Developer Colossal Order Ltd. and publisher Paradox Interactive have released the eagerly-awaited sequel Cities: Skylines II. The game aims to deliver world-building without limits, following its motto “if you can dream it, you can build it”. At the moment, the game has received mixed user reviews on Steam, with many users pointing out the lack of optimization.
The team already shared a blog post with the post-release plans and goals, including addressing the performance troubles. The developers have pointed out that current issues are tied to the rendering of the game. Decreasing the quality of visual effects such as Depth of Field, Global Illumination, and Volumetrics will get you a fair performance without affecting simulation.
Here’s the suggestion on how to get better performance at the cost of some eye candy:
- Reduce screen resolution to 1080p
- Disable Depth of Field and Volumetrics
- Reduce Global Illumination
Following the release, the team will push out a series of small patches (and likely a big one) to significantly improve different areas of performance.
“With the upcoming patches, the situation will largely improve with default settings. It is worth mentioning that for a game like this, the performance target is to run at a steady 30FPS minimum. There is no real benefit in a city builder to aim for higher FPS (unlike a multiplayer shooter) as a growing city will inevitably become CPU-bound. What matters more with this type of game is to avoid stutters and have a responsive UI.”
Cities: Skylines II – PC System Requirements
MINIMUM:
- Requires a 64-bit processor and operating system
- OS: Windows® 10 Home 64 Bit
- Processor: Intel® Core™ i7-6700K | AMD® Ryzen™ 5 2600X
- Memory: 8 GB RAM
- Graphics: Nvidia® GeForce™ GTX 970 (4 GB) | AMD® Radeon™ RX 480 (8 GB)
- Storage: 60 GB available space
RECOMMENDED:
- Requires a 64-bit processor and operating system
- OS: Windows® 10 Home 64 Bit | Windows® 11
- Processor: Intel® Core™ i5-12600K | AMD® Ryzen™ 7 5800X
- Memory: 16 GB RAM
- Graphics: Nvidia® GeForce™ RTX 3080 (10 GB) | AMD® Radeon™ RX 6800 XT (16 GB)
- Storage: 60 GB available space
