I got back into Cities: Skylines and have figured out how to get even more value out of it.
I kind of got bored just always getting through all the pop milestones with every save, then expanding the city as much as possible, working on some transit, being very very functional.. I would make sure things look nice, but I would 90% prioritize function over form.
Right now I'm going through a save where I'm basically taking this approach to each gaming session:
1. Locate a need i.e. more commercial zoning is needed
2. Figure out where to expand and how to connect it to the rest of the city in a functional way
3. Build the roads, zone everything out, and add in any parks, plazas or special buildings. Add in otherwise the needed infrastructure: heating pipes, police presence, new highway onramps, etc.
3.b. Some time is spent making sure that this district is unique. i.e. unique bulidings, unique assets, a different road direction or curvature, trees laid out differently, etc.
4. Run the game a bit and allow your new division to populate a bit
5. Look at the neighbouring parts of the city and see if any changes are required to integrate the new part of town with the rest of the city. Focus on making sure the road connections are efficient here.
6. Run the game a bit again and cycle through the various views.. Education, Fire, Police, Health, etc. See if I've forgotten anything
7. Shift focus to public transit and see how to best integrate the new part of town into the existing transit system
8. Spend some time beautifying everything so it looks more like a real city, cleaning up after the construction & upgrades, etc.
That's basically sort of what I used to do, but it would span multiple gaming sessions. So I'd spend 4 hours expanding the city with different districts on sunday and then 2 hours on tuesday trying to fix traffic issues. I find that going through this process in each gaming session and treating each task as a real city project.. just makes everything better. The city ends up looking more like a real dynamic city and not just a cookie cutter copy of everything everywhere.
Each time I load up the game the 'need' (from 1. on the list) can range from.. new sports stadium district is needed, new subway line, a theater district, a new university district, redrawing of the existing public transit system, an upgrade of a part of town that was built a long time ago and needs to be reworked, changing the way the arteries distribute traffic around the city (by maybe connecting diff. streets), focusing on the river, etc.
There's a lot of different types of projects you can imagine, so at the beginning of each gaming sess I basically look at my city and see what sort of project is needed and/or would benefit the city. Then I go through that list and get er done. It doesn't seem like that much of a difference from the way I used to play this game, but it sort of makes everything a lot more realistic and engaging for me. And that ofc. means even more value that I can squeeze out of this game.
I also bought the public transit DLC a couple weeks ago, so there's also that. Public transit is usually important in my cities, so there's even more options for me now as I load up the game and figure out what to work on next
edit: whooops, I was half asleep and put this in the wrong thread. But can't see a better one to put this in for now
