Anybody who is even remotely interested in Cities Skylines II has probably heard, read or even experienced first-hand the issues that the game currently has.
I have given the game a few tries and will continue doing so when the developers release patches because I am certain that the game will be great – one day. Once they have had the time to iron out the many bugs and the performance issues.
In the meantime, I was looking for an alternative to play. There is Highrise City, for example. The difference is that you don’t only need money, but also need to make sure you have all the necessary resources to grow your city (wood, bricks, insulation materials, fish, vegetables, and the list goes on…) which you are much better off producing yourself than trying to buy everything. The main downside, however, is that I am still experiencing random game crashes. Even with auto-save, it just sucks to lose progress so often.
I went back to Cities Skylines but my main issue with that game is that it feels like there’s several features stitched together. I painted a university district but wasn’t allowed to place the Trade College inside. That one needed a general district (if I remember correctly). It’s a mix of DLC content and free content, I think. Either way, it is still a great game, of course! But seeing what it has evolved to now with CS2 (imagining, for a moment, that the game has no bugs and runs well), it makes me sad to play this.
I tried Urbek City Builder again but that one feels too much like a puzzle. “You can place building B if you have at least 3 of building A in the area, but no other building B around”. It’s a nice game, but not what I want from a city-builder.
Then I stumbled over Citystate II in my library. I did buy it this summer, but then forgot about it again… or maybe something annoyed me and I just don’t remember what it was. What I noticed immediately was the lack of a “real traffic simulation”: You can follow some cars that don’t really go anywhere. They just despawn at some point. Others, however, can be accurately tracked. But this game’s specialty is that you focus more on governing the city. For example, you build an immigration office and can choose how much immigration you want to allow from least developed countries, developing countries and developed countries. Additionally, you create a nation and can then create cities within that nation.
The developer announced that work on the sequel has begun, so this game will sadly not be getting any more updates.
So, for the time being, I will continue to explore Citystate II while watching and waiting for more patches for Cities Skylines 2.
Nerdy Bookahs 
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