New Cities Skylines 2 update adds essential building options to improve traffic

In Cities Skylines 2, the smallest things can make the biggest difference. When the city-building sequel was first revealed, the introduction of both roundabouts and a new road-building tool that let you create instant, symmetrical grids felt like the arrival of the Renaissance - finally, even in the grandest metropolis, traffic could flow freely. But the inverse is also true; even though they may seem minor, the absence of bicycles and bicycle lanes has become a persistent CS2 sore. Bridges and Ports may be delayed. Rivals like Transport Fever 3 and Worldwide Rush could be coming to steal its thunder. But Colossal Order isn't giving up on Cities Skylines 2, as a new update adds some essential building options that should improve your traffic and train networks.

Bridges and Ports was delayed back in May, but Colossal Order promised that the free update that was originally scheduled to be released alongside the DLC would still arrive on time. And here it is, aptly titled Quays and Piers. Free for all Cities Skylines 2 players, it adds a narrow quay, medium quay, and wide quay to the road-building menu, the advantage being that these designs automatically clip to the edge of a body of water, so you don't have to painstakingly finetune with the conventional street tools. You can, however, disable the 'snap to shoreline' feature and also use the quays to create terraced landscapes.

As for piers, you'll find those in the landscaping menu under 'paths,' and again, they come in narrow, medium, and wide variants. They need to be connected to conventional roads or pedestrian routes, but you can build them out over the water to make your shoresides in the city-building game more attractive.

Most significant, however, are the two new bridges. Go to the train transportation menu, and there's now a double-truss bridge that allows you to run two parallel rail lines over a river or a gulf. Colossal Order has also deployed Cities Skylines 2's first double-decked bridge - on the upper tier you get a four-lane, two-way highway, and underneath a double train track, allowing you to run enormous amounts of private traffic and public transport over bodies of water. Compared to building all that infrastructure manually, it's a smart, fire-and-forget fix for moving cars and trains between boroughs.

"Quays and Piers also contains a lot of other bug fixes to improve your experience with the game," Colossal Order says. "While we know there are still things that need attention, we continue to work through the reported bugs and want to thank you all for sharing the issues you've come across while playing."

If you're a big Cities fan, you might want to try some of the other best strategy games, or maybe the best 4X games on PC.

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