Colossal Order and Paradox Interactive advertised the new Cities: Skylines 2 game as a next-gen title, and with good reason. It features one of the most realistic city-building mechanics and simulates a society in a way we hadn’t seen before. However, this all comes at a hefty price. The performance for many users, even those who meet the requirements, might not be ideal. Yet, many ways exist to fix these issues in the PC gaming world. Here, we’ll tell you how to improve performance in Cities: Skylines 2.
Best Ways to Improve Performance in Cities: Skylines 2
For the game to run as intended, we recommend tweaking a few things before starting your city-builder journey. So far, it seems this game is heavy on the CPU side, so you might struggle if you have one that isn’t on the recommended specs. On the GPU side, it’s also a bit hefty, but changing some options will make the game run better without compromising visuals. Here’s what we recommend:
| Setting | Best Option |
| Display Mode | Fullscreen |
| VSync | On |
| Dynamic Resolution Scale Quality | Automatic |
| Anti-aliasing Quality | Low SMAA |
| Clouds Quality Settings | Medium |
| Fog Quality Settings | Enabled |
| Volumetrics Quality Settings | Low |
| Ambient Occlusion Quality | Medium |
| Global Illumination Quality | Medium |
| Reflections Quality | Medium |
| Depth of Field Quality | Low |
| Shadow Quality | Low |
| Terrain Quality Settings | Medium |
| Water Quality Settings | Medium |
| Level of Detail | Very Low |
| Animation Quality | Medium |
| Texture Quality Settings | Medium |
As you can see, most options rely on dropping the quality to medium, and that’s one of the best ways to improve performance in Cities: Skylines 2. The exception is Level of Detail, which is set to very low, and we noticed it has a more significant impact on the game and doesn’t make it look not good. Even at low settings, you can admire the beauty of this city builder and play it much smoother. If you’re still getting a few frame drops, try to play with a few options until you find the right one.
If you’d like to see more of what the game has in terms of visuals, here’s a video by developers showcasing the beauty of a large city:
