Cities: Skylines 2 will simulate layoffs, homelessness and bankruptcies

rockpapershotgun.com:

Paradox has posted a Cities: Skylines 2 developer diary in which it discusses the new game's rather elaborate-sounding economy simulation. This follows equally knotty breakdowns of the game's zoning tools, which allow you to mix architectural styles, and its road traffic system, which will hopefully dispense with some of the original Cities: Skylines' pathfinding issues. In unravelling how individual agents - households, businesses or city services - function within the simulation, the post also touches on the topic of homelessness, a subject the 2014 game left unaddressed.

The new system is "similar in concept" to that of the first game, but has been redesigned to give more of a convincing, organic sense of production and resource exchange, without being too tricky to get into.

"We wanted to create a deep and complex system without it being too complicated for you to manage, allowing you to spend more time building the city rather than worrying about every minute detail at every possible turn," the post reads. "The system is modelled after real-life economic models to tie more realism into the game, and it is designed to balance itself out in most cases to support both new players and newly-founded cities in their first steps to becoming bustling metropolises."

Skylines 2 features government subsidies for new players which take care of a portion of earlygame expenses, and which extend to unemployment benefits for your citizens. These sources of aid decrease as the city grows and you get to grips with the game's simulated economy, in which agents make decisions in response to each other and your choices as mayor.

The economy simulation broadly consists of the flow of resources between households, businesses and