A look at the City
A brief fly through of Valhalla City as of September 2020. It includes a fly through of the Valhalla Cycle Super Highway:
#citiesskylines Valhalla City Fly-Through. September 2020
Author: Ben Ross - Talking Auckland
Admin and author of Talking Auckland Blog ( http://voakl.net )
#citiesskylines Tutorial: Stylised Districts in Your City (Modded)
Using Themes to create stylised Districts
An often overlooked feature using Cities Skylines is that you can stylise individual Districts to your tastes or objectives. Most often we will select what is known as a “Theme” and implement it city-wide. For example my go to city-wide Theme is European and European Suburbia as I don’t like the high rise and super-talls that come with the International theme (Europe also has higher people density as well ironically).
However, using Building Themes I can set individual Districts to have individualised Districts. For example I use the University housing content pack and the Building Theme to create a University district with student housing and commercial services. In the video below I did another theme with Kiwi housing and civic assets (commercial is still being worked on by the asset maker).
How do you do individualised District styles? Check the video below:
You can find me at: https://www.twitch.tv/palpatine001
Have fun with your stylised Districts that add spice to your city creations
We will be right back with Valhalla City and #CitiesSkylines
Content will return
Apologies for lack of blog material recently with things being busy at home. What I will do is write a post at least once a week summing up what I have been doing on my City with highlights from Twitch.
In the meantime some highlights from Valhalla City:
We do zoning, we do traffic, we ride trams into rendered tunnels, we do sign writing and we do detailing.
For a schedule on when and where I stream: https://www.twitch.tv/palpatine001
If you are up for highlights of me detailing or riding a tram:
First full update tomorrow!
Nuclear Steampunk in the 21st Century – with a side of German Zeppelins #CitiesSkylines
Creating a themed city in Cities Skylines
With Grand City of Solaria (see: https://www.twitch.tv/palpatine001) I decided to go for a theme. So using some assets and the European Theme I went for a rather interesting blend of: Soviet/British Nuclear Steampunk with a dash of German Zeppelins thrown in.
How did I go? I think we are getting there with mid rise buildings, the massive Tribune, Monorail and of course atomic power – all things theorised in those books in the 1950’s.
In the end though there is something about the massive central Tribune backed by atomic cooling towers with Zeppelins flying everywhere that gives the City a unique feel.
You can see some of the work below.
Getting around the City is straight forward with bus, metro rail, Zeppelin or Helicopter. If Active Modes are your thing there is a network of Bike Super Highways criss-crossing the majority of the City and they are very well patronised. Of course power generation is 100% Green with either Atomic or Hydro Power providing juice to the City.
The question is would I live in this City? I think I would!
One Metro + One Micro District = Another Day in #CitiesSkylines (Grand City of Solaria)
Got to move and house those Cims
Another day and more work to do in the Grand City of Solaria. Recently I did a podcast on Micro Districts and the Soviet Union (see: Micro Districts, the Soviet Union and Modern City Planning). In the most recent streams of Cities Skylines I put the Micro District theory to the test as well as finally building the new Metro system to serve the City.
The following three videos look at where the Grand City of Solaria is or was at as of the 17th June before I started the Harbour District, followed by the Metro being built, and two Micro Districts being laid out.
The Grand City of Solaria as of June 17
The Complexities of Building a Multi Tier Metro System
Building Micro Districts
I did manage to get one of the three Metro Lines working as well. The other two will be done once the Harbour District, and Palpatine Shores are both built up. You might also see the Northern/Southern Lights are enabled when it is night time giving some absolute stunning shots.
Once I have the Harbour District set up I will get some night shots of the Monorail working as it goes through the entire City. The night shots are just stunning.
Next post will cover the Harbour District and Palpatine Shores!
Fixing a City in #CitiesSkylines #CitiesInASnap
Quick fixes vs Big Infrastructure
Over the weekend I was part of Cities In a Snap – a competition hosted by Cazgem where competitors have two hours to either build a City or complete a scenario. In this instance it was completing the Traffic Scenario where you have a limited amount of time to get traffic above 82% and the population above 35,000. This was achieved inside the two hours!.
Below is the entire video (including a couple of interviews with Cazgem himself) on how using quick fixes to restore the traffic and get the population back up.
Not a single six lane highway was built. All that was used was inside the existing road corridors with I think only one or two new 4-lane roads built. Some cycle super highways were also built with transit going in at the end. The point being retrofitting and upgrading Real Life Cities do not need multi billion dollar large infrastructure fixes. The small nimble quick fixes are often more than adequate without degrading the urban environment (in fact the urban environment was improved as the Low Land Value flags disappeared).
Introducing Grand City of Solaria #citiesskylines
A Soviet, Albert Speer, Russian/British Nuclear Steampunk Hybrid mess
Time for a new city in Cities Skylines however, Palpatine City won’t be going anywhere as I will come back to it for more detailing and tutorial content.
This time I decided to run the City known as Grand City of Solaria to a theme and what a mess of a theme it is (deliberate). The city will follow a Soviet post 1945 theme but I am mixing a bit of Albert Speer design, British/Soviet Nuclear Steampunk into the mix as well. By nuclear steampunk it builds on an original idea in the 50 and 60’s that everything would be nuclear powered (including ships, planes, ovens (microwaves are actually nukers) and power too cheap to metre (not sure if it was nuclear cars or battery cars recharged by the grid powered by reactors)) with design blending brutal-ism and late Victorian/Modernism. I believe the Fallout game series might represent this best before the missiles flew.
The map chosen was Elena Fall 1 which allows two cities to be built at two very different heights.
You can see where I am starting the City as well
Laying the foundations
So we started with the nuclear power station, the Central Soviet Hall and its Spires, and the Tribune area. From there the rest of this part of the City will be moulded around them with a second City on the lower Plains to the right.
As you can see I have added 1930’s Zeppelins as sky buses and because they were equally the rage as well as atomic power – the MONORAIL!
I am using the European Theme to control the buildings so 21st Century design buildings do not pop up.
Now I can hear everyone saying ZEPPELIN rides so one Zeppelin and one Monorail ride coming right up:
As for someone wanting to take their dog for a walk? Well this happened – we rode the bus:
The full strim can be seen here:
I strim at least four times a week at https://www.twitch.tv/palpatine001
More on Grand City of Solaria soon as I set out the industry and next metropolitan area in the main City!
Welcome to #citiesskylines on Twitch with The Senate
Affiliate = interactions
Earlier this week my Twitch Channel had hit Affiliate on Twitch. This means you can subscribe, get emotes, cheer for Bits and interact with the City through Channel Points and Subscriptions.
My Twitch Channel including schedule: https://www.twitch.tv/palpatine001
I usually engage in Macro-Detailing – that is using the Zones and infrastructure to “detail” my city however, more recently I have been engaged in Micro-Detailing or going right down to site level to detail a City with props and decals to make the City look more realistic.
The game uses mods and assets to custom assets to spice up my cities and various themes are used depending on the City.
I also run a Discord which can be seen here: https://discord.gg/pX9emeN
Looking forward to seeing you there. We also play Stellaris from time to time as well.
#citiesskylines Micro Detailing. Settling into making the City more realistic – A Preview
Making Palpatine City more realistic
So I have been watching Detailer Supremo Slay3K doing Detail work on his city since the beginning of the year (Slay’s Channel: https://www.twitch.tv/slay3k ). I have never been one for micro detailing owing to patience and to be honest being tad lazy but last night I thought lets spend a few hours doing this – so I did!
The preview:
Twitch told me I streamed for 3 hours and I did not even finish the roundabout at the Airport. So yep micro detailing does certainly take a lot more time than I would spend macro-detailing (using zones and roads to detail the city at high level). But you can see my first attempt at using Procedural Objects to customise assets for the roundabout.
More can be seen here:
Plenty more to do as I got an entire City to do with just highway signs alone. But am enjoying so will stream it more alongside normal city play.
I stream at https://www.twitch.tv/palpatine001
Schedule on the link above.
Progress on Palpatine City AND OUR FIRST TROLLEY BUS #CitiesSkylines
Slowly getting use to the new DLC + Japan Content Pack
After a small interruption on Sunday I have managed to settle back into Cities Skylines DLC + Japan Content Pack with the continued build of Palpatine City. Palpatine City uses the Craters Fall Map that came with the new DLC and is based around a small flat area in the centre of map surrounded by mountains while criss-crossed by rivers.
It might not look like much land area but that does not mean NOT to use your imagination. So let’s take an initial tour shall we?
I did not have my usual Mods and assets until last night (still do not have my Tram roads yet) so using the Vanilla tools proved to be interesting if not derpy.
But one thing I do love about the new DLC is the transit hubs in which I got two laid down thus far. They being the Inter-City/Metro Bus Hub (thus opening connections with the region rather than rely on an inter-city train station which is both expensive and floods young cities with more tourists than the infrastructure can handle at that time).
I managed to set up a Salmon and a general fishing industry that catches, processes and either sells fish at the market or sells it for export thus generating revenue for the City.
Trolley Buses! I despite not being a fan of them (cheap version of a tram) I decided to build a Trolley Bus circuit to serve the tourist area of Palpatine City.
As of last night this is where we are with Palpatine City:
The City has matured into a nice young town with most amenities now provided for the population. The next phase is to bolster the Industry which still faces strong demand as well as making sure we have workers for the factories, mines and farms. Later on in the week I will be starting on the City Centre, and Metropolitan Airport Complex.
Don’t forget I stream nightly on https://www.twitch.tv/palpatine001
Check the Twitch page for scheduled times where I will alternate between Cities Skylines and Stellaris Federations.
