Why Is Cities: Skylines 2 Crashing & Lagging (& How to Fix It)

Paradox Interactive revealed ahead of time Cities: Skylines 2 would have perform roughly, but I don’t think anyone expected just how rough things would be at launch. If you’re looking for tips, here’s how to fix some of the crashing and lagging in Cities: Skylines 2.

How to Fix Crashes on Startup and Lag in Cities: Skylines 2

Unlike its prequel, Cities: Skylines 2 is far more graphic intensive. The honest truth about most of the crashing and lagging players are experiencing is the result of using an underperforming PC build to play the city-building sim. Look at the system requirements for the title on Steam to get a better idea of what you need for a smoother experience.

If you meet the requirements, your graphics driver may be out of date, leading to crashes on startup and causing bizarre visual glitches. Furthermore, the files installed for Cities: Skylines 2 could be damaged or missing, so verifying or re-installing the entire title is recommended if all else fails.

Related: Does Cities: Skylines 2 Have Mod Support on PC and Consoles?  

Cities: Skylines 2 Devs Promise to Clean Up Crashes and Lag Post-Launch

Following the release of Cities: Skylines 2, players review bombed the sim on Steam due to the game’s frustrating crashing and lagging and struggles to find a fix. Colossal Order has recently addressed the backlash, promising to “improve performance going forward,” claiming current issues are “tied to the rendering of the game, and decreasing the quality of visual effects.”

According to the developer, performance will vastly improve over time “at the cost of some eye candy.” In a performance guide on Steam, Colossal advised players to reduce screen resolution to 1080p, disable Depth of Field and Volumetrics, reduce Global Illumination, and other settings as the team figures out the next steps.

Post-launch, Colossal intends to push “a series of small patches” to address performance problems and have “identified some issues tied to certain hardware setups that yielded unexpected results.” Based on the developer’s investigations, the following are core areas focused on improvements:

• Remove stutters, generally caused by some synchronization condition in the simulation.
• Optimize and balance GPU performance by reducing the number of vertices processed per frame and optimizing/balancing the effects that affect fillrate, such as Depth of Field and Global Illumination.
• Pushing any CPU optimizations that are not already done that Colossal comes across in this process.

While things are looking bleak performance-wise for Cities: Skylines 2, the response from the team has been transparent and honest, so here’s hoping Colossal can turn things around soon.

If you’re looking for more, here’s what you need to know about mod support for Cities: Skylines 2.