Cities Skylines Policies Explained

hello people and welcome to another city skylines tutorial i hope you're all having a wonderful day and today we are back in palaven and which i guess will become our test city now and today we are going to have a look at the policy options available to us in the game including services taxation and city planning this video is definitely tailored towards those with little to no experience with the game and have no idea how to use the policies there are new policies added with each of the dlcs so if you're seeing a policy in my list that isn't in yours it's because you don't have that relevant dlc shameless plug if you are interested in picking up dlcs there are links to instant gaming below they do help support the channel so if you're interested maybe check out the link below a lot of them are pretty self-explanatory so we'll cover all of them as briefly as we can and also include a couple of examples of before and after shots of exactly how these policies and options available to us actually affect our cities but anyway let's get started shall we so to access our policies we come down into the bottom right hand corner here into the little white paper with a green tick on it and hit policies and then they're all listed out for us here and we also have two tabs along the top as well again as i mentioned at the start of the video these will look vastly different dependent on what dlcs you do and do not have but we'll work our way down the list and then across the tabs as well today so first of all we have power usage and water usage and we can bun these two together and each of them has a tool tip as well so if you hover over them it does tell you what it does however some of them aren't always quite as clear as to what effect they have on the c so power usage will moderately reduce the electricity consumption at a cost of five dollars or five pounds or five simoleons whatever you want to call the currency per building so we have a look at our power at the minute parliament is currently consuming 832 megawatts of power if we activate this policy and then come and check again we are now consuming 712 so obviously these two policies here water will work the same as well if we turn this off have a look how much water we're consuming it's currently 894 000 and then we come in and turn this on we can check it again and then it drops back down so these two policies become significantly more expensive of course as the city grows because you're going to be paying five dollars for every building that's in the city when you would use these is really at the start of the city and if you're struggling for money and you're not quite ready to place another power plant or another water tower or another water pump using these can give you a little more breathing room just to take you away from this orange bar for a little bit but once the city grows into a significant size probably around your third or fourth milestone you're not really going to have much use for these policies anymore and you can tend to turn them off and you can actually end up saving quite a bit of money and if you do remember to turn them off because if you put them on at the start of the map and then don't turn them off and the city grows to something the size of parliament you know you can imagine five dollars for every building that starts to add up so that's power and wars usage pretty self-explanatory and more useful at the start of the game next up we have smoke detector and distribution which will significantly reduce the risk of fire again at a cost of five dollars per building in the city we come into our emergency services uh parliament currently has a 57 percent hazard risk of fire breaking out anywhere in the city of course if you're not playing with fire on this policy is totally useless so go into your gameplay settings and actually check if you have fighters on if we activate this policy and come back into our hazard we will see with the gear on three speed that the hazard will fall by a couple of percentiles in parliament it will drop to about 55 so if you're having severe problems with fires in your city this can be helpful otherwise it's not massively useful next up we have pep band and which will slightly reduce the garbage accumulation with a trade-off of a slightly decreased happiness decreasing happiness is never really a good thing to do you know you want your sims to be as happy as possible and the slightly reduced garbage accumulation isn't really a good trade-off for that and if we activate this and leave the games everywhere on three speed for a hot minute and we will just see you know these little pointers they move ever so slightly there's no real reason to ban pets you could apply this to a specific district if you wanted to but otherwise it's kind of pointless unless you're having real severe garbage problems and maybe you can't afford to place another recycling center or a landfill site pep band is fairly useless now going on to recycling again another garbage accumulation reduction policy a recycling will reduce the garbage accumulation with the trade-off of a slightly reduced tax income again if you're having garbage pilot problems this can be helpful maybe in a specific district if um say for example the emerald district right here i was getting a ton of garbage pile up i could specifically apply recycling to it and but you know you have to bear in mind you're going to lose tax income as well for a city the size of parliament money really isn't an issue now you know you kind of you reach a point of terminal velocity or critical mass i guess in cities skylines eventually where money isn't really a concern anymore and you will just have millions in the bank uh so slightly lose tax income not great at the start of the game certainly not a policy you want to be applying early game because you're going to start eating into that income but late game if you're having garbage accumulation issues then recycling can be a useful policy next up we have smoking ban which again is a policy that affects our citizen happiness so if we apply this you know things will shift ever so slightly and it is a slight increase in health with a trade-off of a slight decrease in happiness so health isn't really a mechanic in cities skylines the way people get sick is really through pollution and you know for a city of nearly 90 000 people only 20 of them are sick so you know at least in my experience with the game health has never been an issue you know people i mean maybe this is something that we can that can be expanded in cities too the clinics and hospitals are basically parks they just increase land value and force buildings to level up there's no real flushed out gameplay mechanic with the sims health in cities skylines so again if you want to slightly decrease your citizens happiness for a slight boost in health then apply smoking ban next up we have parks and recreation which will moderately increase the land volume around parks and plazas also increase the parks and plaza's budget by 20 so if we have a look at our budget and come into the budget tab and look at parks and plazas currently spending thirty thousand on parks and plazas in poland if we activate this policy we'll of course see this switch up leave the game on three speed for a hot second then the budget will slowly increase by 20 of what you're initially spending of course this 20 will scale if we move this slider up and down so bear that in mind this will become considerably more expensive the higher that this bar is if we have a look at our land value and even without this policy active you can see palaven's land values are all fairly high we're all pretty much in the green uh for most places it's a nice place to live and so maybe again you could apply this to a specific district with a lot of parks and plazas in and if you really want to make a luxury area increase the land value which of course increases happiness and forces buildings to level up so maybe a policy for a specific district but your city will survive without it so unless you're really looking for that incredible boost in land value quite quickly then state parks and recreation on but just bear in mind a 20 increase is quite significant so just check within your budget tab what you're spending on parks and plazas before you activate this policy education boost will prioritize education over working for young adults so they're more likely to go to university campuses and it also increases our education budget by 25 so again we have a look at our education currently spending fifty four thousand if we activate this policy back into our budget tab leave the game on three speed for a second this number will slowly climb up again it will scale with our sliders here so just be careful before you activate this policy because you could really start eating into your income this is a policy that's really useful for getting our campus areas to level up faster and i use this quite a lot in my cities when i'm trying to hit those next education levels and just to get more students into the campus areas because sometimes it can be a little difficult to get to hit max level and the way campuses level up isn't really great but whatever that's probably a different subject for a different video and again it's i i've always applied it city wide if you guys have had different experiences applying this to a specific district and please let me know but i usually use this one just to get campus areas to hit that next level but you know just be careful about that 25 increase because that's you know that's a quarter of your budget that's uh that's a fairly hefty junk so education boost is quite useful next up we have recreational use which slightly increases tax income moderately increased tourism that's tourism numbers not income from tourism for a slightly reduced crime rate with a trade-off of a 15 increase to your pleasing budget this is usually a good party to have on city-wide and unless you're maybe going for a specific theme of not having recreational use available across your city and again if you have maybe some nightlife or tourism specializations in the district this can be useful to apply to that district but in my experience there's never any reason and not to apply this policy city-wide next up is free public transport and quite a unique policy uh so before you activate this again you want to check uh your income have a look what you're making from public transport uh 13 000 currently in parliament um which is fairly low for public transport to be fair it should be noted as well that this policy only affects your internal lines you will still make money from external train lines taxis and the airports so this will only affect and you can kind of see here as we leave this policy on and that we will still be making money from planes taxis and trains as well it's only everything else so buses trolley buses metros trams ferries monorails cable cars and sightseeing tours will all stop making money but again just to reiterate planes landing at your airports external train lines and taxis will all continue to make money with free public transport activated so you can see now we've activated it palaven's income falls through the floor because we make money with our public transport so the only reason you would really apply this is if you're struggling with traffic and you want that increased use of public transportation and because you know public transport keeps cars off the road because people are using the the public transport systems obviously i've i never use this um no public transport is a decent money maker but if you're having severe traffic issues and you need some kind of alleviation and you want to maybe start introducing some heavier public transport systems and like parliament has with multiple public transport hubs uh then go ahead and uh and check it out so what we'll do is we'll have a look at a little speed up of palaven's public transport hubs with and without this policy activated and see if we can notice a difference with how many people are actually coming and going from the transport hub so you can see from the time-lapse footage and the numbers on the screen that at least in parliament this policy makes very very tiny amounts of differences to how many people are actually using the public transport network this policy will have significantly different effects on everyone's city depending on how extensive your public transport systems are at palaven as an example uh all of our public transport is really highly integrated there is an absolute ton of it and they all converge with one another so people just switch from one method to the other as you can see in our downtown public transport hub here we have trams intercity trains monorails and metros as well all meeting up so if your public transport isn't quite as integrated and convergent as something like parliament's is you may get a little less or more mileage out of this policy depending on your city so this will vary from player to player quite heavily next up we have schools out which will force citizens to go to work over education higher educated sims will take jobs in office spaces and high density commercial when low density commercial as well if you're having an issue with your worker demands then this can be a useful policy to apply to a specific district i would never apply this city-wide and you will really nerf your higher education and which earns you more money with people going to higher jobs and buildings leveling up to max level and they do require higher educated citizens so you know if you're struggling with fulfilling uneducated worker demands uh schools out over a specific residential area it can be helpful to stop that problem next up we have harsher prison sentences which will double the usual prison sentence length and which will of course keep felons off the streets for longer as the policy specifies more of a gimmick policy as opposed to something that really heavily affects the way our cities function and if you're getting a ton of crime uh in your city which for some reason isn't being fixed by just placing more police stations harsher prison sentences could not reduce that figure but again not massively impactful so we'll now come into three snowfall policies of extra insulation no electricity for heat and only electricity for heat so for those playing in the snow formats extra insulation building require less energy for heating and which will of course affect your uh heating stat of course you have to actually heat your buildings in a snowfall map for every other map in the game at these policies it will have no effect you can also tell those buildings to not use electricity for heat meaning they will only use the heat provided by the heating power plants that you use which will of course reduce your electricity consumption and then only electricity heat will do the opposite of that and they won't use the heat provided by the heating plants they will use your power plants which of course will increase your electricity consumption so it's just trading off one for the other depending on which of these you activate but again only applies to snowfall maps uh people outside of snowfall don't have to worry about this next up we have helicopter priority where if this policy is active if there are emergencies on areas with this policy on the services will always use helicopters instead of ground vehicles again more of a gimmick policy um unless you're having severe problems with emergencies like fires and stuff unless you're having severe problems with fire and crime and whatnot then your police and fire helicopters will make use of this policy but in my experience i've never had a need to activate this it's more of a gimmick if your road network isn't quite as extensive and it takes a long time for fire trucks and police cars to drive over to where they need to go helicopter priority might be useful again based on my own experience with the game never really needed it uh if anyone else has again uh with all these policies that we're covering today if you guys have maybe had a different experience with something that i'm talking about uh please feel free to drop it in the comments below and so myself and others can read it but there's a fair few gimmicky policies within the game with helicopter priority being one of them next up we have uh prefer ferries which will force citizens to prefer ferries for moving around in the city again only applies if you have a fairly extensive and expanded ferry network within your city uh currently um palaven has around 83 people a week using the ferry system which is fairly extensive for a ferry network it flows around the rivers it comes out from clausen wharf uh past dawson through canolan into the river fish co-op uh through the downtown where it switches into another separate system and then there's another ferry system that flows down into the rivers so it's a fairly extensive ferry network only 83 people are using it without this policy and then if we uh turn this on it's at a cost of two dollars per ferry in use so that's the ones on the line so that's not per line it's per ferry so if it's two dollars here it's going to cost us 20 for this specific line right here so we'll leave this on and then you can just kind of see it's jumped up to 85 now 27 tourists a week you're getting very slight increases unless you've got an absolute ton of water in your map and a fairly extensive ferry network then prefer ferries isn't something you're going to see a vast amount of use out of but it's nice if you want to bump the ferry numbers a little bit next up we have high ticket prices which will raise public transport ticket prices by 25 to get more profit again at a trade-off it says this may result in less passengers it's not a guaranteed percentile decrease it's going to be fairly city dependent again depending on the extent of your public transport systems how heavily the citizens rely on that public transport to get around then you can you can apply this if you want so we'll take a look at our budget again without this policy active we're currently making 17 000 if we come in and turn on this policy higher ticket prices pop the game on three speed for a hot minute we'll see that this figure will slowly climb again it will depend how extensive your public transport systems are and as to how much this increases by because obviously that's going to be dependent on how many sims are actually using the public transport so if you're struggling for money and you want to nerf how many people are using your public transport systems a bit higher ticket prices might be for you well now move on to the worst policy in the game educational blimps if you are one of the few people in the world that actually uses blimps in your city and then you can turn this on which will switch the advertisements and blimps to be educational posters um to be fair i do use this policy if i'm really struggling for a compass to get to next level and this this can help and if you want to put educational blimps on and it will just help bump those campuses up a little bit quicker but of course you do need to have blimp systems and within your city it doesn't cost you anything so it's never a bad thing unless you want stupid sims so there's no real downside to having this on apart from having blimps flying around your skies but whatever yeah i don't like blimps i don't know so yeah educational glimpse it's all right not the worst policy ever now move on to recycling plastic which forces recycling centers to work with 20 more efficiency at a cost of 10 per recycling center per week and so if we fly over and find a recycling center somewhere in parliament we should have one uh somewhere around here i know where this one's one over here isn't there and so this will refer to that processing rate so if we turn this policy on again if you want to apply this to a specific district with a lot of recycled plastics in it will reduce your garbage accumulation because they're working faster so if we take a look at the numbers without the policy it's processing at 24 000 units a week with 15 garbage trucks again these numbers will be different depending on your garbage budget here this will increase of course and decrease depending on if you slide it up and down and then we'll pop this on let's go for recycling plastic leave the game on three speed for a second we'll see our processing rate would jump up by what was it was it 20 percent yeah with 20 more efficiency so if you've got a ton of recycling centers in your city and that budget will jump up you know if you've got 10 recycling centers that's an extra thousand dollars a week um which is fairly expensive so it's up to you i would probably just apply it to a district that you may be planning to put in a special garbage processing building and then put your recycling centers there unless you want to apply the city wide it's really up to you but you can just see how it kind of affects the numbers where it's applied it boosts up our processing rate as well it doesn't affect the garbage trucks in use this is controlled by your budget and but it will affect the processing rate so it's up to you not the worst policy ever and it can help reduce garbage accumulation in your city too they're also quite useful if you're going for a very green themed city then recycled plastics is always nice so the next policy is preferred parks and very similar to recycled plastics it's going to draw 10 more visitors to all parks plazas and park areas so that's including these assets within these tabs so all of these park assets alongside your part life areas and it's referring to both here so you will draw ten percent more visitors which is nice if you have part-life cheeses then you'll make more money through the park live cheese and however it's also going to cost at ten dollars per park plaza and park area this is something you want to apply uh to a specific district with a lot of parks in it and such as the hillside gardens and lavender van here and there's a lot of parks in this area and there's some over down by the canals and we've got a nice big one over by our metro station once cities get to a decent size chances are you're going to have an absolute ton of park areas and if you're so if you apply a city-wide a cost of 100 per park plaza and park area this can get ridiculously expensive and you imagine for those that have followed polygon all the way through there's a ton of parks in this city so it would uh it will bankrupt you pretty quickly and so this is definitely something you want to apply to a district rather than city wide but you know it's going to draw 10 more visitors which in turn and will make us more money via these stats here and of course the vanilla parks and these don't make money and you know you don't charge to get in them so you will only make money through your part-life areas with amusement parks zoos city parks and nature reserves so just bear that in mind um it's a good policy more people coming to parks is always good for our cities but it's an expensive one so just be careful with it next up we have the park maintenance boost and which increases the park maintenance vehicle shift length by 50 at a cost of 80 per park maintenance service building now what these packmate and server buildings do is they will travel around the city you see that these little blue cars here look like they have a little canoe on the roof these are them they will travel around the city and boost at the parks at increasing their entertainment value and radius which will of course and the entertainment value will draw more people and so that will tie really nicely into our previous policy we covered up preferred parks and increasing that entertainment will also boost land by it as well and so you know they'll stay out for longer continuing to do that job by 50 at a cost of 80 per park maintenance service building 80 is nothing to be fair um first park service building you'll tend to have quite a few of these in your city they're only 147 a week and they're also really nice decoration assets as well a little bit of appreciation here for how we used it alongside our charm depot and to make a little bit of public transport detailing in this part of parliament so a decent policies have active again city-wide there's no reason not to have this active city wide 80 is fine you know you can afford 80 and it's going to help increase your parks as well we'll now move on to free wi-fi which reduces the mail accumulation by 15 percent because people are sending email as opposed to a traditional post at a cost of two dollars per building in the city and so very similar to the first policies we covered or power usage you know this scales per building in the city so the bigger your city is the more expensive this policy becomes the reduced male accumulation again in my experience the male mechanic that was added with the injuries dlc it's not massively fleshed out it's kind of like health and you know post is fine i've never i don't know maybe this is just the way i play my cities but i've never really had any experience with posts and causing any issues we do have post sorting facilities these things tend to produce a ton of traffic and so i guess you can you know apply this city wide now if we go for you know we have 6 000 unsorted mail out of a capacity of 50 000 this is without the policy active so you know if we were gonna pop this on city wide and leave the game on three speed for a hot minute you know you can see that there's a prime example having free wi-fi on this drop down so to mail down to nothing so if you're finding your post sorting facilities and just absolutely heaving with trucks uh then throw on free wi-fi but again this scales per building so the bigger your city the more expensive it's going to be but not a bad policy but i find the mail industry to be not massively flashed out as it is so i don't know let me know what you've kind of thought of the male mechanic in cities next up we have another post service building policy which is automated sorting which will increase mail capacity by 10 at a cost of 300 per city post service building so if we pop this on we currently have 500 000 either side let's go ahead and throw this on for automated sorting it's going to increase by 10 percent so we now have 550 000 of unsorted and sorted mail and that's going to cost you 300 per building so again similar to free wi-fi post isn't the the greatest thing ever and if we come into our public transport we can see you know you you don't make any income from post um yeah it just is what it is for me the post offices are nice decorations and they work as nice corner assets that's about the extent i get out with them i don't know maybe um you guys have had a better experience with post than i have but you know if if these places are really struggling that jam-packed automated soaring will give you that extra 10 buffer so if you want to put it on you can do next up is for-profit education and which all education facilities in the city become for-profit and students are required to pay tuition fees to attend school so this applies to all education buildings in the city so if we leave this policy off sorry for a second see our dormitories currently cost 120 a week our police academy costs 960 study hall 160. now this doesn't affect varsity sports we check it we have three thousand a week upgrade for our aquatic center i'm mentioning that because the vastly sports buildings are under the education tab it does not affect the sports buildings if we come in and pop this policy on we'll see the drop to 64. this becomes free this drops to 80 but the aquatic center stays at 300. this is a trade-off for citizen happiness and so if you want to make a lot more money and out of your university and school areas then for-profit education is good but again it's trading officers and happiness again if we just pop on our happiness overlay a lot of the policies that we've activated that trade off for happiness they have very tiny increases a lot of the time alongside parks and unique buildings they really offset these kind of anti-happiness policies so it's not something you really have to worry about and we can also see here that they um they affect schools as well so currently the institute of creative arts is 288 a week and then we can take this off and come back in and then it'll pop back up to 576. so if you can afford to take the hit to your citizen happiness unless your sims are absolutely miserable then it's a nice way to get some money by charging for education within the city next up is book fair which causes the local public libraries to organize a book fair which will increase happiness and entertainment within the public library's radius so you're essentially giving your library buildings buff which is always nice however it will cost you a upkeep increase of 100 for all public libraries so if we have a little look at our public library building here and this one right here so you can see they have um another fairly wide radius the one here in part pac town basically covers the entire town and it currently costs 320 a week if we pop this on it goes up to 640 so it will double you know 100 increase so if you're really desperate for a happiness an entertainment boost and within a specific area this might be something you want to apply to a specific district like just the park park town and rather than the entire city because obviously the more public libraries you have the more expensive this policy will become but if you want to give your libraries a buff apply the book fair policy next up we have fishing license which increases all residential tax income by five percent uh which is nice that's a you know obviously this will scale with your cities as well so the bigger your cities are the more residentials you have the more money this will bring you in however you are trading off for reduced citizen happiness and an increase in your crime by five percent of course this can be offset by other policies we've looked at today like longer prison sentences and which is a free one to apply um again again citizen happiness but all the ones we've looked at today you know we can apply this we'll pop fishing license on we can see the happiness stats no one really cares to be totally honest um you know this is maybe this is um i'll say it went up it went up with this policy on well i don't know maybe people have a different experiences i suppose every city is different right so it might behave differently in different cities um we know residential tax income and is one of your biggest earners in parliament is the biggest earner at 300 000 um with the efficient license off if we put this on and have a look at it again you'll see you know this figure will just slowly crawl up by a total of five percent obviously residents come and go all the time so this figure will never be stable and it will constantly scale with your population but a five percent increase to what is i'm going to assume everyone's biggest earner is always residential tax income five percent increase for basically no happiness decrease even though it says it and then increase by five this is a good one to have on citywide and i wouldn't see a reason not to use this but again everyone's experience may differ so let me know in the comments if you have a different experience with it next up we have the tourist travel card and which the city offers affordable intercity bus tickets to people living in the surrounding cities to increase tourism and this will bring you eight percent more tourists which is always nice tourists visit new buildings go to parks usual public transport you know they they bring money into your city so an 8 increase isn't something to ignore however you will also increase your intercity bus network and upkeep by 15 so we'll have a look at one of our intercity bus stations here it's currently costing us 800 a week if we bring this up it's going to increase to 1012. so this will apply to all of your intercity bus stations so of course it will scale to become fairly expensive the more intercity bus assets you've got in your city what you're bringing in eight percent more tourists which is nice so again there's no real reason not to have this active city-wide eight percent more tourist is always nice and fifteen it's not that bad uh definitely a mid to late game policy i wouldn't apply this early on and because you will eat into your budget so we now have probably what is the weirdest policy in the game which is argue-based water filtering and this increases the filtering in water intakes and purification leveling drain pipes by 45 percent and it also reduces the algae farm production by 50 percent and increases your water facility upkeep by 15 really random policy and i would definitely say that the trade-offs here if you're relying on your fishing areas using argue farms which i never use the argue stuff i'd rather see the boats moving around than the algae stuff and then you know be prepared to take that 50 percent hit and then an increase to your water facility by 15 again the bigger your city the the bigger that fifteen percent is going to be you know if we have a look at polygon how much are we spending on water stuff let's go into our budget and go to this one here there's 25 000. so if we we throw this policy on you know this is gonna jump up by 15 for better water filtering the purification level engrave pipes by 45 for me this this is totally useless a really gimmicky policy so we'll now move on to our second tab of taxation again in my own experience i've never really had any great success with these if i'm messing about with taxes i'm doing it manually in my taxes tab everything's at 12 and it's always been fine you know um anything less than this you're not making the maximum amount of income anything more you're going to start getting people complaining so it's interesting to note that these policies they don't override your tax rates set in the taxes tab so even though we apply the tax rates for low residential by two percent it does not reflect within our taxes tab so again this is probably best applied um to a specific district if we come into the animal district go into policies and then set a tax rate for this if you want to make a little more money out of your low density residential areas in one specific place then you can do that i'd never really dabble with these and then it's the same for all of our relevant zonings so low density residential low and high commercial office earnings and then it's the opposite for these next ones it's tax relief drops it by two percent instead of increasing it so again i i've never really found um a theme when this has been useful so you see now that we have applied the tax rates for low density residential everyone's whinging about taxes are too high so then what you would do is you come in and then drop this by two percent to offset that increase everyone stops complaining really pointless applying this it's um you know i don't know i haven't had any success with these if i want to mess with my tax rates i do it manually in the taxes tab and and bring everything into 12 which is the golden number and any higher you get people whinging any lower you're not making the most amount of income now the last option within this uh tab of taxation is let go of leisure which causes leisure specialized areas to stop generating all tax income but they will get a hefty boost in the entertainment and attractiveness values and which of course means they draw more people and so unless you're making an absolute ton of money and all of your commercial within your city is leisure and you know you will lose an absolute ton of commercial income and you know you can actually hover over and get a tool tip so i make 7566 of of leisure areas which is not bad that's like what the the third biggest figure if we apply this we're going to get let go of leisure and back into our economy tab hover over commercial and then you'll see that leisure will fall to zero because we now have the policy active where leisure specialized areas don't pay any tax income but they're going to draw more people which means more people will visit your part life areas which means they'll pay the usual public transport systems to get here so again it's going to be very city dependent and you know everyone's going to be different just double check how much money you're making from leisure first and by hovering over your little eye icon on the commercial tab and you'll see the little theater mask face that's going to indicate how much money you're making from leisure so again it's all right it's going to you know bring more people to the area but it's only really worth applying if they're going to get to the area with public transport and pay to use that public transport and then also visit the park life areas within the city uh within the leisure areas as well so dawson waterfront for an example and there's no park life areas here you know we're using park assets but you know people aren't paying to enter these i have green belts they're all just kind of open decorative space so again you've got to make a judgment call on it and i've never really had it active i've never really had a course to get more people to come visit the leisure area and you know 7 000 a week isn't something to ignore with uh commercial income so is a decent policy certainly not essential though we'll now move on to the city planning options available in the city and first up our small business enthusiast and big business benefactor which affects low density and high density commercial respectively and these two will increase their sales which means they sell more goods and however you need to bear in mind if you don't have the industry space available to produce these goods because obviously our industrial areas feed our commercial areas with you know goods to sell and then you know you can be if you put this on and you'll start to see those warning signs i think it's like not enough buyers for products and then maybe too much goods to sell i can't remember the exact warnings i'll throw them up on the screen now and but if you're gonna have these on they also partner really nicely with industrial space planning which is the next option so this allows zoned industry so that's not uh industries dlc areas and they would double the amount of goods they produced by zoned industry buildings which of course ties in with the commercial areas doubling their sales so if you're going to have either of these on it's usually a good idea to partner with industrial space plan as well they kind of go hand in hand and to increase the sales of all your commercial goods and but you know they do have an upkeep cost of uh two dollars four dollars and then six dollars respectively so the more types of zonings you have of each of these the more expensive these three policies become so just bear that in mind if you're going to use them so the next option here is high tech housing which turns homes into much cooler smart homes to raise the land value around them which of course will slightly increase the land value and then also it costs a upkeep of four dollars per residential building again if you want to apply this you can do it's it's a trade-off for slightly increased land value for an upkeep cost of a building and you can apply it to a specific district if you want um all city-wide but again you know it's one of these policies that scales so you know if you want to do it you can do so i've just applied it to hickory square here and it does change the aesthetic appearance of the houses you can see now i've applied it they're starting to level up and grow so if you're after a specific vibe yeah you know they do they do change them into much cooler looking modern smart houses so if you're going for a specific vibe or a build and you don't want these kind of real modern looking ones within the area then don't apply it if you do and you want the land value increase go ahead and apply high-tech housing there's no reason not to but you will be paying that extra upkeep per residential building as well next up is high-rise ban and this is a really useful policy from stopping your skyscrapers going too tall and this is a really useful policy especially if you're going for a real key aesthetic on your build and if you wanted to apply this to canolabin for example we can come in and apply his high-rise bun and then you'll see our high-rises will slowly disappear so these are all level five so they say they just disappear on their own goodbye houses they will regrow and then what it does is um it just prohibits the construction of tall buildings and it will restrict the buildings from reaching their highest level so you have to bear in mind that higher level buildings pay more tax income so if you're going to apply this you're keeping your skyline oh dear enormous fire in the background ignore that that's fine polyvin's finished now um so you know you're not going to get the maximum amount of tax income but you're trading off to keep your skyline nice and trimmed uh like a literal height cap so if this is active city wide then you're not going to get any skyscrapers anywhere so certainly a policy you want to apply to a specific district and then it's going to keep these buildings leveled off at a nice sensible height rather than allowing them to grow enormously tall next up we have the heavy traffic ban and which will ban uh the heavy traffic vehicles however it does also say to make sure that there are optional routes available because if a business in the area needs services and deliveries then the truck will still pass through the area despite the band being active this refers to the kind of articulated trucks like these guys here the oil trucks and the farm ones as well if we can find one zoom around here and it won't refer to vans or anything it's like you know articulated lorries and tractors you know big vehicles that this will affect and of course these vehicles produce more noise pollution so if you don't want to say for example our our country town over here dawson and if i didn't want uh big heavy trucks passing through the town center and wanted to force them to go around the outside road then we can do that let's have a little test let's just trim up the district so it doesn't accompany these roads over here take these ones off and then if i was to apply at this specific policy over to dawson and which actually already has it on we now won't see any articulated trucks or tractors pass through dawson and we will still get vans which so we just saw one drive past there obviously there's one there's one here so this doesn't count as a heavy vehicle and it is just kind of you know real heavy and industrial vehicles that won't possibly dawson and so make sure they have an ultimate available because if they don't they will still pass through the area as so that's something to bear in mind and if you want to apply this policy of course it doesn't apply to garbage trucks because they need to get into the area to collect garbage so again not massively useful um if you don't want real heavy industrial traffic passing through an area apply heavy traffic ban uh but you know just make sure they've got an alternate route available otherwise they will still pass through anyway next up in our city planning options is encourage biking so when this policy is active most citizens will prefer bicycles over motor vehicles this is a policy that doesn't cost us anything and cycling's really good people will cycle further than they can walk so it keeps private vehicles off the road which is always nice it's going to reduce traffic and plus it's going to make your cycle highways a lot busier around the city as well even though there's no traffic stats within public transport which is where we expect it to fall we can actually come to our menu go to city stats and then there's an option here just to take cyclists and you can kind of see um you know how many people have been cycling and per thousand over how many years you can see where i've turned off encouraged bike in for the sake of this video and it's just been an enormous drop so you know you can kind of see that you know as the population grows over the number of years more people are cycling when i turned off the party of this video it nose dived and so what we'll do is we'll set up a time lapse of polygons and busy cycle networks somewhere in the city i'll go find a spot for it and then we'll have a visual representation of exactly how many more people cycle with and without this policy [Music] active [Music] [Music] [Music] so you can see from our little time lapses that there is visually more people cycling and also taking more directions across your cycle networks as well of course you will get more mileage out of this depending on the extent of your cycle networks and one more time just checking our city stats as well we can see where i turned off the policy for the sake of this video there was an enormous drop so all of this data here as the population grows more people are cycling so up until this point here encouraged by him was on turned it off enormous nose dive so encourage biking great policy to have on and you should have it on city wide there's no reason not to and then coming back into cycling we have band bikes on sidewalks which this policy bans cycling on sidewalks bikes can only use dedicated bike lanes on the roads and bike pathways including these ones here i kind of find this counterproductive and there's no reasons not to have cyclists on on the sidewalks if they can you know if they can cycle why would you stop them um it just means you have to be a lot more precise with your bike infrastructure to get them to use the bike lanes and bike pathways and but fairly useless for me i never use bomb bikes on sidewalks and next up we now have nimby which is a strange name uh no loud noise at night and leisure specialized areas will close for the night reducing noise pollution caused by leisure and so for those that don't know leisure specializations they don't close at night time so this is only really a policy that you will notice if you actively play with the day night cycle on all the time and factor in all the changes that come with night time such as the budget stuff and unlike the noise pollution caused by leisure it's never a good idea to zone residential near leisure specialization anyway or high density commercial and sometimes low density commercial in large amounts as well so fairly pointless you're only going to lose tax income throughout the night time with the leisure not being open so nimby might as well just not exist i've never used it and i don't really see a reason why you would so next up is the old town policy which is essentially the residential and commercial version of the heavy traffic ban and so applying this to a district so you definitely don't want to apply this city-wide this has to be on a district really and you can really your city if you apply this city-wide and only residences and businesses can use the area for motor vehicles and bans or other motor traffic and this is really good for forcing people to take public transport and if you want them to get to an area and they can't take their private car then they have to take a bus or a train or a metro and yeah and it essentially gives it the old town vibe not a traditional old town where you think you know it would ban all vehicles and all the streets will become pedestrianized as you would find a lot in europe and but certainly a useful policy it's not something i really use but it is a cool policy and just because the way i play the game but all time is decent um very much a themed uh policy for getting an area to lock and function the way that you want it to we are now coming into the realm of totally useless policies starting with lightning rods so this requests the tallest buildings to install lightning rods on their roofs to lower the likelihood of them catching fire during a thunderstorm and so these are the natural disasters policies uh unless you're playing actively in your gameplay settings with natural disasters on these are pointless and we'll just eat into your budget um i haven't really played at all with natural disasters active in the area so can't speak too much to them if you don't want your buildings to burn down why are you playing with natural disasters on i don't know it's not for me but that's what lightning rods does and with vip area any and all shelters in the policy area are reserved only for citizens living in the policy area so if you only want your citizens to go to the shelters and so they don't get blown up again how much of a difference does this really make can't speak to it i'm not a natural disasters lover a fast recovery in these areas the emergency response unit does not search for survivors but only makes the lot ready for rebuilding so more citizens are lost but the city recovers faster so again if you want your city to grow faster after watching a meteorite slam into it and not have as many survivors recover you use fast recovery and no rebuilding uh forbid rebuilding on lots with destroyed buildings uh lots have to be manually borders to reel our building so if you want to go around a monthly borders a lot of destroyed buildings use no use no rebuilding natural disaster policies aren't great and again the kind of fold are the gimmicky uh policy options for me so the next policy is combustion engine ban so only electric cars are allowed in the affected area except for residences businesses and city service vehicles um so this also says please note this policy takes some time to have an effect and citizens with combustion engine vehicles will avoid the policy area but if they have a destination within the area they will travel to it so kind of seems counterproductive for of course a combustion engine ban and then likewise the opposite to this one is the electric cars with everyone living in the policy area must switch to an electric cars if they own vehicles at a cost of two dollars and per vehicle per week since there's no air pollution stat within the game um these kind of seem a little bit redundant but okay there is something worth noting that with electric cars policy uh for those that follow my series uh you know that we use uh the green cities edison hyper charger car parks a lot for detailing especially outside of large assets like stadiums and stuff where you would expect to find car parks these won't be used unless this policy is active somewhere and if you play it on a district then people from that district will come and use these car parks if you apply city-wide it's a cost of two dollars per vehicle again this scales with the size of your city the more cars in the city the more expensive this v this policy will become and but as this policies are active city-wide we will now start seeing people using the edison hyper charges because of course whilst they are car park assets the game is reading them as you know electric car charging points and so you can see now with the policy off they're not coming in and but once the game picks up on this policy being active and for electric cars we will start seeing some cars actually park within the lots now here as well and we can probably go and find some car parks somewhere in the city with these on these are the four by two car parks so you see where where it has the regular car parking space cars are using them but all the electric ones are empty so this is because electric cars was off but now we have it on and you will start to see some people come in so apart from people actually using um your car parks next up is filter industrial waste which causes zoned industrial buildings to filter their waste making them pollute the ground a lot less which will cost you two dollars per zoned industrial building every week so having this active will just bring your ground pollution down and there's currently basically little to no pollution and in parliament so it's a useless policy for me but if you find that your zoned industrial areas are making lots of pollution and you hate that horrible brownish purple taint that it leaves on the ground phillips industrial waste can help with that next up is boost connections which will increase the traffic capacity and outside of the city by 20 so this will apply to your ferry ports your airports external train lines and motorways so we'll kind of run over each of them here so if we put it on this does cost 10 000 a week which is insanely expensive for a policy uh but you know you're going to be getting more people into your city and so you know i'm paying 10 000 a week for this policy to be active but in return i'm getting 20 percent more people arrive by the airport who are going to spend money in the city they're also going to use my public transport and visit my part-life cheeses you're going to get more people coming through the roads which means more people coming through uh tall booths if we fly over here and you know there's going to be 20 more cars passing through these and then likewise um over grelovin you know there's going to be 20 more sims arriving via this train switch point which means there's 20 more people passing through fromarge park which is one of our best and most efficient park live cheeses here with people crossing the highway so it's a very much a late game policy and applying this early will absolutely murder your economy and so you know a 20 increase is good that's a it's one-fifth of what you're already bringing in but you just want to make sure you have the infrastructure such as part live cheese's public transport and toll booths in order to justify that cost because 10 000 is a lot but you know if you want more people in the city then use boost connections next up we have a workers union policy which again seems to be another pointless happiness trade-off and which is going to reduce your residential tax income by two percent and for a slightly increased happiness so again if you if you put this on you can apply it to a district if you want and it provides the workers with better benefits increases their morale but reduces the tax income you can put it on you can check your sitters and happiness there's little to no change um with this i find i don't know again this could just be my experience with the game but a lot of the happiness policies unless combined and stacked on top of each other relentlessly but you're usually losing money um as a result of that they're yeah fairly useless i wouldn't really bother with workers union and next up is automated tolls and which is a fairly decent one increases the vehicle throw through toll booths so they don't have to stop um but it also reduces toll booth income by 20 so when would you use this and there's no need to use it here because these tall boots aren't backing up they're not busy and you know they can afford to slow down and pay the tour themselves and no traffic continues to flow an example where i have used this is over and by the enormous four-way interchange that imperative built for us and we do have a policy here and we can see the automated talk is active that's because we have two tall booths here so you can see they don't slow down and pay the toll just some stupid traffic airline change in here and so they can continually flow because if we take an automated toll off of this district we will watch the people slow down and pay the toll which is already backing the traffic up onto the bridge and since this is an insanely busy intersection and we know it's kind of like right in the heart of palavin transfers people back into from europe and into the downtown and um down into the cargo port over here so super busy interchange this is a great example of when automated tolls comes in useful you do reduce your income by 30 but you increase your traffic as a result so automated tools it has its place not something you want city wide really on extremely busy road networks next up we have industry 4.0 which the new technologies alter the nature of the industrial workforce now this affects all industrial workplaces are for well and highly educated citizens and increased production output by 50 percent of it also reduces the workplace by 30 percent so that's workplace numbers the amount of jobs available for zoned industry so again this is a specifically for zoned industry and so again you have to bear in mind that your employment rates will take a hit here because you're excluding low educated people from work in those industrial areas but you know you're also increasing your output by 50 percent as well and this will tie in really nicely with uh industrial space planning because you're doubling the amount of um goods you can output so you're essentially getting 150 increase in your industrial production with these two parts is active so again you know it's a balance between every one city and if you want to exclude all low educated sims from working in the industrial areas which is usually where they go to work in the um the lower level uh zoned industry stuff and you're gonna reduce your workplaces as well which means you need to zoom more of it in order to get people to stay in jobs and but also ties in nicely with some of the education policies that we've looked at today as well if we come back to services and then do education boost you know you're gonna prioritize education over working which means that when they are educated they're going to come into these well-educated jobs so you can kind of see how a few of these policies help tie into each other and compliment the other and it's never something i've used however i nearly almost always use the industries dlc stuff to satisfy my industrial demand and i never use the only time i really use um zoned industrial um is for decoration like over here the stuff that was burning down earlier um no this is the only time i use it these little one by one squares and stuff around old dead rails and kind of like the old rail watch towers and old abandoned factories so it depends how you're using zoned industry um but if you are do have a lot of zoned industry in your city this will quite severely affect it so just be careful if you are going to turn it on next up we have sustainable fishing and which decreases the yields by 10 and increases the uh hub upkeep by 15 it also increases citizen happiness by 15 and commercial income from goods by 5 so this is quite good um fishing as an industry is by no means the best money maker in the game um oil and ore are probably the best ways to make money from industry so taking a 10 less yield from your fishing isn't that bad and the assets aren't really that expensive anyway and it's only 166 for these ones and you know the the fish factory is 400 fish mark is 192 they're not the most expensive assets to run and so to take a 15 increase in citizen happiness is is pretty good um you know this is for the first time in this video where we've seen a decent substantial increase of citizen happiness by 15 and we're also gonna get income from uh commercial income from goods by five percent as well so you know you're trading off decrease yield and high upkeep for one of the less efficient industries for increased happiness and more money from commercial goods so sustainable fishing is decent and you probably apply city-wide unless you just want to apply it maybe to a specific um district you can see that we have it active on the uh the palaven riverfish co-op already so you know it's decent it's a it's not a bad little policy but you just want to make sure that your economy can you know unless your economy is totally reliant on fishing you might struggle with sustainable fishing policy but otherwise you are right with it again another happy fish policy and dolphin safe fishing will decrease the fish yield by 25 and increase citizen happiness by 25 percent so you know having both of these policies on and we're going to decrease our yield by a total of 35 percent and for an increase of happiness of 35 as well and so if you're struggling with happiness and you love dolphins dolphins say fishing is great and but again you know just be careful that your your budget and economy isn't entirely reliant on the fishing industry and because you're going to be taking a less than 35 percent yield here which will also affect how well your fish factory and fish market assets remain stopped as well because you won't be catching as many fish and then last but not least we have a unique building specific policy for airplane tours so the local aviation club starts organizing airplane tours which will increase the plane count entertainment and citiness attractiveness but also increases the building noise pollution um by 50 which is 50 is a big increase for noise pollution and but you know you don't really have these things near residentials anyway so it's something you have in your city at the aviation club from sunset harbour then uh just be careful that you're not gonna that that noise pollution increase um isn't gonna affect any nearby houses but um you know you're gonna get more planes going around and increases the entertainment and city attractiveness which is always good things to have it's going to mean more tourists and ultimately more money okay guys that is going to do it for today i want to thank you all so much for watching if you've enjoyed the video likes comments and shares below are always massively appreciated and they really do help the channel equally much if you haven't enjoyed it and please feel free to leave a dislike as well and apologize if i have got anything wrong today i am basing this video entirely off my own experience with the policies and some of them i'm really familiar with or the ones like a lot of the fish and stuff on natural disasters i very rarely use um city skylines i mentioned today you kind of reach you reach a point of critical mass where nothing can stop you and you know once your city reaches a certain size any kind of issues in the city you can basically just turn you back on and carry on playing unless you're quite anal about that kind of stuff then it doesn't really matter but either way i hope maybe you've learned something today and again i've mentioned today uh if you have had any different experiences with the policies in your cities and maybe want to share something with me and the other viewers please throw it down in the comments below maybe i've missed something or perhaps misinterpreted something as well if you would like to come and see the city that we've been flying around today if you haven't seen this before this is paulovan and our city skyline's vanilla build and it is finished now i will leave and links up throughout the video and down in the description below to the playlist and one of my favorite cities absolutely beautiful so if you want to come and watch the city be constructed over 90 episodes on live streams and then there are links down there in the description to go and do that otherwise we'll shut up and leave it there well thank you all so much for watching and as always enjoy the rest of your day

Channel: OVERCHARGED EGG

Views: 10,873

Keywords: cities skylines, tutorial, policies, city planning, how to start a city

Id: 7jQbIQoLoqY

Length: 70min 17sec (4217 seconds)

Published: Wed Jul 28 2021