Comment by herdymerzbow
18 hours ago
Can't speak on how demanding the simulation is/was. But on launch Cities Skylines 2 was extremely demanding in respect of its graphics due to very poor optimisation. This PC Gamer article summarises a more technical analysis, which is linked through
https://www.pcgamer.com/a-tech-analysis-of-cities-skylines-2...
I'm the author of said technical analysis! (https://blog.paavo.me/cities-skylines-2-performance/)
But yes, at launch Cities Skylines 2 was very heavily GPU bound, due to very unoptimized meshes and a poor culling implementation. I haven't profiled it afterwards, but from what I've read they've optimized it enough that on most systems the limiting factor is now the CPU.
Thank you for your analysis! Apologies for not linking to you by name but I thought I'd keep it light and refer to the PC Gamer summary, which does link through to you as well for those who would be interested.