Welcome to a guide on how to start a profitable and working city with a happy population in Citystate II. During this text guide I will explain to you where to get the initial capital for building a new city, how to design the road network, where to place residential, commercial and industry zones and how to manage immigration and the birth rate of your citizens.

I will also explain the more complex game mechanics like RCI demand, legislation and policies, what land value and pollution mean for your citizens and how traffic congestion works in this game while showing you how to finance all city services without going bankrupt.
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To see the video version of this guide click here:


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After choosing the map type, political culture, and the starting settings as well as a name and flag of your new nation you are presented with a huge map. Feel free to pick any plot of land which doesn’t have too much water or hills in it.

A very important thing to do after naming your city is to transfer the entire nation’s fund of 150,000 credits into the starting budget of your first city.


You want to have the maximum funds available to be able to build up faster. Once you have a profitable city you will send your profits back to the nation's main fund. More on that later.

When you load up the new city, pause the game and go into the budget window. On the right side under expanses find national contribution and lower it down to 0.


You are doing this to prevent your income from going into the nation's fund as there is no need to be doing this with just one city on the map.

Next, lower the taxes on retail, a form of commercial zones, both industry zones, all three types of residential zones, and the property tax.


This helps to increase the demand of these zones and let’s your city develop faster.

Pick a spot on the edge of the map from where you can extend a long road. Use the tool to top right and choose the first and cheapest type of road. Start to draw it out from the edge of the map and branch it out to all sides.

Gravel roads have no maintenance cost, they are cheap and have 1000 capacity for traffic congestion.


The traffic in this game works differently then you might be used to in other games. It’s based more on stats and less on simulation.

So while you won’t have to spend time worrying about vehicles, traffic lights, turn lanes and so on, you do have to think about just how much traffic congestion you have on any road segment. This is directly influenced by how much you zone on roads and what type of zone you use. More on this later during the guide.

Before zoning on these roads however, you need to set up utilities. Water and Power. There are several buildings for each with varying costs and monthly upkeep, but start with just one water tower and one diesel generator. Leave cost efficiency calculations for later.

On the left bottom side of the UI you can turn on the layer information overviews. Bottom two are for power and water consumption, but there are another nine useful ones which we will use later on.

You should start by zoning just low density residential zones on the edges of the city along the road. The four little white cubes represent a zone that is four deep while you can extend it for another four cubes making it a 4x4 future building. The maximum size.

After drawing these you need a commercial retail shop to be open in the neighborhood and you once again use low density zoning just for commercial this time. About 1 retail shop every 5 residential zones is enough while later you will add more commercial zones for extra offices.

Because low density zones won’t have high numbers of citizens living there and so low amount of vehicles you can zone on both sides of the street. Repeat this process until you spread around several dozen of these zones.

Next you want to add more roads a bit away from the residential zone because you will add industry zones now. These zones will produce pollution and therefore you don’t want them right next to residential and commercial zones.


To get a new road with enough space to have industry buildings right up against another road, and 4x4 zone size, use the white plus sign and set the point of it right along the edge of the other road.

This way you will use up all the space between two roads. You can zone on both sides with low density industry just like low density residential. Besides industry you can also zone farms. But these need a lot of space. They also need a road segment onto which an actual farm building will be placed, the rest will be farmland.

Farms don’t employ a whole lot of citizens nor do low density industrial zones. They also can’t grow or advance. They are built as level 1 and that is their maximum development stage. This makes them easier to balance but also harder to make profitable.

For zoning medium density RCI, which can grow and be very profitable, you should expand your road network to make room. Keep using the cheapest roads and the same technique to measure them out so you can fit 4x4 buildings between roads. Pick the medium density commercial zone and place one at the start of the road. Next add about half a dozen medium density residential zones of the same size.

Because you no longer want to zone on both sides of the streets, as the first roads have low maximum traffic density you add new roads for new zones. These buildings have actual stages and can grow from houses into actual apartment buildings.

In the budget window you can see that this city is earning from taxes off of lower class residential zones, retail and offices commercial zones, as well as basic manufacturing and property tax.


In the approval window there is the overview of how the left and right political wings see your city and its current situation. You can manage this through various options and go from a free market dictatorship to a communist utopia.

But I won’t bother you with all this info right now as this will be a subject for a separate guide about Citystate II.

In the population tab you can see the info about what is causing population growth in your city as well as a number of other stats.


The main point here is that we have a large immigration of lower class citizens indicated by the single dollar sign. They are coming in droves but because I haven’t zoned enough residential they are building slums, if you ever played the Tropico franchise you will be familiar with the concept.

Because of this high demand, let’s make a whole new neighborhood of medium density residential and commercial buildings like the one before it. Again, zoning on just one side of the street will save you from a lot of problems later on.

With 750 population milestone you will unlock your first government building. The HQ. It actually improves land value but you won’t see that right away. By constructing it you unlock the legislation window. Here you get to pass laws or policies depending on how you want to call them. More are unlocked as your city grows.


They each have four options which influence a wide range of factors, from civil and economic freedom, to approval rating and zone demand. They can also cost money to implement, and will grow in cost with the population numbers.

This might look overwhelming at first but as you get familiar with the game’s mechanics and concepts you will find it actually makes a lot of sense and is easy to use to benefit your city. This is why we will circle back to this soon.

Because the game is great at notifying you of rising issues with the notes in the top left we can see that our education is in trouble and we need to build a school.


The location is actually not that important but I would avoid polluted industrial areas and keep it closer to the residential zones.

Schools like most ploppable buildings have interactive menus when you click on them. The top shows the quality of the education, with grades from A to F.


Increasing the number of teachers helps improve this score, while the upgrade option adds more capacity for students. Each of these increase the monthly cost so go slow with the improvements, only use them when they are necessary.

More citizens means higher unemployment and that means you need to zone more industry. Considering we zoned medium density R and C zones it’s time to zone medium I zones now.

Again, zone on just one side of the street to reduce traffic congestion problems. Spend all your I demand and even go a bit overboard with it.

A new population milestone means a new building is unlocked, this time the department of immigration. And a good thing as well because we were getting warned of too many low skilled workers looking for low land value homes which we aren’t providing.

With this building constructed we can open up the border policy window.


Here you can change the percentage of immigrants you will be letting in from the three types of countries. They all have special modifiers which you will start to recognize from various other menu windows.

Because we don’t have many services available in our city yet we don’t want immigrants who have high demands for those. So let people from least developed countries come in but bar the ones from developing or developed ones.

Power is past maximum capacity and this is easily fixed by adding another generator at the diesel power plant. While we are here we might as well increase the water capacity as it also nears its limit. To be able to keep zoning and building you might as well give yourself some headroom on power and water with additional utility buildings. Just don’t go crazy on these, they cost a lot to maintain.

Now it’s time to expand the road network further and start adding high density zones. Because of them you have to make another change to your zoning design. You no longer want to zone residential buildings right up next to each other. Leave some space between them.


Don’t forget to add a commercial high density zone from time to time in there.

This new zoning design will prevent traffic congestion from going through the roof once they level up to their maximum development stage. Also, it will let you have space to add parks into these empty lots and increase land value.

And on that subject, if we look back to the two government buildings they have increased land value around them. Same effect can be achieved with parks.

Here we have the first protest by our citizens. They don’t like the current income inequality. Something you can hardly avoid in the beginning especially if you have unemployment like I do have right now. You can actually watch your citizens protest.


Each of the three ways of dealing with the situation have their consequences. I will choose to take a hit on security but get a bonus to civil rights. To fix the issue more open jobs are necessary.

That is something that can be fixed by adding high density industry. Again as before for high density, you should spread the zones around and not add many on the same road. This might look like too many precautions now, but that is just because these buildings haven’t leveled up yet.

At this point you just need to keep expanding the city with more RCI zones of all density types while being careful with the ratio. Don’t overbuild any type or zone size. Open up new schools and make sure to have enough capacity for students because education is a major influence on zone demand of more advanced zones like advanced manufacturing and offices.


This is why you need a high school as well, as soon as you have the income required to pay it’s maintenance. After your city grows to several thousand inhabitants you will start to have several negative factors. High unemployment, low education, new slums as you have high immigration but not enough residential zones, and your income will be low.

Don’t panic. This is perfectly normal as it’s the result of the border policy and several other factors. First, open up the border policy window and reduce the immigration percentage from the least developed countries and increase it for the developing and developed. This will reduce new immigration and give you time to employ already moved in citizens.

Second, add religious temples into residential zones to help boost the birth rate so you don’t have to rely so heavily on immigration for new citizens.

Third, open up legislation and edit the entrepreneurship policy. Go with the mandatory entrepreneurship program for all young adults because this will boost commercial and industry demand, increase economic freedom and your approval rating with both the left and right political bodies.

You can open up the immigration from developed and developing countries even more if you want to speed things up. For the same reason, you can go into the legislation window and activate another policy, the one in the healthcare insurance section called compulsory public-private funded plan. This will not only boost commercial and industry demand but also help increase health and the birth rate.

When the first fire starts in the city it’s time to spend your capital on a public service building for fighting fires called simply the fire station. Again, as this is not so much a simulation as a number game you won't see the fire truck roll out and save the day. Your cities safety rating will go up, future fires will be less frequent and RCI zone demand will improve as well as citizens happiness and your approval rating.

With the zone demand for offices and advanced manufacturing up you should feel free to zone more of it and open up those new jobs. These zones will pay for the new service buildings and the upkeep of policies while reducing unemployment.

You will be earning money in no time and almost every part of your citizen’s lives will be improved. Because you are providing more, now it’s time to take more. Go to the budget window and increase all taxes. Especially the taxes on zones where you have positive approval as those taxes are the lowest.

This is also the time to look at the traffic overlay as with more population comes more traffic. Any road which is marked in red has reached its maximum traffic volume. It needs to be upgraded with the next road type. Simply choose the next type, this being a street, and draw it over the old red roads. Once the road network updates you will see the change from red to green traffic congestion.

From here you just keep adding new RCI zones onto new roads, increasing the capacity of utilities and services. If you have a higher demand for commercial and industry zones than residential zones, go back to the border policy and increase the percentages of immigration from all country types, even the least developed ones.

The next service building you need is the hospital as that one influences the health of the population and also the residential demand and immigration of more wealthy citizens. Keep an eye on all service buildings and their capacity and service quality level to increase it when you have the income for it.

You should continue to enact legislation and policies for your population, taking your city into the direction you want, left or right, with civil and economic freedoms. To improve the safety in your city add the police station, but only when you have the income for it.

Keep adding more zones, open up your borders more to bring new citizens to live and work in those zones, increase their taxes to pay for all the new services and improve roads where congestion is high.

As the total capacity of water and power rises to higher amounts you can consider those
more expensive and advanced utility buildings. When you plop those, make sure to turn off the old, less efficient ones.

Water is simple, no thinking required, but power is more complex. Dirty technology like coal and nuclear produce large amounts of power, but also pollute and have higher maintenance costs. Solar power stations are also expensive to construct, they have low production capacity, but are most efficient and clean. Pick your own route from here, but prepare for the consequences.

To get medium and high density zones to level up to their maximum development stages make sure the land value around them is high and if need be place parks manually.

The more population you have, the more legislation options will open up and you will also unlock more buildings, some of which are unique and offer special bonuses and options.

Before you decide to start a new city, begin adding some of your income in the budget window of your current city, into the national fund so you have money to start that new city with.

Now this guide only scratches the surface of Citystate II but it will give you all the info needed to start successfully.

Thank you for reading or watching and happy gaming!