The eagerly anticipated Cities: Skylines 2 is launching despite the ongoing reports of technical problems from players. Multiple reviews and forum posts indicate the game is suffering from low framerates, lag, and stuttering – even on high end systems.
Developer Colossal Order seems to have struggled with optimizing the game, despite delaying launch to polish things up. Publisher Paradox Interactive has even raised the minimum specs in an effort to curb complaints. However, many fans are still finding the game’s performance underwhelming.
Be Prepared To Troubleshoot
Thankfully, there are some fixes players can try to smooth things out. Reducing graphical settings is a good start – turn down options like shadows, reflections and terrain quality. Overclocking hardware and closing background programs may also help squeeze out more frames.
Of course comprehensive patches from the developers would be ideal. For now, fans will have to tweak their settings to find the right balance of visuals and performance.
While Cities: Skylines 2 shows a lot of promise as a city builder, its technical issues could frustrate players in these early days. With some optimization updates, it has the potential to become the sequel fans have dreamed of. But at launch, be prepared to troubleshoot for the smoothest experience.
Tips to improve performance in Cities: Skylines 2
Reduce Graphical Settings
- Turn off or reduce Depth of Field, Volumetrics, and Global Illumination – these graphical effects can impact fillrate and FPS.
- Set Animation Quality, Level of Detail, and Texture Quality to Medium or Low. The higher these settings, the more system resources required.
- Lower Reflections Quality, Shadow Quality, and Terrain Quality. High settings for these can also cause performance issues.
General Fixes to Try
- Turn off Depth of Field, Volumetrics, Global Illumination
- Set Animation, Level of Detail, Texture Quality to Medium or Low
- Set Reflections, Shadows, Terrain Quality to Medium or Low
- Experiment with lowering any other advanced graphical settings
- Set overall graphics to Medium if issues persist
- Turn down resolution scale if required
- Update graphics drivers
- Close background programs and processes
Following these tips should help optimize Cities: Skylines 2 performance on most systems. Reduce the advanced graphical settings first while keeping resolution high. Then lower overall quality and resolution scale if needed.
