In a recent update, Cities: Skylines II addressed problems in the game’s economy by simply eliminating the landlords.

We say simply, but it goes a little deeper. Initially, rent prices were determined by an algorithmic “landlord” who would adjust prices. In order to help fix issues with the in-game economy, the landlord is gone and instead prices are set fairly based on square footage and location.

Let’s start with Rent. Most likely you have run into complaints of “High Rent” in the game, so let’s talk about it. To complement the Land Value changes in patch 1.1.0f1 in March, we have tweaked how Rent works. First of all, we removed the virtual landlord so a building’s upkeep is now paid equally by all renters. Second, we changed the way rent is calculated. For those interested, the calculation looks like this:

Rent = (LandValue + (ZoneType * Building Level)) * LotSize * SpaceMultiplier

This of course affects the “High Rent” notifications you may have encountered, but we’ve tweaked those directly as well, so they are now based on the household’s income. That means that even if they currently don’t have enough money in their balance to pay rent, they won’t complain and will instead spend less money on resource consumption. Only when their income is too low to be able to pay rent will they complain about “High Rent” and look for cheaper housing or move out of the city.

Besides rent, households and companies need to pay for the building’s upkeep, which in turn affects the level of the building. When they pay the full upkeep fee, the building condition increases by a constant amount until the building levels up and the tenants start paying towards the next level. Similarly, if they cannot pay it, the building condition decreases by the same amount until it’s in such poor condition it collapses.

Cities: Skylines II is available on Windows PC (via Steam). PlayStation and Xbox ports are expected to release sometime in 2024.