Building A Skyline

Welcome to Cities: Skylines!

Before You Start

"Cities: Skylines is a modern take on the classic city simulation. The game introduces new game play elements to realize the thrill and hardships of creating and maintaining a real city whilst expanding on some well-established tropes of the city building experience. It also includes the ability to mod the game to suit your play style as a fine counter balance to the layered and challenging simulation. You’re only limited by your imagination, so take control and reach for the sky!" - Paradox interactive

This quote from the publisher of Cities: Skylines requires you to have a decent machine to run the game due to the complexity of the simulation.

If you are playing on a PC, here are the specifications:

Minimum requirements:

OS: Microsoft Windows XP/Vista/7/8/8.1 (64-bit)
Processor: Intel Core 2 Duo, 3.0GHz or AMD Athlon 64 X2 6400+, 3.2GHz
Memory: 4 GB RAM
Graphics: nVIDIA GeForce GTX 260, 512 MB or ATI Radeon HD 5670, 512 MB (Does not support Intel Integrated Graphics Cards)
Storage: 4 GB available space
Requires a 64-bit processor and operating system!

Recommended specifications:

OS: Microsoft Windows 7/8/8.1/10 (64-bit)
Processor: Intel Core i5, 3.20GHz or AMD FX-6300 3.5GHz
Memory: 8 GB RAM
Graphics: nVIDIA GeForce GTX 960, 2 GB or AMD Radeon HD 7870, 2 GB

Other platforms you can play this game on are:

Nintendo Switch Playstation logo

PlayStation 4 Xbox One logo

Xbox One

In addition to the base game, there are expansions. Please bear in mind that expansion availability depends on your chosen platform. Please visit these links to enrich your experience:

Buy the game!

Buy expansions!

Browse mods!

Useful Links and Tips

This section will help you with some basics of the game. As Cities: Skylines is a fairly complex game and encourages creativity, some tutorials won't go amiss:

Skylines Wiki page:

Like everything in this world, Cities: Skylines has a Wiki page too. Click on the link below for all info related to this game. Bear in mind that this is just the beginners section. You can also browse for more.

Click here for Cities:Skylines Wiki page

Basics of Cities: Skylines:

If you just started the game and want to know the basics, head on over to this page and get yourself acquainted with the basic terminology, useful tips and some technical info that might be useful to you.

Click here for Cities:Skylines Distrita article

Video tutorial playlist:

On this page, you will find a YouTube playlist created by the Cities: Skylines official page with some basics and how to's. It contains short videos explaining the basics of building in the game.

Click here for Cities:Skylines video tutorial playlist

Additional tips

As you guessed, there's a lot you can do in this game, and you just made your first step. If you really like planning space, this game will be perfect for you. It won't be easy to learn, but it pays off abundantly. Please check the sections below to see what else you can do in this game.

And the most important thing - don't forget to have fun!

Level up

Advanced Mechanics

This area is reserved for players who know how the game works but want to know more about advanced mechanics. Here you can go through some advanced tutorials and helpful links. And, of course - the basics of traffic.

Zones:

This game has 4 major zones and a number of sub-zones:

RESIDENTIAL COMMERCIAL INDUSTRY OFFICE

This is known in game as RCI

Please note that the Office zone isn't available right at the beginning, so you will have to spend some time to open it in game. If you play with everything unlocked, it will be a major zone

Specializations:

Each zone has "sub-zones" which divide the major zones into high and low density. There are also specializations for each zone type:

Residential: Self-sufficient
Commercial: Organic and Local Produce, Tourism, Leisure
Industrial: Farming, Forestry, Oil and Ore
Office: IT cluster

Each of these have their uses, and depending on your preferences, you can design a city to your liking.

Map making and terrain editing:

If zoning and city planing isn't your choice, or you prefer to make maps and shape terrains, you can head over to this page and learn how to make a map. There are also some useful tools you can use outside of the map editor.

Terraforming tutorial on Distrita.com

Basics of traffic:

Traffic is one of the aspects of the game where you will spend a lot of time. The game's AI isn't the brightest, but it makes sense. The reason why this isn't an extensive guide is that this part of the game can get complicated if you don't make it right. So if you want to make it right, head on over to Biffa's "Fix your city" video below:

Biffa's basics of traffic

Workshop (Mods)

So by now, you heard about something called mods. This section will help you to select some basic mods that every Skyline planner should have in his/her collection:

Steam Workshop page:

This will be your most visited page once you start using mods. The reason why the Steam service is the most desirable platform to buy Cities: Skylines from, is that it's the ONLY platform that offers mod support. At the time of making this page, no other platform offers it. Also, mods aren't supported on consoles

Cities:Skylines Steam workshop page

Most popular mods:

Steam Workshop has thousands of mods but these 5 will be the most essential. Please make sure you check the date the mod came out, as some of the mods are obsolete and some can even break your savegames, including hours of progress lost.

It is very important to READ THE DESCRIPTION OD THE MOD BEFORE you subscribe to it. This will save you a lot of embarrassment and time going through support forums. And don't forget to show some love to the people whose work you are using.

Mod name:	Mod description:
MoveIt!	Enables you to freely move items in game, including parts of roads. It is highly recommended to have anarchy type of mod too.
Fine Road Anarchy	Despite its name, it gives you more control by removing collision restrictions and lets you build more appealing network structures.
Traffic Manager: President Edition	You can set parking restrictions, lane management, speed restrictions and much more that isn't included in the base game but it should.
Loading screen mod	Lowers your computer RAM usage by using the same texture for multiple assets. It also lets you know about any missing or duplicate assets.
Find it	It lets you find that asset you need with a handy search bar. It also has assets organised by groups, so if you can't remeber the name, you can browse the whole group.

There are thousands of mods out there, but these 5 will serve you well at any time. Without these you won't be able to progress to the section below...

Realism in Cities: Skylines

Detailing

Here you will find out how to make your city look like a real world photograph. Using some very advanced techniques and mods, you will be able to trick almost anyone into thinking that picture you took from your city is from a real world.

How to make your city more realistic:

This part is for the people who know how to build in game exactly what they want, but need to work on their visual style. This video from Pres shows you some of the best visual mods you can find in the workshop and basics on how to use them. There are also links to mods in description of the video.

Making city more realistic with Pres

Mods for detailing

If you want your cities to look realistic, this video offers you some of the must have mods for that real world look of your city. Make sure to check the mod list in the video description.

Mods for realistic detailing by Pug gaming

Advanced design in Cities: Skylines

This Youtube playlist will help you build realistic parts of your city, one topic at a time. From map making, mod tutorials and advanced visuals. They are all short videos with lots of useful advice from people who are experts in the game.

Build like a proffessional, a Cities: Skylines playlist

Map making

One part of the game that is not so referenced in everyday use is map making. This guide made by Mr. Miyagi will give you all the tips, details and resources needed to build your own map. Maybe you will find a shorter one, but this might be the most comprehensive one.

Making Maps with Mr Miyagi - Guide, Tips and Resources

Cities: Skylines as a Tool

Here you will find amazing projects from the real world that used Cities: Skylines as well as featured content creators from the game's official YouTube page.

A content creators' tribute

Meet the people who elevated Cities: Skylines from a game to a tool. They are content creators who expanded the game's basic limitations to real life projects and more. See what was the idea behind their passion in this series of short videos.

Amazing content creators and their ideas

Building real cities with Cities: Skylines

One of the game developers, Karoliina Korppoo, holds a TED talk on how a video game can help us build better cities. In this video, she explains how anyone can take this game and build the city of their dreams, including making their own cities better.

Game developer Karoliina Korppoo at TED talk

Study of a walkable city with Jeff Speck

A YouTuber and Skylines player Yuttho made an interesting project in Cities: Skylines - he invited Jeff Speck, an American city planner, writer, and lecturer who wrote a book called "Walkable City: How Downtown Saves America, One Step at a Time" and discussed walkability in real cities using the game. A lengthy video, but well worth watching.

Analysis of a walkable city by Jeff Speck

Building a real-life city district using Cities: Skylines

The capital of Sweden used Cities: Skylines for their initiative to make a substantial urban redevelopment in their city. Stockholm's city officials partnered with the Swedish Building Service and gathered real world city planners, game developers and members of the public to discuss future development of their city.

Rebuilding a part of a real city using Cities: Skylines

Building a Skyline

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CITIES: SKYLINES AND REALITY