Cities Skylines 2 Overhauls Economy with Massive New Patch

Following a particularly disastrous year since its launch, the developers of Cities Skylines 2 are continuing to bring improvements to the game through updates and fixes. The new Economy 2.0 update is bringing countless changes to the game’s systems, making things more balanced and enabling players to make a more productive and healthy city.

Check out the more vital patch notes below, with the full list – including those about mods – here:

Building Upgrade Rework

More control over upgrades from the Selected Info Panel of City Service buildings.
- All upgrade types can be removed from the Selected Info Panel of a City Service building.
- Sub-buildings can be removed by using the bulldozer as well.
- Sub-buildings can be relocated.
- Sub-building can be turned on/off.
- Sub-buildings can be selected.
Sub-building upgrades can now be placed freely within a radius limit from the main building.
Updated City Service tutorial.

Economy updates

Government subsidies for the city have been removed to make the economy more challenging and transparent.
Taxes and Services tabs in the Economy panel now unlock at milestone 1 and the Production tab unlocks at milestone 2.
Added “Import City Services” city policy to toggle import of city services from Outside Connections.
- Separate imported service items in the budget panel.
- Outside Connections won’t send service vehicles if the policy is toggled off.
- Added imported service expenses for ambulance, hearse, fire engine, garbage, and police. The fee scales with the city’s population.
City Service changes:
- Increased chance of entering and graduating both Elementary School and High School.
- Adults can now apply to High School if they didn’t finish it (1% chance, can apply 3 times).
- Garbage accumulation accounts for students, employees, prisoners, occupants, and homeless people in the calculation.
- Balanced garbage city service upgrades.
- Buildings now pay a fixed fee for garbage collection instead of a variable amount based on garbage collected.
- Adjusted garbage accumulation values.
- Adjusted upkeep costs of most City Service Buildings.
- Wages for city service employees are paid from player money
- Increased electricity import price.
- Increased the time it takes for Ambulance and Hearse notifications to appear.
- Adjusted the Service Fee curves for efficiency and consumption.
- Adjusted water service fees (With old saves the game will force reset the value to the new default position).
- Increased the amount of workers for
  - Medical Clinic
  - Small Coal Power Plant
  - Police Station
  - Cemetery
  - Fire House
  - Landfill
Demand changes:
- Residential density depends on household wealth and family size.
- Household spawns are based on average citizen happiness, homelessness, tax, available student positions, and available jobs.
- Commercial companies spawn based on household needs, reducing how often the same companies appear in the city.
- Commercial and industrial demand has been adjusted to avoid “Not enough customers” complaints for newly spawned companies.
- Taxes now have more effect on demand.
Employment changes:
- Workers from Outside Connections no longer pay tax.
- Workers from Outside Connections are not included in population or workplace infoviews.
- Workers from Outside Connections will look for new job more frequently.
- Workplaces in Outside Connections are less desirable than workplaces in the city.
- Only citizens who don’t have health problems (such as Sick or Injured) count as valid employable citizens.
- Citizens can only receive unemployment for a limited amount of time. When they run out of unemployment, they will complain about “High Rent” and move away.
- Fixed population jobs & workers amount issue.
Households & happiness changes:
- Households without adults will now move away.
- Rich households prefer larger homes in attractive neighborhoods (higher land value, good service coverage, etc), poor households prefer cheaper houses and don’t mind services being far away.
- Household needs are calculated based on their spendable money (what’s left after paying rent), so they now spend their money more reasonably.
- Reduced the number of senior citizens moving into the city.
- Adjusted wealth happiness factor to a reasonable value.
- Low happiness affects the chance a household will move out of the city.
- Households consider the garbage fee when calculating their spendable money.
- Added curve parameter to death rate to smooth the death of senior citizens (existing cities will experience an immediate death wave)
Production and Company changes:
- Adjusted values for:
  - Resource production.
  - Resource price.
  - Household wages.
  - Tax income.
- Resource price now has two parts, a lower one for industrial processing, and another for commercial companies’ service prices. Customers (households) pay full price, which is both parts combined.
- Changed the workforce needed per unit for resource processing to a preconfigured amount instead of automatically calculated at the start of the game.
- Companies now go bankrupt instead of looking for new locations if their current property isn’t suitable for profit.
- Changed Industrial Manufacturing space multiplier from 1 to 5 to allow more workers per grid so fewer buildings are needed.
- Adjusted office employee amount.
- Adjusted amount of work required per product to decrease city income.
- Adjusted simulated service prices.
- Improved companies to move away not just because of bankruptcy, but also because of the tax rate and workforce factors.
- Rebalanced Extractor Resource greatly reducing profitability.
- Balanced Industrial and Office companies Default Output Amount, Max Workers Per cell, Resources Initial Price, and Work needed per unit. Increased Space multiplier of Industrial and Office zones.
Rent and Building Level changes:
- Removed the virtual landlord so building upkeep is now paid equally by all renters.
- Added new rent calculation: Rent = (LandValue + (ZoneType * Building Level)) * LotSize * SpaceMultiplier.
- Tweaked “High Rent” notifications to be based on the household’s income. Even if they currently don’t have enough money in their balance, they won’t complain and will instead spend less money on resource consumption.
- Building level is now based on whether renters can pay the upkeep fee. When they pay the full fee, the building condition increases by a constant amount, if they cannot pay it, the building condition decreases by the same amount.
Crime rate adjustments:
- Fixed police service coverage for zoneable assets. The police station will patrol regularly to decrease the crime rate, and all zone type buildings will increase crime rate depending on the police service coverage.
- NA and EU PoliceVehicle02 Crime Reduction value changed to match the NA and EU policevehicle01 value.
- Removed crime scene pathfinding limitation of building’s crime rate to avoid all criminals having the same pathfinding result to queue up to do crime.
- Added new crime factor to lower crime probability in cities with larger populations.
- Lower crime recurrence probability due to criminals needing to wait a long while to remove criminal tag.
Increased the cost of purchasing Map Tiles.
Added upkeep fee for new map tiles
- The 9 starting are excluded and do not have have map tile upkeep fee
Added option to “Unlock all map tiles” (also disables achievements and the tile upkeep cost)
Increased construction cost and upkeep costs for roads.
Moved upkeep breakdown from Tooltip to Selected info panel.
Reduced the amount of money the player gets back from bulldozing roads and buildings.
Adjusted the max shopping amount of the household from 4000 to 2000.
Adjusted Specialized Industry Unlocking to start from milestone 0.
Fixed taxes being collected after bulldozing the entire City.
Fixed Citizen Wealth Infoview not highlighting households with ‘Wretched’ wealth level.
Fixed the wrong moving away statistic data being displayed.
Fixed a newly spawned company complaining about a lack of workers.
Fixed commercial zones incur massive amounts of debt for the citizens.
Fixed refund inconsistencies when replacing roads and stops.
Fixed high death possibility issue:
- Fire accidents now will only cause 1% death compared to the previous 50% death of an on fire medium/high density building.
- The building’s destruction event will now cause 50% death compared to previous 90% death of citizens who are still in it.
Fixed Outside Connection workers won’t find a job.
Fixed trade cost divided by zero bug.