Cities: Skylines - Paradox Interactive Makes A SimCity

After a lot of New City Syndrome, I finally got a city started that I was satisfied with, using a pretty flat custom map I found on steam workshop. I christened it "Santa Xwedodah", for it was founded by a group of Hispano-Japanese Buddho-Zoroastrians fleeing persecution by the Buddho-Catholic Church or something.

I only got ~5k people, but whatever. Here we see the main districts of the city. Araragi Park, the residential-commercial 'downtown', and Sibling Heights, the industrial zone, were the original starting areas:




My highway exit ramp thingies. Could've looked worse, I guess.




A house in Araragi Park is on fire, but the people playing the playground next door don't seem to care



The small historical shrine, dating back several centuries. Currently one of the top tourist destinations in town. It is still maintained by the same incestuous family to this day. [It's some custom unique building I downloaded off Workshop]



On the left is Wonton High School.



I've noticed I seem to have too many educated workers overall. It's kinda annoying, but whatever, so far I've managed it, I just hope I can hold out long enough to get Office buildings.


As a side note, I dunno if it's possible, but I really do wish there's a way you could edit the default Cim name list, the very, very small pool of Anglo-American names gets tiring very quickly.

BirraImperial said:

I don't think you can run this game:

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To give a baseline, I have a Core 2 Duo and an integrated graphics card whose specs I don't know, and C:S runs about 20 FPS on the lowest graphics settings. That's fine for me to play it, but loading times are extremely long, and road-building in particular tends to cause lag.

That aside, I'm having absolute loads of fun with this game so far so it was worth it.

cybrxkhan, your highway exits look great. Check out one of mine:



All function, no form.

cybrxkhan said:

Araragi Park, Sibling Heights, Karen Grove

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Is brushing your little sister's teeth a common past time in this city?

warpus said:

cybrxkhan, your highway exits look great. Check out one of mine:

All function, no form.

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If it weren't for those weird-looking pedestrian paths I'd say that ramp wouldn't be half bad, the line of trees isn't a bad touch actually.

Maniacal said:

Is brushing your little sister's teeth a common past time in this city?

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In a city called Santa Xwedodah? Why, my good man, it's practically the national sport here!

Those weird looking pedestrian paths are my masterpiece! They connect my entire city.

warpus said:

Those weird looking pedestrian paths are my masterpiece! They connect my entire city.

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Apparently I saw a guy post on reddit a city completely connected by pedestrian paths, to the points where the only cars on the roads were service cars and other vehicles that couldn't use the pedestrian paths. Of course, just download that mod that allows service vehicles to use pedestrian paths and that wouldn't be as much of an issue.

Either way, I do like making little pedestrian paths connect random roads all over the place, no matter whether it is in a high-rise commercial district or a quiet suburb. Latter reminds me of the suburb I used to live in back when I was in the DC area, actually.

I'm a bit obsessed about them tbh, each time I expand the city it ends up being more connected to the rest via the walkway than before... And now I've started connecting other parts, because it's "not connected enough".

Elevated walkways everywhere.. I'm half convinced I've fallen prey to some ancient curse



In the above picture you can see the new railway station highway express exit in action

I got the game a couple of days ago. When I first played the game all I did was try laying down some roads and zones, not even knowing that I had to connect to the highway for the city to grow. I played some more earlier today, playing for about an hour. I managed to grow to a city large enough that I unlocked parks, then I ran out of money. One thing that I did like was being able to build roads that don't have to fit on a grid, so I ended up building many curved roads. My city still ended up looking really bland and boring.

I'm bustily mapping out Ottawa still...I've got Centretown, Downtown, the Glebe and Civic Hospital mapped out.

Deciding to remap the Queensway from a standard elevated highway to its accurate form (built on an artificial slope with bridges over important streets) slowed me down a bit.

Some guy mapped London, Ontario, that's what I'm building the above city on. Seems to be a very accurate depiction of the area. I bet somebody must've done Ottawa as well.

I am incredibly excited to try out various parts of BC for building cities. Literally a childhood dream of mine when playing sim city.

I want this game so badly, must. resist. buying. more. games. until. june.

warpus said:

Some guy mapped London, Ontario, that's what I'm building the above city on. Seems to be a very accurate depiction of the area. I bet somebody must've done Ottawa as well.

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There's one (or at least there was last I looked), but while reasonable it had some key flaws (the scale was off, resulting in the southern part of the Rideau Canal, between the Queensway bridge and Dows' Lake. Plus it cut the map at awkwards spot, resulting in half of Sandy hills being left out to include stupid parts of western Ottawa.

There's also one that's on my computer. Making the actual map isn't the hard part. The hard part now is taking the map and laying down the streets, pedestrian paths, transport services, etc to create an actual working model of Ottawa

It should be easier with Ottawa than London, because London has a highway that's wayyyyy south and not anywhere near the rest of the city except its southern reaches.. so I've had to start building the city at the very southern tip.

But yeah, it's not easy trying to duplicate a city. I'm sort of following a similar grid and locations for things (main parks, main roads, etc.) but just mainly as a guide. I want to design a better city, so there are going to be large differences.

Santa Xwedodah is now a bustling town of some 25k residents, so I'm starting to approach the mid/late game cusp, I think, although my growth has been slowing down quite a bit. I'm rolling in cash now and have about 1 million in my treasury since I dunno what to spend it on. Not that I mind, I'm not one of those players seeking a challenge.

Overhead view of city and its districts


The Great Temple of Xwedodah in Talos Plaza district, which sits right by the Chirper HQ (custom buildings galore!)


University of Santa Xwedodah campus, including several lecture buildings and dorm rooms


Same Wayshrine from before, except most of the buildings around it have changed


Some Elementary School in the suburbs (in Three Sisters neighborhood, I think)


Statue of Don Tiberio Septimo de Talos, the great Zoroastrian Castillan conquistador who explored the present-day location of Santa Xwedodah. More seriously, it used to be right next to a Walmart, but nowadays stands next to a fire station and a health market.


Church of Santa Mara in downtown Santa Xwedodah


Construction of some high rise residential buildings in Los Hermanos/Rio Hanecava district


City skyline from afar




Now that I've played long enough I think I can say that the game is definitely great. You have to start slow and easy so you don't end up screwing yourself over, but other than that things seem relatively simple enough. I've heard that once you pass the ~20k population mark that's when traffic issues start to build up, but haven't had anything too seriuos yet as I've invested into a bus/metro system that covers most of the city. There's still some wonkiness with, say, education and building abandonment, but nothing broken per se, in my opinion. They do need a better interface for the metro system, though, I had to download a mod to improve things for myself.

warpus said:

It should be easier with Ottawa than London, because London has a highway that's wayyyyy south and not anywhere near the rest of the city except its southern reaches.. so I've had to start building the city at the very southern tip.

But yeah, it's not easy trying to duplicate a city. I'm sort of following a similar grid and locations for things (main parks, main roads, etc.) but just mainly as a guide. I want to design a better city, so there are going to be large differences.

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Yeah, and it can get downright aggravating when you're trying to make the game do things it wasn't really designed to do (I was pulling my hair trying to create the sidewalks of the Rideau Canal, and getting the Queensway right also drove me to despair once or twice).

But on the plus side, the whole thing really is taking shape. Well, in terms of laying out the street and all. Actually getting the buildings and zoning right...that's going to be a whole other game.

My city now stands at ~85k people last I checked. I've learned that trying to ensure the survival of my industrial sector without building gigantic slums of uneducated citizens is very tricky in the mid/late game, but I think I've sort of managed it.

The color correction mods are also pretty interesting, btw, though I haven't found one that satisfies me yet. It's cool that the vanilla game ships with something akin to a proto-ENB-maker.

You can make it look like sunset (this is the Araragi Temple of Xwedodah, basically an Asian temple I downloaded off steam):


A thunderstorm:


On acid:


Or just a different lighting style, more or less


Original look for comparison:


Also, bonus shot of most of my city; the Temple of Xwedodah and Stonehenge in the foreground.

Question: How do I take screenshots of my city?

BirraImperial said:

Question: How do I take screenshots of my city?

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Press F12 and it'll be saved to the steam CS screenshots folder (this also applies for most if not all games on steam; I think you have to have your steam overlay on, though). You can access the folder via your steam library, there should be as section for each game there. In case you don't know, to remove the HUD, there's a button on the bottom right of a camera that does that (to turn the HUD back on press ESC).

Some nice looking cities.

I haven't got that far in any of my cities as I'm a serial restarter!

One of my main wishes for the improvement of this game would be if the workshop was easier to sort through as lots of the buildings are just recoloured ones from in game and not new models.

I'll try to get a screen or 2 up from my current city at some point (if I don't start a new one again that is)!