Top 15 Tips for Beginners at Cities Skylines!

hello welcome back to City platter plays where today I'm going to give you my top 15 tips for beginners and City skylines and though this is geared at beginners even seasoned players May pick something up so stick around and let me know if you do also if you think of a tip I missed drop it in the comments so we can all get better at City skylines together without any further Ado let's Jump Right In tip number one pick your map carefully the most important decision that you make early on in the game is selecting your map the map tells your story kind of resources that you're going to have the transportation connections the theme of your map and even the amount of area suitable for building these are all things that without mods you cannot change so if you're playing on the Xbox or Playstation you're stuck with this and understand that certain Maps like crater Falls here no ship connections could be a problem for you or Fisher Enclave no train connections so if this is something you want to build your map around you're not going to have that available to you in this particular map and that's why it's so important for you to be thoughtful about this up front the other consideration is that cities exist for a specific reason so did your city form around a forestry industry you'll probably want to pick a map that has a whole bunch of that resource available is it tourism maybe you want some water or you can be like B and pick a map that has a little bit of everything the same information is available on maps you download from the workshop so be sure to check this out if you download a map from the workshop as well tip number two do not over build only build what you need if you want to keep your budget in check early in the game it can be really tempting to over build your transportation Network look at this for instance this is a very complex interchange for what really is a town with no people and even after we have people have you ever seen a small town with an interchange this complex so I encourage you to build with dirt roads and early on in the game you won't actually have them unlocked what you need to do is just draw a small piece of a two-lane road and you're gonna unlock a bunch of new roadway options I don't want you to obsess with your entryway into the city it's not that important the other thing that you shouldn't think about is having the perfect roadway layout think about the story of your community here for instance if you wanted to have an industrial Powerhouse I would want to have my industry over here next to this train line if I knew that I wanted this to be a tourism focused City maybe I would put the tourism in and housing over in this area this right here might just be the very best way to start your city because it's inexpensive and won't bleed you dry on money and it's very flexible in this instance I'm going to say that this city is based on industry in order to place our industry way over here next to the rail line and we'll place our residential and Commercial over here next to the river this is also a way that you can plan out your city if you really want to plan a bunch of stuff out use dirt roads because they're inexpensive to maintain and I would encourage you from staying away from larger Transportation facilities until you absolutely need them use asymmetric roads if you can and avoid roads like this one until you need them tip number three place your water drain pipe Downstream now I know I know I know this one might seem really simple but I've killed a number of Sims in my day inadvertently making them drink poo water we don't want to do that so we're going to take the water drain pipe and place this Downstream and for a strictly vanilla player this is going to be how you're going to do it because you won't have access to Inland water treatment plants or some of the Eco Water Outlets which are available if you have some of the DLCs since my water is Flowing from the left hand side of the screen to the right hand side of the screen I've placed my drain pipe right here and I will place my pumping station at the other end and with that you're ready to place your water pipes underneath the road right where they belong tip number four services that unlock are required if you're playing through a traditional vanilla playthrough you will reach different Milestones that will unlock different Services I have just reached little Hamlet at 500 population and now garbage Healthcare and education are now available to me these are not optional I have to place these in my city even though they weren't required previous to this because I didn't have them unlocked at my next Milestone worthy Village I need to place emergency services if I don't place them my city will burn down and be full of criminals so make sure that you're paying attention to this new Services section of the Milestone unlocking panel and here's an example of this I now need to pick up garbage from these homes now that I've unlocked the ability to place a landfill tip number five respect the topography build only where it's appropriate and if you're going to build in more challenging locations be sure that you're doing so in a way that makes sense by grading things out and having slopes that are reasonable all of that said in the early game it's really difficult to to do that because you cannot see your terrain Heights unless you have a mod such as this one toggle it which allows you to toggle your contour lines your ability to look at Contours will be restricted until you reach the Tiny Town Milestone when you unlock landscaping and you can layer this with other tools so for instance by starting out with your gravel road you can click on your terrain Heights and now you can draw a road while you're looking at your terrain Heights at least on PC unfortunately this is not available on Console which is a really big limitation in my opinion because I use this all the time unlocking Tiny Town also unlocks your landscaping and disasters and I would highly recommend that you master your landscaping tools right up front for instance you have the shift terrain tool which if you left Mouse click will create small hills and if you right Mouse click we'll create valleys for this tool I would almost always recommend you use it at its lowest brush strength next you have your level terrain tool click on this and then you can right Mouse click somewhere and take that height and spread it out everywhere if you're looking to layer things in your terrain this can be a very invaluable tool to use next is the soften terrain tool and I like to use this one with a larger brush size we're gonna go with a medium brush size and again we'll go down to a pretty small brush strike the entire area that you have highlighted within this tool will be averaged out if you're using this and you'll be able to see the contour lines spreading I use this at the lowest brush strength so that I'm able to control what I'm doing you don't have to but I find this to be the easiest way to use it and then finally we have the slope terrain tool I think this is the most useful tool of all of them and probably the most underappreciated and misunderstood so with this tool you can select it right Mouse click a height that you want to go to and then find a location where you want to start the incline up to that height and use your left button to slope to that height and this can be invaluable if you want to be able to create a nice slope for a roadway to go up or down look at that absolutely beautiful except that this shouldn't exist number six provide transportation options across all modes upon reaching the Boom Town Milestone you will unlock buses and the moment you unlock buses and other Transit options you should start to implement them but it's not just buses we've also unlocked trams if you have the snowfall DLC I'm gonna Place trams because it feels like the most natural thing to place in a historic City so we'll Begin by finding a home for our tram Depot and then we'll create our first tram route this new tram route that we created is going to provide people options other ways to get around other than driving it's also going to boost property values in the vicinity and help our city progress but I don't want you to just think about Transit if you have the plazas and promadons DLC you can create small pedestrian areas like this one that I put together here and even if you just have the base game you can create small Parks like this one with little paths that reach out in all directions giving people another way to get around if you have access to after dark you will also have bicycles in your game one of the frustrating things is that you can't actually Place roads with bike Lanes until you get through the busy town Milestone but you will have the opportunity to place bicycle pads and I would encourage you to do so for instance I decided to place this bike path right behind our main road that links together our industrial and our commercial and residential districts people can get off tram then take their bike and head down this way to get to work I would encourage you to think about all methods of transportation and how you can use them to your advantage to get people around outside of their cars tip number seven build things that you see what you see right here is a high school campus and if you are from the US this probably looks very familiar to you you'd have some athletic fields and then a large high school and no matter where you are in the world I'm guessing you could design a campus that reflects where you are and even though we're good at building things like this or maybe a small Main Street or even a park it can be tempting to build things you've never seen in reality in an effort to resolve problems in the game I have never seen anything like this in reality except for maybe in Las Vegas a place that clearly prioritizes cars over almost anything else so keep it simple you don't need to over build you don't need to build things you've never seen in reality this for instance would be a better solution to that road crossing that we had over here reasonably these sorts of pedestrian facilities are only for the busiest roads when you take a cyclist or pedestrian and put them on one of these Bridges you are inherently prioritizing vehicles and I would encourage you not to do that think about your Sims as if they are real people they'd want to be prioritized when they're walking it's a lot more effort to walk all the way up this bridge than it would be to drive a little bit longer don't be afraid to experiment and create things that you see in reality too such as Parcels right here I've added a bunch of fences in between the properties and given them yards and I think that this makes a world of difference if you want to have a realistic feeling City and look at this we've reached big town and the game is about to encourage me to do something that I would encourage you to avoid remember how we unlocked bike Lanes with busy town Big Town has unlocked the underground Metro station and I don't know about you but I'd never been to a small town with subway service number eight apply proper hierarchy across all modes of transportation throughout your community you might be surprised to hear me applying hierarchy to all modes of transportation but I think it's really important if you want the most effective Transportation Network you can hierarchy ensures that every Transportation facility has a purpose either Mobility or accessibility and in practice this is what this means the road on the left is a Highway piece then we have an arterial a collector and a local Road Highway prioritizes Mobility Above All Else and the local Road provides accessibility to local destinations the roads on the left prioritize speed and efficient travel between far away destinations the roads on the right prioritize providing access to local destinations here's a good example of roadway hierarchy applied the highway is right here we've got a collector right here that would link this neighborhood to this neighborhood over here and give access to the highway which is actually an arterial which is why we don't have one of the six Lane roads whereas there's only one access to the highway shown here we've got three accesses to the collector in the local roads we have a ton of access we could add as much access as we want here this roadway layout will function very well you'll have minimal backups and things will just operate very efficiently but you don't need to use the four and six Lane roads to have proper roadway hierarchy here for instance I've taken the arterial and put trees in the side of the road the collectors I have the median and then all the local roads have nothing so right here this road should be carrying most of our traffic in and out of the community the roads of the medians the collectors should be carrying most of our traffic that goes from one neighborhood to another then the local roads are prioritizing accessing individual properties make sure that you don't have uses that generate lots of traffic on your arterials and minimize the number that you have on your collectors feel free to absolutely load up your local roads with uses that dump trips right on them that's what they're for but you don't have to stop at Vehicles when you think of hierarchy here I've applied it to the bike Network what we have here is a bike arterial this will be our bike Highway that links up one District to another and you can think of the roads with bike Lanes as collectors since they will gather all the traffic from the nearby local roads which should be slow enough and safe enough for bikes to travel on them or in the case of City skylines on the sidewalks if you think about these principles it's a way to have a comprehensive and complete bike Network throughout your entire community and these principles of hierarchy can be applied to Transit as well what I've done here is created a train station this is our Inner City Connection kind of like our Highway and now here's where I say do as I say not as I do I've added a subway station right here so Metro going from the train station to our downtown area and this will take you to some of our Local transportation options you could walk from the subway to our inner city bus terminal and then take any of the local routes to get around the community and across this entire system we have minimal stops with our train we've got one for our Subway we've got two and they're quite a ways away and then for our local service our trans and our bus we have stops every couple of blocks that is proper Transit hierarchy and you should apply that as well and if you do this across all modes you will have an efficient traffic flow in every city you build I promise you that number nine many transportation problems are actually land use problems so what I've just done is taken every single recycling center in the build and put it right here on this collector and what it looks like is we have absolute pandemonium so what you might see someone do is build a highway get rid of all these and put in a major arterial but it's not necessary in fact I've upgraded this to be a four-lane road and that was unnecessary the main problem here is we've concentrated a bunch of uses that generate a lot of trips onto one roadway and now I've relocated those same eight recycling centers to two new blocks and look what it's done to the traffic in between our neighborhoods it's much more manageable I wouldn't have a problem with this the other thing that I've done here is I've actually given this road a lane diet we had four lanes here before now we have two and it still looks good and this is all because we have placed these appropriately these facilities are now on local streets and its traffic is being distributed before it reaches the higher classification roads you should apply these exact same principles when you're placing unique buildings such as office Towers spread them apart and don't concentrate them all on one road so you can distribute the traffic a bit better number 10 give your buildings space I don't know if you're like me but I used to play the game just like this I would utilize every square inch of the city and fill everything in with buildings don't be me give your building some space for instance I've got this unique building right here the Fresh Foods and what I've done is added a bit of parking and given some space here so that it can breathe and be a special unique place and I've actually applied this concept to this entire build this is a 16 by 16 grid meaning that in the center there will always be empty spaces but here's the thing I like about this you could have a Plaza in the center you could add some pedestrian pads through here when you increase density or add unique buildings you have space to do so it really gives you a lot of flexibility and if you want you can do what I did earlier and add these fences in here and have lots but where I think this could be most impactful are school campuses back in the day I used to just build the these as efficiently as possible I placed the high school in the middle of a neighborhood and leave it alone I encourage you to try to build a campus most high schools have amenities that are associated with it even if it's a very Urban school there might be a small field next to it just to play soccer or there might be a tennis court or two and if it's a more Suburban site or a rural site like this one you might see a whole Suite of different athletic fields available so absolutely let your creativity run wild and do as much as you can to make these buildings special places number 11 don't forget to landscape we're back at the high school because this is a great example of something I've done to give this place a sense of place I've added landscaping and made this a much more interesting area because of it and Landscaping could be useful in awkwardly shaped Parcels where maybe nothing else fits and it can help Elevate areas that are already unique and special these are some of the older trees but take a look at what this does to the space I already like that more and in combination with being able to change the trees on the road you can make some very unique features in your city I also like to use high vegetation to cover up terrain issues right here you can see that I've encroached upon the hillside a bet and we've got this flat line right here you want to fix this quickly a way that you could do it would be to take some of the larger vegetation and just place that along that contour line you can even mix it up so that you have different types of vegetation and sprinkle in a tree or two and now it looks like this is here simply to prevent erosion from occurring I like that a lot it also hides the lumpies and bumpies and looks a ton better so definitely don't skimp on your landscaping and be sure to think about it in all the places that you're building it'll also give you a sense of pride in your build or at least that's what I find it makes each place I build just a little bit more memorable number 12 only subscribe to mods you will use if you're anything like me it's easy to go to the Steam Workshop and start to subscribe to everything that catches your eye but you should be judicious with your use of mods especially when you're just beginning when you introduce a number of mods to your build you can have unpredictable behavior and there could be conflicts between mods so I would highly recommend adding just a couple at a time and really Master those mods and understand why you have them in your build before you add new ones I would also recommend creating a collection for your mods so you don't lose track of what you have in your build for instance this is my Nikolay Bay one-click collection it has all the mods that I've used to make Nicolet Bay what it is this is helpful for me if I need to reinstall Windows or reinstall my game or I simply want to use a different Windows account I can just subscribe to this entire list and speaking of the Nicolet Bay collection this is a great starting place for most people who would be interested in modding it is some of the very best mods including find it move it intersection marking tool and the network multi-tool as well and if you watch the series you'll find out how to use most of the mods in this list and if you are interested in the Nikolay Bay collection I'll leave a link in the video description and I am actively maintaining this collection you'll notice that right here there are a bunch of dates I make changes and I let you know what changes I've made to ensure that all the mods in this collection are compatible with the current version of the base game number 13 don't be afraid to redevelop what we're now looking at is the original part of this community and what you might notice is that there's high density buildings mixed in here and that is because I have not been afraid to redevelop the oldest parts of the community cities are always changing and you shouldn't be afraid to change your city I know it can be intimidating but feel free to demolish a whole block or two blocks or add new things in that happens in reality and doing so will make your city feel much more organic coming back to our recycling centers one of the things I did is adjust a block so that I could fit two recycling centers side by side right here it's changed things up a little bit but it feels much more organic we've broken the grid it feels so good so let your cities change and evolve that's something that makes cities amazing number 14 be patient when you make big changes so we currently have a massive death wave this is pretty easy to figure out why this is happening our Cemetery has filled up so we're going to need to place another death care amenity and we're not thinking that we're going to place is this crematorium so we'll use a bit of eminent domain on this home and place one right here and if we look at our crematorium availability it looks very bad so you might be tempted to place a few more of these but don't be patient well it took you a while to get in this mess and it's going to take you a while to get out of it so what I'm going to do is let this run for a couple minutes and see if we're able to catch up and after letting this run for a few minutes I can see a couple of things number one we're basically at equilibrium for our death care and we've got a slight Health Care issue as well so what we'll need to do to resolve this is focus on both our health care and our death care which is something we might not have figured out if we just spammed our death care so now I've added new healthcare and deaf care right up here to spread things out a bit and that should resolve all of our issues let's let this sit for a minute and see and now after just a couple of minutes our death care is in check as is our health care and things are looking good this same principle applies to so many different areas of the game for instance we have a huge demand for industrial and if we add a whole bunch through here we've got to be patient so that things reach in equilibrium to meet this absolutely out of control industrial demand I've taken all of these blocks and created them and what we're going to do is Zone these all for industrial and now that we've done this we should take this meter or a grain of salt for a little while sometimes it will drop all the way down sometimes it will remain high until this all develops out so you need to be patient and let this fill in and see what your city actually looks like foreign we can see that our industrial demand is rebounded but it's not nearly what it was before if we would have tried to respond to that we might have doubled the size of our industrial area and had absolutely no demand so this is an important Concept in the game be patient if you do this what I just did here with a residential neighborhood you will have crushing traffic as everyone moves into that neighborhood do not panic do not start to build gigantic arterials to your neighborhood let things reach an equilibrium things will calm down after a while and this concept is especially true if you do anything with water if we were to try to bring part of the ocean back I would absolutely need to be patient to let the water normalize and that might take more than a few minutes and if we add enough water flow to damn any of this you better believe I'm waiting a long time to let things normalize the editor Phil here you should save too save be patient and save you will be rewarded for it number 15 stop focusing on traffic flow percentage really oh so that's how you're gonna play it to do this okay fine that's all I needed that's all I needed for him to do that and it it became personal with me oh this one's gonna be controversial but before you just reject it hear me out now I think that this could be the largest mindset shift for most people it's so tempting just to pop into your info View and look at traffic and look at this number and say it's 82 percent I'm in a good place but I'm not here I've got some issues we've got significant backup that would be almost impossible to make this right hand turn out of here and that's because we're having capacity issues you have to remember that the average traffic flow is an average of the flow of all of your roads so if you have a lot of roads and most of them are doing well but you have a bit of backup here you're going to have a pretty good traffic flow even though things aren't looking good so rather than looking at traffic flow let's improve this based on what we're seeing significant delays in this instance I would take this main arterial and convert it to a four-lane road and then the truly Uncorked this I had up making our four lane extend this road that was having all of the backup and what we can see is that now we're no longer backing up around the corner this is acceptable Vehicles can be a little bit delayed we don't need to give them free access to everything when we do that when we prioritize vehicles in that way we end up destroying our cities and making cities that are 100 based on vehicular throughput which is a really regressive way of looking at your cities and before we could have thought that our traffic flow percentage was absolutely perfect and left it alone and it's basically in the same spot as it was oscillating a little bit higher every now and then but I would say that this is significantly better because we're not seeing those major backups 24 7. so look for those hot spots and the other thing when you see stuff like this understand that it's not always bad I'm okay with a segment of Road that's showing as red high utilization as long as we don't have vehicles stopping and backing up to me this means that this is an important part of the community and that's completely fine you can see the exact same thing in commercial areas and that's what makes a commercial area vibrant so don't be afraid of seeing heavy traffic in your commercial areas if you take it away they're going to die so you actually want this there and those are my top 15 tips for beginners at City skylines did I miss anything let me know down in the comments or drop your favorite tip and I will create a pin comment of all of the best tips you leave behind and if you're interested in taking a look at this city that I created during this video I will drop a link to it in the video description thank you so much for joining me today it is a pleasure and a privilege and I appreciate your time take care bye-bye [Applause] [Music] thank you [Music]

Channel: City Planner Plays

Views: 300,748

Keywords: cities skylines tips for beginners, cities skylines top 5 tips, cities skylines beginners guide, cities skylines beginners guide 2020, cities skylines tutorial 2020, city planner plays cities skylines, cities skylines how to start your city, how to play cities skylines, city building basics, cities skylines beginners, cities skylines tutorial, cities skylines, cities:skylines, no mods, cities skylines tips and tricks, cities skylines tips, city planner plays

Id: 1syUxBR60WE

Length: 26min 30sec (1590 seconds)

Published: Tue May 16 2023