Quick Links
Cities: Skylines 2is a significant improvement over the previous game when it comes to the depth of simulation at work. More than ever, city-building has become a complex beast with tons of factors to take into account when planning and executing the city of your dreams.
From managing your power grid to balancing your imports and exports, there are hundreds of tiny adjustments you can make to your cities to make them run better. In addition to that, forward planning is all but entirely necessary if you want a city to make it to its first year anniversary.
How To Turn Chirper Off (And Turn Autosaves On!)
Something you’ll notice incredibly early in Cities: Skylines 2 is just how ‘talkative’Chirperis. This Twitter clone’s purpose is to give you passive-aggressivehints as to what problems exist in your city(such as air or noise pollution).
Unfortunately, these constant pop-ups can be both annoying and unreliable, such as complaining about even the very slightest level of noise pollution that is basically unavoidable in a city. This could be clever commentary on the perils of urbanisation, but it also gets in the way of a fun, relaxing time.
To turn Chirper off, you’ll need tohead into the Options menu and uncheck the relevant box in the Interface tab. If you do this, though, you’ll need to be a little more attentive to any warning signs that something in your city has gone wrong, and you’ll want to be checking your map overlays frequently.
While you’re here, you may want toenable Autosaves, as they are not enabled by default! Be wary, though;we experienced consistent crashes within twenty minutes of starting the game up as it tried and failed to autosave.
Veterans: Don’t Play Timidly
A key difference between this game and its prequel is thatit’s harder to trap yourself in a money pit through overexpansionaccidentally - you certainly don’t have to play as timidly and limited as you would in the first Cities: Skylines game.
In fact, as you’ll need to expand significantly to reach higher development levels (in a regular game, that is),aggressive development will actually help you in the short run. The only thing you need to be careful about is the placing of incredibly expensive buildings, such as hospitals and colleges.
At the start of the game, reaching higher levels of development is the key way to make money, which will prevent the need for loans. As long as you’re constantly expanding your city, you’ll be earning points towards the next level and the next very hefty cash injection.
Connect Your Power Lines To The Outside World
Once you’ve set up your power grid and started producing your own electricity, it’s a great idea touse Power Lines to connect your power grid to a Power Line that leads off the map. This will connect up your power grid to the outside world and enable the import and export of electricity.
While you canstore excess electricity using batteries,exporting it to external marketsis a great way to stem the negative cash flow you’re extremely likely to experience in the first few hours of building a city. This also lets you import electricity in case of a blackout or a disaster wiping out any of your power-generating buildings.
If you don’t want big, clunky Power Lines throughout your city, keep in mind thatyou can build them as cables underground that connect directly to the Power Lines leading out of the map. To do this, you’ll simply need to make the elevation -10m when placing them.
You will need to use aTransformerif you want to connect up Low Voltage energy sources (such as Wind Turbines) to a High Voltage grid.
Plan Industry With Wind In Mind
While there are multiple types of pollution in the game, perhaps the most annoying and insidious of all isair pollution. This is produced primarily by your industry buildings and power plants and the like.
When creatingindustry zones, the map will show you the wind direction of your map. Pay attention to these arrows when deciding where to set up big industrial parks, as they will pump air pollution in huge amounts in the stated direction.
This will be very important for your future plans -any residential areas that fall under heavy air pollutionwill eventually end up abandoned thanks to the heavy happiness penalties the families inside will be under.
Basically,forward planning is essentialwhen deciding where to locate industry as it will create effective no-go zones where only further industry zoning will likely be viable.
Roads Are Important Unlocks
When you start levelling up your city and getting development points, you’ll have a huge range of options available to you for unlocks. Despite them being on the more boring side, the Roads tab has some of the most important unlocks in the game.
It’s recommended to get at least Roundabouts and Highways before dabbling in other tabs.
Build Commercial Zones With Access In Mind
Something you’ll have to consider when placingcommercial zonesishow people will reach them. Shops need to be accessible if they’re to make enough money to make staying in your city worth it, so you’ll need to make sure customers can get to them.
The two main ways to ensure good access to a location arepublic transportation(buses or trams work very well, and taxis can help pick up the rest) andcar parks. Public transport is easy to understand - as long as there are stops within walking distance of residences, workplaces, and shopping areas, they’ll be used to bridge those gaps - citizens won’t walk too far to reach a shop.
Car parks are more useful for very large shopping areas where you want to condense your commercial zoning all at once. This frees up parking spots on your roads and lets more people access your shops, hopefully preventing those pesky ‘not enough customers’ notifications.
Public Transportation Is A Mid-Game Thing
While it is tempting to unlock thefancy transportation options, such asbuses and trams, very early on in the game to experiment with them, you’ll find them to be loss-makers in the first hours of a city’s life. Your city footprint will simply be too small for them to be necessary.
Instead, hold off on implementing public transport until you’ve reached at least theBusy Town or Big Town milestones, and even then, don’t go overboard with airports or ferries.
That doesn’t mean you’re able to’t plan for transportation before you unlock the functionality, though - creating room for bus stations and the like will make the eventual incorporation of public transport into your city a far smoother process.
