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PC Performance Analyses

Cities Skylines 2 developers target 30fps and not 60fps, even on the latest and greatest high-end PCs

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A few days ago, we shared some early benchmarks for Cities Skylines 2. In those benchmarks, an Intel Core i9 13900KS with an AMD Radeon RX 7900XTX struggled to run the game at 4K/High Settings. And in a recent Reddit AMA, the developers claimed that their target is 30fps and not 60fps, even on PC.

Colossal Order’s “damsku” made some pretty wild claims. They said that running a city-building game at 60fps doesn’t really make a difference. But it seems like they haven’t tried panning the camera around at 30fps, where you can notice the jerky movement.

Cities Skylines 2 | Benchmark Test | CPU/GPU Performance | Core i-13900KS OC + Radeon RX 7900 XTX OC

Later, the developer admitted that when players build big cities, the game starts relying a lot on the CPU. But, as shown in a video by PCGamesHardware, Cities Skylines 2’s multithreading capabilities are awful. It’s obvious the game can’t take advantage of high-end CPUs, which is a classic sign of a poorly optimized game. So, it’s not really because the city calculations are super complex. It’s more about the game not being able to use all the powerful CPUs properly. Hell, even the first Crysis game had CPU issues in some places due to its single-threaded nature.

And I really had a good laugh at that “60fps as it can contribute to better visuals in relation to temporal effects“. Ahem, no? 60fps is all about fluidity. It makes movement easier for the eye. It can also make menu navigation a lot easier (you know, lower latency and all). Which is exactly what the developer claimed that it mattered the most. But somehow they can’t see the benefit of 60fps? Oh boy.

Here is the full quote from ‘co_damsku’

“The target is 30fps because of the nature of the game, (arguably) there are no real benefit in a city builder to aim for higher FPS (unlike a multiplayer shooter) as a growing city with inevitably become CPU bound. What matters more with this type of game is to avoid stutters, and have responsive UI.

For that reason, our simulation is also built around an expected update rate given 30fps. However, it does not hurt to get 60 fps as it can contribute to better visuals in relation to temporal effects so while our target is 30fps, we don’t intend on limiting or stopping the optimization work just because we reach it on recommended hardware, we just don’t believe there would be a long term benefit in setting the target to 60fps, especially because we face rendering challenges both from close up and far distances.”

Paradox Interactive will release Cities Skylines 2 on PC later today. And the harsh truth is that the game may never hit 60fps, even on the latest and greatest PC systems. Also, if this quote is anything to go by, we can safely say that Colossal Order will not bring any major performance improvements. I mean, the developers themselves claim that they target 30fps and not 60fps. And they also believe there won’t be a long-term benefit in setting the target to 60fps. Oh, and remember that performance target they missed? That was their 30fps target and not a 60fps target.

In short, Cities Skylines 2 will target 30fps on PC because the developers cannot optimize its engine. That’s the fact, and you should be prepared for it. It’s a real bummer, especially to those who were looking forward to it. However, the game won’t magically get optimized for 60fps anytime soon.