Hello again, here I come with another massive guide, this time about Cities: Skylines.

Why?

I've always liked this kind of game, the game were you surge from your very own actions, and if you do something wrong, game over. This game is a little bit like that, many times I've done things I regret afterwards because maybe I could have created, for example, a nice little green area intead of some industrial buildings, or could have bought a firetruck station instead of a police station. In this guide, we will be reaching out many situations you could have encountered while playing, city modeling and strategy whitin the game.

This guide's going to be a little bit different, tho. The sections of this guide will be created so you can find the info you need without the need of reading the whole guide.

Also, I invite all of you to visit the other guides I've created:

How to Garry's Mod (Garry's Mod Guide)
How To Afforest The Forest (The Forest Guide)

Well, now, let's get started!


Picture by Anakeen on Reddit

note: I will be using my very own pictures of the game, besides this one up here and some below.

Here I've drawn a simple city pre-planning. We will be using this to make our city from scratch. Literally.

Now I'll be explaining each of the points specified above. The idea by doing this is to give you some 'tips' you could write down later and have them handy any time you need them. So, we will start talking about the city entrance.
(btw, I'm gonna use a map called "The Great Plan" which you can find just right here) here

• 1. ALWAYS leave some space between both entrance and exit roads. You won't have the money and requirements to build the thicc-est road by the first time, so you'll need some space to, once you have the money and requierements, make the road thicker. I'm telling you this because you WILL need to make it thicker, once you have many, many citizens (30k+ at least).
  
  
• 2. This is the important bunch of roads you got to build, this portion will be located right in the middle of the zone you are playing in. Just like this.
  
  Why building that thing in the middle, like some sort of roundabout? Well, it is a very effective way to make your city flow, keeping the movement going. Of course there's many more designs for this very important piece of your starting city. You can even make your own!, just keep in mind, the task of this structure is to make the city flow, regardless the amount of cars there might be.
  
  
  descriptive image showing which type of road I used, to build those roads at the very beggining, you have to build a simple concrete road first. (just a few meters and then delete).
  
  
• 3. If you're playing in "The Great Plan", skip this tip. In a normal map, you'll be constructing your entrance/exit roads from the inner main road (just as I drew on paper adove). BUT, i'd say half of the foreign cars come from the outter main road, so keep in mind you'll have to design a road complex to take the foreign cars coming from the outter road into your city (MAKE SURE it's just an entrance and not the whole main road, otherwise, the cars coming to your city will start dissapear).
  
  
• 4. This is a simple tip. First, let the road reach the end of the zone, separating it in 2 equal areas, as shown adove in the screenshot. Second, this could sound obvious but merge both roads so the cars can flow along. And finally, start your residential zone with a simple ground-like road, remember to leave plenty space to make it thicker afterwards.

Zones allow you to decide where houses, shops and factories will be built. When an empty zone is assigned a zone type, buildings will be built there automatically over time (assuming people want to live or do business there!).
There are four different zone types: residential, commercial, industrial, and office. Each zone spawns a different type of building:

• Residential – Residential zones provide housing for people.
  
• Commercial – Commercial zones will have shops and other services selling the goods produced in the industrial zones.
  
• Industrial – Industrial zones provide jobs for people and products for commercial buildings. They can be specialized to take advantage of natural resources.
  
• Office – Office zones provide pollution free jobs for higher tech level citizens, but it doesn't produce any goods.

Zonable areas will be visible when using the zoning tools, divided into small 8×8 m squares. Areas up to four tiles from a road can be zoned. Zoning costs nothing of itself, however these roads and other services that buildings require are not inexpensive. On the other hand, the residents and businesses that occupy these buildings pay taxes, which is the principal source of income to the city's treasury.

Buildings that develop in zones, known as "growables", come in a variety of sizes, however the front of all buildings must be immediately adjacent to the road.

One cannot directly build growable buildings. Mayors need to make these zones attractive enough for residents and businesses to move in (and stay). If the occupants of a building are doing well, it will level up. Levelled-up employment buildings provide more numerous and better quality jobs, and levelled-up residential buildings have more numerous and more wealthy inhabitants.

At the start of the game, only low density residential, low density commercial and industrial zones will be available to you. The other zone types are unlocked at early milestones. Commercial zones can be specialised into Leisure and Tourism. Industry can be specialised into Oil, Ore, Forest and Fertile land.


Picture by simval84, visit his publication about Cities: Skylines here[urbankchoze.blogspot.cl].

• Residential (Low Density Residential Zones - Green). This type of residential zone attracts families to your city. Usually two adults will start off and they will create a family. This zone takes up more space and it houses fewer people than the high density residential zone.
  
  
• Residential (High Density Residential Zones - Dark Green) This type of residential zone attracts young people to your city. However, they are not inspired to procreate to help increase the population. This zone can house more people in an area than the low density residential zone.
  
  
• Commercial (Low Density Commercial Zones - Blue) These zones buy products from industrial zones (or import them) and sell them to the people. They usually require workers with little to no education and they serve fewer people than the higher density zone. Moderately noisy.
  
  
• Commercial (High Density Commercial Zones - Dark Blue) A ramped-up version of the low density zones. Taller, noisier buildings will buy and sell more goods than the low density equivalent. These create more jobs, generally with higher educational requirements.
  
  
• Industrial (Industrial Zones - Yellow) These zones manufacture goods which can be sold in commercial zones or exported. They predominantly employ workers with low education levels. Most industry produces a lot of pollution. Industrial and office zones do not have separate density classes. Specialized industry can be created by painting a district and selecting a specialist industry type for that district.
  
  
• Office (Office Zones - Cyan) These zones exist mainly to provide jobs. They require more educated workers than industry but produce no goods. Office zones produce no pollution.

Water, electricity and... money. ugh...

If you are following the tips I'm giving to you, it is very possible that now you are on red numbers or even on bankrupcy. Keep going, it's worth to stick out one's neck.

Here, to decribe the situation, I'm ₡5,965 below the safe-zone and loosing ₡973 each second.

Is the risk worth?
Absolutely, once you reached the first milestone, and reached an amount of money below the safe-zone (red numbers), the bank will offer you $50,000 for free, a no-need-to-pay-back thing.

How did I spend the starting ₡70,000?
I first made the roads, then the water pump and the electricity system, as shown below.

Electricity system, wind-powered.


Water pump and pipes, built below roads.

As you can see below, always try to create residential zones close to the energy source (In my case, wind-powered electricity). If you do not, many of your houses will have no power to funtion, due to the distance to the power source, so, once you created this little space with houses recieving power, you can then start creating more and more to the sides (like below), so the new houses will always have electricity once created.

Just like this, and repeat, and repeat.

(The bnkrpcy keeps going on, ₡8,740 below safe-zone and loosing ₡931 each second)

Now we need no more houses, the game tells you to create industrial zones. I just did that, as shown below. (the little green, blue and orange colored bars tell you which of the zones are needed to be built, in real-time)

Made the industrial zone at the other side of the main road, to keep it far from the city. Something you will notice is that I've got ₡35,000 positive counting, it's because I accepted the bank's loan of ₡50,000. (*IMPORTANT* you've got to reach the starting milestone first, make your city big enough, and after that, you can recieve this specific bankrupcy loan from the bank, so try to get there first before breaking your economy system).

Now we have industrial and residential zones fullfilled with people. Once I created the industrial zone completely, the numbers turned green and I started gaining money intead of loosing it.

Why?
Taxes will be your mayor income enhancer. Each building you construct will pay taxes to fill your city treasury, that's why my numbers turned green, because I created industrial buildings. BUT, if you create commercial, industrial or residential zones when it's not needed, you'll start loosing money, so just create zones when needed.

You can also adjust taxes for all the different zones separately from 1% to 29% (the default tax rate is 9% for all zones). Residents and businesses start to protest if taxes are raised above 13/14% for too long, but a short tax hike is a good way of earning some quick cash if you don't want to take out another loan. Maintaining tax rates below 5% for a short amount of time is necessary to unlock some unique buildings, but it will cause a decrease in money earned. I'd stay with a 9% of taxes, at least until we have 10k+ citizens.


Of couse, in terms of electricity and water, you just keep creating just what's needed, so you don't loose much money on that.

Once you have your industrial zone and residential zone, create a little commercial zone and satisfy all those things your city might need. Now you surely have a "Little Hamlet" or a "Worthy Village" (both milestones obtainable by reaching an amount of citizens living in your city, in this case Little Hamlet with a required population 500 and Worthy Village with 1000 citizens) so start creating the Garbage Disposal, Education and Healthcare buildings, as shown below.


Now, stablish yourself, stay just like that and save some money, in case something horrible happens. This is important, you got to stablish yourself before buying more buildings and making new zones, if you don't, your city will die sooner than expected. always try to have at least +₡200 / +₡300 / +₡400 each second, below that, be aware and don't spend more money on unnecessary things. That's your safe zone, at least at the beggining.

IMPORTANT TIP: If you have some money but not enough to buy, for example, a water pump or some electricity sources, you can go to the little bill icon down to the right and spend some more money on you resource creation, the more money you put there, more electricity, water, etc... will be created without buying another electricity/water building. (it's not just water and electricity, it works with many other services and resources you gain/loose throughout the game)

Districs help you organize your city in various ways.
In my game, I created two districts, to help me categorize between the industrial zone from the commercial and residential zone, and specialize my industrial zone (Kent Hills) to a Farming Area.



Now, districts allow you to designate specific areas of the map in which you can assign specific policies and specialization.
The use of districts is not necessary, however industrial specialization can not be achieved without its use.
To create a district, click the Districts button located to the right of the zoning button. There, you have 3 choices of brush size, and simply have to draw the district over the area they wish to cover by left clicking. The brush auto-snaps to roads and intersections, meaning that drawing individual blocks is relatively easy. To remove what has been drawn, simply right click and draw to erase. To expand the size of a district that has already been drawn, hover the brush inside the district until it is highlighted, then click and begin drawing.



Once a district has been drawn, it can be specialized. This is done by selecting the appropriate specialization from the bar at the bottom of the screen and clicking on the district. Specialisms control which types of industry develops in the district, and allows industry to fulfill production and secondary processing roles of the supply chain. There are advantages and disadvantages to each specialization.

There are 4 different industrial specialized district types:

• Forest industry - This district will cause any industry built inside it to work with timber.
  
• Agriculture - Agricultural industry consists of farmland and processors of agricultural goods.
  
• Ore industry - The ore industry mines and processes ore.
  
• Oil industry - The oil industry pumps and processes oil.
  
• Generic Industry - None from adove, it's just an industry. (Explained below)

For a specialized zone to be a primary producer of a product, it needs to be zoned in an area with the appropriate natural resource. Otherwise all buildings in the area will be secondary processors of the specified type and will need to import the raw materials from elsewhere. Some secondary processing industry will normally emerge in areas of primary production as well.

Industry outside of specialized zones will be generic industry. Generic industry will not automatically utilize any natural resources present. A district's specialism can be removed, reverting it back to the generic type. Changing, adding or removing specializations causes all pre-existing industry in a district to be dismantled.

Districts can be subjected to differing sets of policies to the city as a whole.

Once a district has been made, specific policies can be assigned to it by clicking on the name of the district and clicking "policies" on the UI. This will open another UI to the right of the screen. The options will be mostly identical to the city-wide policy options, however these policies will apply only to the district.

Picture by co_fiirdraak, visit their page about districts and policies here.[forum.paradoxplaza.com]

Decorations have both aesthetic and practical purposes for a city. The decorations menu is sub-divided into three sub-menus:

Parks & plazas provide entertainment for citizens and tourists, and help to increase nearby land value.

Picture by FX2K on the Steam Community.

Landscaping includes are, practically, part of the transportation infrastructure of a city, providing routes for citizens to walk on foot (like above), in addition to trees for aesthetics, although player-placed trees will support forestry industry as much as naturally occurring woodland. Pedestrian paths and trees, formerly found in the decoration menu, are found in the Landscaping menu.


Picture by Co_Karoliina, visit their page about commercial specializations here.[forum.paradoxplaza.com]

The After Dark expansion adds another category Tourism & Leisure. Like other services, the decorations budget can be adjusted between 50 and 150%, which subsequently adjusts the entertainment impact of parks and plazas.


Picture by Co_Karoliina, visit their page about commercial specializations here.[forum.paradoxplaza.com]

There are a variety of parks and plazas available to build. Citizens and tourists will travel to these and spend time enjoying the scenery. These will also have an effect on the "leisure" value of nearby buildings (viewable in the leisure info view), increasing their land value. The magnitude and spread of this effect depends upon the "entertainment accumulation" and "entertainment radius" parameters of the different structures.

All of the unique buildings offer some degree of entertainment, and can supplement a city's parks infrastructure.

Like other buildings, all of these must be placed roadside.


Picture by M.Bergseth, visit their page here.[distrita.com]

Picture by Steven Wong

• Ground pollution and air pollution don't move far. You don't have to be too afraid of zoning industrial next to residential. The only "gotcha" is to make sure that water input doesn't touch pollution, so put the sewage downstream and make sure any pumps aren't near any pollution. 
  
  
• Commercial needs residential in order to employ cims and make sales. Industry needs commercial to provide goods to and residential for workers. Residential doesn't like being near industry because it pollutes, but needs commercial / industry for jobs and shopping. 
  
  
• When you reach a net profit, you can "set it and forget it" if you have enough police, fire, and health coverage along with landfills and other services. You can easily leave the game in windowed mode and let it idle, collecting revenue to build your next expansion. Popups will pause the game which is a good thing, as your city levels up, the demands of your citizens will increase. The game will pause when your city "levels up" so that your cims don't leave with their new expectations. This is great at lower levels when you just want to get things unlocked and some cash to start really building.
  
  
• Watch out for trash in your city, you need an effective trash management plan and you only have two outlets to get rid of trash - landfills, which fill up fast, and incinerators which create pollution. So you need to make sure you have enough trucks. Unused trucks will drive further but there is another gotcha here - they also follow traffic. So you need to make sure that traffic is working properly. 
  
  
• Traffic is the most important determination of your cities success, because once traffic hits you're going to be stuck in a situation where you're screwed and you'll probably never earn enough money to dig yourself out of it. There is too many traffic tips to mention, but remember that the major highway network that was laid out for you at the start is where most of your traffic pileups start at the intersection. Use bigger roads to move people around and smaller roads to keep costs low. One way roads help a lot and avoid the small roundabout, it clogs up too quickly. Intersections are evil and you should avoid them as much as possible, because red lights slow traffic. 
  
  
• Make sure to have enough crematoriums and cemeteries. Same rules apply in regards to traffic, the hearses can't move through traffic and you will reach a point where your cims age and begin to die, requiring you to have enough places for them to rest peacefully. Some will refuse to go into the crematorium, so make sure you have a mixture of both. 
  
  
• Land value affects tax income, the richer the area, the more tax they pay. However, there is a loss component - the additional taxes may not overtake the upkeep on any improvement. Be sure to place all improvements in areas where they touch as many zones as possible. 
  
  
• Medical isn't that important if you have enough clinics through your city. Likewise, fire is only an issue in areas where fire is very likely (industrial). Police coverage can be sparse, as long as patrol cars can get to an area, you'll be fine. 
  
  
• If you find yourself not making money ever, start building smaller. You have to lay the framework for when the city gets bigger, however, when you don't have much land or money, building out a small RCI area and letting the cash come in can help build a warchest for later in the game. Then slowly build out and expand from there. 
  
  
• Restarting should be a pleasure, not a sign of defeat. It takes a lot of iteration to get a general idea of where and how you want to build. Unlike SimCity (2014), you have a lot going on, so take awhile to get defeated by trash and pollution and restart, I promise it gets faster each go around. You can always window mode and let the game idle, hoping in every 10 minutes to clear burned down buildings and make sure nothing major has happened.  

Picture by fakewars

Trash Tips

• Landfills provide a maximum of 15 trucks vs the incinerators 27.
  Once a landfill is full, it can’t receive more trash until additional space has been created through emptying.
  
  
• While set to “Empty”, trash trucks will haul trash from the landfill to the incinerators or another available landfill. 
  
  
• If you can’t empty a landfill right away, you should turn it off. The trucks aren't utilized by other landfills, so you're better off saving the expense of keeping it open. 
  
  
• You can't move a landfill until it's been completely emptied.
  
  
• While emptying a landfill, a large number of trash trucks will flock to it, thus creating a potential traffic problem.
  
  
• Additional trash can't be added during the emptying process.
  
  
• Landfills create pollution, but no noise. Incinerators create both pollution and noise. 
  Both landfills and incinerators have an operating radius, so in larger cities you can't just place them in one corner.
  
  
• Trash truck efficiency is diminished in cities with heavy traffic.
  
  
• You don’t have to use landfills. You can go incinerator-only. I prefer this method because it removes the number of variables involved with balancing supply and demand. I don't have to worry about both picking up trash and emptying landfills at the same time.
  
  
• If you find yourself in a pinch where there is more trash needed to be picked up, you can:
  Increase the trash budget, thus increasing the number of trash trucks, or
  Build extra incinerators and/or landfills and turn them off one at a time until you find the right balance of supply/demand.

Picture by co_fiirdraak


Deathcare Tips

• The key to avoiding death-waves is to have a more consistent rate of births.
  When starting to populate a newly constructed residential area, don’t zone the entire area at once. Add to the residential area slowly. This allows the lifecycles of the CIMs to be spread out and not all hit old age at once.
  
  
• Remember that you can turn deathcare buildings off and on as needed to handle supply/demand. You can also increase the budget as needed to increase/decrease the number of hearses.
  
  
• Keep an eye on your population stats to notice any birth waves that can then turn into death waves later down the line.
  
  
• Deathcare is similar to Trash in that you have items that need to be picked up and taken to a disposal site: Cemeteries are to crematoriums what landfills are to incinerators
  Cemeteries provide a maximum of 10 hearses vs the crematorium's 7.
  
  
• Both deathcare buildings have a service radius, so in larger cities you can't just place them all in one corner of the map.
  
  
• Crematoriums produce pollution while cemeteries do not.
  
  
• Once a cemetery is full, it can’t receive more bodies until you start to empty it. If you can’t empty it right away, you should turn it off, thus not paying more money to keep it running. The extra hearses won't be sent to help out other cemeteries or crematoriums. 
  
  
• While emptying a cemetery, a large number of hearses will flock to it, thus creating a potential traffic problem.
  
  
• While set to Empty, hearses will take bodies from the cemetery to the crematorium or other cemeteries that have room.
  
  
• Hearse efficiency is diminished in cities with heavy traffic.
  
  
• You don’t have to use cemeteries. You can go crematorium-only. I prefer this method for the same reason as I gave in the trash tips: It's easier to manage.
  
  
• If you find yourself in a pinch where there is more dead needed to be picked up, you can:
  - Increase the health care budget, thus increasing the number of hearses, or
  - Build extra cemeteries and/or cremtoriums and turn them off one at a time until you find the right balance of supply/demand, or...
  - If you don't want to bother picking up the dead bodies, you can demolish the building instead.

Picture by mitchells00

How to avoid traffic lights and reduce stops on major roads:

These are the principals used in my Free Flow Grids

• Highway to 6-lane or 4 lane junctions doesn't create traffic lights.
  
• Highway to Highway do not create traffic lights.
  
• A 2-lane to Highway does not create traffic lights, but 2-lane to 6-lane or 4-lane creates traffic lights.
  
• A off ramp to 6-lane will create traffic lights.
  
• 6-lane to 6-lane junctions create traffic lights.
  
• A off ramp to a 4-lane or 2-lane road also doesn't create traffic lights
  
• Roundabouts using Highways at any major intersection can create a free flow intersection/junction without stop lights.
  
• Traffic should be divided in tiers as follows: 
  - Tier One: 2-way roads or walking paths 
  - Tier Two: 4-way and 6-way roads, 
  - Tier 3: Highways.
  
• The goal in number eight is to confine zoning to the 2-way roads and channel traffic to the 4-way and 6-way roads and from there to the Highways.
  
• Where the tiers meet Highways, roundabouts will ensure traffic flows smoothly.
  
• Placing walking paths along major roads is a good way to prevent zoning where you don't want it without using a mod.
  
• Finally, don't worry about space, especially if you use a mod that provides access to all 25 squares. A million people can fit in HALF that area so feel free to spread things out!

by Jamie Ramsey from the Skylines Nation Guild

8/1/2018

- Added the **UPDATE at the end.

2/5/2017

- Added some missing letters and dots.

2/4/2017

- Added the "Read'n Go Tips (General)" section.
- Added the "Read'n Go Tips (Trash and Deathcare)" section.
- Added the "Read'n Go Tips (Free Flowing Traffic)" section.
- Added missing credits.
- Added the "That's why I created a Changelog" text on the Ending section.

These are the points I wanted to clarify, but, there's always something left to write down, so I'll be updating this guide whenever I think there's something missing (that's why I created a Changelog). Even you guys could help me finish this guide if possible.

Thanks for reading and see you in the next one!

**UPDATE
This is how it's been evolving, after a couple hours of gameplay.










That's all, thanks for reading!