Fans of RTS games will feel right at home with a new game mechanic being introduced in Cities Skylines 2. Milestones are returning to the game, but the progression trees are new. Each type of city service will now have what amounts to a tech tree, where you can choose the path to go down, which will dictate which services unlock first.
Some look purely cosmetic, like the parks, for instance, in which all choices lead to large sports parks and tourist attractions. Power is more fleshed out, with each city choosing whether to focus on renewable or coal/gas power plants early.
The major unknown with this dev diary is whether the game progression mechanics mean something to each city built or if it is a grinding mechanism to add more time to the game.
One interesting pushback I’ve seen from some YouTubers deals with the airports. They are back to being homogenized, with the airport DLC level of placing terminals and runways gone, and in its place are static types of airports. It feels like a conscious choice to unveil a more detailed DLC pack after the game’s release, but it feels like a bit of regression for the game that has seemingly worked to bring together some of the more popular mods and DLCs into the base game.
Overall, it adds to the game, but it feels like a foundation is being laid for DLC over a mechanic purely for the base game. You can get a feel for what different Cities Skylines Youtubers think of the mechanic below.
We are closing in on the final developer diaries, with three remaining before the game goes radio silent a month before its release in late October.
