fading out.
• Fixed non-centered error message in Paradox Account -panel.
• Fixed Paradox account link button overflowing in various languages.
• Fixed Economy budget panel overlapping text in some languages.
• Fixed tooltips rendering outside of the screen.
• Fixed edge case of quitting the main menu or starting a new game by opening the pause menu from the button in the upper-right corner while using map tiles view.
• Rebalanced all citizen audio volumes.
• Fixed cemetery sounds not playing.
• Fixed audio source position that was not correctly set for multiple assets:
  
  • Fixed sounds of Residential Signature Buildings play even if buildings are not functional
  • Fixed sound effect of navigating through the Main Menu is almost inaudible
  • Fixed Overground Parking’s upgrade does not add new sounds
• Keybinding:
  • Block all actions while listening for key press when the rebinding process is ongoing.
  • Added the ability to reset key binding to the default.
  • Added controller button icons to key binding options.
  • Added support for rebinding some specific tool actions and camera rotation
  • Added batch rebinding option which allows changing multiple keybinds without receiving the “cannot be rebound” error
  • Fixed controller hint when two direction action has bindings when one direction has binding with modifier and another one without modifier.
  • Added auto-detect for keyboard layout. Keybinds are converted to the current layout and keep their physical location (for example, WASD key bindings on French keyboard will be shown as ZQSD). It converts only Latin-based layouts, while US international layout is used for other non-Latin-based layouts.
  • Fixed building Selected Info Panel not opening when the Info Panel option is assigned to the Right Mouse button and disallowed the same key being set for Info Panel and Cancel actions.

Known issues

• Medical clinics not refilling their pharmaceutical storage is fixed, but with old saves you might need to wait longer to see it to recover because the resource could become negative. As a workaround, you can destroy and rebuild the building.
• With old saves, the water budget is reset to the default 100% value.
• Existing saves may experience a death wave if they have a lot of senior citizens, however, we’ve made changes to avoid these in the future.