The Cities: Skylines 2 developers have finally confirmed the size of the map in the new city builder, and while it can’t compete with the modded maps for the original game, we’re still talking about a map size of about 159 square kilometers in the new city builder.
It is noted in the most recent dev diary video that the 159 square kilometers are “larger than some countries.” A Cities: Skylines 2 metropolis would rank near the bottom of the list of geographically largest countries, however you may still be able to build an exact replica of Liechtenstein as part of a city-building game.
There were nine map tiles to unlock in the original Cities: Skylines, resulting in a total of 33 square kilometers of playable area available in the game. Compared to the original game’s map tiles, Cities: Skylines 2’s map tiles are a third of the size, but there are still 441 map tiles to choose from, so you’ll be able to explore 159 square kilometers, nearly five times larger than the original game’s playable area.
The problem with that is that it does not tell the full story, as folks like City Planner Plays have pointed out. A community mod called 81 Tiles was available for the original Cities: Skylines on PC and it allowed the players to expand the playable area to a whopping 299 square kilometers, which was a huge increase in playability. The vanilla maps in Cities: Skylines 2 are much much larger then the ones in the original game, but they are still only a little over half the size of the maps available in the original game with mods.
It is true that the sequel’s maps are still huge, and there is every possibility that modders will make them even bigger, as well. In addition, the sequel will also remove the agent limit, which will mean that there will be fewer artificial limitations on the growth of your city than there were previously.