Cities Skylines – Addictive

I’ve been watching Youtube videos about various simulation games. Factorio, Automation Empire, Satisfactory, and Cities Skylines. Of course, Cities Skylines is very different from the rest of those. But there’s a sale going on Steam for Cities Skylines, so I gave it a shot.

I started with a tutorial file and made a little town and learned how to get it going in about Four Hours. I didn’t get the cheapest package.

There are several bundles to choose from. The one I got is about $20.

Some Things to Start With

I’d seen a video that showed starting with some of the build in Mods. Unlimited Funds seemed interesting. Maybe I’ll come back and fill this in with what I used. The Unlimited Funds mod is built in, but it’s not a setting, it’s a Mod.

Beech Harbor

Here’s what I ended up with so far:

Beginning Frustrations

So it’s not obvious how to get into and out of Edit mode at first. Finally I saw the little (x) at the bottom right of the screen. That takes you back to observer mode.

Another frustration is where are the screen shots stored and why can’t I just set the hot key to be PrintScreen. But no. F12 is the default and PrintScreen won’t work for some reason. The shots are saved in

C:\Users\YourUserName\AppData\Local\Colossal Order\Cities_Skylines\Screenshots

And telling Steam where to save screenshots is a waste of time. They aren’t saved where you say. Other places were suggested, but those are wrong. I had to dig around with the resource manager to watch the files being written to find them.

And a few more frustrations:

  • I had to quiet the chirp-er or what ever it’s called that keeps annoying you. Go to the Audio settings for this.
  • And if you don’t “Unpause” the city, it will never make any progress. The run arrow is at the bottom left. And you may want to pause it to make changes so that the annoyance level is lower.
  • The music is too loud, so visit the settings right away and turn that down.
  • Anyway, there are lots of fiddling to get things calmed down so you can start to learn about how to do things.
  • When the day night cycle is running, it looks like you can’t see well to change things, but if you start editing, the screen changes so you can see. There’s a graphics option for putting a flashlight on the mouse cursor.
  • Go find the Move Mod on Steam and subscribe to that. Somehow, the game only lets you build things and bulldoze things, not move them once you build them. Although I saw a “Relocate” buildings, there doesn’t seem to be a way to just move items without the mod or plugin. Odd choice for a game that’s been out for 5 years.

Getting a City Going

I had the sewer plants aimed the wrong way at first and some residents complained about the smell and the flooding. So aim the pipes into the river, downstream of your water source of course.

I built the nuclear power plant and waste incinerators on the other side of town along with the prison, and heavy industry. No need to worry about the Nuclear Waste, so I chose the low pollution option for power. But don’t forget that it needs water, so maybe put it closer to the river than I did.

Oh, so building schools, health care facilities, police stations etc are fairly obvious. But don’t forget Cemeteries and Crematoria, or the dead folks will pile up in the houses.

Here’s a short video covering these topics and showing which options and mods I’m using to learn Cities Skylines.

Cities Skylines hints to get started

This game is actually kind of cool and I’ll sure I’ll waste a lot more time with it.
:ww