Cities Skylines 2 will feature a better traffic system that will ease some burdens from the initial game, while creating some new interesting scenarios.
The deep dive covers some interesting aspects of the upcoming simulation game. Instead of Cims utilizing the “shortest route” consistently, they will instead have a tree of dynamics that will influence their decisions. Some of the decision making involves considering time, distance, cost, and safety.
Some interesting perks of the system include the ability for Cims to outright avoid traffic, if a street is too congested they might turn around and find a new way around. This also goes for accidents…. yeah accidents! A new major feature of the game seems to be that Cims can get into accidents with pedestrians, cars, and even buildings, which will create stress on your EMT and road services crews. Influencing accidents will be road designs, weather, and Cims themselves.
Other important aspects include building better networks of roads which don’t have too many intersections, or tricky interchanges, to reduce risk. Cost of tolls and transportation is also factored in, which means we most likely can’t cheese busy toll roads with tolls anymore. Also highlighted was the need for parking which was a recent addition in the first game via the last expansion. It’s noted that areas with better parking will attract more people to meetup.
One important thing that seems to be noted in the comments, and not covered in the video, was the official social page posting “please use all lanes!” which got pinned to the top. I’m assuming this means a major issue with traffic is being fixed in the sequel. In the current game, for whatever reason, Cims like to all merge over to the closest lane to their exist, no matter how far away they are from said exit. This creates huge traffic jams because 2 or 3 lanes are not being used, or because Cims feel the need to cut off zooming traffic to get over. Hopefully, hopefully, this issue is fixed and we can see highways function like normal.
