Cities: Skylines, a beloved city-building simulation, offers unparalleled freedom to create sprawling metropolises. However, as your city grows, a common issue arises: performance degradation, leading to frustratingly low frames per second (FPS). A stuttering game can ruin the immersion and make intricate city management a chore. This guide dives deep into the strategies you can employ to reclaim smooth gameplay and breathe life back into your virtual city.
Understanding The FPS Bottleneck In Cities: Skylines
Before diving into solutions, it’s crucial to understand what causes FPS drops in Cities: Skylines. The game is CPU-intensive, meaning your processor handles the bulk of the calculations, especially the complex simulations of traffic, citizen behavior, and economic factors. A weaker CPU will struggle to keep up as your city expands.
The game also relies on RAM, especially if you have numerous assets and mods loaded. Insufficient RAM can force the game to utilize your hard drive as virtual memory, which is significantly slower and leads to performance hiccups.
Finally, while less impactful than the CPU and RAM, your graphics card (GPU) plays a role, particularly in rendering visual details and handling graphical effects. A weak GPU may struggle with high graphical settings or a large number of detailed assets.
Identifying Your System’s Weak Points
The first step is to pinpoint which component is holding you back. Use task manager to monitor your CPU, RAM, and GPU usage while playing. If your CPU is consistently hitting 100% utilization, it’s likely the primary bottleneck. High RAM usage, especially nearing your system’s limit, also indicates a problem. If the GPU is maxed out, consider lowering graphical settings.
Optimizing In-Game Settings For Enhanced Performance
Cities: Skylines offers a range of graphical settings that you can tweak to balance visual fidelity with performance. Experimenting with these settings can yield significant FPS gains.
Graphics Settings: The First Line Of Defense
Start by lowering the overall graphics quality. This single setting can have a substantial impact. If your performance improves significantly, you can then selectively increase individual settings to find a sweet spot.
Pay close attention to shadow quality. Shadows are computationally expensive to render. Reducing shadow quality or even disabling them can provide a noticeable boost, especially in densely populated areas.
Level of Detail (LOD) determines how detailed objects appear at different distances. Lowering the LOD reduces the number of polygons rendered for distant objects, improving performance.
Anti-aliasing smooths jagged edges but can be demanding on your GPU. Try disabling or reducing anti-aliasing to see if it helps.
Reflection quality can be another significant performance hog. Lowering or disabling reflections, especially water reflections, can free up resources.
Ambient occlusion adds depth and realism to scenes, but it also impacts performance. Experiment with disabling or lowering its quality.
Resolution: A Double-Edged Sword
Lowering the resolution can dramatically improve FPS. However, it can also make the game look less sharp. Experiment with different resolutions to find a balance between visual quality and performance. Consider playing in windowed mode at a smaller resolution if necessary.
Other Performance-Impacting Settings
Population Detail can impact performance in very large cities. Lowering this setting reduces the amount of detail shown for individual citizens.
Dynamic resolution automatically adjusts the game’s resolution to maintain a target framerate. While it can help prevent severe FPS drops, it may result in a blurry image at times.
Managing Assets And Mods For A Smoother Experience
The extensive modding community is a major draw for Cities: Skylines. However, excessive or poorly optimized assets and mods can significantly impact performance.
The Asset Avalanche: When More Isn’t Always Merrier
Each asset you add to your game consumes memory and processing power. Carefully consider whether you truly need each asset. Be selective and prioritize high-quality, optimized assets over quantity.
Use the Loading Screen Mod to identify broken or redundant assets. This mod also optimizes asset loading, reducing loading times and memory usage.
Consider unsubscribing from assets you no longer use. Regularly cleaning up your asset library can prevent performance degradation.
Mod Management: A Balancing Act
Some mods are essential for improving gameplay, but others can be resource-intensive. Evaluate the performance impact of each mod before enabling it.
Read mod descriptions carefully to understand their functionality and potential performance implications. Some mods are known to cause FPS drops, especially those that add complex simulations or visual effects.
Experiment with disabling mods one by one to identify which ones are causing the most significant performance issues.
Update your mods regularly. Mod developers often release updates that improve performance and fix bugs.
Hardware Upgrades: The Long-Term Solution
While software optimizations can help, ultimately, Cities: Skylines benefits from powerful hardware. Upgrading your CPU, RAM, or GPU can provide the most significant and lasting performance improvements.
CPU: The Heart Of The City
A faster CPU with more cores and threads is crucial for handling the game’s complex simulations. Investing in a modern CPU with good single-core performance can significantly improve FPS. Look for CPUs with a high clock speed and strong single-core performance.
RAM: Memory Matters
Sufficient RAM is essential to prevent the game from using your hard drive as virtual memory. Aim for at least 16GB of RAM, and consider 32GB if you plan to use a large number of assets and mods.
GPU: Visual Fidelity
While less critical than the CPU and RAM, a decent GPU is still important for rendering visuals and handling graphical effects. A mid-range or high-end GPU can improve visual quality and prevent FPS drops, especially at higher resolutions and graphical settings.
Advanced Optimization Techniques For Dedicated Players
Beyond the basic settings and hardware considerations, several advanced optimization techniques can further improve performance.
Launch Options: Fine-Tuning The Game Engine
Using launch options in Steam, you can fine-tune the game engine’s behavior and allocate more resources to Cities: Skylines. Right-click the game in your Steam library, select “Properties,” and then click “Set Launch Options.”
Some useful launch options include:
-force-d3d9: Forces the game to use DirectX 9, which can sometimes improve performance on older systems. Note this may disable some visual features.
-noWorkshop: Disables the loading of workshop content. Useful for troubleshooting mod conflicts.
-limitOutput: Reduces the amount of logging information generated by the game, which can slightly improve performance.
-high: Sets the game’s process priority to high, giving it more CPU resources.
Page File Optimization: Managing Virtual Memory
The page file is a space on your hard drive that Windows uses as virtual memory when your RAM is full. Ensuring that the page file is properly configured can improve performance.
Increase the size of your page file if you have limited RAM. This allows the game to use more virtual memory if needed. The optimal size depends on your system’s RAM. As a general rule, set the initial size to 1.5 times your RAM and the maximum size to 3 times your RAM.
Process Lasso: CPU Affinity And Priority Management
Process Lasso is a third-party application that allows you to manage CPU affinity and priority for individual processes. You can use it to ensure that Cities: Skylines has sufficient CPU resources.
Setting the game’s process priority to “High” can give it more CPU resources. However, be cautious, as this can potentially impact the performance of other applications.
You can also use Process Lasso to prevent other processes from interfering with Cities: Skylines.
Driver Updates: Keeping Your System Up-to-Date
Ensure that you have the latest drivers for your graphics card. Driver updates often include performance optimizations and bug fixes that can improve FPS in games.
Download the latest drivers from the manufacturer’s website (Nvidia or AMD).
SSD Installation: Speeding Up Loading Times And General Performance
Moving Cities: Skylines to an SSD (Solid State Drive) can significantly reduce loading times and improve general performance. SSDs offer much faster read and write speeds compared to traditional hard drives.
Long Term City Planning For Better Performance
The way you design your city also influences the performance of Cities: Skylines. By implementing certain planning strategies you can help alleviate some of the burden placed on your system.
Efficient Road Layout: Traffic Flow Is Key
Inefficient road layouts are a major cause of traffic congestion, which can significantly impact performance.
Plan your roads carefully, considering the needs of different areas of your city. Use a hierarchy of roads, with highways connecting major districts and smaller roads serving local areas.
Implement public transportation options, such as buses, trains, and trams, to reduce reliance on cars.
Use traffic management tools, such as roundabouts and one-way streets, to improve traffic flow.
Zoning Strategies: Minimize Unnecessary Travel
Careful zoning can also help improve performance.
Mix residential, commercial, and industrial zones to reduce the need for citizens to travel long distances.
Create specialized industrial zones to reduce pollution and traffic congestion.
Use the “Local Products” policy to encourage local businesses and reduce the need for imports.
Limit Details And Complexity
While it can be tempting to create the most detailed and beautiful city, too much detail can negatively affect performance.
Use simpler building styles and avoid excessive detailing.
Avoid overusing props and decorations.
Limit the number of unique buildings in your city.
By following these steps, you can significantly improve FPS in Cities: Skylines and enjoy a smoother, more immersive city-building experience. Remember that performance optimization is an ongoing process, and it may take some experimentation to find the settings and strategies that work best for your system.
Why Is My Cities: Skylines Game Running So Slowly In A Large City?
The most common reason for poor performance in Cities: Skylines as your city grows is the sheer number of calculations your computer needs to perform. Each citizen, vehicle, and building requires processing, and the game engine can struggle to keep up when simulating tens of thousands of these objects simultaneously. This is especially true with mods and assets that add complexity or increase the number of simulated elements.
Additionally, limitations of the game engine itself can contribute. Cities: Skylines, despite numerous improvements, still has some inherent performance bottlenecks. High polygon counts on custom assets and the accumulation of unoptimized code from various mods can exacerbate these issues, leading to significant FPS drops as your city scales.
What Are The Most Effective In-game Settings To Improve FPS?
Lowering graphics settings is a fundamental step to boost FPS. Reducing texture quality, shadow quality, and level of detail will significantly decrease the load on your graphics card. Experimenting with these settings to find a balance between visual fidelity and performance is crucial. Disabling antialiasing can also provide a noticeable performance improvement, particularly on less powerful GPUs.
Beyond graphics, optimizing simulation settings can also help. Reducing the simulation accuracy of things like road vehicle AI and public transport routes can free up CPU resources. Consider using the “Optimize It!” mod (if applicable to your game version) as it provides tools to reduce unnecessary agent count without drastically affecting city functionality. Remember to save your game settings after making these changes.
How Can Mods Help Or Hurt My Game’s Performance?
Mods can be a double-edged sword. Some mods, like traffic management tools (“Traffic Manager: President Edition”) and asset optimization utilities (“Loading Screen Mod”), can significantly improve performance by reducing unnecessary calculations and optimizing asset loading. These mods can streamline the game’s processes, leading to higher and more stable FPS.
Conversely, poorly optimized or overly complex mods can severely degrade performance. Mods with high polygon counts or those that add a large number of unique assets can strain your system. It’s essential to carefully evaluate the impact of each mod and unsubscribe from those that are known to be performance hogs. Regularly updating your mods is also vital, as developers often release optimized versions.
What Hardware Upgrades Will Have The Biggest Impact On Cities: Skylines Performance?
Upgrading your CPU is often the most impactful upgrade for Cities: Skylines, as the game is heavily CPU-bound due to its extensive simulation processes. A CPU with a high clock speed and strong single-core performance is ideal. Consider CPUs with a good balance between cores and single-core speed to handle both the simulation and other background processes.
While the CPU is critical, a dedicated graphics card (GPU) with ample VRAM (video RAM) is also important, especially for handling high-resolution textures and complex visual effects. A fast SSD (solid state drive) will significantly reduce loading times and improve overall system responsiveness, although its impact on FPS during gameplay may be less significant than a CPU or GPU upgrade. Adequate RAM (16GB or more) is also crucial to prevent the game from swapping to the slower hard drive, which can cause stuttering.
How Can I Manage Traffic Congestion To Improve Performance?
Traffic congestion is a major performance killer in Cities: Skylines, as the game has to simulate the movement of each vehicle. Efficient road networks are key to reducing congestion. Implement hierarchical road systems with highways connecting to arterial roads, which then lead to local streets. Roundabouts and well-placed interchanges can significantly improve traffic flow and reduce bottlenecks.
Encouraging the use of public transportation can dramatically reduce the number of vehicles on the roads. Invest in a variety of options like buses, trains, trams, and subways, and ensure they are well-connected and integrated into your city. Policies that discourage private vehicle use, such as parking restrictions and congestion charges, can also be effective in reducing traffic volume and improving performance.
What Is Asset Optimization, And How Does It Help?
Asset optimization involves reducing the complexity of custom assets, such as buildings and vehicles, to improve performance. This typically involves reducing the polygon count of the asset’s model and optimizing the textures used. Lower polygon counts mean the game has fewer triangles to render, reducing the load on your graphics card.
Optimized textures use less VRAM and can load faster, improving overall game performance. Tools like MeshLab and texture compression utilities can be used to optimize assets. The “Loading Screen Mod” (if applicable to your game version) can help identify problematic assets with high polygon counts, allowing you to prioritize optimization efforts. Using optimized assets allows you to have more visually appealing content without sacrificing performance.
What Is The “Loading Screen Mod” And How Does It Contribute To Better FPS?
The “Loading Screen Mod” is a powerful tool that primarily speeds up the game loading process by sharing assets between different saves and DLCs. It also helps identify missing or broken assets, preventing errors that can negatively impact performance. This faster loading can make starting and restarting the game much quicker, which is valuable when experimenting with different settings or mods.
Beyond loading speed, the mod provides valuable information about the assets being used in your city, including memory usage and polygon counts. This allows you to identify particularly demanding assets that might be contributing to FPS drops. By using the mod to track and remove or replace these performance-heavy assets, you can significantly improve the game’s overall responsiveness and achieve higher FPS, especially in larger cities.