How to Start a City in Cities: Skylines in 2021?

Cities: Skylines was released back in 2015 and was developed by Colossal Order and published by Paradox Interactive. Skylines is a city-building game and is a single-player. While playing the game, you will engage in urban planning, controlling road placement, zoning, public services, and more. Over the past years, this game has received various expansions, and now, I feel this is an established game and have decided to help my fellow gamers out with playing it. Starting out, I am going to explain how to start a city in Cities: Skylines. 

How to Start Out in Cities Skylines

Before you begin, stop and think about how to start your Cities Skylines game. Familiarize yourself with the available industries, districts, and so on so that you can create a strategy of building your city, and later on, maybe expanding it. Your city planning in Cities: Skylines can be based on land types. For example, let’s say you want to reserve a seashore for a nice cargo harbor – this will require you to have a wide connection and you will need to avoid putting residential areas next to a noisy port. These key points may include deposits of raw materials for rivers, industries, outside connections, and forests. Create a raw plan of districts as well as key railways, roads, and so on. 

In the beginning, right after the map loads up, stop the simulation. By doing this, you can avoid those unnecessary maintenance costs. At the beginning of the game, you’re only going to receive 70.000 credits, so make sure you spend them wisely. For example, if you jump right in and you build too many roads, you’re going to go through your budget and you’re not going to receive any loan until you have reached your first milestone. 

When you first start out, go ahead and build the basics tuff – you know, the water intake, power plant, and some intake sewers. Connect your main street with a motorway exit and build a couple of residential zones. Of course, you don’t’ want to forget about adding some electricity as well as water pipes. 

When you place new zones in the game, it’s important to note that industry doesn’t like residential areas, so you should consider placing the industrial zones separately. 

As for the roads, when you feel that the roads are too narrow, go ahead and upgrade them. For the main alley, I recommend having at least three lanes, but later on, you may choose to upgrade it to highway level, so save some space to do that. 

You will want to provide services for industry and residents because only services will increase building level and you know what a higher-level means …it means more income. Public buildings have specific efficiency and capacity. The reach will all depend on the road plan and you will always be able t move them to a suitable place if you feel the need. The specialized industry is producing resources that are needed for standard industry within your city. If you have traders that have everything available in the area, this will help you earn even more from taxes. 

The standard industry will produce various commodities, and this will allow you to put them in shops within your city. If the shops in your city don’t’ need to import anything, then this means their income will be larger, and taxes will also be larger.          

I recommend investing in ecology, and an advanced wind turbine is the best route to take for doing that. Afterward, aim for solar power. You will want to work as fast as possible so that you can unlock the incineration plant.        

Consider the citizens that will be living within your city – you don’t want to cause them any harm. When you build a water pumping station, you should avoid building it near a water drain pipe and don’t place a residential zone around a landfill. If you make the wrong moves, there could be a sudden disease outbreak and this wouldn’t do you any good. 

How to Get Skyscrapers

In City Skylines, I noticed many gamers are clueless as to what they need to do in order to get a skyscraper. In the game’s title, skyscrapers are implied, but it’s not clear how to go about getting them. You can only get skyscrapers in commercial leisure districts and high-density office zones. 

Skylines Parking Lot

It’s hard to think about a modern city, especially one in America that doesn’t have any parking lots. Don’t you agree? Unfortunately, the game mechanics don’t give the option of having parking as a separate feature. However, without applying any mods, there is still a way for you to get parking lots. The healthy food commercial districts that come to us from Green Cities DLC include a parking lot. You just have to wait for it to grow in the plat and turn it into a historical building. 

Why is Everyone Sick in Cities Skylines?

Oftentimes, players find themselves struggling with their citizens getting sick and there are no obvious reasons. In most cases, the reason citizens become sick in Cities Skylines is because of the water pollution and that can be hard to track. Usually, there is some form of pollution, which expands to the water tower, even if it’s far from the building where there are sick citizens and this is one of the reasons why it’s so hard to detect. When citizens become sick in your game, go ahead and check your water sources and see if there is pollution. If you find pollution, you may consider moving the water tower to a clean area. 

Conclusion

Getting started on Cities: Skylines isn’t that hard to do in 2021. If you enjoy tycoon-style games and you haven’t played Cities: Skylines yet, then you should go ahead and check this game out. There’s so much you can do on here and come on, who here hasn’t dreamed of creating their own city? Cities: Skylines makes our wildest “I want to create a city” dreams come true.