In this longer highlight I go through the basic notions of Road Hierarchy and its planning, building and optimisation. Note: the City is still in very early stages so transit and cycling infrastructure will be in its infancy (localised) until the City further establishes.
I do cover both Vanilla and Modded game play styles.
I run through how to build and optimise an interchange over a motorway. The interchange used was the YumblTV interchange available on the Cities Skylines Steam Workshop.
If you are wondering about transit and cycling infrastructure, this will get placed later on once the zones are operational.
In Day 2 of recreating South Auckland as part of a Mixed Reality build in Cities skylines I go through the motions of laying down the core transport infrastructure. This is a full run through, I will have separate posts covering the highlights of Road Hierarchies, and Transport Optimisations.
So why Road Hierarchies?
Would you put residential on a six lane arterial road, or send trucks and buses down a tiny road?
Yeah.
Next up: Day 3 – preparing the zones and establishing the city
After giving my second ever only Winter map a go (Antarctica City) I went back over to my stock standard Temperate Maps reopening Vanilla Coast to have another crack it (the first had to stop as the Industries DLC had come out when the city was in its end phases).
With that I introduce South Auckland, a Mixed Reality build named after my IRL home sub-region here in Auckland, New Zealand. If you are wondering what Mixed Reality is the term means the blending of Virtual and Real World concepts for the purpose of education, entertainment or showcase. Given I stream Cities Skylines on Twitch the Mixed Reality version is more around education as I go through the real life motions of building a City in its various stages of its life on a virtual platform.
Day 1 looks at the methodology I use in laying the foundations of the City. Basically I am doing the equivalent of the real life Auckland (Spatial) Plan in working out how things will be shaped followed by laying down key transport routes the spatial form be influenced by.
Note: This is the full play through of this particular segment of Cities Skylines. From time to time I will publish Highlights as separate blog posts.
Next up: Day 2 and looking at Hierarchies
One thing not often done, or at least recorded in Screenshots and video is what the City is like from Cim or ground level perspective in the game. For me I love dropping down to First Person Mode to see what is going on a Cim level and see all the interactions in place – or rather traffic fouling up as I forgot to do something in that area.
Speaking of which First Person mode whether it be the free camera or riding transit, it is great for investigating where problems in the City might show up and getting it fixed as it wont always show up in birds-eye or God view. First person mode also makes for great pictures or video of your City so here is one of Antarctica City after I recently expanded the Heavy Rail.
For those wondering why all the mid-rise? It is because I use the Euro Theme by default meaning I get the Euro based buildings that cap out at eight storeys where as the International theme has unlimited height. Ironically though (or not) the Euro theme buildings and designs allow for higher density (in terms of population per set area) compared to all but the largest of super-talls in the International theme.
I have also done an Industry 101-301 series on Twitch. I will place these into YouTube at the conclusion of the series.
Twitch: Palpatine001
Once you have settled into the basic mechanics of Cities Skylines with a functioning transport system, the zones nicely laid out and the civic infrastructure all working does the fun really begin.
Fun what fun?
As the city gets larger it gets more complex as an organism especially if playing modded as I do. This means regular check ups across the City to make sure the transport and transit systems are working as optimally as they should. The good news is that most fixes you come upon are not major and can be done very quickly and cheaply. That said from time to time a major overhaul might be needed but that is for another day. The point being that six lane roads and motorways are not and should not be the go to fix – PUBLIC AUTHORITIES TAKE NOTE.
In this post I go through some medium and advanced play throughs in using some extended tools to help fine tune your City as well as giving it more realism. Note: I use Real Time Mod which simulates the full day/night cycle and includes the rush hours, shopping, events, and shift work effects upon a City. More HERE.
Of course as the City continues to grow and evolve more checks and tweaks are done, especially as more transit lines are added and old ones might need replacing.
I can be found on Twitch doing Cities Skylines play throughs: https://www.twitch.tv/palpatine001
As a Spatial Planning and Urban Geographer in real life the concepts I practice there can make its way into Cities Skylines and vice versa. For more on tactical urban see this post over at my main blog: Tactical Urbanism Reaches South Auckland!
So can Tactical Urban be done in Cities Skylines? Yes it can. Below is a high level overview of doing Tactical Urbanism in converting a painted cycle lane to a separated cycleway on a main thoroughfare route:
Part 1 is the high level overview and doing the most basic form of tactical urbanism. As this particular City grows and evolves I will do further videos on Tactical Urbanism with some being more complex than others. Other Spatial Planning and Urban Design concepts will be outlined as well.
Hopefully these videos can give some inspiration to provide some extra realism in your cities based on real world concepts today.
Apologies for lack of content lately. It is all sitting there in Youtube and in pictures but not assembled into a blog post.
That said in the blog’s absence fellow Cities Skylines follow DoctorWhy rose to the community challenge and this is what happened:
We are on a Winter Map, our first ever in playing this game for five years so pictures and videos coming once I have built more than just four roads and a roundabout 😉
More soon
In Cities Skylines your city can fail in one of two ways; population abandons it because your City Management was less than desirable, or the City has become too successful and both housing and infrastructure have not kept up.
Well for Valhalla City we had a case of the latter. After the ore and farming industries opened up we had a massive influx of residents which meant an influx of traffic to boot. Queue the City’s housing and infrastructure in a bit of a pickle. So over the space of several streams (or strims) I attempt to fix one crisis after another. But unlike the real life New Zealand Finance Minister we do not engage in tinkering, we engage in full blown Public Works – NO HOLDS BAR!
So did I fix both sets of crisis that had hit Valhalla City? Find out in the full video streams of the week’s play below. For live streams see: https://www.twitch.tv/palpatine001
What does the future hold for Valhalla? Tune in and find out!
A brief fly through of Valhalla City as of September 2020. It includes a fly through of the Valhalla Cycle Super Highway:
