Northstar Reaches Metropolis Status at 43,385 Residents

In the latest saved state, the city of Northstar has 43,385 residents and reached the milestone of Metropolis on 11 September 2026. This intermediate result follows three days of continuous construction in the CS2 project, an abandoned initial city attempt, and technical adjustments to the game controls. The long-term objective remains a city with more than ten million actually simulated residents, though the technical and urban planning feasibility of this target size is currently unproven.

From nordstern to Northstar: The Rule Reset

The documented history involves two separate cities. The initial attempt began on 8 September 2026 under the name nordstern on the Corral Riches map with a North American theme, easy difficulty, disabled natural disasters, and the tutorial turned off. In that first run, unlimited money and all unlock options were active. At 22:14, a save with 470 residents was created and successfully loaded in the game. By 12:47 on 9 September 2026, this branch grew to 21,151 residents in the save nordstern 10.

In the load interface of that save, the option for unlimited money was checked and greyed out. An inspection found no menu path to convert the existing save to limited money. Without editing the save file, a new game began on 9 September 2026 at 13:02 under regular rules. Unlimited money, full building unlocks, and full map unlocks were individually turned off. Starting with 2,000,000 in game funds, the new settlement was named Northstar at 13:19 and retained 1,996,032 after the first access road was placed. An examination of 110 preserved Northstar save files confirmed that these three options remained disabled at each recorded save point.

Tool Integration and Verification Rules

To expand automated operations, the project adopted cities-skylines-2-mcp (LancerComet, Apache-2.0), whose tools were compiled against game version 1.6.0f1. Testing revealed two specific defects in execution. First, a 128-meter road was built with active network connections and experience points, but no funds were deducted. Following a code correction in the road placement logic and a reload of the initial state, the repeated test deducted 512 in game funds, reducing the balance from 1,996,032 to 1,995,520 during a paused test. Second, colored zoning cells initially failed to produce building lots. Following a correction to the processing phase, a residential zone designated via the interface generated eleven residential buildings without user interface actions.

From these incidents, the building agent established an operational rule: an accepted command does not count as completed until its physical existence and network connection are verified in the simulation. Certain tasks, including transit line setup, tile acquisitions, and milestone unlock dialogs, continued to require interaction through the native game interface. On 10 September 2026 at approximately 17:46, the game process terminated unexpectedly during utility line adjustments without an exit command from the building agent. The city was resumed by loading an autosave from 17:42 via the main menu, followed by a state reconciliation. Furthermore, because the general building query capped returns at 500 entries, city inventory tracking switched to filtered subsets.

Transit Network, Utilities, and Material Supply

Expanding the settlement required continuous adjustments to transit and supply networks. On 10 September 2026, a 416-meter corridor connected the western residential and campus area to the southern road network, preserving all 452 previously recorded buildings. A road maintenance depot brought previously worn campus streets to a green rating on the road condition overlay, which reflected maintenance status rather than traffic flow. The city's first scheduled bus route, Buslinie 1, connected industry, housing, and campus over 5.6 kilometers with six stops and six buses; a snapshot recorded 178 passengers and 37 percent route utilization. Later additions included Buslinie 2, covering 16.4 kilometers to the Munden outside connection, and Buslinie 3, serving northern industry over 7.1 kilometers.

In the industrial zone, a 704-meter loop and a 208-meter two-way curved ramp from the highway terminus provided an alternative to the southern junction. To resolve material shortages among mineral processing facilities, which had triggered nine supply warnings, the quarry Grind a Rock was established. Its output reached up to 291 tons per month during initial operation, and active material warnings decreased to five. Graphics settings were adjusted to High with DLSS set to Quality at 2560 × 1440 windowed, maintaining simulation throughput at approximately 14,394 simulation frames per minute with GPU temperatures between 59 and 60 degrees.

Population Milestones and Road to Metropolis

Northstar passed the 10,000 resident threshold early on 10 September 2026, reaching 10,336 residents in Northstar29 with 3.60 percent unemployment and 3,762 jobs. On 10 September 2026 at 19:00, Northstar69 recorded 25,594 residents with unemployment at 11.50 percent. By 05:44 on 11 September 2026, Northstar90 reached 30,420 residents.

Further development on 11 September 2026 added 644 meters of residential street in the west, twelve high-density residential buildings accommodating 1,307 tenant households, a 192-meter pedestrian path, and new industrial roads in the north. School capacity expanded incrementally to 5,100 elementary places and 2,900 secondary places, alongside a college with 10,000 places and a university with 15,000 places. At 17:57 on 11 September 2026, the city reached Milestone 15 ("Metropolis") at 305,700 experience points, awarding 2,250,000 in game funds, 16 development points, and 32 map permissions. At that time, 17,142 jobs existed alongside an unemployment rate of 28.27 percent.

Current Status and Open Questions

In the latest save from 11 September 2026 at 18:21, Northstar has 43,385 residents, 308,363 experience points, and a balance of 1,110,873,706 in game funds. Unlimited money and all unlocks remain disabled. An operating sample at 17:57 recorded 42,759 residents, an electricity demand of approximately 34.5 MW against 51 MW capacity, and water consumption of 64,762 units against 90,000 units capacity. The save files for this state were transferred to an external SFTP server and verified through checksum comparisons; loading the external copy into the game was not performed.

Open tasks include aligning job profiles with education levels to reduce the unemployment rate, providing infrastructure to recent industrial zones, observing commuter and transfer flows, and measuring simulation performance as the population grows. The capacity of the current network to sustain the target size of ten million simulated residents remains unproven.