Cities Xxl, Experience So Far...

Hi XL Nation, been a little while since I last posted, wanted to give some feedback on what I've seen in XXL so far. Downloaded it over the weekend and spent a few hours in game. The good news is that it didn't crash once, but then again, I'm not running any mods outside of the ones in the Workshop and my city was only 150K capacity. While it used all cores, it seemed to heavily use the first.

The biggest thing that struck me was the removal of features and items. I can't remember how the previous versions of XL looked pre-UIM, so please forgive me if I mention items that have been added through UIM.
- Didn't see an option to select road types when creating a city (German vs. USA vs. UK etc)
- Building straight bridges is not an option (straight and 45 degree angle options are not there)
- A junction was removed from the Highway section (frustrating because it was the one I wanted!)
- The distinction between business and leisure hotels is lost (was this a UIM feature?)
- Yes, the trading resets to zero when reloading a city (sad face)

Some good points -
- The skyboxes are a great addition
- Even though the UI updates are merely a re-skin, they are easier on the eye and work for me.
- The sound FX are a tad better. I mean just a small little bit better, no creaking. Still ended up muting them.

Will be great to hear from you other city builders, what have you all found?

 

Forgot to mention that one. Nope, not in XXL so far.

 

Thanks Spock, somehow overlooked the road selection!

Actually reminds me of another issue, the distinction between standard and sandbox gameplay.

First question is what makes this different to just removing the building restrictions through the Cheat part of the menu. Is it just the resource availability map?

Secondly, I initially loaded the city in sandbox mode, built oil fields based on the availability (everywhere). I then fired up the game later, entered through the standard game option and reloaded my city. The resource areas had changed to just a couple streaks outside the area where the oil fields were. I immediately exited the city and got back to the start menu, reloaded the game mode as sandbox. The oil fields were still the same unfortunately. Had to exit out of the game and restart again to get the resource map to reset back to sandbox mode.

 

Thank gbojanic and JimmiG,

Should have done a better job of getting my facts straight about the hotels, please ignore that comment and apologies! Created the message away from the game (excuses, excuses).

To boil the issues down more accurately:

Pros
- The skyboxes are a great addition (and the increased lighting options)
- Even though the UI updates are merely a re-skin, they are easier on the eye and work for me.
- The sound FX are a tad better. I mean just a small little bit better, no creaking. Still ended up muting them.
- <NEW> Being able to have a more graphic representation of the mods in Steam (better tracking of them)
- <NEW> Addition of the new public transport option - Park and Ride

Cons
- A junction choice was removed from the Highway section (frustrating because it was the one I wanted!)
- Yes, the trading resets to zero when reloading a city (sad face)
- <NEW> Not being able to easily import all of the XLN mods.
- <NEW> Going through Steam to launch the game (more clicks plus the timer to tell you how much of your life was just spend in game)

All in all, very happy about the performance improvements and the fact that Focus decided to do more than just a handful of new buildings. I will be looking at making my existing mods compatible with XXL, still very much loving this game!!

Congats and thanks to all of you from this site who were involved with the development and testing!!!