I’ve Been Playing ‘Cities: Skylines’ And I Think You Should Too

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Okay, fine, I’ll admit it.

I’ve been playing Cities: Skylines whenever I have the chance.

I remember a commenter telling me I’m better off learning a new language than spending 357 hours playing Football Manager (Real Talk: that’s the actual number of hours I’ve played Football Manager), but it’s just way more fun playing God and creating your own city.

So far, I’ve logged 22 hours worth of game time.

You know when EA killed the Simcity franchise, you just knew Cities: Skylines was going to blow up. (Also, fuck you Bethesda for starting the DLC phenomenon, you motherfuckers.) I’ve been watching this game ever since it was announced and I finally have it.

I’ve played Cities In Motion for a while, but that only gave me the satisfaction of developing and controlling a transport empire. It was good, but not the whole package. I wanted the ability to develop my own city and create a transportation system within it, as well. Now, I have that chance.

In terms of gameplay, it’s quite pleasant. I find the controls to be clear and simple. The graphics are great — just make sure you’re not running it on a Macbook like I am. You will have to lower graphics to their lowest settings and turn off a bunch of visual options for it to run smoothly (and that totally sucked when I found out. This is why I need to get a PC).

When you zoom in you can see cars and pedestrians. Zoom out enough and you’ll be within the clouds. When you lower your camera enough, you’ll be able view whatever is in the horizon.

I’ve been watching some tutorials for the game, and to be honest, they are extremely informative. I found out you can manually raise roads using Page Up and Page Down (that’s fn + up arrow for Page Up and fn + down arrow for Page Down for us Macbook users. Took some Google-fu to figure this one out).

As of now, I have about 18,000 residents in my city named Fulton Town. (I live on Fulton Street — I’m very creative, you know?) I’m rolling in the dough, but first, I had to get into debt. Maintaining your city is actually pretty easy once you get all of the necessary buildings in order — police stations, fire departments, health clinics, cemeteries, schools (elementary, high school, college), water pumps, sewage pumps, power plants, and whatever else I may be forgetting.

Some tips I picked up from playing and watching others play:

  • Force all traffic to go through the highway.
  • Utilize one-ways to prevent congestion.
  • Avoid intersections if you can.
  • Parks are important to upgrading your buildings.
  • Industry creates a lot of pollution, but it doesn’t affect quality of life very much.
  • Obvious, but cars turn at a much slower speed at 90° angles than 45° angles. Remember this when constructing your onramps.
  • You will need to build exits and entrances for highways — it will result in four onramps.
  • Buses and metro stations will really help with traffic.
  • Abandoned buildings will get new residents / businesses, but you will have to wait a while.
  • Don’t build sewage pumps upstream.
  • When you build dams, be wary of water displacement.
  • If you’re not careful, roundabouts will eventually get gridlocked.
  • You will use the curve tool more often than not, so get used to it.

There’s a healthy modding community, so there’s some really cool objects and in-game items you can download (or “subscribe” to).

And I think Chirper is annoying as fuck.

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bShMULZDfmI]