Cities: Skylines

Cities: Skylines

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Cities Skylines – Beginner tips and tricks guide
By Magistar
Beginners tutorial point out important aspects of the early game. Inspiration for this guide were mistakes I made when playing for the first 10 hours of the game.
   
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Introduction
As ususal the full guide was published here: Cities Skylines – Beginner tips and tricks guide [www.gameplayinside.com]. This Steam version is meant as an shortened in-game reference.

The order of this guide is the order in which you will encounter these services in-game!
Power and Wind
Recommendation:
  • The Coal Power plant is too expensive at the start of the game (19.000 vs 6.000) so really the Wind Turbine is your only option!
  • Try to position Wind Turbines in de the dark blue zones
  • Plan ahead: Wind Turbines generate Noise pollution and relocating a Wind Turbine costs 1200
  • At 6+ MW a Wind Turbine it is more cost efficient than a coal power plant, so use them when you can!
Power lines
Power lines can be a bit confusing.
Construct them like this:
Not like this:

Recommendation:
Always create multiple links between important zones. Constructing roads can automatically demolish power lines. If you forget the connection to your water pumps your entire city could be left without water.
Water and Sewage
When you construct your first Water pipe you will notice it has two lanes. Like in any city builder water pipes are used to supply fresh water to your citizens. This means you must connect them to a Water Tower or Water Pumping station.

The other lane is used to transport sewage. Although you might not like it you will have to dump your waste into the nearest river!

Keep in mind that using a Water Drain Pipe or Water Treatment Plant pollutes the river water.
Rivers always move into one direction (downstream). Therefore you must make sure your water pumps are located upstream relative to the sewer system. If you fail to do that your citizens will become ill.

Recommendation
Skip the water tower and only use pumping stations. Also make sure you plan your sewage drain pipes properly. Meaning you should fresh water for at least 5-6 pumping stations
Garbage disposal: Failing is game over
Garbage trucks
Garbage trucks pass each individual building to collect garbage. The brighter blue the building the lower the amount of accumulated garbage.After a few buildings they are full and will return to their landfill or incinerator. Due to this mechanic Garbage disposal is a strain on road network and trucks can be delayed by traffic.
Recommendation: Do not force all your garbage trucks over a single (oneway) road layout. Be aware of the impact on your roads!

Landfill
This building will send out up to 15 trucks to gather garbage. This will only be sufficient for very small cities so expect to construct multiple landfills so you have enough trucks to drive across town.

Recommendation: Reserve space for at least 3 landfills and realize they can only be moved when empty.

Incinerator
This building has a few advantages of over the traditional landfill
  • It actually burns garbage instead of storing it
  • It can spawn up to27 garbage trucks instead of just 15
  • It can provide 12MW of power (almost 2x a windmill)
  • You can empty landfills into incinerators

Recommendation: Switch to Incinerators when you can afford to. They use less space and provide more trucks.
Health care: Don’t go big
To receive health care they must be picked up by an ambulance and brought the nearest facility.

Medical clinic
For $10.000 with $ 400 upkeep it can send out 8 ambulances and “store” up to 100 patients. Meaning it will cost you €50 per ambulance or €4 per bed. The range is about a single tile (2km x 2km). A single medical clinic should be enough up to 11.000 citizens.

Hospital
For 65.000 with 2400 upkeep this bad boy can send out 25 ambulances and handle up to 500 patients. Therefore it will cost you €96 per ambulance or €4.8 per bed. The range is about twice that of the medical clinic (about 1.5-2 tiles). Although it looks cool a combination of 4 local medical clinics is usually far more efficient in terms of costs, range and response time.
Death care
Just like ambulances drive across town in an attempt to save people the Hearse will collect the dead and bring the citizen to their final resting place. It will take 2 days to “load” a dead citizen.

Cemetery
For €3000 and €160 upkeep this building can store 3000 ‘patients’ and send out 10 hearses. Keep in mind that it can only be relocated once completely empty.

Crematorium
For €25.000 and €720 upkeep your citizens can be cremated. This building can store up to 105 deceased but will also process them. It can send out only 7 hearses.

Recommendation: So far it looks like not everyone likes to be cremated so you will always need a cemetery. Spread your crematoriums across the city to avoid traffic congestion caused by hearses. Do not forget that people can also die while working or shopping. So also cover commercial and industrial zones!
Practice using the Asset editor!
Roads are also extremely expensive. Demolishing a road when the game is paused will only result in a partial refund of 75%. Therefore I recommend you save yourself time and start using the Asset Editor.

To launch he Cities Sklyines Asset editor go to Tools>Asset Editer>Temperate>New . Once inside the Asset editor can construct roads like you would in-game. When you are finished designing your “crazy” intersection you should go to the asset editor options and take a snapshot. After that press escape and save the asset!
Do not forget to enter a filename, Asset name and description or you will see error warnings when you load your next game.
Concluding paragraph
Again I would like to remind you that this is a compact version of the game meant to be used using shift-tab whilst ingame. If you are intersted in learning more then visit the full guide on Cities Skylines – Beginner tips and tricks guide [www.gameplayinside.com]

Version history
10/3/2015
  • 0.1: Quick release because steam already released the game 45 minutes before official launch!
  • 0.2: Added Garbage, Healthcare, Deathcare
  • 1.0: Finished converting all chapters of the guide to steam.
33 Comments
HesteBremse 2 Dec, 2021 @ 12:22pm 
Vanilla, Beginner Bundle or DLC?

I recently purchased the Vanilla Version, and had a nice long evening/night and reached the 30K mark with that session. After that I explored and installed essential recommended Mods and some assets etc – Then nobstyle completely ruined that Vanilla city (I have a save :steambored:) – but with so many assets using DLC I wonder which version to get? – currently there is a bundle including Industries, Mass transit and a Harbour thingy, but I am not sure if that bundle then levels me to DLC or if any of those are part of the DLC version?
scpool1986 16 Dec, 2017 @ 1:08pm 
Not really a beginner problem but the biggest I've been able to get a city to is 40-50,000 then it goes stagnant. Demand for all zone types drops to low and population growth drops from hundreds a week to only 50-60 a week. I've tried just about every trick I know, including reducing all taxes to 1% and nothing. What am I doing wrong? I use 6 lane roads for collectors that connect to the freeways and my city is almost entirely powered by hydro and other renewable sources. Any tips on what to do?
Magistar  [author] 28 Feb, 2016 @ 7:09am 
Just expand your city a bit. It does not take that long to reach the requirement and unlock the high school. Also as long as you have uneducated workers you should focus more on industry and less on commerce. When commerce upgrades it emplys 0 uneducated workers.
Magistar  [author] 7 Apr, 2015 @ 2:15am 
Local firestations have a faster response time :).
Pillow Smeller 6 Apr, 2015 @ 11:05pm 
This helped A LOT with services. Thanks for clearing up the crematoriums. I also like how 4 clinics are better than 1 hospital, but Im curious if 4 fire stations are more efficient than 1 Fire HQ as well as police too.
jcewazhere 3 Apr, 2015 @ 3:35am 
I found the answer, I'll post it here because it seems like a question many new players may have:
You can use the intersections you've made and downloaded in the map editor as long as they only use basic highways, not the noise blocking ones, and ramps. Any upgraded highways, any other types of street, etc. will prevent it from showing up in the map editor.
Magistar  [author] 1 Apr, 2015 @ 9:15am 
@Trechnfoot

It is a lightbox so if you click anywhere on the screen the popup will disappear (or try the cross lol). Also it only appears after 30+ seconds.
Trenchfeet 1 Apr, 2015 @ 9:10am 
Your link works however is unuasable because of that site's choice to put a big facebook ad right in the middle of the screen that scrolls with the window. Dumb. Good guide from what I've read here...
Magistar  [author] 26 Mar, 2015 @ 7:21pm 
I am not sure I have not used the map editor. Maybe someone else can respond to this question?
jcewazhere 26 Mar, 2015 @ 7:01pm 
Is there a way to use the assets I've made or downloaded in the map editor?