Top 15 Tips for Beginners at Cities Skylines!

A couple of years back I released a video called Top 5 Cities Skylines Tips for Beginners (From a City Planner). In this video, we're going to expand upon that to help you make a city that functions well and is built upon solid foundations. And though this guide is gears toward beginners, I think it might help seasoned vets as well. And if I've missed your favorite tip, please let me in the comments and I'll compile a list to share at a later date!

Map: Winding River from the Map Pack 2 CCP

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CHAPTERS

Intro - 0:00
Tip 1 - 0:21
Tip 2 - 1:27
Tip 3 - 2:29
Tip 4 - 3:42
Tip 5 - 4:29
Tip 6 - 6:50
Tip 7 - 8:28
Tip 8 - 10:14
Tip 9 - 13:42
Tip 10 - 14:55
Tip 11 - 16:26
Tip 12 - 17:48
Tip 13 - 19:09
Tip 14 - 20:00
Tip 15 - 23:11
Conclusion - 25:37

[CityPlannerPlays]

Tips YOU suggested:
1) Use the budget sliders in the early game. You don't need 100% going to power, water, and roads at the beginning of the game. I usually set them to 50% and use dirt roads. Then I raise water and power as needed until they're at 100%. I raise the roads back up to 100% once I start replacing dirt roads with streets.
2) If you have the Industries DLC, I've found that once I get my first industry (farming or forestry) up to a profitable level 2, I generally don't have to worry about cash flow too much as I build out.
3) Natural resources like oil and ore will be gone after a while, if you don't the unlimited resources mode.
4) Another tip. Try to spread your industrial areas to different locations instead of combining them all in one place. This improves distribution of unique factory goods and improves traffic overall as well as gives the city a background
5) There is no right, no wrong, let alone perfect. If it works, it's fine; anything can be improved as long as there's nothing more fun to do.
6) Don't be frustrated by comparing your results with someone else's. Take inspiration from great builds, they are not meant to pull you down.
7) From Captain Ahvious: "It's about the journey, not the target." Enjoy every minute of the game.

[thedocumentaryguycomputers]

Another tip. Try to spread your industrial areas to different locations instead of combining them all in one place. This improves distribution of unique factory goods and improves traffic overall as well as gives the city a background

[dpaws]

I always fall into the trap of feeling like I have to zone everything. It's a good tip to leave some unzoned space around and detail it - I'm trying to get myself to do more of that. Lately I have been doing school campuses with sports fields and playground and detailing paths and trees. It looks so much better than just spamming them down.

[herbie_the_hillbillie_goat]

Tip A: Use the budget sliders in the early game. You don't need 100% going to power, water, and roads at the beginning of the game. I usually set them to 50% and use dirt roads. Then I raise water and power as needed until they're at 100%. I raise the roads back up to 100% once I start replacing dirt roads with streets.

Tip B: If you have the Industries DLC, I've found that once I get my first industry (farming or forestry) up to a profitable level 2, I generally don't have to worry about cash flow too much as I build out.

[ZedemMonk]

Tip: when an industrial area expands toward residential, commercial zoning can be used as a buffer to keep nearby residents healthier.

[carstenzimmermann]

Outstanding collecting of tipps!
The tips that keeps me playing:
- There is no right, no wrong, let alone perfect. If it works, it's fine; anything can be improved as long as there's nothing more fun to do.
- Don't be frustrated by comparing your results with someone else's. Take inspiration from great builds, they are not meant to pull you down.
- My favorite quote from Captain Ahvious: "It's about the journey, not the target." Enjoy every minute of the game

[LordofSyn]

Tip: Do not be afraid of playing slower, selecting your zoning to make smaller buildings and more modular built areas of the city. Use the policies sparingly until you understand them better. High-rise ban may prevent you from getting skyscrapers but it might fit more into your vision of the city. O7

[hrani]

Just now thought about how rarely I see anyone in SKylines doing underpasses, especially for cars. Here in my city in Finland there are pedestrian underpasses dotted everywhere, but more often than not also car underpasses, going under railways etc. Sometimes even car underpasses to prioritise pedestrians and bikes!

[sarsrogo]

The pedestrian overpass that you “haven’t seen in reality” are really common here in China and usually the only way to cross busy roads (like city highways).

[MajorHickE]

One thing I learned from media classes is to save regularly (my teacher said every 15-20mins but this is a game not a work project). Most importantly, if you're going to make a major change, such as redesigning a suburb or redoing your entire downtown grid or transit network, make a new save file *BEFORE* making the change. That way you'll have a backup in the event that things don't go the way you wanted.

[danacollins]

One of my commonly used tricks for traffic flow through my industrial areas is to recess my factories and warehouses a few units back from the local roads and build "driveways" using small local roads. This allows some space for trucks to load/unload without blocking traffic and also gives me room for landscaping, which provides more attractive industrial parks.

[emuannihilator]

Greatest tip of all: make sure you comment on every CPP video for the sake of engagement!

[rjacobb]

Oh, also, another tip I learned the hard way on Switch. The industrial train stations won't work with roads using dedicated bicycle lanes. After lots of testing, I eventually figured out that prevented traffic from turning into the facilities, which meant no goods to ship nor receive. Being a cyclist myself, I pretty much utilize cycle lane roads everywhere. Except the train stations, where I use maybe trees or something without parking. Similarly, I realized four lane roads have a median, thus traffic leaving a service such as a fire station, they can't cross the median to travel in the opposite direction. This knowledge helps when you notice the building across the street from a fire station is always on fire.

[apotato]

Tips: sometimes a 6-lane one-way road is better than a 4-lane highway. The lower speed allows for better merging and the road has 2 more lanes to distribute. Also if you have merging problems you may want a toll-booth. You'll earn some money and cars will merge better.

Don't have parallel bus lines. If you have 2 bus lines both going from a-c coming from the same hub (A) but they take a different route to the let's say point B and next both go to point C with the same route you should make 1 line only go between a-b and the other route do a-b-c. This will save money on busses and make roads less busy.

Some DLC buildings don't have a high/low density version. Green cities: green commercial zoning will always be low density. After dark: Tourism specialized zoning is always high density.

households does not equal people living there. You should look at age/education and count every number together. That is the amount of people in a house.

low density commercial isn't that noisy and can be placed next to residential area's but high density commercial is noisy and should have at least a buffer zone of 4u between residential area's I recommend office as a buffer.

Red in the traffic menu means busy not traffic queue's. I have a railway in my city of 500k that's red but every train is going at 180km/h

If you are redeveloping and upgrading your low density residential to high density you should keep in mind that high density buildings house about 2, 5x the amount of citizens compared to low density. So build more services and shops/work spaces.

Planes can fly through buidlings without problems.

Make sure you have a good balance between commercial and industry. There is a limit on import of commercial goods so you will always need regular industry.

It's fine to have a police station/fire station/hospital next to an arterial. Problems only arise when There is already a bad traffic flow. But keep in mind garbage collectors do make more traffic.

commercial zoning doesn't scale to residential (u=zoning unit)
Low density comercial=1 worker/u
high density commercial=1, 4 workers/u
Low density res=, 7 households/u (1 household is ~4 people)
High density-1, 7 Households
Meaning that you need more units of high density commercial per high density residential than that you need with low density commerical to low density residential

1 commercial zone worker covers about 8 citizens in demand.

If you play with day/night cycle enabled you need more power in the evening and morning then compared to day/night.

Vehicle speed (KM/H) M=Road maintenance vehicles from the snowfall DLC can boost this road type.
Dirt road: 30 M
2 lane road: 40 M
4 lane road: 50 M
6 lane road: 60 M
highway on ramp: 80
2/3/4lane Highway: 100
Note: Emergency vehicles go 2x speed limit. So on a highay the'll go 200

Special vehicle speed
Tram: 40/50/60 (depends on road used)
Bus: 100
Trolley bus: 40/50/60 (depends on road used)

Metro: 125
Monorail: 125
Train (Includes TGV/High speed train from vehicles of the world ccp): 150
Train: 180 (When the clock tower from the parklife DLC is placed)
Commuter train: 100/120 (Train from Vehicles of the world ccp) 100=normal 120=Clocktower
Cablecar:?
Blimps:?
Helicopter:?
Small Meteor:500
Big meteor:500
Ship: 100?
Plane: 500?
Industries DLC trucks: 80?

PC tips for CS: When building a new pc for just CS I recommend a cpu with 6 cores/12 threads and good single core performance. CS can only use 4 cores and 8 threads and the other 2 cores your pc can use for background tasks.

Ram:
8GB: enough for cities up to 100K
16GB: minimum for vanilla with all dlc's and ccp's
32GB: recommended for vanilla with all dlc's and ccp's and lightly modded
64GB heavy modded.
128GB Extremely modded but almost obsolete.
6TB Put the XEON W9 down!.

A good gpu for cities skylines would be one with 10+ GB of vram for optimal performance. my 3070 maxes out all of it's vram and I play unmodded.

CS always page file's so I recommend a SSD.

But don't forget that CS 2 probably has an updated game engine.

[wearloga]

One of the most important things for new players: pause the game before you start building your first roads. It will take some time to figure out the lay-out that you want to use, don't pay upkeep over the roads during that planning phase, it will save a huge amount of money.

[Dethmakt]

I think an important tip and kind of a note on some other tips is:
Find how YOU like to play, CPP loves to make things realistic such as putting water pipes under roads, beautifying areas with landscaping and props and the like, which is amazing and boosts his, and many other players enjoyment, but for some people (myself included) some of that can feel overwhelming and isn't strictly needed for how the game works, if you want to play it and lay pipes across whole city blocks, leave parks as they are and just add a couple paths, do it, your enjoyment should always come first (as long as your city still works!)
And don't be afraid to mess around in sandbox or with unlimited money! just because it isn't the base or challenging way to play doesn't mean you shouldn't do it!

[stenchlord]

Awesome video. Even though you've been putting out videos for a while it's nice to know you're acknowledging all the newcomers to your channel who may not be as experienced in the game.

Would love to see a video series where you start off with unlimited money and everything unlocked so you could build your ideal map without having to worry about limitations.

[ipwndcancer]

I always found that I ended up doing too much too quickly and chasing an unrealistic result. I've always wanted to build organic, realistic, attractive cities, but I get caught up in the upgrades and stop planning. These are some great tips that I will definitely employ on my next play!

[simonsv]

The smallest city with a metro system is Lausanne in Schweiz, which has 140 000 citizens.

[thedocumentaryguycomputers]

Tip : Try to build a ringroad system instead of blastng highways through your city center. Also have decent north-south and east-west collectors so you dont force all traffic onto a single road