Cities: Skylines 2 is 'roughly 5 times bigger' than the original

As we continue inching closer to the release of Cities: Skyline 2 in October, developer Colossal Order keeps feeding us more information about the city building sequel with new videos and dev diaries.

Today's infodump is all about the maps you'll build your cities on, and just how big they are—and the best way to explain the size of the buildable area in Cities: Skylines 2 is to compare it to the original game.

"In Cities: Skylines the playable area consists of 5x5 tiles, 9 of which can be purchased once everything is unlocked," Colossal Order says. "One map tile is 1.92 x 1.92 km which results in the total playable area being 92.16km² with a maximum of 33.18km² to build a city on."

But things are going to get considerably bigger in Cities: Skylines 2. "For starters, one map tile is much smaller—roughly 1/3 what it is in the predecessor—but you are able to unlock almost all tiles giving you a whopping total of 441 map tiles," Colossal Order says.

"That results in a playable area of 159km² which is roughly 5 times bigger than in Cities: Skylines."

That's pretty darn big—larger than some small countries, as the video points out. And something tells me modders will quickly make even more buildable area available once the game launches. That's why they did in the original Cities: Skylines, turning those nine available tiles into 81.

Another interesting wrinkle: the unlockable tiles in Cities: Skylines 2 don't all need to be adjacent to one another, which sounds like it might open up some interesting possibilities.

"Additionally, the Map Tiles do not have to be connected to each other, so technically you can create small isolated pocket towns, and you can purchase the Map Tiles all the way to the edge of the map where you can create new Outside Connections," the dev diary says. "But wait, there’s more! The map height limit is much higher than before adding much more flexibility and freedom in how your dream city will look."

You can read more about the maps in Cities: Skylines 2 in the new dev diary.

Chris started playing PC games in the 1980s, started writing about them in the early 2000s, and (finally) started getting paid to write about them in the late 2000s. Following a few years as a regular freelancer, PC Gamer hired him in 2014, probably so he'd stop emailing them asking for more work. Chris has a love-hate relationship with survival games and an unhealthy fascination with the inner lives of NPCs. He's also a fan of offbeat simulation games, mods, and ignoring storylines in RPGs so he can make up his own.