Cities: Skylines II's final update of 2023 will have two new maps, budget fixes, and more

The next update to Cities: Skylines II is coming later this week according to Colossal Order CEO Mariina Hallikainen. This is slated to be a larger than usual update following the studio's recent move to halt weekly hotfixes to focus on the more major issues plaguing the city builder.

Hallikainen gave a teaser of what's incoming with the update in the latest Word of the Week development blog post. Aside from the usual array of bug fixes, the studio is also putting in a holiday treat for players in the form of two new maps.

Titled Sunshine Peninsula and Corral Richers, the former will offer a map with only warm temperatures while the latter will be almost completely flat. The duo is being made using the Map Editor that's coming soon to players.

Meanwhile, to improve performance, Colossal Order will be adding new character-level of detail models and improving geometry layouts for assets. Players wanting better control over their city budget will be seeing improvements too, with changes hitting how money is calculated and shown off in menus.

"We’ve also improved how vehicles change lanes, fixed situations where the resource amount stored would end up as a negative value, and added the line colour to ships and cargo trains so you can easily see which lines they belong to," says the studio.

An exact release date has not yet been given to his upcoming Cities: Skylines II update, but it is coming to both Steam and Microsoft Store (PC Game Pass) players sometime this week. The Colossal Order team will then be off for three weeks for the holidays before development resumes in 2024.

Modding support with the studio's official Editor tools is still coming next year. The focus on boosting performance and bug fixes will continue as DLC production remains paused. The studio is also working on the Xbox Series X|S and PlayStation 5 ports of the game, which have not received firm release dates yet since their last-minute delays from earlier this year.

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