PROtips for Skylines (Work in progress)

A collection of tips and tricks for Skylines. I aim to create a complete collection of protips, so please help out.

This is still very early in the making as I've just gotten started playing and finding these tips.

Power

Never place a second dam on the same river unless the height of the dam does not exceed the height elevation of the dam upstream! Otherwise, one will lose MW production and even fail!
-- Knight Lazarus

Tactical use of water pumps

Place water pumps after a waterdam. The pumps suck up the outflow, letting the water fall further down and from this, you get more mW transformed. However too many pumps is useless, find the dam balance.

Wind flow and trees

Removing trees lets the wind flow freer, allowing you to get more power from wind turbines. Remember though, this also means the noise will travel further.

Skip Nuclear Power Plants

Do not use Nuclear Power Plants, they are currently not balanced properly. Solar Power Plant is more efficient for your money, creates less noise and don't use 1920m^3/week either. Ignoring all the other downsides, a NPP should have created 1060 MW in order to compete with the SPP.

Traffic

This section is highly unclear and will get some work with diagrams done soon.

When joining roads, try to join them in such a way that cars don't have to go through an oncoming lane.

Even when merging onto a one-way six-lane road, keep in mind that cars might pile up in one lane since that's the side they joined from and didn't change to a free lane because they ultimately are going to take the left exit. You can force them to use the most lanes possible (3 in a one way six lane) by joining them in from the right, in that example, and mirror this if they pile up in the right lane.

[Silent Fart Drifter]

yes yes, put nuclear next to the governor mansion.

[Sir Alf]

@aturchomicz clearly

[Aturchomicz]

Gordam@ so have you given up on this guide?

[IceCreamMan.忍🍧🍀🍟]

As you said removing the tree lets the wind flow free but it also makes noise will travel further (worse). So it means in the city, around noise place (commercial area) if I put more trees, the noise could be reduced, couldnt be ?

[Gordam]

@Punzybobo Yes. I'll have to create a video, but in the meantime I hope this explanation will do. Start out with a base terrain around at least 100 height. Your river should start around 80 (-20 compared to the terrian. It depends a bit on how fast and amount of water it should transport, but -20 works for a calm river). Now use the Level tool exclusively for making the river. Set it to 80 and draw where the river goes. For every half of a map area (the ones you can purchase in game), you reduce the height for the level tool by 1, so you're going 79, 78, 77, etc. For a faster river, either increase the amount it drops and/or drop it even more often than half a map-marker.

I'll make a video demonstrating what I said above if it didn't make sense reading it. Thanks for the question!

[Daniel]

Do you have any tips on creating rivers that flow nicely in the map maker?

[Maria]

Quick tip about money:

If you are in serious money trouble, raise the taxes very slightly! only 1% increase is enough to stop your citizens bickering about it but will bring the money right back in!

[Gordam]

dud10982: Can you expand on what the issue is? I just added a harbor and it worked for me without any problems. Maybe you placed it too far up the river? They need access to deep water, you should see a green line extending to the edge of the screen, indicating where the ship traffic will come from.

[ArcaneGamer]

Here's a good protip:

Never place a second dam on the same river unless the height of the dam does not exceed the height elevation of the dam upstream! Otherwise, one will lose MW production and even fail!

[ArcaneGamer]

Proposed paragraph for the Power subheading:

Place drain pipes on the inflow side of the dam on the opposite bank from the water pumps. The water that the pumps sucked in for the city will be output on the dam inflow side on the opposite bank by the drain pipes. You may have to raise the height of the dam depending on the sewage outflow!

The best locations for hydroelectric dams are between steep banks along deep rivers and just after large waterfalls.