One of many points with the unique Cities: Skylines is the way in which you unlock new public transportation choices. The unlocks are primarily based solely on inhabitants milestones: you get entry to taxis and buses when your inhabitants reaches 650 folks, however cable vehicles, trains, trolleybuses, and monorails come later down the road when you have got sufficient residents to qualify as a Huge City and a Small Metropolis. Meaning you want 1000’s of residents earlier than you possibly can entry these essential companies.
The issue is that well-designed cities are constructed round public transportation programs like trains and trams, and that works a lot better than constructing a metropolis that helps 1000’s of residents and then attempting to cram public transportation into an present design. Lay the tracks earlier than you construct the skyscrapers, in different phrases.
That is why it is nice information that in Cities: Skylines 2, new modes of public transportation will not be unlocked by inhabitants milestones. As an alternative, as we discovered at the moment within the new Cities: Skylines improvement diary, public transportation choices are unlocked utilizing one thing known as “improvement factors.”
Sadly we do not know precisely the way you earn improvement factors—that is being saved for a future improvement diary. However we do know you’ll spend these factors on the kind of public transportation you wish to unlock subsequent. Buses and taxis will nonetheless unlock primarily based on inhabitants progress, however after that, all the pieces else will likely be unlocked by spending your improvement factors, so the selection will likely be yours as an alternative of being primarily based on the scale of your metropolis.
That is a wise change. As the event diary says, the unique milestone system “resulted in equally constructed cities as every choice was at all times unlocked on the similar time, whatever the participant’s want to make use of them or not.” In Cities: Skylines 2, if you wish to focus your younger metropolis on utilizing subways, ferries, streetcars, and presumably even airplanes (and hopefully blimps!) you’ll unlock them within the order you need and get entry to the programs you want sooner than you’d in any other case.
I feel it is a nice tweak to the method, and I am hopeful the event factors system will lengthen to different elements of the sport—public transportation is not the one factor dictated by inhabitants milestones, but in addition distinctive buildings, totally different industries, and different companies. The extra choices we get to make about after we get to entry new companies, the higher.