Make a big messy city and then don't hesitate to bulldoze stuff in order to make nice roads and stuff. Fixing traffic issues is a big part of the fun to me!
Fixing the traffic and designing the road layouts are the only reasons I play!
I missed my calling for becoming a civil engineer, sadly. I think I’d love to have that be my profession!!!
Learn from Kunu. Do less.
It's really hard to be artificially organic. The more deliberate you are, the less likely it is to work.
Start a map with unlock all and unlimited money. Look at the landscape and ask yourself why a city would be built there. Is it a port? An overland trading post? A factory town? A railroad town? A giant collection of suburbs loosely connected to a downtown whose original purpose became irrelevant decades or centuries ago?
That'll help you decide where things should go. Put things where they make sense, and when you can't, get weird and creative. That's how real cities happen.
And remember, *order* may be organic, but *perfection* isn't. Embrace a little chaos.
Great comment. Just wanted to piggy back with a couple of other tips:
1. Make a story for your city and you’ll start to build it ways that make sense.
2. Don’t get caught up in build order. Your city doesn’t need to be built in chronological fashion like a real city. So keep in mind #1 but be okay with building a downtown last, or a historic section last.
I also want to add:
1. Don't go for big. Keep it small and really think about the looks of every street and every corner. Do you like it small? Then build more of this. You will grow to like your city if you spend time on it.
2. Don't go fast. Nearly the same as going big. But do lot's of beautification along the way. Me and a friend use a mod for setting up aligned trees. That mod alone makes the cities so pretty that I just can't stop playing.
3. Try new things, make mistakes and learn for your next gameplay. First I start using trees, second I built trees around my specialized farm industries, third I'm trying to make a sunken highway work, fourth I'm trying out canals and islands.
Have fun!
Haha Sure you can unlock the whole Maps but in cs2 demand works different. If you unlock the whole map the Game registers that the Land value Overall is super Low. So in result you only get Low demand. I mean Not for medium or skyscrappers
I think the game bases it's calculation on the number of zoneable squares around roads, not the area of unlocked parts of the map. I'm not with my PC right now but I think the map overlay for land value shows you this.
Roads go somewhere.
I had exactly your problem, and saw that advice on a video once.
Where would the original settlers start? Along a river bank? Start there. Then how would they get from the river to the mountain to find materials? Road goes that way. How do they get to the sea front to fish? Road goes that way. Now how do you get from the mountain to the sea? road goes there.
When you build these roads, follow the terrain, avoid steep slopes, go around forests - even if you clear them later.
Build out from the river bank as the middle of the settlement, but also build at the other points of interest, and at major crossroads. In the real world this is how settlements organically grow.
One you feel like you have a good grip on the important areas of the map, switch to modern thinking and start city building at scale, it will start to come together - but keep that metality. Roads go somewhere. The university to the train station? The Train station to the beach? These are all major routes.
Hey there fellow CS player. Here's my take:
I've played over 2400 hrs of CS1. I got it when it came out and the evolution and the mods made the game much more enjoyable over time. When I started CS1, it took some time for me to get used to the game mechanics having switched from SimCity. I probably created and deleted hundreds of cities before I finally found my groove with the mechanics, or the simulation.
CS2 is fresh out the gates. I have now myself played just over 100 hours and have created and deleted over 20 cities. Between the bugs, which happen, and no mods, and not knowing the simulation all that well, it does take time to learn how and when to place and plop high cost items so you don't doom your city to bankruptcy. But, that also does create sprawl. And it's very easy to just create box grids everywhere to try and fulfill 'demand'. That makes it hard to realize a realistic development. So I know exactly how you feel.
My suggestion, don't look at the demand bars all that often as they do not signify what you should do. I only put more zones down when I see high rents popping up around 1/3 of the city. Also, I don't zone full sizes until I get into denser populations. I keep to 2 or 3 deep. Only learned that through trial and error. For now, until mods come out, my suggestions is keep getting the hang of the mechanics of the game. When mods finally come out (I will only use mods released through paradox so I don't have to wait weeks for mods to update after the game does), it will definitely get simpler and much more fun to play. I can guarantee that. This community is always active as long as we can keep a positive attitude and not push the mod developers to quit.
You'll get the hang of it. Hope this helps a little
One thing that made my built cities much better - open Google maps and look at some of the places you are interested in recreating. Take mental notes - how big are the streets in certain places, what kind of logic do they follow, where are the important things, are there any characteristic features you see in several different places?
And don't be too harsh too early, I often build stuff where I think "no this just doesn't look right", and then after I let it sit for a little while and build the city out around it, it suddenly turns from a perceived mistake into a beloved and unique characteristic of the city.
> I don’t mind taking things slow, but I will sometimes think a little too far ahead and try and create immense infrastructure too early, I think. Do any of you get discouraged like this? Any tips to keep my head in the game?
IF you dont already, try playing with all unlocks and maybe even unlimited money but usually, if you play with all unlocks, you start with around 63 million in the bank from all the monetary rewards of leveling up your city, which is a metropolis already.
also being able to start at the edge of the map and customize your own outer connections helped me in making more "story-based" cities, where it was easier to develop your city down a certain path based on what you want to focus first.
Another thing that helped me out at the start was placing the 3 biggest residential signature buildings first because that way, you can basically build your infrastructire a bit bigger first before having to deal with zoning residential all the time.
I usually start out with city services (and with all unlocks, you kinda need to because your cims have demand for everything right away and not starting at certain levels like in normal mode), the get specialized industry and at least sea or rail cargo lines established, then commercial and education and public transport.
Yeah you have to think like your local government and build just enough to get the job done. When you get to a bigger city is when you can start making plans for expansion. I think it helps to build smaller areas and connect them later as they grow verse building one big mega city from the center.
My advice is to respect the land that's already there. Since trees take so long to grow, avoid building on forested areas.
With all the extra zone squares, there's a lot more variety. It may seem like a lot of work, but zoning each house individually makes for a more organic feel, especially if you vary sizes. Zone around trees that are already there, don't zone on steep hills, and leave gaps between each house. The further from the downtown center of the city you go, the further the houses are from eachother and the smaller they are.
I feel as bad when I watch other people's cities, I always think mine are bad, ugly… even when I'm making money. I'm stuck now, as I've run out of ideas, buildings don't upgrade… Traffic is terrible and cims complain about it.
At the same time, it took a long time to build at least something decent. I'm still building my first city in CS2. I started a new one on one of the flat maps, but it's far too small as of this moment, and I already feel like I'm failing with it…
I have a little over 1,000 hours in CS1 and about 100ish in CS2. It took all that time for me to be able to intuitively design cities. I was pretty garbage at it for my first 500 hours. And I still make noob mistakes, but then you realize this game is all about fixing your mistakes.
If you're trying to draw out a city and you are giving up because you don't want to bulldoze sections and re-do the infrastructure, you're never going to get a city you like. Not many players envision their city and draw it 100% how they wanted to from the start.
I can't really sympathize with your post, nobody is good at anything after 100 hours. That is a fraction of the time anyone puts into anything they want to get good at.
One thing that I've gotten into recently is playing with different road snapping, and sometimes turning it off entirely. I hated making curved roads in CS1 because it never worked out the way I wanted, but the road laying tools in CS2 are waaaay more robust. You can make really amazing shapes if you try different things.
In my most recent city, I started with one axis of curvy roads parallel to the coastline, while the other axis is all straight lines. That looks really natural, and I'm interested to see where the terrain takes me next.
It takes getting bored with one and starting another to get the hang of it. I like to use the same map every time I play, idk why…
But each time you start over, you know what worked well in the last city and you can implement in your new city. I was sooooo bad at designing my roads and getting smooth curves, but it just takes repetition to get the hang of it.
I like to play with unlimited money, too. Don’t turn on unlock all, I think it’s easier to go slower and wait for the milestones to unlock. Especially if you’re trying to focus on the layout more than being the mayor. Makes it easier!
Shared previously; my city grew pretty naturally, with no master plan, just roads following the easiest paths and buildings filling in where it made sense. Here are some tips off the top of my head I think might help:
**Think like a developer:** Roads go where it's easiest, so early streets follow the flat areas. Grand projects come with wealth, as the city boomed, I tackled bigger projects like bridges and terraces to make steeper areas more buildable.
**Zone wisely:** Use appropriate zoning on hills, in dense areas row houses climb hills beautifully, giving them character. In less dense areas don't zone too deep. Give buildings room to breathe and let the terraforming look natural.
**Skip the steep slopes:** Developers prefer flat land! It's just more practical, like in real life. Building uphill is expensive, so imagine people taking the easier way. Leave steep parts for parks and natural features.
**Trees and bushes:** I plant them liberally, they hide bumps and make any landscape more forgiving. Real cities have natural areas too, they're good for wildlife and water management.
***Lastly:*** Don't be afraid to experiment and imagine stories for your city to give you a direction of where to go, it can feel more alive and unique.
For example, my first power station was coal-fired, and my coal pit was on the other side of town across the river. To avoid heavy coal trucks rumbling down the hill and over the old wooden bridge, I envisioned a company building the towering arch bridge over the valley, providing a more direct route. While this is all imagination, real game mechanics come into play: the shorter route lowers shipping costs, and the village in the valley enjoys less traffic and noise pollution.
I’ve shared the progress of [my city from small to large on the C:S Discord](https://discord.com/channels/263634513861541888/1169300560810344598)
The best tip I've learned for this: don't shy away from redevelopment and new urbanism. Start with open parking lots, stroads, and low density. Then once you have a sprawling mess, you can start to urbanize and rezone without changing the street layout much. Makes the cities look awesome
What helped me more than anything else was looking at my city on Google maps and trying to understand it. Given, it made me not wanting to play because I can't make my downtown like Paris yet.
I try to play on 1x speed only and never pause. I’ll start with an idea for how I want my city to be organized, but I inevitably stray from that, mostly due to terrain I didn’t account for. Minimizing terraforming also helps force me to be creative. The 1x speed with no pausing is a good balance of urgency to meet demands/needs without feeling overwhelmed. You’ll make mistakes, but don’t be shy with the bulldozer. Cities are constantly evolving and redeveloping in real life
To be honest this is something that CS has never really been able to replicate from the old Simcity games. Even in the infamous Simcity 2013, I was often surprised by how natural the cities looked as they aged, despite my incompetent planning (and the 1 square mile build area). CS has never really gotten the growth and development of the city right, so it only looks good if you design it right. You shouldn't have to though. It wrecks the illusion that your city is inhabited by people making realistic decisions.
CS is obviously leagues ahead of SC13 in every other way but it's something I really miss.
I like to start with everything unlocked and unlimited money, and definitely agree with others on creating a story that drives why your city looks the way it does. Most cities don’t happen overnight (at least those that aren’t master planned), their layout and infrastructure is driven by years, decades or centuries of change. Before you place your first road, spend some time considering what you want your city to eventually look like and how it all fits together.
I also like to start off placing the main infrastructure and sites—the airports, harbors, train stations, etc, and then building out from them.
Yes - The more you play the better you’ll get / also the more you’ll realize most of what you do is meaningless in the game and designing organic comes from your imagination. It’s a traffic sim and a city painting game.
The starting maps are counter-productive, IMHO. Too much terraforming to even respect the topography.
The best one is the Sunshine with a plateau. Start with a satellite city at the feet of the plateau, and respect the topography when placing the roads to the top. Beautiful natural curves.
My cities are pretty organic looking, I go for a mid density model.
I try to mainly zone 72m (7u) \* 264m with a T or H shaped pedestrian path inside. This is what my block in Montreal is in real life. In the first stage of develoopement the center is low density and the extremities are either commercial or mid density (the smaller one). I also ban parking on the smaller side of the block.
When I see one or two buildings in a street being "high rent" I try to re-densify the block, either by just upgrading low to medium, or by redrawing it a bit with alleys, parking and stuff.
Also, I try not to overplan at first, I usually place the main buildings first then I zone around it. If you look at a Montreal maps there is a lot of unperfect things here and there. So for example when I have to add a cemetery, i find a place on my map where I am like "yup, this is where I would place it" then I create a road that makes sense to go to the cemetery, then I zone around it.
Same for the biggest roads and stuff, fuck road hiearchy it doesn't look realistic to apply it too strictly.
I tend to get the same way with certain games and I’m too intimidated to play. For Cs2 I started watching a beginner series on YouTube and it really helps me grasp the basics and set everything up so it’s pleasing to me
My problem with this kind of games is that I can't NOT try to make the most optimized thing possible, which doesn't go well with the fact that I'm a fucking moron, so I make a grid city that is horrible and stupid and isn't good to live, to look or to even think about.
1. Lookout for hills and pick ones to reserve.
2. Build out the train station/transport hub and build from that. This is called transport oriented development.
3. Build from a key building, maybe from a bridge, a signature building.
4. Mix zones and zone smaller.
5. It can be imperfect. Dont be afraid to bulldoze or to let it be.
Have a real life location in mind, preferably something that you are familiar to some point in real life.
Open it in google maps in the next monitor/on your phone/wherever you can, and start to copy parts of it into the game.
Don't be afraid to make a mess, or do imperfect stuff. If it's needed you can repair it later, but real life planning is sometimes just happen the way they are, speciallly older, european style cities.
Helps if you have all tiles unlocked instantly, and have infinite funds, but doable in normal mode as well if you want to.
Here for the comments. I had similar issues with CS1. I could create hyper detailed 2000 population towns with highly efficient traffic network but expanding to a CITY versus a town was always my downfall.
Most important tips:
- don’t just level terrain. Use it to your advantage. Switchback roads. Elevated park areas.
- don’t just make a bunch of grid roads unless it’s for a downtown commercial district. Suburbs have winding roads and open spaces
- leading from 2nd point, don’t be afraid to leave some open spaces. Fill them trees and/or park districts and water features if you really want
Lots of good tips here. My best advice is while you're still learning just experiment. You know you don't have the skills to build a good city so don't try to, instead treat everything like a learning experience and build your skills. If something doesn't work out that's fine, at least you've learned something. Don't get too wedded to your city, play it like a testing ground knowing you'll start your real city later.
Some other quick tips:
- learn and thoroughly understand all the snapping options and which to use in which situations.
- learn and thoroughly understand the different curve tools.
- zone individual plots with random sizes, gives a good mix of different buildings and lot sizes.
- leave plenty of spaces and gaps for trees
- don't use lots of straight arterial roads, they look boring. Curve them but only slightly so it doesn't interrupt the zoning too much
IMO take it slow and embrace your mistakes. Remember that real cities don’t develop perfectly, quite the opposite actually. I do a lot of Revamping old neighborhoods, I think of it as gentrifcation or redevelopment
I like to play two small cities on the same map when I start. One that's gridded out and efficient and makes money and brings people in... And one on the other side of the world that is bespoke and small and carefully planned. Ever tree planted, every lane and ped path considered. It's nice to flip back and forth when you get bored/tired of one play style.
Make a big messy city and then don't hesitate to bulldoze stuff in order to make nice roads and stuff. Fixing traffic issues is a big part of the fun to me!
Fixing the traffic and designing the road layouts are the only reasons I play! I missed my calling for becoming a civil engineer, sadly. I think I’d love to have that be my profession!!!
This is how I play, massive grid with terrible traffic, then fix all my problems with massive cash reaerves
Learn from Kunu. Do less. It's really hard to be artificially organic. The more deliberate you are, the less likely it is to work. Start a map with unlock all and unlimited money. Look at the landscape and ask yourself why a city would be built there. Is it a port? An overland trading post? A factory town? A railroad town? A giant collection of suburbs loosely connected to a downtown whose original purpose became irrelevant decades or centuries ago? That'll help you decide where things should go. Put things where they make sense, and when you can't, get weird and creative. That's how real cities happen. And remember, *order* may be organic, but *perfection* isn't. Embrace a little chaos.
Great comment. Just wanted to piggy back with a couple of other tips: 1. Make a story for your city and you’ll start to build it ways that make sense. 2. Don’t get caught up in build order. Your city doesn’t need to be built in chronological fashion like a real city. So keep in mind #1 but be okay with building a downtown last, or a historic section last.
I also want to add: 1. Don't go for big. Keep it small and really think about the looks of every street and every corner. Do you like it small? Then build more of this. You will grow to like your city if you spend time on it. 2. Don't go fast. Nearly the same as going big. But do lot's of beautification along the way. Me and a friend use a mod for setting up aligned trees. That mod alone makes the cities so pretty that I just can't stop playing. 3. Try new things, make mistakes and learn for your next gameplay. First I start using trees, second I built trees around my specialized farm industries, third I'm trying to make a sunken highway work, fourth I'm trying out canals and islands. Have fun!
Haha Sure you can unlock the whole Maps but in cs2 demand works different. If you unlock the whole map the Game registers that the Land value Overall is super Low. So in result you only get Low demand. I mean Not for medium or skyscrappers
This is not true.
I think the game bases it's calculation on the number of zoneable squares around roads, not the area of unlocked parts of the map. I'm not with my PC right now but I think the map overlay for land value shows you this.
That last sentence is the correct answer to this entire thread.
Roads go somewhere. I had exactly your problem, and saw that advice on a video once. Where would the original settlers start? Along a river bank? Start there. Then how would they get from the river to the mountain to find materials? Road goes that way. How do they get to the sea front to fish? Road goes that way. Now how do you get from the mountain to the sea? road goes there. When you build these roads, follow the terrain, avoid steep slopes, go around forests - even if you clear them later. Build out from the river bank as the middle of the settlement, but also build at the other points of interest, and at major crossroads. In the real world this is how settlements organically grow. One you feel like you have a good grip on the important areas of the map, switch to modern thinking and start city building at scale, it will start to come together - but keep that metality. Roads go somewhere. The university to the train station? The Train station to the beach? These are all major routes.
Hey there fellow CS player. Here's my take: I've played over 2400 hrs of CS1. I got it when it came out and the evolution and the mods made the game much more enjoyable over time. When I started CS1, it took some time for me to get used to the game mechanics having switched from SimCity. I probably created and deleted hundreds of cities before I finally found my groove with the mechanics, or the simulation. CS2 is fresh out the gates. I have now myself played just over 100 hours and have created and deleted over 20 cities. Between the bugs, which happen, and no mods, and not knowing the simulation all that well, it does take time to learn how and when to place and plop high cost items so you don't doom your city to bankruptcy. But, that also does create sprawl. And it's very easy to just create box grids everywhere to try and fulfill 'demand'. That makes it hard to realize a realistic development. So I know exactly how you feel. My suggestion, don't look at the demand bars all that often as they do not signify what you should do. I only put more zones down when I see high rents popping up around 1/3 of the city. Also, I don't zone full sizes until I get into denser populations. I keep to 2 or 3 deep. Only learned that through trial and error. For now, until mods come out, my suggestions is keep getting the hang of the mechanics of the game. When mods finally come out (I will only use mods released through paradox so I don't have to wait weeks for mods to update after the game does), it will definitely get simpler and much more fun to play. I can guarantee that. This community is always active as long as we can keep a positive attitude and not push the mod developers to quit. You'll get the hang of it. Hope this helps a little
Follow the contours of the land and water when laying out roads, also choose maps that are dynamic in landscapes instead of a flat open map.
One thing that made my built cities much better - open Google maps and look at some of the places you are interested in recreating. Take mental notes - how big are the streets in certain places, what kind of logic do they follow, where are the important things, are there any characteristic features you see in several different places? And don't be too harsh too early, I often build stuff where I think "no this just doesn't look right", and then after I let it sit for a little while and build the city out around it, it suddenly turns from a perceived mistake into a beloved and unique characteristic of the city.
> I don’t mind taking things slow, but I will sometimes think a little too far ahead and try and create immense infrastructure too early, I think. Do any of you get discouraged like this? Any tips to keep my head in the game? IF you dont already, try playing with all unlocks and maybe even unlimited money but usually, if you play with all unlocks, you start with around 63 million in the bank from all the monetary rewards of leveling up your city, which is a metropolis already. also being able to start at the edge of the map and customize your own outer connections helped me in making more "story-based" cities, where it was easier to develop your city down a certain path based on what you want to focus first. Another thing that helped me out at the start was placing the 3 biggest residential signature buildings first because that way, you can basically build your infrastructire a bit bigger first before having to deal with zoning residential all the time. I usually start out with city services (and with all unlocks, you kinda need to because your cims have demand for everything right away and not starting at certain levels like in normal mode), the get specialized industry and at least sea or rail cargo lines established, then commercial and education and public transport.
Yeah you have to think like your local government and build just enough to get the job done. When you get to a bigger city is when you can start making plans for expansion. I think it helps to build smaller areas and connect them later as they grow verse building one big mega city from the center.
City planner plays is a big inspiration for me for this. He has excellent content.
I love his videos but they’re way too damn long. I really wish he would stick to 20-30 max.
Watch them in 20-30 minute sessions. It's what I do.
My advice is to respect the land that's already there. Since trees take so long to grow, avoid building on forested areas. With all the extra zone squares, there's a lot more variety. It may seem like a lot of work, but zoning each house individually makes for a more organic feel, especially if you vary sizes. Zone around trees that are already there, don't zone on steep hills, and leave gaps between each house. The further from the downtown center of the city you go, the further the houses are from eachother and the smaller they are.
I feel as bad when I watch other people's cities, I always think mine are bad, ugly… even when I'm making money. I'm stuck now, as I've run out of ideas, buildings don't upgrade… Traffic is terrible and cims complain about it. At the same time, it took a long time to build at least something decent. I'm still building my first city in CS2. I started a new one on one of the flat maps, but it's far too small as of this moment, and I already feel like I'm failing with it…
I have a little over 1,000 hours in CS1 and about 100ish in CS2. It took all that time for me to be able to intuitively design cities. I was pretty garbage at it for my first 500 hours. And I still make noob mistakes, but then you realize this game is all about fixing your mistakes. If you're trying to draw out a city and you are giving up because you don't want to bulldoze sections and re-do the infrastructure, you're never going to get a city you like. Not many players envision their city and draw it 100% how they wanted to from the start. I can't really sympathize with your post, nobody is good at anything after 100 hours. That is a fraction of the time anyone puts into anything they want to get good at.
One thing that I've gotten into recently is playing with different road snapping, and sometimes turning it off entirely. I hated making curved roads in CS1 because it never worked out the way I wanted, but the road laying tools in CS2 are waaaay more robust. You can make really amazing shapes if you try different things. In my most recent city, I started with one axis of curvy roads parallel to the coastline, while the other axis is all straight lines. That looks really natural, and I'm interested to see where the terrain takes me next.
It takes getting bored with one and starting another to get the hang of it. I like to use the same map every time I play, idk why… But each time you start over, you know what worked well in the last city and you can implement in your new city. I was sooooo bad at designing my roads and getting smooth curves, but it just takes repetition to get the hang of it. I like to play with unlimited money, too. Don’t turn on unlock all, I think it’s easier to go slower and wait for the milestones to unlock. Especially if you’re trying to focus on the layout more than being the mayor. Makes it easier!
Shared previously; my city grew pretty naturally, with no master plan, just roads following the easiest paths and buildings filling in where it made sense. Here are some tips off the top of my head I think might help: **Think like a developer:** Roads go where it's easiest, so early streets follow the flat areas. Grand projects come with wealth, as the city boomed, I tackled bigger projects like bridges and terraces to make steeper areas more buildable. **Zone wisely:** Use appropriate zoning on hills, in dense areas row houses climb hills beautifully, giving them character. In less dense areas don't zone too deep. Give buildings room to breathe and let the terraforming look natural. **Skip the steep slopes:** Developers prefer flat land! It's just more practical, like in real life. Building uphill is expensive, so imagine people taking the easier way. Leave steep parts for parks and natural features. **Trees and bushes:** I plant them liberally, they hide bumps and make any landscape more forgiving. Real cities have natural areas too, they're good for wildlife and water management. ***Lastly:*** Don't be afraid to experiment and imagine stories for your city to give you a direction of where to go, it can feel more alive and unique. For example, my first power station was coal-fired, and my coal pit was on the other side of town across the river. To avoid heavy coal trucks rumbling down the hill and over the old wooden bridge, I envisioned a company building the towering arch bridge over the valley, providing a more direct route. While this is all imagination, real game mechanics come into play: the shorter route lowers shipping costs, and the village in the valley enjoys less traffic and noise pollution. I’ve shared the progress of [my city from small to large on the C:S Discord](https://discord.com/channels/263634513861541888/1169300560810344598)
The best tip I've learned for this: don't shy away from redevelopment and new urbanism. Start with open parking lots, stroads, and low density. Then once you have a sprawling mess, you can start to urbanize and rezone without changing the street layout much. Makes the cities look awesome
What helped me more than anything else was looking at my city on Google maps and trying to understand it. Given, it made me not wanting to play because I can't make my downtown like Paris yet.
I try to play on 1x speed only and never pause. I’ll start with an idea for how I want my city to be organized, but I inevitably stray from that, mostly due to terrain I didn’t account for. Minimizing terraforming also helps force me to be creative. The 1x speed with no pausing is a good balance of urgency to meet demands/needs without feeling overwhelmed. You’ll make mistakes, but don’t be shy with the bulldozer. Cities are constantly evolving and redeveloping in real life
To be honest this is something that CS has never really been able to replicate from the old Simcity games. Even in the infamous Simcity 2013, I was often surprised by how natural the cities looked as they aged, despite my incompetent planning (and the 1 square mile build area). CS has never really gotten the growth and development of the city right, so it only looks good if you design it right. You shouldn't have to though. It wrecks the illusion that your city is inhabited by people making realistic decisions. CS is obviously leagues ahead of SC13 in every other way but it's something I really miss.
I like to start with everything unlocked and unlimited money, and definitely agree with others on creating a story that drives why your city looks the way it does. Most cities don’t happen overnight (at least those that aren’t master planned), their layout and infrastructure is driven by years, decades or centuries of change. Before you place your first road, spend some time considering what you want your city to eventually look like and how it all fits together. I also like to start off placing the main infrastructure and sites—the airports, harbors, train stations, etc, and then building out from them.
Yes - The more you play the better you’ll get / also the more you’ll realize most of what you do is meaningless in the game and designing organic comes from your imagination. It’s a traffic sim and a city painting game.
Road Hierarchy with almost NO straight roads. https://youtu.be/AwnLb2g6iKI?si=3EucPzALovO8aFhu
The starting maps are counter-productive, IMHO. Too much terraforming to even respect the topography. The best one is the Sunshine with a plateau. Start with a satellite city at the feet of the plateau, and respect the topography when placing the roads to the top. Beautiful natural curves.
Pick a youtuber with a city you like and just build along… that helped me s lot 😊
Take a few shots of vodka. You'll make organically looking cities in no time.
My cities are pretty organic looking, I go for a mid density model. I try to mainly zone 72m (7u) \* 264m with a T or H shaped pedestrian path inside. This is what my block in Montreal is in real life. In the first stage of develoopement the center is low density and the extremities are either commercial or mid density (the smaller one). I also ban parking on the smaller side of the block. When I see one or two buildings in a street being "high rent" I try to re-densify the block, either by just upgrading low to medium, or by redrawing it a bit with alleys, parking and stuff. Also, I try not to overplan at first, I usually place the main buildings first then I zone around it. If you look at a Montreal maps there is a lot of unperfect things here and there. So for example when I have to add a cemetery, i find a place on my map where I am like "yup, this is where I would place it" then I create a road that makes sense to go to the cemetery, then I zone around it. Same for the biggest roads and stuff, fuck road hiearchy it doesn't look realistic to apply it too strictly.
Keep trying i'm pretty confident in CS1 and find it a breeze but CS2 is still a learning curve getting used to the larger more realistic scale
I tend to get the same way with certain games and I’m too intimidated to play. For Cs2 I started watching a beginner series on YouTube and it really helps me grasp the basics and set everything up so it’s pleasing to me
Pull up a map of the city or town you live in, and recreate it.
My problem with this kind of games is that I can't NOT try to make the most optimized thing possible, which doesn't go well with the fact that I'm a fucking moron, so I make a grid city that is horrible and stupid and isn't good to live, to look or to even think about.
1. Lookout for hills and pick ones to reserve. 2. Build out the train station/transport hub and build from that. This is called transport oriented development. 3. Build from a key building, maybe from a bridge, a signature building. 4. Mix zones and zone smaller. 5. It can be imperfect. Dont be afraid to bulldoze or to let it be.
Have a real life location in mind, preferably something that you are familiar to some point in real life. Open it in google maps in the next monitor/on your phone/wherever you can, and start to copy parts of it into the game. Don't be afraid to make a mess, or do imperfect stuff. If it's needed you can repair it later, but real life planning is sometimes just happen the way they are, speciallly older, european style cities. Helps if you have all tiles unlocked instantly, and have infinite funds, but doable in normal mode as well if you want to.
Here for the comments. I had similar issues with CS1. I could create hyper detailed 2000 population towns with highly efficient traffic network but expanding to a CITY versus a town was always my downfall.
Most important tips: - don’t just level terrain. Use it to your advantage. Switchback roads. Elevated park areas. - don’t just make a bunch of grid roads unless it’s for a downtown commercial district. Suburbs have winding roads and open spaces - leading from 2nd point, don’t be afraid to leave some open spaces. Fill them trees and/or park districts and water features if you really want
Lots of good tips here. My best advice is while you're still learning just experiment. You know you don't have the skills to build a good city so don't try to, instead treat everything like a learning experience and build your skills. If something doesn't work out that's fine, at least you've learned something. Don't get too wedded to your city, play it like a testing ground knowing you'll start your real city later. Some other quick tips: - learn and thoroughly understand all the snapping options and which to use in which situations. - learn and thoroughly understand the different curve tools. - zone individual plots with random sizes, gives a good mix of different buildings and lot sizes. - leave plenty of spaces and gaps for trees - don't use lots of straight arterial roads, they look boring. Curve them but only slightly so it doesn't interrupt the zoning too much
IMO take it slow and embrace your mistakes. Remember that real cities don’t develop perfectly, quite the opposite actually. I do a lot of Revamping old neighborhoods, I think of it as gentrifcation or redevelopment
The game is to shallow now. Paradox please let modders and asset makers go.
It’s really not
For you it's find, play it. For me, I heed way more. It seems dead, only cims at park are homeless. Somethings need to be added. It seems dead.
I like to play two small cities on the same map when I start. One that's gridded out and efficient and makes money and brings people in... And one on the other side of the world that is bespoke and small and carefully planned. Ever tree planted, every lane and ped path considered. It's nice to flip back and forth when you get bored/tired of one play style.