It's no mystery that traffic AI is one of the biggest issues in the original Cities: Skylines, and today Paradox and Colossal Order revealed how they plan to tackle it in Cities: Skylines 2.
It's not surprising that the first developer diary released for the game a little while ago was all about the new road system, as that was at the base of the traffic issue. Today we tackle the next layer of the problem.
With the new traffic AI system, four main factors influence the path chosen by your citizens, defined as "Pathfinding costs." They're Time, Comfort, Money (which includes the availability of parking), and Behavior. Their combination will determine the path AI citizens take to where they want to go, differently from the previous games in which the shortest route was always chosen.
With the new game, there will also be traffic accidents, which you can help prevent by keeping the roads well-maintained.
You can watch the video below. Hopefully, Colossal Order will manage to make the system reliable enough to be enjoyable without mods, because the original game fell considerably short of that.
Cities: Skylines II releases on October 24, 2023, for PC, Xbox Series X|S, and PS5. It'll also come to Xbox Game Pass on day one.
If you'd like to see more, you can enjoy the original reveal from March and a brand new trailer shared at the Xbox Games Showcase, where the release date was also announced.
