It's time for another Cities Skylines expansion pack! This is the fifth one and
it arrives for $12.99 here in the US. And is titled Green Cities.
...yay?
Gotta admit as far as concepts for packs for Cities Skylines goes, this was very low on my
personal list of things that I really wanted in the game. But I'm still curious,
you're curious, we're all curious, so let's get serious about diving into this
thing which includes over 300 and something new assets: eco-friendly
buildings, services, specializations policies, scenarios, and maps. And it also
introduces some gameplay tweaks, specifically things like road
pollution. In particular, noise pollution from roads has been redone entirely to
be affected by the type of vehicles using it, not just the size or capacity
of the road. So in other words now you have electric cars, biofuel buses, and
combustion engine bans that you can put into place to both lower air and noise
pollution from roads. It's a thing that's increasingly happening in real life so
of course adding it to the game makes some sense, I guess. As for a more game-y
thing here, roads can also be thoroughly customized through the built-in modding
tools. A very welcome addition, I do say. And it's also been included in the
latest free patch so mod way with those roads, make cool stuff because I'm too
lazy to do it. And also in the Green Cities pack you get some new
specializations for office, commercial, and residential zones. Districts
containing offices lets you specialize them as an IT Cluster now, which provides
you some awesome-looking buildings and some very high production from their
production. Commercial zones can receive the Organic and Local Produce
specialization resulting in hippies --er-- businesses catering to everything from
organic coffee, to fresh markets for food, to herbal dispensaries, to electric
vehicle charging hotspots and all that kind of stuff. And residential can be
classed as Self-Sufficient now, a step beyond the existing High-Tech Housing
policy. Homes go largely off the grid here, requiring
very little power or water from your main cities. However, while the high-rises
look pretty futuristic and kind of fun to look at with their earthy exteriors,
low-density just looks gray and drab and kind of samey. The models themselves are
nicely detailed and they seem more realistically proportioned. And they
don't have that ridiculous color scheme going on, which I appreciate. But they all
just sort of blend together. I don't know, it's a personal preference, but I still
think that there could have been a little more color and variety. There's
also a notable lack of grass in the yards of these lots. And before you say
"it's not eco-friendly to have grass in your yard," well that may be true in some
climates, sure. Drier places it makes sense to not have grass. But I build my
city in a place where it rains almost every single day. Grass is everywhere by
default, but as soon as they place down their gray samey-looking buildings the
grass goes away, I don't really get it. For a "green" cities pack I guess I
expected a little more green. But hey, at least we got more trees that they've
added here as well. I probably still prefer some of the custom-made ones that
I've seen but these are nice to have in there officially. But anyway, the other
main additions to this are the other new buildings, both alternatives to existing
buildings or as new options unique to this pack. Almost all of them are more
expensive, because that's the price to pay for "going green" here. But the benefit
is that they take up less power and water, output less pollution, or give you
a new way to deal with old concerns. There are new leisure buildings, many of
which also come in the latest patch. You get various, gardens, parks, and havens of
all sorts of sizes and shapes. Including a ziggurat, a yoga garden, a place to
learn about the birds and the bees, and several buildings that float on water.
Mm! Aesthetically pleasing but functionally
the same. There are also alternatives to elementary school, high school, and
universities. And respectively these come in the forms of a community school, an
institute of creative arts, and the Modern Technology Institute or MIT -- er
MTI. Yeah I see what they did. There's also new resource buildings for water,
power, and garbage. Including a solar updraft tower that looks pretty rad, some
geo and ocean thermal energy converters, cleaner options for sewage outlets and
treatment, and recycling and garbage collection centers, the latter of which
deals with water pollution by also floating out in the water like those
restaurants and parks and other things. Oh yes, Georgie, they all float!
And there's also a new monument: the Ultimate Recycling Center, because Ultimate
MK was already taken and I guess recycling normally is passe. Anyway, that's pretty
much the Cities Green Stuff Pack or whatever it's called. Overall I like it!
But as usual it's unnecessary to the core game and doesn't really do much
more than throw a few light wrinkles into your city building fabric for you
to leisurely iron out. I wish it added a bit more challenge or fixed up existing
problems rather than just giving players a slightly different urban planning
strategy. For some people that's enough, they don't expect this to do anything
more! And that's probably the best way to look at it because we're probably just
gonna have to wait around for Cities Skylines 2 to get that stuff, because at
this rate it seems like they're happy just giving little piecemeal, slight
additions and updates every so often. But anyway that's getting a little bit
off-topic; that was the Cities Skylines Green Cities pack! And if you enjoyed
this look at this thing then perhaps you'd like to see some of the other LGR
episodes that I've put together. And there are new ones every Monday and
Friday on a variety of topics, because I have interests that I can't keep aligned
and I jump all over the place and that's just what I do.
But if you like that then awesome, thank you for watching!