Cities: Skylines - Paradox Interactive Makes A SimCity

Co_Karoliina said:

Hello again! This time we will take a peek at how the game systems actually work. Some of the main goals for us at Colossal Order where to create fun systems which interact with each other, and to have simulated individual citizens.

At the heart of Cities: Skylines is how the individual citizens and goods move around the city. Citizens have a name, age, a home and a workplace, unless they are students at the university or too young to work. Citizens travel to work, go shopping and occasionally visit leisure locations like parks. Not all citizens own cars, so some walk and others drive. If public transportation is available, most of the people without cars will use it for longer trips. Even people with cars use public transportation if they notice driving with their own car might be slower because of the traffic.



Because simulating individual citizens takes some processing power, we opted to cut down the number of citizens. Some residential buildings have a quite low amount of people living in them compared to the size of the building. We felt choosing individual citizens over realistic numbers brought more to the game. So while your high-rise might have only 12 households, everyone has a name and a logical pattern of moving around the city.

Goods are produced in industrial areas and transported to commercial areas to be sold to citizens and tourists. This means that wherever there’s a commercial area, there will be trucks driving to and from it. To produce goods, industrial areas use raw materials. If the city produces raw materials by specialized industry, the industry will automatically get them shipped from the specialized production facilities. Industry prefers materials from inside the city, but if none are available, they will order raw materials from outside locations. Materials arriving from outside locations come by truck if no train or cargo ship connections are available, which will put a stress on the road system.



To avoid traffic jams, vehicles choose their route so that they try to avoid busiest spots in the city. They also like to choose lanes early to avoid switching lanes and blocking off two lanes in the process if they are trying to push their way into a line of cars and have to wait. If the traffic does not flow well, there’s a traffic info view to show the spots where problems lie. Using roundabouts, elevated roads and building roads to get the vehicles straight to where they are going is are a big part of the game.



Everything is connected. If you build a Fire Station that sends out fire engines to put out fires, the service vehicles can only get to the fires if the roads are not crowded with other vehicles. But just having a Fire Station near by raises the happiness of residential houses. A raise in happiness means the residents are less likely to turn to crime, even if they are unemployed for some time.

Karoliina Korppoo, Colossal Order, lead designer on Cities: Skylines

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co_fiirdraak said:

Is it a bird? Is it a plane? No, it is the next developer diary for Cities: Skylines! Today we take a look at the various info views that help you keep track of the different aspects of managing a growing metropolis.

As always, if you haven't read the previous dev diaries, you can find them here http://forum.paradoxplaza.com/forum/showthread.php?802652-Cities-Skylines-dev-diary-archive!

Cities: Skylines features 19 different info views (some info views include multiple tabs such as the different levels of education, health care and death care and so on). While there are no actual categories for the info views they can be roughly divided in three categories by their nature:

• city service related
• citizen related
• city and map related

City service related
City service related info views display info mainly about the functions of the different city services and their effects to the zoned buildings. These include things like electricity, garbage, education, health, fire safety and public transport. Most of these are also used when accessing the build menu for city services. This helps planning when building a new service building.


Electricity info view shows all the buildings in blue which are connected to the power grid. The light grey-ish/blue-ish area surrounding them is the catchment area of the power grid that the buildings create around themselves.


Water info view displays the water currents, the direction the water flows and also highlights all water network buildings. It also shows the water pipes that run underground. In this view mode you are able to bulldoze the underground water pipes.


Garbage info view displays the amount of garbage piled up in buildings as well as the location of landfill sites and incineration plants. The roads are colored in green in places where there is garbage truck coverage. Road network as well as one-way and two-way roads affect how far the coverage reaches.


Fire safety is a big thing in a large city. Luckily the info view lets the player know if there are area not adequately covered by the fire department.


Crime info view shows where criminals are active. It colors the buildings in red if there is high criminal activity. Police coverage is displayed by the colored roads.

For example, when the player is building a new elementary school the info view activates when the elementary school is selected in the build menu. The info view then shows the current availability of school services as well as the coverage of existing elementary schools in the city. In the info view the roads are green if there is coverage for the selected city service. If the roads are gray, there is no coverage available in that area.


Elementary school coverage in the city. The info view highlights the elementary school buildings as well.


High school info view. There are still households in the neighborhood (in grey-ish purple) who have citizens not yet educated in the second school level.


Health care highlights all the residential buildings, showing the health levels of the residents in them.


Death care displays the information on available cemetery space and crematorium capacity.


Public transport info view highlights all the different transport types as well as shows how many customers each of them have.

When zooming out the player can see city service buildings of the same category highlighted with colored light pillars.

Citizen related
Citizen related info views display info relating to the citizens themselves such as citizen happiness, housing levels, population and so on. These info views let the player see how their actions affect the everyday life of their citizen.


Citizen happiness info view tells how your citizens as well as the different businesses feel about your city.


How high are the levels for the different zone types in the city? The Levels info view shows you exactly that.

Tools such as traffic info view are invaluable when laying out road network and planning the different areas of the city. It shows in red the roads that are most heavily used by citizens, tourists and cargo transport.


Traffic info view is a crucial part of any city manager's toolkit. Red means there is a lot of traffic.

The population info view shows how the population of the whole city is divided between the different age groups. It also shows where the different major groups (families, adults and seniors) are located on the map.


Population info view displays various types of information in the info panel.

City and map related
City and map related info views display features and effects that define the city area itself. These are pollution levels, land value, natural resources and districts. Pollution displays both ground and water pollution while sound pollution shows the effect of the road network and various zoned buildings and city service buildings (residential areas generate little to none noise pollution while commercial and especially industrial areas affect drastically to noise pollution levels).


Outside connections info view is divided into three categories: Import, Export and Tourism. These highlight the buildings and vehicles that ship goods in and out of the city as well as the commercial and tourist attractions that tourists visit. The pink cars are those of the tourists visiting the city.


Businesses that import goods and natural resources as well as the trucks carrying them are highlighted in the info view.


Land value shows how land value is affected by the buildings on and near it.


Ground pollution comprises of both land and water pollution. Water pollution is affected by the water flow mechanics such as direction and strength of water currents.


Noise pollution is created by traffic, industrial and commercial zones and tourist attractions such as the unique buildings. Smaller roads create less noise pollution and roads with decorative trees create less noise pollution than their tree-less counterparts.


Wind info view shows the areas that are opportune for harvesting the power of the wind as a source for electricity.

Natural resources info view points out the areas on the map where the player can find the various resources to be used in specialized industry.


Natural resources info view displays the locations of all the different resources on the map. It doesn't differ too much from the similar info view in map editor.

District info view shows all the districts that the player has created accompanied with the icons for active policies.


Districts are highlighted in the Districts info view. In addition to the names of the districts you can see all the active policies as icon underneath the names.


As an extra screenshot of a small business district surrounded by a park.

- Henkka also known as an artist, designer and level designer at Colossal Order

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co_fiirdraak said:

From the cold north to the pleasant south and the radiant tropic, we welcome all of you to take a look at the development diary about the different climate themes in Cities: Skylines!

Cities: Skylines features three distinct terrain themes. These include north, sunny and tropic themes. Gameplay-wise the themes do not differ from each other, the effects are purely visual. This way the player can create their favorite maps using any of the themes available.

A theme includes its own set of trees (pine and conifer trees for north, broad-leaved trees for sunny and palm trees for the tropic theme – there are also some overlapping flora found in all of the themes), terrain colors, water texture and lighting conditions. For example, the sun is lower in the north theme and the grass is darker as well. The water is also a darker blue. In comparison the sunny theme has sun higher up in the sky and the lighting reflects more the Central and South European lighting conditions. The grass is greener and the water texture is somewhat more vibrant compared to the north theme. The tropic theme emulates tropical island atmosphere with sand texture that has a nice, slight glow to it when the sun hits it.

North theme
North theme represents the climate of northern countries such as those in Scandinavia. The sun has a bit colder feel to it accompanied with a toned down sky color, the grass is a bit darker as is the color of water. Pine and conifer trees make up the majority of flora but there are also a few broad-leaved trees and bushes to create variation.

Below are a few images of a small industrial town in the north.









Sunny theme
Sunny theme represents central and south European climate. The sun is brighter and a bit warmer in the sunny theme with blue skies, the grass is brighter green giving a more vibrant feel and the color of water is lighter blue. Broad-leaved trees such as alder and beech make up the majority of the flora. Oak trees are included in the sunny tree roster as well as are few bush types.

Sunny metropolis divided by a river.







Tropic theme
Tropic theme represents both the sunny California type climates as well as tropical island climates. The sun light is of warmer color and the sky color complements it nicely. The grass texture goes for a slightly different shade of green color compared to the sunny theme. The lush palm trees and bushes add to the grass color and create the iconic sunny beaches and tropical islands look.

Last but not least, a city stretching from the highway to the sandy beaches, just like in California.







- Henkka also known as an artist, designer and level designer at Colossal Order

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