FAILSAFE

Immediately after you install the game and before you run it at all, go to your Steam Library, right click Cities XL Platinum and select Backup Game Files.

After reading the tips in the guide below and when your game is running stably, do the same again. You should really do that now if you have already installed the game and it is working correctly.

Screen Resolution and Positioning
I am putting this one at the top even though you cannot deal with it till you have actually started the game, because I think its probably the biggest game breaker for the people it affects and important to be aware of from the outset.

However, you should read the entire guide and apply at least the Pool Size fix (requires at least 4Gb RAM) before you start the game at all.

In Windows, from the start bar access the Control Panel. Select Display then Screen Resolution or Settings (or probably just right click the desktop and select Resolution / Properties).
Click Advanced Settings then the Monitor tab up the top. Note what the box in the middle says (for me 59 Hertz).

When you get into the game, select Options from the main screen (you may have to exit the tutorial first since I think it starts up automatically on the first time playing). Note that you may also have to click the far left or right of the Options button to actually get to the Options screen.

In the middle, for resolution, it should say something like 1920x1080,29. That 29 must be the same as the Hertz value you looked up earlier or your screen will go screwy and the game may be unplayable on account of being unable to see the control menus.


EDITING THE GLOBAL SETTINGS FILE

I recommend everyone read this and make changes as appropriate BEFORE YOU START THE GAME THE FIRST TIME.

Use Notepad or another basic text editor to open file below (which may be on partition C, D etc on your machine.

DO BACK THIS FILE UP BEFORE YOU EDIT IT !!!

E:\Program Files (x86)\Steam\SteamApps\common\Cities XL Platinum\Data\Config\GlobalSettings.cfg

To edit the file you need to find a line like the ones I indicate and then change it so that it is as I have put it here. IE this guide is showing you the changed line(s) not the original.

Pool Size

This setting is the amount of memory the game reserves for its use from the outset and is initially set too low. This is probably not really the game's fault but the result of a commmon gaming problem known as memory leak and caused, I think, by some element of DirectX or the Visual C++ redistributable.

The forums recommend changing this to 4096. I suspect the game can be played for a while with it at 2048 (whatever the start value is) but that larger cities will need more. This means that playing the game with only 2Gb of RAM is almost certainly going to become problematic after a while (though see below for a possible workaround).

As long as your computer has at least 4Gb of memory, you should definitely change this line.

<PoolSize>4096</PoolSize>

Cumulative Lag / Crashes

Almost certainly caused by the pool size and memory leak initially. To avoid this problem by jump out to the planet view every hour or so, as this seems to flush the memory cache and restart the memory pool from scratch, thus giving the game back your full available memory.

Graphics Lag

On systems, that almost certainly have underpowerd graphics cards or embedded chips (IIRC the game does not support some embedded chipsets, though you should probably check taht detail against your own machine spec), the game can begin to scroll jerkily or update very slowly as your city gets bigger, and this is not fixed by jumping to planet view.

If you reduce how much the game has to display then your lower end GFX will find it easier to cope with larger cities, apparently this is a fairly big improvement. So change the below from 2 to 1, and even to 0 if you still get problems.

This fix is one you can probably make immediately (though its optional) and should make definitely if you et jerky screen updates.

<VisibilityEnabled>1</VisibilityEnabled>

Still got Graphics Lag?

If you get slow screen updates even with visibility set to 0, then you should make the following change. which will turn off the drawing of some objects completely and may make the game more playable

<ProcessEnabled>0</ProcessEnabled>

General Resolution Problems

Most reported initial graphics problems appear to be fixed by making sure your resolution has the correct screen refresh rate - that Hertz value I told you about at the start.

However, I did read here on Steam, of one player who had a problem with their screen resolution because they were using an HDMI screen that had poor driver support. This was not the game's fault, his hardware drivers were badly written and made it impossible to switch to 800x600 mode without crashing his drivers / the game.

If you have a problem of that sort, you may be able to work around it by having the following line instead of the original one. (I cannot guarantee this will work as I do not experience this problem).

Making this change may throw up an error to the log file along the lines of "Failed to load starting screen with value Nil" (or something similar), but hopefully the game can cope with that.

<StartingScreen></StartingScreen>

Forcing Video Resolution Before Startup

If you have further resolution problems, you may be able to force the game into a particular screen resolution and even into windowed mode by editing the following values.

Changing the first setting from 0 to 1 should make the game run in a window (though I have not tried that personally).

<Win32FullScreen>0</Win32FullScreen>
<ScreenWidth>1920</ScreenWidth>
<ScreenHeight>1080</ScreenHeight>

Saved Games

Saved games are located in
C:\Users\<MYUSERNAME>\AppData\Local\Focus Home Interactive\Cities XL 2012\live\offline\solo

You should regularly backup everything in the above folder.

Crashed and Does Not Work Anymore

Backup your saved games folder and then delete the most recent save in the actual save games folder. Restart the game.

If you still have an error, delete the next most recent save and try again.

If the game still will not start after deleting the three most recent saves then its fairly likely that your game installation has become corrupted.

You should uninstall the game, delete the game's saved game folder (not your backup), and then reinstall the game.

Game support forums do indicate that there could sometimes be a problem with uninstallation due to some parts of the game installation not being correctly removed.

I am not sufficiently technically informed about the recommended solution to explain it to you myself so look on http://xlnation.net/forums/cxl-main-forums/tech-support for the solution (which I think you may find by searching the forum for SECUROM).

It is possible to add new features to the game via player written mods.

Not to cause any panic or paranoia, but you should be clear that a badly written mod can break your game and can be very difficult to fix.

Try to ensure that a mod has the thumbs up from the player community before you consider using it. Also be sure that any mod you download is definitely for the correct version of Cities, ie 2011, 2012, Platinum etc.


Before installing any new mod you should backup your game files by right clicking the game on the Steam Library page and selecting the backup option.

Before accepting that the mod works and installing another mod, you should play the game for at least several hours and also ensure that you are using the content of the mod. Just like builtin game features, a mod may not be accessible at earlier stages of a city so you should be sure that it is actually working by actually using it.

Once you are sure that the mod is working ingame, you should quit the game entirely, restart it and then play for another hour or so to be sure that any data that the mod needs to be saved is being correctly saved and restored correctly.

Rinse and repeat the above three steps when you install any other mod.

I only wrote this because someone on the discussions forum here suggested that I should make a guide of the post I had made there.

I am not part of the publishing company or related to the game other than as a player of it.

To my knowledge, the information I have given is accurate and correct but I accept no liability if any of these solutions do not work or work differently on your particular machine configuration.

Editing the configuration files is always very slightly risky, though if you copy and paste the lines I put above over the original lines that should minimise risk of error or typo.

Do remember to backup the original file just in case you make a mistake and have to edit a clean copy.


I will not be specifically maintaining this guide, though I may update it should I feel like it or someone post a comment with useful info that will be useful to the player community and would like me to add it.

DATE OF SUBMISSION: 13 Sep 2013