Tips for Getting Started in Cities: Skylines

Having a tough time keeping your starting population on the up and up? Running out of money and having to turn tricks for Skyliniums? Here’s a handy guide to help you not suck.

1) Don’t get over-excited with your roads. If you’re anything like me then the first temptation is to lay out lots of lovely, neat roads all over the place. Take a deep breath and constrict yourself to using the cheap option for now; roads cost to build and maintain. They will make you broke, and sad.

2) As soon as you get the information overlays (top left corner) then use them. Check where your windy spots are and which way water is flowing – these are both important. Later on they become very important for working out the most efficient places to build services.

3) You can’t afford a coal power-station if you want to remain in the black. I tried, plus it’s bound to make your city mucky. Instead opt for some super environmentally conscious wind turbines and add to them as the demand for electricity increases. It’s important to put them somewhere windy (duh) and to put any residential zones a good distance away, Skylinians don’t like noise.

4) If you use a water pumping station, remember to check that you’re building it upstream of your water drain pipe. No one wants to be drinking poo-water. If you opt for a water tower than make sure you don’t plop it anywhere near polluting industries or you’ll end up with a lot of sickies.

5) Be mindful about where future traffic flow problems might exist and leave space to add roundabouts when they become available. I didn’t and had to bulldoze an entire district to stop people being cross about traffic jams.

6) Not sure why something isn’t working out? If you click on the little thought bubbles popping up from individual buildings it’ll tell you.

7) Incinerators are your friend, build them, build some more. Unless you enjoy vast swathes of land being turned over to landfill sites.

8) You can turn off the auto-open on Chirper messages in Settings > Misc. It won’t get rid of the icon but it’ll stop the drivel.

9) Don’t let rubbish or dead bodies build up. As far as I can tell these are the only things that really upset the population. If you can’t afford incinerators then just go with the landfill until you’re turning more of a profit.

10) As there are no natural disasters in Cities: Skylines you can generally leave your masterpiece going about its business in order to ramp up some much needed money. Just keep an eye every now and again in case something important has burned to the ground.

Cities: Skylines is out now on Windows PC, Linux and Mac.