If you haven’t played Cities Skylines 2 since it launched in October 2023, the game plays very differently now, thankfully for the better. Performance of the game on PC continued to struggle for some time, but the latest patch goes a long way to fixing this problem, while also squashing countless other annoying bugs.
Cities Skylines 2 now has support for Nvidia DLSS 2, and while you won’t need one of the best graphics cards to use it, you will need to be using any RTX graphics card to benefit.
The inclusion of Nvidia DLSS support would have gone a long way to improving performance in Cities Skylines 2 on PC if it was available at launch. However, this time it’s a case of better late than never for the Super Resolution tech, as it can substantially increase your frame rate if you’re using an Nvidia graphics card.
DLSS isn’t the only noteworthy change in this new patch, though, as two other big changes have been made. The first is a fix for pathfinding, which now reduces the slowdown during simulation. The other change is vaguely listed as “optimizations to reduce frame spikes.”
Either way, the result is a much more stable game in practice. In my experience, it now runs smoother, and is less frustrating as a whole, at least from a performance perspective. For more on the gameplay changes, you can read through the complete set of patch notes that have been released on the Paradox forums.
When Cities Skylines 2 first launched, we also faced problems with extreme temperature issues when trying to play the game on the Steam Deck. However, after further testing following the release of this patch, the thermals are now far more stable than before.
If you’re keeping an eye on Cities Skylines 2 mods, you’ll also be pleased to know that one of the best and most-desired Cities Skylines 2 mods has also been released.