City planning

[Mysticalmaid]

Do you have any rules of thumb when you start building a new city, when you start setting out roads and such? I've had the game since launch but only played about 50 hours until recently. I've been watching Biffa's traffic fixing so one of mine will have to be not to put junctions too close together and I'm already a fan of roundabouts being British.

CS has changed so much with all these packs since launch, it's a lot to take in and many of the videos based on starting out seem outdated now.

[Meesmoth]

I prefer mass-building or fast-building cities. When I start one new city, I always follow my "8 steps". Step 1 would be laying out roads, step 7 is zoning, etc.

[MrMattyMatt]

I tend to let things grow organically, but then I always end up with "problem" areas.

[nS|Merodi]

Originally posted by MrMattyMatt:

I tend to let things grow organically, but then I always end up with "problem" areas.

City Planning? Pfft. :D

I do the same, since that's how a lot of real life cities grew.

[ams083]

Just don’t go laying 6 lane one way roads etc. I see many of the problem cities Biffa or any of the other fixes always overuse the larger roads - no need for it. I have cities with 100k-200k population and I mainly use small and medium roads.

I usually construct ring roads as well, so traffic can bypass certain areas etc. I usually like to outline a rough area of where I want my CBD / Downtown area to be and kind of work back from that. I won’t necessarily build the area but just have a place on the map picked out. This I find works well for planning any future rail / bus networks.

[mbutton15]

Up til this Campus upgrade came out I would zone around 10 4x4 residential plots at a time. I'd let all reach level 2 before zoning another 10 plots. Using this technique I found that my population would largely avoid suffering death waves.

I'm still on my first city since the Campus upgrade came out. But I seem to be having trouble with residential buildings levelling up. I put it down to the Campus update affecting the education mechanics. I'm still reasonably early into the city's life, as it's only around 2,000 population, but I just feel it's not working how it was prior the the upgrade. For what ever reason it seems to take longer for the education effect to work it's way round the houses. Population growth would normally be fairly linear, but now I am getting populations drops which are really hampering city growth.

Other rules I go by are I never use 6 lane roads !! All my main arterial roads are 4 lane. And as mentioned in the OP, spacing out junctions on the main arterial roads is just good traffic management.

I also avoid one-way roads as much as possible, only really using one-way roads for cargo access as the game restricts them to one-way any way.

My residential local roads will be 2 lane roads. But I use 4 lane roads in my industrial areas. I found trucks making deliveries on 2 lane roads would cause traffic queues. So using 4 lanes roads means there's an extra lane in the same direction so a delivery causes less delays.

[LØQe]

I think general rules apply to all cities,
then it varies when applying to the style and type of your city.

Industry should be close to your highways and arterial transport.
Commercial should buffer industry and office.
Office between commercial and residential.
Offices soak up noise pollution- must have Zero forms of pollution near residential.
Water intakes away from industrial zones.
Be mindful of city services effective radius and infrastructure's impact on it.

Your choice of road sizes will be governed by your city design and density.

I've been on a grid city binge - trying for the impossible million population city-
in my cities, i've optimized traffic with alternating six lane / two lane roads, and six lane crossing roads. It would be overkill for low density, but works fabulously with >150k population per 2km square. Also overlap looped CW-CCW metro lines to keep residential car traffic down.

It only works if the zoning is right, in any case.
Fully cover your zoned areas with city services, and they will grow.
Load up on park coverage, or any "entertainment" to level up your zoned areas.
Special buildings are perfect for commercial zones, poor for residential due to the noise pollution they bring.
There are numerous details to dive into, if you wish- optimizing cost per output for service buildings, etc. DLC changes what your most effective build will be...
I've started skewing service buildings to work around game engine hard limits, but vanilla content will get you over 400k population cities without much fuss.

[Markus Reese]

Best city planning is try to consider where you want main road so can expand later if needed. Leave some space and minimize connections to it if you can.

Build it by districts. Try to avoid cross connecting districts too much. Make use of those main roads.

[Randox]

Originally posted by nS|Merodi:

Originally posted by MrMattyMatt:

I tend to let things grow organically, but then I always end up with "problem" areas.

City Planning? Pfft. :D

I do the same, since that's how a lot of real life cities grew.

I use a tried and true variation of this method called 'forgetting the plan'. I often have a rough idea of where certain things like highways, industrial areas, and railways will go. Then I forget everything except where I plan on putting industry until I've already ruined my plans and have to make new ones.

Seriously. I've been 10 minutes into a new city and realized I already blocked the highway in a way that requires a very expensive solution (more than one of my cities has highway tunnels suspiciously close to the starting highway junction). Step 2 is laying out my usual starting grid incorrectly.

I do find I have a pattern that I tend to follow when I start a new game. It works for me, and the design tends to get more dynamic pretty quickly, but there is always that core layout that I start with.

[Mysticalmaid]

Thank you for the tips!

[Mysticalmaid]

I started playing along with Biffa's Industries videos and up to 11k so far, learning lots of new things as I go, he seems to do good road layouts. I'm basically learning by copying what he does, although I think they have tweaked the game since he recorded them since there seems to be some differences in RCI demand.

[Emjay]

I feel your pain. I came back the other day myself and all was going well until I started to dip into the university, industry specializations and a zoo.

My city went from looking half decent to an absolute mess as I slammed down these new buildings just to see what they did.

The industry in particular shocked me as it sapped my workforce from my original industry district which became a ghost town.

[Markus Reese]

Yeah, gotta be careful with industries DLC. Game always prioritizes the dlc zones first.

I am doing up a new city for university. At over 40k, 90% traffic with zero mass transit systems. Will share later to give some more tips for layouts.

Herringbones and squareabouts for zero traffic!

[Rena]

The universities are very expensive, and the industries' income/expense feels practically random, since they tend to run at a loss for a while, then suddenly make a ton of profit at once when they export. It can be very difficult to get them started.

[Mysticalmaid]

I plopped down a normal (base game?) University and the Industries workforce seemed to plummet for a while, it seems to be doing better now and I have 2 level 5 industries at last. I've yet to explore the Universities pack though it is installed, once I finish the Industries play through I may try to learn Parklife then Universities.

[Mysticalmaid]

Originally posted by twistedmelon:

Yeah, gotta be careful with industries DLC. Game always prioritizes the dlc zones first.

I am doing up a new city for university. At over 40k, 90% traffic with zero mass transit systems. Will share later to give some more tips for layouts.

Herringbones and squareabouts for zero traffic!

Wow that's great traffic, mine is in the 80's with just 11,000 :D I had to dezone a lot of normal industry to force the workers over to my farms, perhaps that was because it was closer to where they lived.