Cities Skylines

[JTsyo]

I am thinking rail roads are bugged with low demand. *Shrugs*

Any tips for the metro routes? Does each route have to expand to massive parts of the map or can they interconnect like a real city? Like take the "d" train to the "c" train connector.

My other trouble is you can't build a highway ahead of time. So by the time you expanded, you pretty much have to level half your city to build a better road. Traffic is becoming a big challenge for me.

I'm having the opposite problem with the railroad, it's just jammed up. Think I might need to separate the passenger trains from the cargo trains.

All mass transit interconnect so people will take the bus to the train to the subway to another bus and get where they are going. You can pick a guy and see how he moves around. I run buses within a district and then run the subway between districts in multiple loops with one hub.

 

[Homerboy]

I can't keep up with the dead bodies and the burned down buildings.
I have excellent coverage for both too.

I also can't get my residential to upgrade to that last (?) level?
My city looks more like Los Angeles and urban sprawl...

 

[Dahak]

For the dead, you might not want to expand to quickly, that way they are spread out a bit
Something I saw on the official forums was

Residential areas are the backbone of your city. Detached houses such as the ones on low density residential zones are inviting to older people and families with kids. High density residential apartment buildings on the other hand serve the needs of younger adults who value cheaper living costs among other things.

Not sure how true this is, but you could then build some low res / a "retirement area" and have graveyard/incinerators close to it, in addition to the others in case someone dies at work

For residential upgrade, make sure the land value is up, so maybe put a park near by.
Make sure that you have a university and office industrial as well

 

[imaheadcase]

I am thinking rail roads are bugged with low demand. *Shrugs*

Any tips for the metro routes? Does each route have to expand to massive parts of the map or can they interconnect like a real city? Like take the "d" train to the "c" train connector.

My other trouble is you can't build a highway ahead of time. So by the time you expanded, you pretty much have to level half your city to build a better road. Traffic is becoming a big challenge for me.

I just figured these out. It seems obvious, but they connect just like bus stops, except instead you have to have actual stations to exit up top. Its hard to see you have to zoom into the terminal to see the "start line" "stop line".

Yah Traffic, its really hard in this game..you basically have to make all exits to highway curved and no stops.
My city right now has the problem is when you go to other part of town, on otherside of highway, i have straight paths across highway..so highway gets backed up while cars stop to wait for people to go over. Don't forget you can limit traffic with one way streets, and put a "NO TRUCKS" policy for streets.

I think i know how to fix it, but got to bulldoze a huge chuck of business. hehe

Btw you can learn a lot about watching Twitch. Lots of people have 100k+ cities.

 

[njdevilsfan87]

For traffic I have found that having a single 6-lane road come off the highway that forms a big loop from entrance to exit, with everything branching off from it (and with as little intersections as you can help) works very well.

 

[Maximilian]

For the dead, you might not want to expand to quickly, that way they are spread out a bit
Something I saw on the official forums was


Not sure how true this is, but you could then build some low res / a "retirement area" and have graveyard/incinerators close to it, in addition to the others in case someone dies at work

For residential upgrade, make sure the land value is up, so maybe put a park near by.
Make sure that you have a university and office industrial as well

Lmfao... quite a grim approach to town planning but hey ho

 

[FuzzyDunlop]

What a GREAT game!! Its really not too difficult and the fun is in the creativity.

This is my third and largest city so far. Ive found that two ways streets without traffic lights are the key. Its ok if traffic turns red as long as the traffic is still flowing. My most recent pentagon center (far left) has proven the most difficult to manage traffic wise. One way streets help a lot. Also lots of access to the major centers. Rather than one huge bustling city I have multiple small ones working together.
The top half sun shaped is all Ore and manufacturing. The far right and left are all residential, business, and commerce. The middle clover is a mix of everything but manufacturing.
I think the industry is set up so that you can harvest raw materials, ship it to manufacturing, then ship it to commerce for sale. So you gotta have enough transport between industry and commerce to keep demand up. Ive been using a cargo train to carry between heavy industry and commerce and it saves a lot of truck traffic.

Here I have a red intersection but traffic never piles up. Its always flowing. This intersection use to jam up everything until I put one way streets. I have Right Hand Drive traffic so I put the roads on the right side of this intersection to be one ways leading away, and those on the left side to be leading in. This forces all traffic coming into the intersection to turn right, rather than turning left and crossing traffic causing blockages.

Pretty simple really. Im just having fun playing with the layouts.

EDIT: Still working on getting these one ways to work in the middle

 

[Slimline]

Having ablast so far making an awfully aid out small city. Ive only hit 7k so far but have been playing slow. someone was mentioning water power issues. I placed 2 hydro power plants beside my sewage plant on the river. The power bridged from the plant to the power generstors and they are working well.

My noob mstake was running power ones everywhere. I didnt realise once a subdivision was connected the power spreads with it without needing more lines. I have ugly power lines throughout my residential districts.

A tip with money early is fine tune your budgets. You can drastically cut spending on sectors and earn money initially then scale up as needed. Large solar farms can be rurally located an connected to the city via power lines.

City policies almost bankrupt me. Recycling and one other were costing me 5 cents a resident each and once i cancelled those policies i had tons of income

 

[XavierMace]

I'm at 70k right now. So far, only having traffic problems in one area. Crime is almost non-existent, no health/garbage issues. Just built an airport.

What kind of fire hazard rating/percentage do you guys have on your cities?

I find the hydro plants to be a waste of time. 50% it either doesn't work when you build it or you flood your city when you build it. Solar is cheaper and doesn't have the hassle.

There's a mod that lets you change the direction of 1 way roads just by clicking and dragging. That's a god send.

 

[Arcadio]

Not enough workers for my forestry industries. I built 2 bus lines and 2 metro lines to those regions but the workers are still not arriving.

 

[SLU Aequitas]

Not enough workers for my forestry industries. I built 2 bus lines and 2 metro lines to those regions but the workers are still not arriving.

Check the overall employment rate and other jobs that are available. Cims always prefer the jobs at their education level, and foresty/farming/industry in general all are suited for uneducated workers. If your Cims are educated, they'll prefer those jobs instead.

I usually set up a dedicated village/town next to these industries without any public education just to service those industries.

 

[Dahak]

Lmfao... quite a grim approach to town planning but hey ho

haha, it seems that way, but probably did not come across as I meant but oh well


The thing I noticed about the traffic too, as some may or may not have noticed.

Is that high/red traffic zones mean that is high volume and not necessarily traffic jams, although there could be jams too.


And for the life of me I still cannot get Commercial happiness above 80%.......

 

[JTsyo]

For the dead, you might not want to expand to quickly, that way they are spread out a bit
Something I saw on the official forums was


Not sure how true this is, but you could then build some low res / a "retirement area" and have graveyard/incinerators close to it, in addition to the others in case someone dies at work

For residential upgrade, make sure the land value is up, so maybe put a park near by.
Make sure that you have a university and office industrial as well

I'm not sure that the Cims move residence within town. What you quoted is for new Cims moving in.

 

[Martimus]

That's a pretty awesome design for a city.

 

[Homerboy]

Screw it. Started a new city. This time armed with some knowledge and planning.

Traffic is a bitch to manage. Cloverleafs off the highways (and directional highways in general) are a must. I still run into some issues with traffic to/from my industrial areas. Once you put up a cargo train depot, you better DAMN well have overbuilt the roads to/from that location. Soooooooooooooooo many trucks.

I'm still trying to figure out offices. These count towards industry, correct? And are required for when you have well educated sims that can't work those lowly, demeaning blue collar jobs? ... I wish there was an indicator for the demand for offices.

 

[Dahak]

Here is a good topic of traffic, from what it talks about it seem to make sense.
Also if you have high volume, it does not necessarily mean bad, unless there is congestion, it just means that there is a lot of traffic over it

http://imgur.com/a/z1rM1

Basically you have 3 levels, and quick summary from it
The basic, textbook idea is simply three hierarchical levels of the network: local (2-lane roads), connecting (4- and 6-lanes) and regional (highways) (there's really a fourth level, national, which in-game would be the outside connection, but we don't build those so forget them).
This organization is how pretty much all cities are built IRL.

Local roads should be where most people live; they're basically an extension to your driveway, letting you get to the real road network. They don't bring you anywhere themselves, other than maybe the corner store.

Connecting roads get you around the neighborhood. They're wider, faster, and people travelling on them get higher priority at intersections than those on local roads. That said, you can still live or work on them.

Regional(highways) roads are even faster: no intersections, no driveways, high speed limit. Highways obviously fit this, but any kind of road can fit this description if built the right way, e.g. feeding the outskirts of your city with a 6-lane road with intersections hundreds of meters apart.

 

[JTsyo]

Screw it. Started a new city. This time armed with some knowledge and planning.

Traffic is a bitch to manage. Cloverleafs off the highways (and directional highways in general) are a must. I still run into some issues with traffic to/from my industrial areas. Once you put up a cargo train depot, you better DAMN well have overbuilt the roads to/from that location. Soooooooooooooooo many trucks.

I'm still trying to figure out offices. These count towards industry, correct? And are required for when you have well educated sims that can't work those lowly, demeaning blue collar jobs? ... I wish there was an indicator for the demand for offices.

There might be a happiness penalty but over educated people will work in dirty industry. Offices and Industry use the same demand but if you don't have industry then more trucks/trains/ships have to come into your city from outside to support your commercial zones. plan your roads accordingly.

 

[JamesV]

I'm kind of having the same issue I had with old Sim City games; I keep restarting when I see something that I don't like. Ten hours in, and I've only broken 1,000 population once.

The majority of my time has been wasted just figuring out what kind of connection to make to the highway. Doh!

 

[imaheadcase]

I can't keep up with the dead bodies and the burned down buildings.
I have excellent coverage for both too.

I also can't get my residential to upgrade to that last (?) level?
My city looks more like Los Angeles and urban sprawl...

From twitch a guy said that the best way to upgrade buildings is add services near them. Like if they are not upgrading, put a few parks/fire department, etc. You should start to see them instantly start upgrading.

The trash/bodies thing is 2nd hardest to get down after traffic. My problem right now, besides traffic, is getting trash taken care of. I have 23k population, 6 landfills, 6 incinerators. I figured it out what is wrong, and going to take lots of work to fix. The problem is the trashtrucks keep getting stuck in traffic, so the incinerators stop working before they they back. lol

Another thing i found out is bus routes are not always a good thing, the more bus routes you have, the more buses = more traffic. I just checked and i have over 100 buses going down a small street. rofl

 

[Aikouka]

My worst problem so far is probably managing roads. I'm one of those people that feels dirty bulldozing something that's already built and functioning. I'm actually thinking about taking a different approach and sort of "rebuilding" on the other highway connection point with a better infrastructure since I have the money to support it now.

My noob mstake was running power ones everywhere. I didnt realise once a subdivision was connected the power spreads with it without needing more lines. I have ugly power lines throughout my residential districts.

I did the same thing.

 

[Arcadio]

Does the performance of the game decrease noticeably with large cities?

 

[XavierMace]

Does the performance of the game decrease noticeably with large cities?

I haven't noticed anything at 75k, but that probably doesn't qualify as a large city.

 

[JTsyo]

From twitch a guy said that the best way to upgrade buildings is add services near them. Like if they are not upgrading, put a few parks/fire department, etc. You should start to see them instantly start upgrading.

The trash/bodies thing is 2nd hardest to get down after traffic. My problem right now, besides traffic, is getting trash taken care of. I have 23k population, 6 landfills, 6 incinerators. I figured it out what is wrong, and going to take lots of work to fix. The problem is the trashtrucks keep getting stuck in traffic, so the incinerators stop working before they they back. lol

Another thing i found out is bus routes are not always a good thing, the more bus routes you have, the more buses = more traffic. I just checked and i have over 100 buses going down a small street. rofl

I don't think garbage dumps and cemeteries are worth placing. They fill up and then don't work. You have to then empty them to make them useful again. The good things is they don't pollute so you can place them int he middle of a residential area. As long as your roads are good enough you can place them far enough and not have to worry about the pollution.

 

[lupi]

Don't recall disposing of bodies ever being an item of concern in SC.

 

[Homerboy]

I don't think garbage dumps and cemeteries are worth placing. They fill up and then don't work. You have to then empty them to make them useful again. The good things is they don't pollute so you can place them int he middle of a residential area. As long as your roads are good enough you can place them far enough and not have to worry about the pollution.

I was wondering about that myself -- once you get to incinerators and crematoriums, are landfills and cemeteries even needed anymore?

I vote "no". I've been emptying mine so far and then bulldozing with no seen effects on the happiness or health of the areas they serve(d).

Though, I admit, I sort of like having a cemetery around in my residential areas just to give it that old "small town" feel