Gadriel's Cities: Skylines
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Five-Star Parks!There is no one right way to play Cities: Skylines. This story is humbly offered for your enjoyment. While Cities: Skylines is an artifice, we endeavor to stay true to the spirit of the game.
Envision a borough with a large central park and a beltway avenue providing easy access for cims (simulated citizens) to commercial and residential areas. But how? We start with the simple block.
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Residential
The largest zonable building size is 4x4 unit-squares, which we will call a "lot." While you can make residential city blocks of various sizes, a good-sized residential block has an interior width of eight units, room for two lots across. The block can generally be of any length but is limited by how far a cim must go to find a connecting road. Paths can help by allowing cims to cut through neighborhoods. So, our borough will be composed of residential blocks that have an interior width of eight units (10 units road-to-road with 2-lane roads) and of varying length. With paths, the buildable zones will be 8x12 and 8x8 units, that is, 2x3 and 2x2 lots. |
(This borough was created with help from Planning Roads by Bicky Monster. The yellow represents two-lane roads, orange four-lane roads, fuchsia six-lane roads, and white highways. The brown are pedestrian paths.)
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Industrial
Industrial zones work a bit differently from residential zones. Large numbers of trucks going to-and-fro can easily clog the roadways. Keeping industrial areas separate from the borough and having their own highway access will help reduce truck traffic in the borough, as well as lessen pollution and noise. Having a higher density of roads will also reduce traffic congestion. A block width of five units gives each industrial lot better access to the road system. Note that, unlike in residential areas, there are no industrial buildings trying to access the same road from across the street. |
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Commercial
Commercial zones are placed just outside the residential zones along the beltway avenue, preferably away from intersections, especially away from major intersections. There is still easy access from the residential zones, by path, or with a quick jaunt by car. Services, such as fire and police, can be similarly placed on the beltway. |
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The Borough
Our borough is 100 units square and can be used in full or in part. (The checkerboard lot pattern shown is just to help make it easier to see the layout but will be filled in actual play.) The key features of the borough are the beltway avenue (later upgraded to six-lane roads with bus lanes), and the central park. The planning highway extends the existing highway. Most of the residential roads do not intersect the avenue. There are two north-south and two east-west collector roads. Altogether, there are eight residential access roads to the beltway avenue, two on each side. The borough can easily house 2,000-3,000 cims with low density, or 10,000+ cims with a mix of low and high density. The industrial and utilities areas are kept apart from the residential and commercial areas, and each has its own highway access. Good's Corner is industrial for producing commercial goods and can be extended as required. The Wastelands is for power plants, water treatment, and landfills. There's a second set of industrial and utilities areas, on the near side of the highway, which may work better on certain maps. Using Zone Info by rcav8tr, we can determine that of the 10,000 unit-squares, 4288 are allocated residential, 256 commercial, and 684 for the central park. Roads and paths comprise about 30% of the area. That leaves about 1500 empty unit-squares along the outer rim, which can be used for services, offices, more commercial, or filled with trees to reduce noise. A low ratio of commercial below what the game-meter requires works fine, but there's room for more. The borough is pre-built using the planning roads on a flat map, then exported using Move It by Quboid. The borough can then be imported as many times as desired.
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Traffic Manager, Node controller, and Zone Adjuster
Using TM:PE, Traffic Manager: President Edition by LinuxFan et al., the north-south residential roads should be given priority over east-west priority roads. The beltway avenue is given priority over that. When the city grows a bit, you can add a timed-light for the entrance from the highway to the borough. Don't forget to set the traffic rules for the roundabout. Node Controller by macsergey et al. can be used to add crosswalks for where the paths cross the residential roads, so cims can stroll more freely through the borough. With Zoning Adjuster by algernon & Chamëleon TBN, zoning can be removed from the north-south residential roads so that none of the residential lots front the north-south roads, keeping the north-south roads clear for traffic. (Unfortunately, this setting is lost when you upgrade the roads, so it has to be reset each time roads are upgraded. This is optional, in any case.) |
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Little Hamlet
At the start, upgrade the planning roads to gravel roads. With the available money, you can usually upgrade about half the borough with roads, water, and electric. If done properly, you can press the play button and then just wait until you have reached the first milestone, Little Hamlet. Once reaching Little Hamlet, you should be able to upgrade the rest of the borough. Don't be averse to taking the loan. At 5% interest, you can certainly make far more money than necessary to repay the loan. Expand the industrial area as needed. If money permits, start upgrading the avenue beltway. The commercial may have to be rezoned, but that's not a big deal this early in the game before the buildings have leveled up. Worthy Village
By the time you reach Worthy Village, you should be able to start a second borough, typically adjoined to the first borough. It's best if you build the second borough so that you can later provide the borough with its own highway access, for when highways are unlocked. |
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Tiny Town
With Tiny Town, you can now define your city parks. You can use the name of the park to also refer to the borough, such as for naming Bus Lines and Walking Tours. As money becomes available, upgrade industrial roads, avenues, paths, add pedestrian bridges between the boroughs and paths from the boroughs to the industry. Don't forget to keep some cash on hand for necessary upgrades to the electric and water utilities. Let It Grow With Fire and Police already placed on the highway access of the industrial area, income is usually $1,000 to $2,000 per week. Just let the town grow, while making a few adjustments along the way. Let the cash pile up, and money should no longer be an issue. Watch for when schools may be needed. You will want educated cims for modern industry. 
Upgraded Borough
A borough with upgraded roads can be created to import, for when the upgrades are unlocked, and money is plentiful; typically, by the third borough. As with the planning boroughs, you can export the upgraded borough missing a side or two for easy connection to existing boroughs. |
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Five-Star Park!
Sometime after reaching the Busy Town milestone, Robin Gardens has achieved five-star status. Applegate is not far behind, and the Cozy Nature Reserve and Pete's Amusements have been established. The residents are happy, and land values are rising. Note that three of the four boroughs have direct highway access. In addition to Good's Corner, there are also new zoned industries: Prospector's Luck for ore products, and Farm Commons for food products. Schools are sufficient for training a new generation of cims to run the industries and offices of the future. A bus line has been set up to circuit each borough. Pedestrian bridges provide easy access for bus transfers or to walk to jobs in industry, utilities, or hubs. Income is $3000-$4000 per week, with plenty in the bank. |
