Okay so after yesterday and the great additions to mods you guys all helped turned me onto, I have a list of what I'm running, after about 8 hours of testing all these appear to be stable still and working together, having eliminated the ones that were causing me to crash (only on reload) and I'm pretty sure one of the mods was making my game constantly hick-up and run crappy (The mod called Move It and all its sub-mods that it recommends you download when you try to get it). Other than those two issues I have been having butter smooth performance with City Skylines and it seems to be running much more stable and optimized then I remember it from a few years ago.
Mods not yet recommended that I discovered on my recent return.
*
*Hide It!: Allows you to turn of just about anything in game you don't like, from ui elements to graphical effects / settings to repetitive props / billboards that stand out and ruin immersion. I use it to turn off the fake terrible pollution coloring from Industry and surrounds it with bad colors that makes it stand out and look abstract from the rest of the art, a must have for me.
*Chirpy Exterminator: Self explanatory, once in a while you would get a chirp clueing you into a problem in your city, once you start using City Vitals Watch you no longer need this stupid annoying thing (Are they really trying to push dlc by selling hats for this thing lmao, embarrassing).
*Cargo Hold Fix: Makes planes, trains and ships take bigger loads closer to full capacity than leaving sometimes almost empty, cuts down on traffic (Haven't actually verified any of this to say its working for sure but seems like its necessary).
*City Vitals Watch: This one is a must have imo and I'm surprised the base game didn't already do this. It adds a small at a glance UI element on a moveable (translucent adjustability also) tiny window that show you where you stand as far as power, water, sewage, etc. Everything you need to keep track of and need to know about, once I started using this thing I can't live without it, having to go into all the map views and layers to get each piece of information. Really frees you up to be creative and lose yourself while still keeping everything right there.
*Less Steam: This mod disables some of the network connectivity traffic with loading the game and connecting to steam to show and load stuff on the games main menu, noticeable load improvement once this mod is enabled.
*No Border Limit Camera: This mod is very useful when your starting the game and need to look around to see your connections and resources are and getting a plan together on where and how your going to build. Lets you look around freely over the city tile border and zoom out etc.
*Random Tree Rotation: Randomizes the rotation of trees so they arnt all the same and look fake. Makes a big difference in authentic looking landscape.
*Unlimited Trees Mod: Make forests thick and beautiful without reaching a arbitrary limit and having other trees delete when you add new ones.
*All Areas Purchasable: Lets you buy 25 tiles instead of the 9 from vanilla. They unlock organically as you play and when you hit Metro at 65k Pop you get the option to purchase the rest of the areas. Fits into the vanilla progression and makes you earn then while giving you a huge (But still reasonable and non game crashing) area to work in. I was trying the 81 tiles mod but it is outdated and was corrupting the game, plus it just seemed like two much area that would break the system at some point.
!!!!*Real Time: Amazing mod I have discovered yesterday and totally changed the game for me. Instead of arbitrary weeks passing instantly and being detached to what your cims are doing in the city this revamps it. Single days pass and hours per day, it sets cims schedules and workdays and your city takes on a realistic traffic pattern in accordance with whether its the weekend or weekday, lunchtime or start or end work. It has so many little touches to customize the experience how you want, definitely check this mod out. It chances how money accrues and time works, it ties the entire game together and makes it feel more realistic and immersive, I highly recommend this mod!!!
Suggested Mods from earlier in the thread and my takes on them.
Automatic Bulldoze v2: Suggested above, a must have QOL so you dont have to run around and bulldoze abandoned buildings. Also bulldoze's burnt down buildings, not sure if this conflicts with them adding no auto rebuild from the Natural Disasters DLC. This mod seems to be the better one, but the bulldozing of abandoned structures does seem delayed and take time, mod might need some patching.
Traffic Manager: President Edition [STABLE]:Mentioned above, thank you so much for turning me onto this. Despite all the other precision control this gives you over everything traffic related, it gives your cims the ability to modify their route due to real time conditions in the city and choose different paths depending on encountered traffic / backups. This is totally necessary to help make traffic patterns and prediction realistic and not stuck to some arbitrary thing like your cim departing for travel with a locked set route despite traffic and ignoring other obvious paths that would be more efficient/ superior (There is another version of this mod that is the experimental version, mod author warns to use at your own risk).
Precision Engineering: Helps making the roads do what you want and shows angle information at a glance, this ones pretty old but still works i'm not actually sure if some of its compatibility has been added to the base game and if Fine Road Anarchy and Fine Road Tool superseded its usefulness and make it redundant. One of the first City Skylines mods I've ever used and have been using it for years.
Extra Landscape Tools: Suggested above and great to have, I was using a mod called tree brush and this has that and way more.
Fine Road Anarchy and Fine Road Tool: Same author and synergize together, recommended above and cant live without them. As a casual player who keeps leaving and coming back the behavior of the vanilla road tool is madenning and this thing really is necessary to have a level of control and precision.
Loading Screen Mod: I'm not sure if this thing is actually helping or not, it seems like it should and it sounds good, but I feel like loading takes twice as long with it well see.
Network Extensions 2: Suggested above, huge addition of content, I haven't really had a chance to use much of it, but im looking forward to giving pedestrians and bicycles options and their own integrated networks. Some really cool roads with dedicated turning lanes etc to add lots of variety and things to play with.
Roundabout Builder: Recommend above, it's freaking amazing and makes using these convenient and easy. I find that roundabouts are superior traffic solutions for early to medium traffic management, before you can unlock and afford bigger roads, exits, intersections.
WG Citizen Life Rebalance v2.6 / WG Realistic Population v.8.4: Mentioned above, Makes things more reality based, adding to realistic behavior and should synergize well with improved traffic AI and Real Time scheduling the totally change the game and make it something relatable and realistic and less arbitrary / generic / gamey.
!!! Old / Outdated mods causing performance issues, errors and crashes:
**Cross The Line: Pretty sure this is one of the mods causing me to crash on a reload of any city I started with it.
**Unlimited Outside Connections: In addition to not working to create real time connections in game, this was one of the factors causing every reload of a initial city to crash and hang during loading (Synergized and recommend to use with Cross The Line, when I eliminated these mods from the list the problem went away).
**Move It and its recommend submods: These were causing my butter smooth like performance to turn into a janky stuttering affair.
**Road Removal Tool: Seems outdated gives me all kinds of error messages when I start a game so I decided it had to go despite some niche convience if you want to bulldoze a city quick.
City Skylines seems to go two different ways. You start out with small money and grow your city organicly and unlock everything, tends to dictitate how a city is going to look at first and makes you settle and throw up temporary stuff that ends up becoming your city. Sometimes you just want to plan everything out and have a vision, and when you want to do that I recommend.
*Unlock All Tiles at Start: Gives you every starting tile (25 if you use the mod above) and lets you instantly start using the entire map, no more arbitrary tile unlocks.
*Start Money Mod 1,000,000: You start with a cool mil. Not enough to make the game totally feel broken but enough to start laying out your vision and not having to go through the unlock / progress route so you don't have to settle for crap right off the bat if your trying to build or just have fun. The game has a built in mod of unlimited money but I don't like playing in a no consequence mode, sometimes it's nice to just start with some cash so you can do something in your head. Having said that, I will be playing organically without the Unlock All Tiles and starting money mod because I like to progress and earn my city sometimes, it can feel more rewarding for me so that's the route Im going to be going in, I just wanted to post these incase anybody else happens across this and wants some help starting out open ended. Also necessary would be enabling the built in no progression unlocks or whatever its called, where everything (Roads, infrastructure, buildings and monuments etc) are unlocked from the start also.
So this is the master mod list ill be running for my next game, and after my test cities last night, Im very excited, totally different vibe and change from the base game. So much control and a world that will function more realistically you can relate to instead the vanilla abstract systems. I thank you guys for the mod ideas and inspiring me to explore and really flesh out my experience, and I hope my mod trouble shooting will help someone at some point.
Mods not yet recommended that I discovered on my recent return.
*
*Hide It!: Allows you to turn of just about anything in game you don't like, from ui elements to graphical effects / settings to repetitive props / billboards that stand out and ruin immersion. I use it to turn off the fake terrible pollution coloring from Industry and surrounds it with bad colors that makes it stand out and look abstract from the rest of the art, a must have for me.
*Chirpy Exterminator: Self explanatory, once in a while you would get a chirp clueing you into a problem in your city, once you start using City Vitals Watch you no longer need this stupid annoying thing (Are they really trying to push dlc by selling hats for this thing lmao, embarrassing).
*Cargo Hold Fix: Makes planes, trains and ships take bigger loads closer to full capacity than leaving sometimes almost empty, cuts down on traffic (Haven't actually verified any of this to say its working for sure but seems like its necessary).
*City Vitals Watch: This one is a must have imo and I'm surprised the base game didn't already do this. It adds a small at a glance UI element on a moveable (translucent adjustability also) tiny window that show you where you stand as far as power, water, sewage, etc. Everything you need to keep track of and need to know about, once I started using this thing I can't live without it, having to go into all the map views and layers to get each piece of information. Really frees you up to be creative and lose yourself while still keeping everything right there.
*Less Steam: This mod disables some of the network connectivity traffic with loading the game and connecting to steam to show and load stuff on the games main menu, noticeable load improvement once this mod is enabled.
*No Border Limit Camera: This mod is very useful when your starting the game and need to look around to see your connections and resources are and getting a plan together on where and how your going to build. Lets you look around freely over the city tile border and zoom out etc.
*Random Tree Rotation: Randomizes the rotation of trees so they arnt all the same and look fake. Makes a big difference in authentic looking landscape.
*Unlimited Trees Mod: Make forests thick and beautiful without reaching a arbitrary limit and having other trees delete when you add new ones.
*All Areas Purchasable: Lets you buy 25 tiles instead of the 9 from vanilla. They unlock organically as you play and when you hit Metro at 65k Pop you get the option to purchase the rest of the areas. Fits into the vanilla progression and makes you earn then while giving you a huge (But still reasonable and non game crashing) area to work in. I was trying the 81 tiles mod but it is outdated and was corrupting the game, plus it just seemed like two much area that would break the system at some point.
!!!!*Real Time: Amazing mod I have discovered yesterday and totally changed the game for me. Instead of arbitrary weeks passing instantly and being detached to what your cims are doing in the city this revamps it. Single days pass and hours per day, it sets cims schedules and workdays and your city takes on a realistic traffic pattern in accordance with whether its the weekend or weekday, lunchtime or start or end work. It has so many little touches to customize the experience how you want, definitely check this mod out. It chances how money accrues and time works, it ties the entire game together and makes it feel more realistic and immersive, I highly recommend this mod!!!
Suggested Mods from earlier in the thread and my takes on them.
Automatic Bulldoze v2: Suggested above, a must have QOL so you dont have to run around and bulldoze abandoned buildings. Also bulldoze's burnt down buildings, not sure if this conflicts with them adding no auto rebuild from the Natural Disasters DLC. This mod seems to be the better one, but the bulldozing of abandoned structures does seem delayed and take time, mod might need some patching.
Traffic Manager: President Edition [STABLE]:Mentioned above, thank you so much for turning me onto this. Despite all the other precision control this gives you over everything traffic related, it gives your cims the ability to modify their route due to real time conditions in the city and choose different paths depending on encountered traffic / backups. This is totally necessary to help make traffic patterns and prediction realistic and not stuck to some arbitrary thing like your cim departing for travel with a locked set route despite traffic and ignoring other obvious paths that would be more efficient/ superior (There is another version of this mod that is the experimental version, mod author warns to use at your own risk).
Precision Engineering: Helps making the roads do what you want and shows angle information at a glance, this ones pretty old but still works i'm not actually sure if some of its compatibility has been added to the base game and if Fine Road Anarchy and Fine Road Tool superseded its usefulness and make it redundant. One of the first City Skylines mods I've ever used and have been using it for years.
Extra Landscape Tools: Suggested above and great to have, I was using a mod called tree brush and this has that and way more.
Fine Road Anarchy and Fine Road Tool: Same author and synergize together, recommended above and cant live without them. As a casual player who keeps leaving and coming back the behavior of the vanilla road tool is madenning and this thing really is necessary to have a level of control and precision.
Loading Screen Mod: I'm not sure if this thing is actually helping or not, it seems like it should and it sounds good, but I feel like loading takes twice as long with it well see.
Network Extensions 2: Suggested above, huge addition of content, I haven't really had a chance to use much of it, but im looking forward to giving pedestrians and bicycles options and their own integrated networks. Some really cool roads with dedicated turning lanes etc to add lots of variety and things to play with.
Roundabout Builder: Recommend above, it's freaking amazing and makes using these convenient and easy. I find that roundabouts are superior traffic solutions for early to medium traffic management, before you can unlock and afford bigger roads, exits, intersections.
WG Citizen Life Rebalance v2.6 / WG Realistic Population v.8.4: Mentioned above, Makes things more reality based, adding to realistic behavior and should synergize well with improved traffic AI and Real Time scheduling the totally change the game and make it something relatable and realistic and less arbitrary / generic / gamey.
!!! Old / Outdated mods causing performance issues, errors and crashes:
**Cross The Line: Pretty sure this is one of the mods causing me to crash on a reload of any city I started with it.
**Unlimited Outside Connections: In addition to not working to create real time connections in game, this was one of the factors causing every reload of a initial city to crash and hang during loading (Synergized and recommend to use with Cross The Line, when I eliminated these mods from the list the problem went away).
**Move It and its recommend submods: These were causing my butter smooth like performance to turn into a janky stuttering affair.
**Road Removal Tool: Seems outdated gives me all kinds of error messages when I start a game so I decided it had to go despite some niche convience if you want to bulldoze a city quick.
City Skylines seems to go two different ways. You start out with small money and grow your city organicly and unlock everything, tends to dictitate how a city is going to look at first and makes you settle and throw up temporary stuff that ends up becoming your city. Sometimes you just want to plan everything out and have a vision, and when you want to do that I recommend.
*Unlock All Tiles at Start: Gives you every starting tile (25 if you use the mod above) and lets you instantly start using the entire map, no more arbitrary tile unlocks.
*Start Money Mod 1,000,000: You start with a cool mil. Not enough to make the game totally feel broken but enough to start laying out your vision and not having to go through the unlock / progress route so you don't have to settle for crap right off the bat if your trying to build or just have fun. The game has a built in mod of unlimited money but I don't like playing in a no consequence mode, sometimes it's nice to just start with some cash so you can do something in your head. Having said that, I will be playing organically without the Unlock All Tiles and starting money mod because I like to progress and earn my city sometimes, it can feel more rewarding for me so that's the route Im going to be going in, I just wanted to post these incase anybody else happens across this and wants some help starting out open ended. Also necessary would be enabling the built in no progression unlocks or whatever its called, where everything (Roads, infrastructure, buildings and monuments etc) are unlocked from the start also.
So this is the master mod list ill be running for my next game, and after my test cities last night, Im very excited, totally different vibe and change from the base game. So much control and a world that will function more realistically you can relate to instead the vanilla abstract systems. I thank you guys for the mod ideas and inspiring me to explore and really flesh out my experience, and I hope my mod trouble shooting will help someone at some point.
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