Paradox releases Cities: Skylines II for PC, highlights upcoming fixes

Paradox Interactive has released Cities: Skylines II for PC. The game is now available via Steam, the Microsoft Store and Game Pass. The company previously warned of performance issues and in an ama, Colossal Order further explains upcoming performance fixes.

In the Reddit-ama the developer elaborates on the promised performance fixes to be released after the release of Cities: Skylines II. Currently the developer works including a solution for stuttering images, which are caused by a synchronization problem within the simulation. According to the company’s CTO, this problem depends on the CPU in a system and the way a city is built in the game.

Furthermore, the developer says it is working on reducing the number of vertices that need to be processed per frame and optimizing the visual effects depth of field, global illumination and volumetrics. According to the CTO, turning off these effects should ensure a better frame rate. The upcoming patches are intended to improve PC performance with the standard settings, including the mentioned effects.

The Colossal Order CEO also says that Cities: Skylines II was made with a frame rate of 30fps as a guideline. “The performance target is 30fps because, unlike shooters, for example, in city building games it does not benefit much to play at a higher fps; a larger city mainly has an effect on the CPU. That is why the simulation in the game is intended for 30fps.” According to him, it doesn’t hurt to play the game at, for example, 60fps to get a better visual effect.

Cities: Skylines II is now available for Windows PCs via the platforms listed. In the run-up to the PC release of the game, Paradox and Colossal Order already announced that performance issues are expected on certain systems. The game was originally going to be released simultaneously for the PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series consoles, but the console version was postponed a month ago to spring 2024.