- DLCs, Mods, Assets

Updated: January 2020

The more you add, the slower the game becomes...

Recommendations

8GB RAM: 100 assets, 5 mods, 1-2 DLCs



16GB RAM: 500 assets, 20 mods, 5-10 DLCs



32GB RAM: 2000 assets, 50 mods, 15 DLCs



64GB RAM: 4000 assets, 100 mods, All DLCs

DLCs

Steam Workshop

Maps & Map Themes: Only one of each is active per city. In terms of game performance, we can safely ignore these.



Mods: These alter the game code (but can sometimes also include assets). You can have potentially hundreds of mods active per city.



Assets (everything else): This is content such as buildings, roads, vehicles, etc. You can have potentially thousands of assets active per city.

Are you really actually ever going to use this thing?



Look at what other users are saying in the comments, and how the author responds to them.



Author name is in yellow text, so easy to spot in comments - if the author is still around answering questions, that's a good sign.



Good ratings and lots of subscribers is generally a good sign, but not always. There's lots of broken stuff which used to work years ago (hence subscribers and ratings) but no longer works with current version of the game.



If there is a yellow "This item is incompatible with Cities: Skylines" banner across the top of a workshop page, DO NOT SUBSCRIBE (or, if you already did, unsubscribe it). It will literally break your game.

Mods

[docs.google.com]

Zombie assemblies

[github.com]

If there are multiple versions of a mod, only ever use one version at a time.



Completely unsubscribe mods you aren't using, don't just disable them.



After making any changes to mod (updating, disabling, unsubscribing), exit the game to desktop to flush zombie assemblies from RAM

Assets

Good asset authors often specify the number of triangles, texture sizes, etc., for their asset. If they've taken the time to optimise the asset, it's probably a good asset.



TM:PE team maintains lists of known broken assets: Buildings [github.com] , Vehicles [github.com] , Props [github.com] , Roads [github.com] .

Unsubscribe broken & bloated assets

Disable unwatned assets

If you overburden your hardware with too many DLCs, mods and assets, the game will grind. But what sort of numbers are we talking about here? It's difficult to quantify, because no two DLCs, assets, mods or computers are alike - but here's a rough guide based on RAM (these values assume you are using Loading Screen Mod to help reduce RAM consumption):Obviously, RAM is not the only factor but it's a good reference point. If you have powerful graphics card (with lots of VRAM) you can handle more assets. If you have powerful CPU, you can handle more mods. And, as mentioned later, a fast disk drive helps reduce lag in all aspects of the game. DLCs are official add-ons for the game. Depending on your hardware (particularly RAM and CPU), adding too many can impair performance and even cause crashes.Radio stations don't cause any problems, as only one track plays at a time. But other DLCs can add huge numbers of assets (particularly content creator packs, and Green Cities).Content from Steam Workshop can be considered in three main categories:Nothing will destroy game performance more than you subscribing to crazy numbers of mods and assets, so learn to deal with your subscription addiction!Some general tips before clicking the Subscribe button:Each mod (generally speaking) adds more workload for your CPU.The compatibility checker will help you find out if you have any problem mods (it lists any that are laggy, broken, etc):You can also check the list of broken and incompatible mods (the compatibility checker linked above contains most of that list). Someone tested 50 popular mods to see what effects they had on fps, here's the results There is a "zombie assemblies" bug in the game engine which modders cannot fix: If you have more than one version of a mod subscribed, the game can't differentiate between them, even if you disabled the other versions. That causes weird problems, lag and crashes.So, when using mods, always remember:Each enabled asset adds extra load for your RAM and VRAM (Video RAM); even if you don't use it on the map it will still get loaded. And once it's on the map, it will put more strain on your GPU (graphics card).When choosing assets, consider these things:Removing broken and bloated assets will make the game more reliable and improve performance:Many workshop assets are acutally colleciotns of assets - a single subscription might contain a building and several props, or several variants of a network, etc. You can disable individual assets, even if they are part of a pack, via Main Menu > Content Manager > Assets screen.This mod will help you browse and filter your asset list: https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=814498849 By disabling assets you prevent their mesh (triangles) and texture getting loaded in to RAM (unless something else uses it). That will make loading faster and in some cases will improve visual quality of all other assets of the same type (by avoiding the need to rescale everything smaller to fit that extra texture in the texture atlas).