it arrives for $12.99 here in the US. And is titled Green Cities.

...yay?

Gotta admit as far as concepts for packs for Cities Skylines goes, this was very low on my

personal list of things that I really wanted in the game. But I'm still curious,

you're curious, we're all curious, so let's get serious about diving into this

thing which includes over 300 and something new assets: eco-friendly

buildings, services, specializations policies, scenarios, and maps. And it also

introduces some gameplay tweaks, specifically things like road

pollution. In particular, noise pollution from roads has been redone entirely to

be affected by the type of vehicles using it, not just the size or capacity

of the road. So in other words now you have electric cars, biofuel buses, and

combustion engine bans that you can put into place to both lower air and noise

pollution from roads. It's a thing that's increasingly happening in real life so

of course adding it to the game makes some sense, I guess. As for a more game-y

thing here, roads can also be thoroughly customized through the built-in modding

tools. A very welcome addition, I do say. And it's also been included in the

latest free patch so mod way with those roads, make cool stuff because I'm too

lazy to do it. And also in the Green Cities pack you get some new

specializations for office, commercial, and residential zones. Districts

containing offices lets you specialize them as an IT Cluster now, which provides

you some awesome-looking buildings and some very high production from their

production. Commercial zones can receive the Organic and Local Produce

specialization resulting in hippies --er-- businesses catering to everything from

organic coffee, to fresh markets for food, to herbal dispensaries, to electric

vehicle charging hotspots and all that kind of stuff. And residential can be

classed as Self-Sufficient now, a step beyond the existing High-Tech Housing

policy. Homes go largely off the grid here, requiring

very little power or water from your main cities. However, while the high-rises

look pretty futuristic and kind of fun to look at with their earthy exteriors,

low-density just looks gray and drab and kind of samey. The models themselves are

nicely detailed and they seem more realistically proportioned. And they

don't have that ridiculous color scheme going on, which I appreciate. But they all

just sort of blend together. I don't know, it's a personal preference, but I still

think that there could have been a little more color and variety. There's

also a notable lack of grass in the yards of these lots. And before you say

"it's not eco-friendly to have grass in your yard," well that may be true in some

climates, sure. Drier places it makes sense to not have grass. But I build my

city in a place where it rains almost every single day. Grass is everywhere by

default, but as soon as they place down their gray samey-looking buildings the

grass goes away, I don't really get it. For a "green" cities pack I guess I

expected a little more green. But hey, at least we got more trees that they've

added here as well. I probably still prefer some of the custom-made ones that

I've seen but these are nice to have in there officially. But anyway, the other

main additions to this are the other new buildings, both alternatives to existing

buildings or as new options unique to this pack. Almost all of them are more

expensive, because that's the price to pay for "going green" here. But the benefit

is that they take up less power and water, output less pollution, or give you

a new way to deal with old concerns. There are new leisure buildings, many of

which also come in the latest patch. You get various, gardens, parks, and havens of

all sorts of sizes and shapes. Including a ziggurat, a yoga garden, a place to

learn about the birds and the bees, and several buildings that float on water.

Mm! Aesthetically pleasing but functionally

the same. There are also alternatives to elementary school, high school, and

universities. And respectively these come in the forms of a community school, an

institute of creative arts, and the Modern Technology Institute or MIT -- er

MTI. Yeah I see what they did. There's also new resource buildings for water,

power, and garbage. Including a solar updraft tower that looks pretty rad, some

geo and ocean thermal energy converters, cleaner options for sewage outlets and

treatment, and recycling and garbage collection centers, the latter of which

deals with water pollution by also floating out in the water like those

restaurants and parks and other things. Oh yes, Georgie, they all float!

And there's also a new monument: the Ultimate Recycling Center, because Ultimate

MK was already taken and I guess recycling normally is passe. Anyway, that's pretty

much the Cities Green Stuff Pack or whatever it's called. Overall I like it!

But as usual it's unnecessary to the core game and doesn't really do much

more than throw a few light wrinkles into your city building fabric for you

to leisurely iron out. I wish it added a bit more challenge or fixed up existing

problems rather than just giving players a slightly different urban planning

strategy. For some people that's enough, they don't expect this to do anything

more! And that's probably the best way to look at it because we're probably just

gonna have to wait around for Cities Skylines 2 to get that stuff, because at

this rate it seems like they're happy just giving little piecemeal, slight

additions and updates every so often. But anyway that's getting a little bit

off-topic; that was the Cities Skylines Green Cities pack! And if you enjoyed

this look at this thing then perhaps you'd like to see some of the other LGR

episodes that I've put together. And there are new ones every Monday and

Friday on a variety of topics, because I have interests that I can't keep aligned

and I jump all over the place and that's just what I do.

But if you like that then awesome, thank you for watching!