Cities Skylines 2 1.3.3f1 (Sep 2025) works in Crossover 25 with mods
After spending more time than I want to admit trying to launch Cities Skylines 2 through crossover on my old MBP M1 Max 32GB I can confirm that it is working again. I mostly used information provided by other people for earlier versions - the challenge was to reapply some of the earlier fixes as a few issues became fatal errors rather than minor inconveniences.
Steps to get it working in Crossover:
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Create a Win10 bottle in Crossover
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Install Microsoft .NET Framework 4.8 (just search .net 4.8)
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Install Steam and Cities: Skylines 2 through Steam as normal
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One of the game files has to be patched (same as in this post) as a few lines can't be properly executed in WINE. I made the same changes to the file as u/alieng-agent - you can get it from my Github. You can also try to go for the file from u/alieng-agent but I noticed that the size was changed and therefore likely the content. All I did was to remove everything at the end of the methods EnumerateFileSystemIterator and EnumerateFileSystemIteratorRecursive of LongDirectory in the last WHILE-clause.
The patched file should be copied into this folder (replace the original):
/drive_c/Program Files (x86)/Steam/steamapps/common/Cities Skylines II/Cities2_Data/Managed
You can always restore the original file through Steam by verifying the game files integrity.
If you want to edit it yourself (or when inevitable a new update is pushed by CO): I used dnSpy (available only on Windows, so I used Parallels) and it doesn't allow you to post changes due to lots of exceptions. You'll have to go to IL-editing by selecting the line you want to remove, right-click to IL edit (a new window opens) and right-click into Replace with NOP - this removes the selected instruction. This has to be done several times until the code is edited to a clean state again (sometimes a line is only partially removed).
In the patched file the selected WHILE-clause has nothing in it
- OPTIONAL: Before launching the game I disabled Paradox Launcher as it caused issues in the past, but you can risk and keep it. Without the launcher I have to adjust the graphics every time, the game only remembers your resolution and fullscreen parameters. To disable Paradox Launcher simply add the following Launch Option to the game in Steam (right click - properties - General):
"C:\Program Files (x86)\Steam\steamapps\common\Cities Skylines II\Cities2.exe" %command%
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Download Jetbrains and install in the bottle to prevent loading into an empty menu with no UI (same issue as Windows folks had here but different reason)
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Create a folder for Temp files. In my case it was this path:
'drive_c/var/folders/p3/pd0y7gnd6yg6s0h4jl4khy0c0000gn/T'
Until you have this folder the game writes fatal errors to the Player.log (located in 'drive_c/users/crossover/AppData/LocalLow/Colossal Order/Cities Skylines II/Player.log'). Seems quite weird as I can't imagine such folder is created in Windows for the game, however, the game actually writes .tmp files to the folder constantly. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Now you are all set to launch through Steam. In my case both cloud and local savegames are working fine, but a new save (I downloaded CPP's Magnolia County) is only visible after a few restarts - guess Steam has to do some Steamcloud magic first.
Installing mods
Paradox Mods still doesn't work for some reason - according to PdxSdk.log this is due to access issues. You can also install mods manually:
- Download your mods from Paradox Plaza
- Extract the archive
- I recommend to rename the unarchived folder to reflect the mod name
- Move the unarchived folders to 'drive_c/users/crossover/AppData/LocalLow/Colossal Order/Cities Skylines II/Mods' (create the Mods folder yourself
- After you launch the game you will probably see mods-related pop-ups in the notifications like keybind conflict for Anarchy - this is how you know the mod was installed. This required me a few game restarts until I managed to completely unsubscribe from everything in the Paradox Mods - don't try this yourself :-)
Note that all dependencies are to be considered by yourself - like Unified Icon Library for Anarchy.
Possible issues
- If you experience crashes - you likely didn't replace the file in the step 4
- If your game only loads background scene with no UI - you didn't install Jetbrains from the step 6
- If your game ends up with a huge blue screen similar to Windows Blue Screen of Death and refers to cryptographic errors - this is likely to what u/alieng-agent was describing in his guide in the optional step 4. Basically MacOS sometimes creates invisible files .DS_STORE. You won't even see them if you made invisible file visible, but you are able to see them in console. To get rid of them - open the game folder in Terminal (you can drag the folder from Finder directly on to the Terminal icon in Dock) and execute the following command:
find . -name '.DS_Store' -type f -delete
Performance
For my MBP M1 Max 32GB performance isn't great and is around 20 FPS. Simulation is also slow on bigger cities. Here are some screenshots with different graphic settings from the Magnolia County savegame by CPP
When doing anything in the city FPS is mostly at 20 with almost no impact from graphic settings. FPS drops below 20 when you change camera angle to horizontal and look up from the ground level - this makes almost the whole city render even though the view is usually obscured by tall buildings.
If anyone has good suggestions on improving the performance - I would be happy to hear!
Posted Sep 14, 2025, 5:16 PM UTC