Cities: Skylines II update has fixes for homeless citizens, a Decorations Menu, and more

Colossal Order has just shipped a brand-new update to its city-building entry, Cities: Skylines II. The studio is delivering on its promise of continued updates to improve the title following its less-than-ideal launch experience on PC. Patch 1.1.8f1 has shipped with a new focus on decorations and a major bug that affected homeless citizens in the game.

Players now have access to a Decorations Menu. While players have been utilizing the Developer Mode to plop down props to beautify their cities, Colossal says that method can break saves and cause issues. The new Decorations Menu alleviates that problem by making the coveted feature official and easy to access:

Landscaping now includes 8 new categories packed full of props, from stones in Nature to benches and fountains in Park to crates and silos in Industrial Props. We looked at all the existing props in the game and selected the ones that both make sense and work when placed in game.

298 props are now here for players to decorate their cities with. These items can be placed on surfaces for no charge to the city's bank balance, giving builders plenty of freedom to decorate and create plazas, parks, gardens, back alleys and other elements.

The other major feature of this patch is the homelessness fix. Previously, homeless citizens in Cities: Skylines II would get stuck in abandoned buildings or parks without finding new places to live or finding their way out of the city. Colossal Order has updated the checking system for the homeless to now actively search for new and cheap places to move to.

"Depending on how many homeless households your city has, it may take a while before all of them get back on their feet or find their way out of the city, but you can help the process along by fulfilling the demand for residential zoning and providing public transportation out of the city, such as intercity buses or trains," the studio explains.

Release notes for Cities: Skylines II patch 1.1.8f1 can be read below:

Gameplay Fixes & Improvements

• Fixed issues with Homeless citizens:
• Fixed homeless citizens not seeking a way out of homelessness.
• Fixed homeless citizens having a good household wealth.
• Fixed newly spawned households still moving in being counted as homeless.
• Increased the cost of shelter in home finding job to reduce homeless households.
• Added MovingInHouseholdCount, which is the household looking for property to move into, and added a maximum to stop new households from spawning when many are already looking for homes.
• Fixed Small Elevated Subway Station showing missing road connection and utilities when placed on a 6 or 8 lane road.
• Fixed crash to desktop that occurred when overriding a building that has also lost some renters.
• Fixed road tunnels generating noise and air pollution above them.
• Fixed buildings on pedestrian street roundabouts showing no pedestrian access notifications.
• Fixed sick citizen might stuck on pedestrian lanes
• Fixed missing sewage connection notification when placing the Water Tower on top of the combined pipes.
• Fixed issue where it was possible to place buildings so that their surface areas would overlap with already created standalone surface areas.
• Fixed some city service buildings showing “Overlapping items” warning when trying to place them on the roundabout zone grid.
• Fixed areas attached to buildings allowing placement on water.
• Improved Passage Park coverage to be more consistent no matter what direction the park faces.
• Improved dog behavior so citizens don't take their dogs to work or school unless they are already out of their homes.
• Adjusted Subway station 01, 02 and 03 Construction Cost, Upkeep Cost, and XP rewards.
• Removed Noise Pollution from Solar Power Station Additional Transformer Station upgrade.

UI Fixes & Improvements

• Fixed bottom status bar not being accessible with a controller when in Map Tile Purchase mode.
• Fixed “assign vehicle” selection skipping values on the slider.
• Fixed “Show Unlock Popups” option only being available in the interface options menu with developer mode enabled.
• Fixed the UI disappearing when selecting the "Place Multiple" Tool Mode in the Vegetation tab with a controller.
• Fixed parallel offset setting not working correctly when building roads with a controller.
• Fixed building showing wages section in the upkeep even though the building does not have workers.
• Fixed change in money and population count current trend is not updating correctly.
• Fixed some building upgrades missing their bonuses in the building's Selected Info Panel.
• Fixed building attractiveness tooltip showing incorrect percentages if the building has lost all of its attractiveness for example in case of fire.
• Fixed Train, Tram, and Subway tutorials marking the step for 'placing tracks' as completed before taking any action.
• Fixed the top of the tutorial welcome window being cut off in some languages if the text scale is set to 140%.
• Fixed some cut-off tutorial prompt panels.
• Fixed police and fire safety tutorials missing from the advisor panel.
• Fixed out-of-focus icons during tutorials.
• Fixed happiness tooltip overlapping with Citizen's information inside their Selected Info Panel when using a controller.
• Fixed missing tooltips in options panel while using a controller.
• Fixed Chirper posts not getting updated accurately.
• Fixed overflowing residence names in Lifepath panel.
• Fixed overflowing text with long keybindings.
• Fixed keybinding description being difficult to read with long keybindings.
• Fixed eight-lane divided road thumbnail.
• Fixed some building upgrades missing pollution-type icons.
• Fixed text being unreadable in some panels with the blue interface color theme.
• Fixed missing space in passenger and cargo count in route or line detail Selected Info Panel.
• Fixed issue where selecting objects from the Chirper panel does not work if the game was loaded while already having something selected.
• Fixed inconsistency with how Residential, Commercial, Industrial and Office are highlighted in Infoviews.
• Improved Selected Info Panel of stops and stations to show to directly show whether transport lines are active or disabled.
• Improved oil icon color for better visibility.
• Changed Infoview panel pie charts to horizontal bar charts for a more compact UI allowing better visibility for the map legend.
• Added mouse bindings for camera movement actions (both back and forward). They are unset by default.
• Added Shift, Alt, and Ctrl keys that were missing from the description of binding action for Mouse.
• Added support for the mouse wheel to scroll through asset panel pages.
• Moved Small Water Tower’s UI position to before the regular Water Tower.

Audio Fixes

• Adjusted Marquee zone tool audio and map tiles tool audio.
• Fixed Space Rocket sound playing after a rocket disappears from the map when the rocket is being followed.
• Fixed some buildings missing fire sound effects.
• Fixed Building pipes and electricity nets missing snapping sound effects.
• Fixed North American Ambulance missing engine sound.

Misc Fixes & Improvements

• Fixed holes from the previous city remain on the terrain after starting a new game (Until something with terrain holes is spawned).
• Fixed right indicator on the back of NA_Ambulance01.
• Fixed direction indicators of trams flashing out of sync.
• Fixed missing basketball basket from the basketball court in the Film Actor Mansion Signature building.
• Fixed Small Bus Station illumination after upgrading it with the Extra Platforms and Taxi Stop.
• Fixed some building upgrades missing fire visual effects.
• Fixed electricity wires rendering on top of the smoke.
• Fixed Forest Forwarder vehicle lights glow.
• Fixed Forest Harvester vehicle light source placement.
• Changed some industry chimneys' smoke to water vapor.
• Several translation fixes.
• Updated game credits.

A number of other changes and bug fixes have also hit the Paradox Mods platform and the game's own modding hooks. Check them out in the 1.1.8f1 changelog here.

Cities: Skylines II's first expansion, Bridges and Ports, is currently slated to land in 2025 following the studio's commitment to a new roadmap. However, the delayed console version still does not have a release window.