Best City Starts RANKED! - How to start a city in Cities Skylines (no mods required)

Best City Starts RANKED! - How to start a city in Cities Skylines (no mods required)

➤It's a tier list! Cities can and should be unique from one another, so not every city needs to start the same way. Here are several city openers you can try on your next build! Featuring roundabouts and highway exits with a focus on road hierarchy. This video will weigh the benefits and drawbacks of different city beginnings.

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0:00 Intro
0:29 Roundabout
5:05 Highway to Arterial
8:24 Bring the Highway In (Diamond Interchange)
15:46 Service Interchange
22:05 "My First City"
24:00 The options Raked! (tier list)

#citiesskylines #tierlist #yumbltv

[carstenzimmermann]

Unless all is unlocked from start, availability and budget have guided my first steps. Until you get to HD zoning, C:S will mostly work with any layout. Being mentally prepared to bulldoze and redo was the hardest for me to learn in the first attempts

[ashlandky]

Ah! That first city. Mine has been blessed by "healing of memories."

[bobbodaskank]

For anyone intrigued by the description of the diverging diamond as the "darling" of the interchange world these days, bear in mind that it is so well liked because it is especially *safe.* In Cities, there are no car accidents, so just keep in mind that while it is a lovely and functional interchange, its arguably best feature in real life will not come to bear in this game.

[denvergray]

My first city was on console with no prior knowledge, a complete disrespect for any tutorials or tips, and the determination to unintentionally build the ugliest city known to man where death waves in the tens of thousands went unchecked due to single digit traffic flow on roads that were somehow always crooked in a grid system. Good times. Personally I'm a big fan of starts that run the highway through the city, but only allow it to dump/pick up people and goods at massive public transportation and cargo hubs on the outskirts. Gives you a good travel-line for cinematics, a feature to divide distinct sections of the city, and the option for direct access in overly busy locations.

[starwave]

@ 7:10. There is a way for vanilla console players to have the inside lane go straight on and turn. You need 6 or 7u length, and use straight road not free form, curving the road gives the turn only arrow.

[AccOriginal]

I'd recommend a trumpet interchange, as soon as highway roads are unlocked, because it's 100% free flow without any crossings.

[Elkatook]

"and make sure our ramps are facing the correct direction, simply by right clicking"
i must have watched thousands of hours and played a couple of hundred, i did not know that, i've always seen people go over to the upgrade tool and change that way !
TOP TIPS

[Jake]

This is an extremely interesting idea! People always tell us their way to start a city but I've never seen them compared. Thanks Yumbl!

[HirAmHelcaraxe]

"Let's assume that you're a builder of taste"

You had my curiosity, but now you have my attention.

[darthcalanil]

Life love and heartbreak. that's exactly how my first city felt :'D

[cbhk]

14:32 "incidentally symmetrical" - more likely an (un)conscious habit of yours, Yumbl. :)

[anita]

I actually started playing Cities when I stumbled across videos of people 'playing' it (making poop vulcanoes) en fixing it (Hugo there!), so I had some knowledge on how to make a city entry from the highway :)
Never used Diverging diamonds or SPUI interchanges, I have now subscribed to them on your workshop!
Build many cities by now, but still appreciate these starter videos. thank you for making it!

[Mike-ukr]

FYI: you can remove traffic lights in vanilla

[garethwilkins]

YUMBL: "Remove roundabouts, add traffic lights!"

Biffa: "You don't want traffic lights, we want to add roundabouts!"

[sjoervanderploeg]

I like to make that diamond into an overhead roundabout, usually I have the exit go into a collector that splits down into industrial > commercial > residential zoned blocks away from the collector. This way you reduce the traffic between zones and leave the outside connections for demands.

Especially with public transit, you can almost completely remove residential traffic and then use a goods trains station leading into the roads coming down from the overhead collector. This will move a lot of industrial traffic from the highway directly to the train station.

Most of my cities are the typical grid city, with 90+ traffic flow!

[randallcromer]

I've been enjoying watching the New England series of video's here on YouTube. You have become one of my favorite Cities Skylines builder because you sure do have a amazing since of design and all your city's are very well thought out. So please keep up the awesome work and I promise to keep coming back for more and sharing your video's with as many people as I possibly can because I believe that you definitely deserve it.

[MihitsTilozi]

Personally, I'm a fan of the, "destroy the interchange and put down a gravel road" start. But that's me

[ShadowWolfTJC]

One additional start that I would've considered reviewing would be the collector/express start, where you have one-way arterial roads (sometimes called frontage roads) lined up right next to, and parallel to, the highway, that have slip lanes going to and from the adjacent highway (moving in the same direction, sometimes crossing over and under eachother, like in a basketweave interchange), and overpasses/underpasses (or an elevated highway) to allow vehicles within the parallel-moving one-way arterials to turn around without crossing through highway traffic.

[MR-cxmg]

Thanks for explaining the pros and cons of each approach. It really helped me wrap my head around interchanges as a whole. I was too intimidated to touch them before now.

[EspeeZombie]

I've watched, I downloaded to watch later, and I'm interacting in the comments. I'm doing my part to help the algorithm.