Cities: Skylines II Strategy Updates
Three new strategy guides have dropped for Cities: Skylines II, including 50 updated tips and tricks reflecting recent patches and 80 beginner tips for new players. Key insights include prioritizing infrastructure sequencing, using roundabouts for traffic optimization, and building in phases rather than overextending — principles that mirror real-world urban planning and business scaling strategies.
The launch of *Cities: Skylines II* in October 2023 was met with "mixed or average" reviews from critics and players, largely due to significant performance issues. Even on high-end PCs, players reported low frame rates and stuttering, with developer Colossal Order acknowledging the problems and even stating that the game targeted 30 frames per second. The technical problems overshadowed the game's expanded simulation and new features. The performance issues were attributed to a lack of optimization, including missing level of detail (LOD) models for in-game objects, which meant even distant, tiny details were rendered at full quality. One notable, widely circulated example was that every citizen had fully rendered, high-polygon teeth, which were never meant to be seen by the player. This contributed to the game being unusually demanding on GPUs for a city-builder. In response to the troubled launch, publisher Paradox Interactive and developer Colossal Order apologized for the state of the game. The first paid DLC, "Beach Properties," was so poorly received for its lack of content that it was made free, and refunds were issued to purchasers. This was part of a broader pledge to focus on fixing the core game experience before releasing more paid content. In a major shift, publisher Paradox Interactive announced in late 2025 that original developer Colossal Order would be stepping away from the franchise. Starting in 2026, development of *Cities: Skylines II*, including all future updates and the delayed console versions, was handed over to Iceflake Studios, another Finnish developer owned by Paradox.
