With 1000+ hours invested in CS, I figure it's about time to write a review.

THE PROS

• So immersive for the creative mind. A real pleasure for the engineer and creator inside all of us.
  
• HUGE mod support. An added plus is that modders are proactive in keeping their mods up-to-date.

THE CONS

• Puts the mightiest computer to the test. You'd better have a top-drawer machine.
  
• The longest load time of any game I've ever seen. I did a test loading a blank map into the editor. No mods or assets. Took 3 minutes to load. Then I activated 20 mods and 50-or-so assets. Took 3 minutes to load.
  
• The terrain resolution needs to be finer. You get a lot of "jaggies" when carving out rivers. The heightmap resolution (a grayscale image that determines mountains, valleys, etc) also needs refinement. I loaded up a heightmap of Tacoma, which the downtown area is like a set of stairs. The heightmap only gradually slopes, a true crime, in my opinion. Same with San Francisco and other hilly cities. This is NOT the game's fault, but terrain party's. (No longer on-line.)

Even with its drawbacks, CS is my favorite game of all time (and I've been gaming since the Atari 2600 days).

EDIT: Now that I've got 1,152 hours into CS, I thought I'd update my thoughts on it. I've done a lot of RW cities and uploaded them to the Workshop. Not the entire city, mind you, just the basic requirements done in the Map Editor. Let me say this: CS stinks if you want to do accurate re-creations.

I use Google Maps Downloader to do the overlays, copying the coords from terrain.party and generating a hi-rez street map. Guess what? They NEVER match up. The overlay is ALWAYS shifted over and down about 30 squares. Again, this is the failure of Terrain Party, not CS.

Now if imaginary cities is your thing, then CS is for you. Grab a map from the Workshop and get to it. But as far as real-world geography, fugeddaboudit. It's one thing to do a nice mathematically balanced freeway interchange, but if you want to re-create some of the nightmares found in the real world, you'll go crazy trying to work around the limitations.

Why a Map Editor? All the editor is, is a dumbed down version of the city editor. You can't name your streets, options are anemic, etc. When I do a RW city template, I just build it in the city editor. Just make sure you stop the simulation from running while you destroy the city.

My computer can handle anything thrown at it, but not everyone has that advantage. To mitigate the long load times and crashes, buy as much RAM as possible, the best graphics card you can afford, and a robust CPU. Lastly, install the game on an SSD or an M2 card.

With 1000+ hours invested in CS, I figure it's about time to write a review. [u]THE PROS[/u] [list] [*]So immersive for the creative mind. A real pleasure for the engineer and creator inside all of us. [*]HUGE mod support. An added plus is that modders are proactive in keeping their mods up-to-date. [/list] [u]THE CONS[/u] [list] [*]Puts the mightiest computer to the test. You'd better have a top-drawer machine. [*]The longest load time of any game I've ever seen. I did a test loading a blank map into the editor. No mods or assets. Took 3 minutes to load. Then I activated 20 mods and 50-or-so assets. Took 3 minutes to load. [*]The terrain resolution needs to be finer. You get a lot of "jaggies" when carving out rivers. The heightmap resolution (a grayscale image that determines mountains, valleys, etc) also needs refinement. I loaded up a heightmap of Tacoma, which the downtown area is like a set of stairs. The heightmap only gradually slopes, a true crime, in my opinion. Same with San Francisco and other hilly cities. This is NOT the game's fault, but terrain party's. (No longer on-line.) [/list] Even with its drawbacks, CS is my favorite game of all time (and I've been gaming since the Atari 2600 days). EDIT: Now that I've got 1,152 hours into CS, I thought I'd update my thoughts on it. I've done a lot of RW cities and uploaded them to the Workshop. Not the entire city, mind you, just the basic requirements done in the Map Editor. Let me say this: CS stinks if you want to do accurate re-creations. I use Google Maps Downloader to do the overlays, copying the coords from terrain.party and generating a hi-rez street map. Guess what? They NEVER match up. The overlay is ALWAYS shifted over and down about 30 squares. Again, this is the failure of Terrain Party, not CS. Now if imaginary cities is your thing, then CS is for you. Grab a map from the Workshop and get to it. But as far as real-world geography, fugeddaboudit. It's one thing to do a nice mathematically balanced freeway interchange, but if you want to re-create some of the nightmares found in the real world, you'll go crazy trying to work around the limitations. Why a Map Editor? All the editor is, is a dumbed down version of the city editor. You can't name your streets, options are anemic, etc. When I do a RW city template, I just build it in the city editor. Just make sure you stop the simulation from running while you destroy the city. My computer can handle anything thrown at it, but not everyone has that advantage. To mitigate the long load times and crashes, buy as much RAM as possible, the best graphics card you can afford, and a robust CPU. Lastly, install the game on an SSD or an M2 card.