How to Use Natural Resources in Cities: Skylines?

Hello, mayors! What is the population of your cities? Are people happy with your running of the city? Does your city have enough natural resources to provide citizens with everything they need to live? As we know in advance, cities that have reliable sources of natural resources do not have to depend on anyone, thus they can strengthen urban zones on their own. 

They may not seem so important to you, but natural resources can determine your cities’ entire course of progress, so it is desirable to manage natural resources well. In this article, we will write about natural resources in Cities: Skylines and how to make the most of them. Let’s start reading.

In 2015, Paradox Interactive launched into the gaming world one of the best simulation city-building games of today – Cities: Skylines. In this game, you play as the mayor of the city. You start from the map of your choice and continue with the construction of city zones. You have to take care of residential, industrial, and commercial areas and take care of your citizens’ health, the amount of taxes, pollution of the city, public transport, and much more. This game is available on the Steam official website and comes in a PC version and PS4 and Xbox One game consoles.

Also Read: How to Get Oil in Cities: Skylines?

Natural Resources in Cities: Skylines

Using natural resources overlay lets you see how these four types of natural resources are arranged on the map. Yellow color for fertile land, green color for forests, ores are blue, and oil comes in black color. The darker the color of a particular natural resource, the better the piece of land for extracting this resource. Using this natural resources overlay, you can check the statistics and availability of a particular natural resource.

With natural resources buildings, you can influence the supply chain of your city, as well as the tax revenue, which means that getting to know the functioning of natural resources for the progress of the city is crucial.

For example, suppose you zone your industrial areas over natural resources. In that case, that area will become a district and will specialize in exploiting specific natural resources depending on where it is located. Industrial zones with forests will have forestry specialization with sawmills and forests.

Also, one trick: you can manipulate your forest industries by adding handmade trees from the Decoration tab that will also be used in the woodworking process. This means, of course, more resources for your city. Areas with oil industry specialization will have oil pumps and facilities for petroleum processing. The oil industry has the most significant tax income boost of 35%.

Also Read: How to Make a Map in Cities: Skylines?

How to Use Resources in Cities: Skylines

Basically, when you create an industry zone around an area with natural resources, the factories will “build” themselves depending on the natural resources. When you choose the specialization of your district, the building will be built in two ways. The first type of buildings will be extractors – extractors must be built in an area with a natural resource to produce stuff for export. 

This can be, for example, oil wells located on oil sources or animal farms on fertile land. The second type of buildings is processors – processors depend on the importing resources of the same type of specialization. This means that they do not depend on being built in an area with natural resources—for example, oil refinery for oil specialization.

However, be careful because natural resources affect environmental pollution and can affect your citizens if they are close to residential areas. People will be dissatisfied with air pollution, and their health will be damaged.

The problem occurs when the specialty is built close to people. When you lack natural resources, your city will be less developed and may decline.

For example, you can create an oil district to see what it looks like. The district still has no specialization, but we will change that. The District tab contains the Industrial Specialization option. There you can apply specialization for your district depending on natural resources. So, it makes no sense to choose oil specialization in the area where the ore is located. Here you can apply oil specialization for this district. 

Buildings that were previously built in this area will be magically transformed into buildings related to oil resources. Choosing a specialized industry will bring various benefits to your city. Primarily, it lengths the supply chain of goods for your citizens and for your city, thus creating new jobs and improving the relationship between imports and exports of goods. By building different types of buildings, you will be able to export your oil resources and earn money. Yay!

You have to remember that not all natural resources are renewable. Farming and forestry belong to renewable natural resources, and they will continue to produce raw materials indefinitely. If you plant trees and replace fertile land with forestry, fertile land will be removed permanently.

Ore and oil, however, have specific amounts that you can extract. When you consume these natural resources, the production of goods will stop. If the factory cannot import the necessary resources, people will leave it, and it will become an abandoned place.

When it happens that natural resources are depleted or when your specialized industry is in an area where there are no natural resources, there will be a collapse. Producers will no longer exist and will be replaced by consumers. This means that the import of goods will become their main priority. Raw materials will need to be imported off the map. What does this mean for your city? This means that cargo traffic will increase on your highway ramps and cargo terminals, trains, airports, ships. Whether this will positively or negatively affect your city depends solely on the excellent transport links of your city.

If your industrial zone is well connected, then these imports will not be a problem for your city, but if you have poor traffic connections between the industrial zone and the rest of the city, this could be a problem. In this second case, it is better to get rid of that industry zone, because if it becomes a generic industry zone, it will also have to rely on imports, and traffic collapses will occur again.

In Cities: Skylines, there is a built-in mod called “Unlimited Oil and Ore are not reduced from terrain,” which prevents oil and ore resources from being depleted. You have to activate this mod before natural resources are used up in order for it to affect the game.

If you’re wondering if there might be an additional mode that more easily regulates the extracting of natural resources, there are currently no mods related to natural resources other than this one that is already built in a game.

Also Read: How to Fix Sewage Backup in Cities: Skylines?

Final Thoughts

Surely you know well the importance of natural resources in the world around us. A city or state with a good amount of natural resources such as oil, ore, fertile land, or forests can sustain the lives of its citizens by supplying them with various types of goods produced from natural resources. Of course, suppose a city or state can produce enormous quantities of these goods. 

In that case, it will be able to export them, which means an additional inflow of money and economic dependence of weaker cities. In Cities: Skylines, the situation is very similar; there are areas with natural resources where it is desirable to build a district, choose an industry specialization and watch the money come into the city budget. Feel free to share with us the way you manage natural resources.