After a couple years of rumors, Colossal Order has finally officially announced a sequel to Cities: Skylines. I would have thought that this would mean the end of new content for the first Cities: Skylines. But instead, we've seen a deluge of new content from the studio. I already reviewed the Plazas & Promenades expansion from last fall, but that expansion was followed by a "World Tour" of new content.
Most of this content comes in the form of "content creator packs", which are assets that were originally created by modders, but which Paradox and Colossal Order have bought and are selling in packs (and giving full credit to the creators, and presumably a cut of the sales). It's nice to see some big-name modders getting this formal recognition in the game, and an opportunity to profit a little bit from their hard work.
But there has also been some first-party content in the form of a mini-expansion called Financial Districts. This DLC adds a stock exchange, banks, and the ability to invest city funds into an in-game stock market. There is also another full expansion called Hotels & Retreats, but I'll be reviewing that separately.
Colossal Order is releasing one final barrage of DLC and mini-expansions before releasing a full sequel.
Insider trading
I'm going to start with the Financial Districts DLC, since it's the only content in this review that is actually first-party content created by Colossal Order, and it's the only of these DLCs that actually has any new rules and mechanics associated with it. The rest are all just collections of assets. Financial Districts isn't a full expansion. It's more in-line with previous DLC like the Match Day or Concerts DLC, in that it adds only one very specific thing, and a couple new mechanics.
This expansion adds a new type of office specialization: the titular Financial Districts. This district creates tall skyscrapers which belong to banking and investment firms. These buildings also generate increased tax revenue if near one of the expansion's ploppable buildings, the Stock Market. Combined with the "Tax Increase for Offices" policy, these districts can be incredibly profitable for the city.
Financial districts include tall office buildings for banks, investment firms, and the like.
As for the Stock Market itself, it allows the city to invest in a variety of fictional stocks for companies that supposedly exist in the city. Different stocks unlock based on the level of the Stock Market or based on certain criteria within the city (such as having enough of a certain type of building. The Stock Market is basically a cheat device for earning more money for your city. The performance of the various stocks all depend on factors within the city that the player has a degree of control over. For example, the player could bulldoze all your hospitals, let the healthcare stock crash, buy a bunch of it, then re-build those hospitals, and sell the stock after it shoots up. You can then also bulldoze the hospitals again and repeat the process until you have as much money as you want. The player can also affect the value of various stocks by simply increasing or decreasing the relevant budget sliders.
I was also disappointed by the sparse variety of stocks to choose from. In fact, it doesn't seem that any of the expansion content has associated stocks. While I can invest in farming, forestry, mining, and drilling industries, I cannot invest in the fishing industry from Sunset Harbor, nor is there any stock associated with the leisure or tourism specializations from After Dark. I'm also assuming that there won't be any stocks associated with the hotels from the Hotels & Resorts expansion. Similarly, I cannot invest in local amusement parks or zoos from the Parklife expansion, or in sports teams from the Match Day mini-expansion or the "Sports Arenas" content pack.
The value of stocks can be manipulated by the player for easy, risk-free money.
Even within the farming, forestry, mining, and oil stocks, the game is unclear if these refer to the zoned farming, forestry, mining, and oil industrial buildings from the vanilla game, or if they also include the Industries industrial areas. Or either? Or both? Based on my testing, it seems that only buildings that extract a resource count as buildings of that industry. So zoned oil buildings count as "oil industry" and drills in oil industry areas count, but oil industry area processor and storage buildings don't seem to count. Similarly, is the Airline stock based on the performance of your Airports areas, or only on ploppable vanilla airport assets?
Even in terms of vanilla content, there's still some industries and services that lack stock options. There's no stock for garbage collection or recycling, no stocks for utilities, no stocks for any specific transit options (except for the cruise ships), no stocks for education, and so forth.
If you decide to play the in-game stock market in good faith, it can provide a valuable service. It can be used as a "rainy day fund" that allows the player to invest the city's money, hopefully gain a decent percentage, and then be able to sell those stocks (hopefully for profit) if the city's budget falls in the red. It can also be used in the event of an emergency situation, such as a natural disaster. It's basically an inverse loan; you set money aside in the hopes of being able to retrieve more money later, instead of getting a lump sum now and having to pay back more later.
The Stock Market can be leveled up,
which unlocks new stocks and infrastructure.
The Stock Market can also level up based on the cumulative profit earned from all stock sales. Once leveled up, the Stock Market cannot de-level, since selling stock at a loss does not take away any of your progress towards a level. As the Stock Market levels up, it will unlock new buildings. Some are superficial parks, but others are functional buildings like banks and the International Trade Building, which can further buff the tax revenue of nearby offices.
Leveling up the Stock Market also unlocks Banks, which will send out cash vans to pick up money from local businesses. This reduces crime at the respective businesses because, presumably, the armored cash vans are harder to rob than simply sticking up the cashier. But then again, crime has never been a major problem in Cities: Skylines, so I rarely feel compelled to build banks.
I do think it's kind of weird that the Stock Exchange is a prerequisite for a bank. I would think that a local bank branch or 2 should probably come before a Stock Exchange in an organically-growing city. But whatever.
Banks send out armored vans to pick up cash from local businesses, which reduces the risk of robberies.
Cultural diversification
To be honest, I actually enjoy the content creator packs more than the Financial Districts and Stock Exchange. Several of these packs add new sets of buildings with different cultural architectural styles. There's a Korean pack, an African pack, and a pack of Japanese train stations and transit hubs. Each pack contains a variety of zoned buildings, as well as ploppable assets and services. They can be great for trying to create a foreign city, or if you want to create an ethnic district such as "Little Korea".
The Korean buildings are mostly just apartments and commercial offices with Korean signage.
Unfortunately, these packs only provide a limited number of zoneable buildings, and they don't even include zoneable buildings for every zoneable type. For example, the Korean pack has Korean-inspired commercial and residential growables, but no offices or industrial buildings. And even the growables that are included don't look particularly "Asian" in terms of their architecture. They're basically just standard-looking office buildings and apartments, but with Korean text and signage printed on them. In fact, the highest-level commercial buildings all have English signage, and so don't look "Korean" at all. As such, I often try to mark a portion of such buildings as "historical" buildings when they're level 1 or level 2, in order to preserve the more distinct Korean look.
Unfortunately this means that I have to micro-manage the buildings in the district, which can be especially frustrating when things like the dreaded "Death Waves" start happening. Historic buildings do not re-populate after being abandoned, so whenever a death wave happens, I have to manually bulldoze a bunch of the Korean buildings, wait for them to re-build, bulldoze them again if they don't spawn the type of building that I want, and then lock them in as "historical" buildings again before they advance to level 3. This is another thing that I really hope will be fixed in Cities: Skylines 2.
In addition to the Korean, African, and Japanese building packs, there's also an "Industrial Evolution" pack, which includes older turn-of-the-century growable factories and warehouses. There is also a "Brooklyn & Queens" content creator packs that is full of medium-density apartments modeled after those found in and around New York City.
The African buildings are much more architecturally distinct (and colorful)!
Park 'n' Ride
The other content creator packs also finally added some assets that I've been wanting in the game for years. The "Shopping Malls" content pack finally added ploppable parking lots and a garage! (And parking lots are a confirmed feature of the sequel!) I've been asking for this for years, and had to resort to mod assets to place parking lots in my cities. Best of all, citizens will actually use the parking lots!
Sadly, the parking lots are treated as "parks", and so some of the cars parked on the lots belong to people who are "visiting the parking lot" because they think it's a park, and the lot will also increase property value. This is a problem with some of the parking lot mod assets that I had downloaded as well. Also, the garage asset has static cars baked into the asset, rather than allowing agents to park their cars in the garage. I hope that the parking lots and garages in Cities Skylines 2 are distinct from parks, and are actually used correctly by the citizens.
Parking lots and garages have finally been added as native DLC!
Regardless of the minor flaws with the parking lot assets, it's still great to finally have these in the game. They make a huge difference for making realistic suburbs, and also for making realistic shopping malls, airports, and entertainment venues like sports stadiums, concert stages, amusement parks, and so forth. They're also great as functional decorations for transit hubs, as they give a better feeling of having a "park 'n' ride" service, even though I don't think the agents in the game will use them as such.
Sports and shopping
This brings me to the other new set of assets that I've been long awaiting: athletic parks. The "Sports Venues" pack adds several new sport parks to go along with the tennis court, basketball court, and public pool that have been in the game forever. I can now build a soccer park, football field, and baseball diamond, as well as cricket and Ausie Rules football pitch. These are a great supplement for many public parks, and also pair well with American high schools and colleges. They all come in 2 sizes: a simple field, and a "community" field that includes some bleachers and better lighting. Just like the parking lots, these new assets can completely replace more of my most commonly-used mod assets.
Unfortunately, the new sports parks have to be placed roadside. They cannot be placed along pedestrian paths in Parklife areas. There's also some full-size stadiums, but these new stadiums don't use any of the Match Day features, nor are they usable as "varsity" stadiums for the Campus universities. But I wasn't really expecting them to. After all, new assets and mechanics not using old assets and mechanics is one of my biggest and longest-standing gripes with Cities: Skylines.
New assets and mechanics not being compatible with old assets and mechanics is a long-standing gripe.
Though to be fair to Colossal Order, the latest expansions and DLC packs have been much better with backwards-compatibility. A couple of expansions have explicitly added new assets to the older expansions. These newer DLCs have added new infrastructure and hubs to legacy transit methods from older DLC. And the latest expansion, "Hotels & Retreats", even goes one step further. But I'll save that for a separate review. So hopefully this is will establish a new trend for Colossal Order going into Cities: Skylines 2, such that the sequel will be much better about backwards and forwards compatibility with expansions and DLC.
Sports fields are a great addition to American high school and college campuses.
Oh, and there's some large shopping mall assets too. I like the outdoor shopping mall. It goes great with a pedestrian district from Plazas & Promenades. There's also a few department stores and large grocery stores which also help to make more realistic suburbs. The Shopping Malls content pack also includes a new district style which allows for new low-density commercial buildings that, if placed around parking lots, make good American strip malls. It's just more flexibility and variety for your cities.
Shopping malls look great as part of an American suburbia, or as the centerpiece of a pedestrian area.
Honestly, more options for native district styles is a long-overdue feature for Cities: Skylines. Even though getting mods for stuff like this is easy, I still prefer to avoid going to mods excepts when absolutely necessary. For one thing, lots of mod assets dramatically slows down loading times. Mods can also become un-supported, or rendered redundant (as is the case with the various parking lots, and football field assets I had downloaded), by future DLC, expansion, or patches.
The interface for managing mods is less than ideal. It's easy enough to manage if you have a handful of mods, but when you get to the point that you have hundreds or thousands of assets, it gets out of hand. While there is a convenient "Disable All" button on the Asset Manager, the "Enable All" button is far less useful. I have plenty of mod assets downloaded, which I never use, either because I tried them and didn't like them, or downloaded them but then never really found a use for them. What I would rather have is a button to enable all the mods used by a particular city save file, but as far as I know, no such functionality exists. Hopefully such functionality will be in the sequel? So whenever I disable mods, and then go back to an old save that used mods, I have to go remember which mods were in use, and then manually re-enable them one at a time in the Asset Manager. It's very tedious!
Mods can be rendered obsolete or in-compatible with future DLC.
These DLC packs have basically rendered all of my most commonly-used mod assets obsolete. Pretty much the only mod assets that I would still regularly use are assets for creating public beaches and ski resorts.
More truly is better!
There's some other miscellaneous new content as well. There's some larger-capacity transit vehicles which can help cut down on traffic congestion, as well as some new road types. There was also a new "Hubs & Transport" DLC pack that added a bunch of new transit hubs. These include a lot of hubs that combine bus terminals with other transit lines, such as ferries, trams, monorails, and so forth. There's some pretty useful stuff in here.
I wish there were some higher-capacity cemeteries and crematoriums, since I'm constantly frustrated by the tedium of having to regularly empty my cemeteries. One of the packs does include a new crematorium building, but it's only marginally helpful, since crematoriums just don't work very well to begin with (at least, not in my experience). They rarely send out more than half of their vehicles, and don't bother to fill up their storage capacity, even when death waves are running rampant. Part of the problem is that hearses aren't considered "emergency vehicles" and don't have sirens, so they can't use express lanes, have to stop at red lights, and frequently get stuck in traffic jams. Again, I hope that the sequel finds a way to address the ubiquitous problems with deathcare and death waves that have frustrated Skylines players for 10 years.
Despite some limitations, I'm very happy with the new content from these packs. Looking at all of these content packs as if they were a single expansion, this World Tour / Financial Districts combination would probably be my 3rd or 4th favorite (and most-used) expansion in the game, behind Parklife, Mass Transit, and maybe Industries. A big part of that is that half of the new content is specifically geared towards more accurately modeling American suburbia. As someone who lives in an American suburb, that is the type of city that I'm most familiar with, and also the type of city that I'm more inclined to try to build. And now I have a lot more tools and options for making such a city look closer to how I want and expect it to look (without having to go to mods). I really hope that most (if not all) of this new content returns for Cities: Skylines 2, because I would really miss it if it doesn't.
Content creator packs add more variety and character to a city.