Scale always seems to be off in city builder games (a different but related genre, I suppose). Small roads that are too wide. Stadiums and even large power plants that are barely larger than condominiums. These structures should dominate the surrounding landscape, and I think a city sim would be better if it modeled it more accurately.

Cities: Skylines is not too bad in that regard. The core game has some really silly assets (like the international airport which feels big until you realize that the runways are about ¼ or less of the proper size, and the concourse and terminals are scaled down to match), but for a lot of things you can build them to the proper scale with a little creative thinking, a DLC (like the airports DLC), or mods (get one of the parking lot mods so that you can put 10k parking spots around your realistically–sized stadium, for example).

Cities skyline is about redoing the urban planning mistakes of the last century. And it’s fun.

Agreed! With just a little practice, building the perfect highway interchange with all of its flyovers everything is really a lot of fun. You can really see why cities like to build those perfect 6–level urban stack interchanges with access roads.

Yeah - the DLC really helps, where for instance a University changes from being a tiny building just a bit larger than a high school, to an entire campus with student accommodation, lecture halls, gyms, etc.

I think it's specifically the techniques you need to use to optimise depots that I find frustrating. Using double depots or staggering them on raised ground for maximum throughput.

It just feels like depots should be more like stations - I think it'd add loads to the game. Being able to build big roro depots near main lines or have smaller terminus ones with many bays for lower traffic routes.

Edit: here's a 2007 thread on the forums covering the idea https://www.tt-forums.net/viewtopic.php?t=30346

If you play with the JGR Patch Pack, there is a patch for drive-thru depots, which lets you place depots back-to-back, with each end open, and a train will drive in one side, service, and then drive out the other. It looks a little janky with the default depot graphics, but if you use a track set with full-tile depots, it looks wonderfully accurate, and you can make them as many tiles long as you need.

Oooh thanks for the tip. I'll definitely investigate!