Why does my city always look like a dump

[Jorbee]

Ive restarted like 3 times, tried to follow the most popular guides on traffic, trains, zoning, and natural looking city and yet my city doesn't look right, Im might just have to resort on copying someones road layout and just zoning everything

[rajwarrior]

Post some screenshots and maybe we could help out. Still, don't get too hung up on how your city looks in the early stages. You have a bulldoze function. Don't be afraid to use it. Heck, I've restructured half the city before and I routinely delete all the bus lines and redraw them to try to make the better (but I'm terrible at public transport planning).

There are some good starting out guides on Youtube. I really like ImperialJedi's videos. Also, scroll around on Google Maps or Google Earth and get some ideas from real world cities. Mix and match. Design a downtown Chicago with New York City docks and Florida suburbs and Dallas oil fields and Dutch farmlands.

Inside of trying to design one mega city, make several small towns and fill the areas in between with rural farms, open lands and residential (think Southern US).

[%AppData%]

Screenshots please, and please be a little more detailed with what a dump is.

Transit control can be tricky, but creating a freeway into the heart of the city and creating (or using Workshop intersections. If so, check this guy's amazing interchanges https://steamcommunity.com/id/itstimboh ) interchanges so people can easily get in and out.

Public transport is tricky as well, but here's an explanation.

Originally posted by Juan_Golt:

First off you have to know how cims behave.

Cims will transition between multiple modes of transit. Meaning they will take a bus to a tram to a train with no issues.

Cims will walk a relatively long way to reach transit provided there is a path to reach their destination. Walking paths from all your residential areas to your transit stops will reduce complexity and increase ridership.

Cims will not take any path other than the shortest/fastest path. You'll want to avoid having multiple ways to reach the same spot. If bus lines and subway lines run parallel all your cims will chose whichever one is slightly shorter, and almost no cims will use the other line.

Cims only travel from residential to commercial|education|work and then back. They never go from residential to residential.

Putting all this behavior together means that transit in C:S is well suited to a transit hierarchy. With smaller transit methods feeding into larger ones. In my cities, buses will feed trams in low density zones. Metros feeding trains in high density zones. With transit hubs in large commercial heavy, university districts.

I understand the idea of copying and pasting someone else's road layout, but then that'd make the game boring because then it'd be almost like if someone else did all the job and all what you did was... copy and paste. Keep experimenting, checking guides, and learning from mistakes and eureka effects.

[Overlord]

I have troubles too. THe largest troubles to me are height differences. Most of youtubers build on huge flat piece of land but I like to have some elevation but I dont know how to work with it :D

[Rags]

Originally posted by Overlord:

I have troubles too. THe largest troubles to me are height differences. Most of youtubers build on huge flat piece of land but I like to have some elevation but I dont know how to work with it :D

Page Up and Page Down buttons. Other then that, terraforming so that you can rework the land and ease difficult areas. Otherwise, and truly more to the point, embrace the challenges of the complex nature of elevation changes and work with them. There is more challenge to it. That is why most YouTubers use flat land. They aren't skilled enough to tackle the challenge. #easymodesucks

[Markus Reese]

Good day! Ahh... I love hilly maps, steppes and all that fun! So how to build on hilly...

First, remove any notion of using a prefab intersection. Understand the concepts of them, and that is half the battle.

The other half is in planning. Hilly terrain is all about preplanning. Knowing where you want to run roads before you start building. Find and visualize that path through where you can put the big highways and have space for interchanges. Then you have the terrain feature, split it with that district's main roadway. Lastly, fill in following the contours.

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=941553328

Is only picture handy at moment for showing hilliness, I can get better this evening if desired.

To help control traffic, try to use both sides of main roads for entry and exit. Really smooth exit flow? Major one way then use one way off both sides and will just flow large capacities.

Imagine your city like a tree. Main trunk, branches off both sides, Then main branches to smaller branches and leaves, but the branches never connect to eachother. Use internal transit systems to interconnect.

Difficult to access or really rough terrain, low density works well and looks nice. You can mix in commercial with residential. For all others, try to specialize the "branches" so you can optimize transit. Having a cargo train from industrial to commercial really can cut down traffic.

[xybolt]

Hmm, that "dump" might be subjective. It all depends. I have seen some cities where the author used grid layout only. That city is decent tho.

If you are interested; look at my current one I am working on:

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1402832741

Could be better aint it?

[Markus Reese]

Aah! Nice pic! We probably have similar approaches to building, similar techniques and layout concepts.

In areas with highways and limited space, that is a good location for trees, bike paths and monorails/trams, etc depending on your DLCs. In residential areas for smaller houses, non highway like the six lanes, I like to put my commercial and specialist buildings. High density, office lined main streets are fantastic looking!

Industrial? I run rail lines along them so I can junction off rail depots all over.

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1120184639

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=920695096

This second one shows a mix of those suggestions well. It has the rectangular isolated districts, but then office and large commercial. Having borders of low density also helps create nice gradients.

[xybolt]

Nice. Yet, at some city layouts I see here or on Reddit, I see that some people have highways going through city. That aspect is strange to me. Are there really no problems with noise sickness? That is why I leave some space between my residential building and those big streets (4 lane roads or higher). I had my cims complaining about noise.

I have to add that the screenshot I took is a part of my city. I am currently expanding to the northern part. There is a big industry, then a river and then a new residential area I am working on. Then I am going to rework my leisure district (washington hills). It already has tram, metro and bus connection; but I am not satifsied with the layout of the roads I placed before. It also does not attract enough workers.... Probably because my other industry / office area is more accessible.

[Markus Reese]

Not with noise sickness. At least not anything medical cannot keep up with? I get patters of it here and there. That is why I use those main road dividers for greenspace, office or commercial. Flipping back through old screenshots, found a better picture showing.

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=816273460

So foreground is a high capacity traffic circle of sorts. Heading away from view are the one way, six lane main thoroughfares. So one from, one to the traffic circle. This is where my commercial and office space is. Off to either side are the branches for my residentials with also a bit of a buffer space.

It makes a world of difference be it grid or terrain following by having that form of gradient to blend areas together. Really helpful fo you want that heavily urbanized look. Plus now trees do have a noise blocking effect so tree lined trees have a functional in addition to the appearance.

Something else you can do is build up a little hill between the road and district to create that noise barrier look.

[xybolt]

Originally posted by twistedmelon:

Something else you can do is build up a little hill between the road and district to create that noise barrier look.

I like that easy cheat. And yes the last patch brought an improvement with using trees to reduce noice a bit. At least it helps.