The latest Cities: Skylines 2 patch addresses homelessness and pollution issues in an already-fraught election year

Homelessness and pollution are complicated issues, I'm told, despite the surplus of unoccupied buildings and people who'd prefer to have breathable air. Luckily, addressing solvable problems is a fantasy we can live out even in the patch notes of Cities: Skylines 2, which just got fixes for buggy homeless encampments, inconsistent pollution behavior, and much more.

The full list of changes for Patch 1.1.10f1 is a lengthy one, but I should note up front that the pollution issues addressed will, technically, produce more pollution in a lot of cities. Specifically, air pollution has been tweaked so that "overall, more air pollution is generated, it spreads slightly more, and dissipates slower." Unfortunate.

Additionally, the patch addresses "issues related to road-based noise pollution" and rebalanced road noise generation to account for the fix. Overall, non-highway roads should produce a similar level of noise pollution as before, while highways will produce slightly more. The patch also fixes vehicle pollution only being visible above roundabouts and map borders.

On the homelessness front, homeless citizens will be freed from their purgatory of "waiting endlessly for public transport at the International Airport." Likewise, players will no longer find their tents in their parks after their previously-homeless occupants have left.

Tourism mechanics have gotten some needed attention, too, with fixes arriving for hotels that refuse to spawn in commercial zones and tourists loitering forever in buildings when they should be doing tourist things.

Elsewhere in gameplay improvements, the patch increases "fire spreading probability from 0.05 to 0.3," meaning fire will now spread more easily between buildings. Your fire departments will have no shortage of work, at least. Also of note: Cars will no longer park in Motorcycle Parking Lots. Civilization, at last, is restored.

Additionally, there are a series of fixes and adjustments to the UI to improve both readability and usability while addressing incidents of disappearing, erroneous, unresponsive interface elements. There are audio fixes in the mix as well. I'm reading here that "an unrelated whoosh sound that can be heard during the loading screen when a game is started or loaded" has been purged. If you're a particularly whoosh-sensitive individual, rest easy. Your time has finally come.

The latest fixes continue the ongoing effort to rehabilitate Cities: Skylines 2 after a launch that, as we noted in our review, was riddled with performance problems, bugs, and missing features—a launch that probably came too early, according to Paradox deputy CEO Mattias Lilja. At time of writing, Cities: Skylines 2 remains at a Mixed rating on Steam.