District Styles vs. Building Themes?

[Strategikal]

What are the key differences between these?
They seem to do much the same thing, but when should I use one rather than the other?

[Termite]

Building themes is more powerful and flexible but there is still a good reason to use styles as well.

Building themes allows many themes to be used in a district. You can create, delete and edit themes in game. It works with all growable buildings whatever size they are or if they are in an asset building pack. You can apply a theme to the whole map and then also to individual districts. It has much better organisational tools. It allows you to plop buildings (as long as the area has an appropriate zone or you use plop the growables mod). You can specify what a building will upgrade to. You can edit the spawn rate of buildings. Any style you create automatically shows as a theme in building themes.

Styles only allows for one style per district. You can only create, delete or edit using content manager and not in game. It does not work with very small plots (eg DK trailor homes). It does not work correctly with assets in a building pack, you can add the buildings to the style but other than the first building in the pack the rest register as missing once you exit editing the style. The whole map is stuck with the existing style although you can change it for districts. The advantage of styles is that if you include buildings in a style you can disable all custom growables and then enable the styles you want in game and they will still be loaded, (this allows you to switch custom buildings loading simply by turning on or off a style). With styles you can subscribe to all buildings in a style with a single click (but not unsubscribe all in the same way). There are hundreds of styles to download from the workshop.

I use both. I create styles so I can have better control of what custom assets are loaded into the game and as a means to easily subscribe to all buildings in a style. I use building themes for better control of what buildings spawn in a district and for the more powerful editing tools it provides.

[Strategikal]

Thanks for the explanation, it's clearer than most I've seen. I think I understand most of it now but I'm still not 100% sure about styles yet.

What do you mean by "if you include buildings in a style you can disable all custom growables and then enable the styles you want in game and they will still be loaded". Do custom growables automatically appear in the game if they're in your assets list?

I read that all assets are loaded, even if they're not enabled, that doesn't make much sense to me. I'm sure I'll figure it all out eventually with some experimentation.

[Termite]

If you enable a custom style the buildings in that style (as long as you have subscribed to them) will still load into the game even if you disable those buildings individually in the 'asset' list of content manager. This means you can go to 'assets' disable all growables then go to styles and enable only the styles you want. That way the only CUSTOM buildings that will load will be those in the enabled style/s. This does not affect the growables that came with the game they will still load.

An exception to the rule is the inbuilt European/Vanilla style. If you enable that style all European and International buildings (both growables and plopable) that came with the game will load into any map, if disabled only the buildings for the map type will load (European or International).

If you want to get rid of any or all buildings (or cars, props, etc) that came with the game you can use 'loading screen' mods ability to skip prefabs. However, you must make sure you have buildings of all types and levels in the enabled style/s.

[Termite]

It is not easy to explain. It is something I found out by accident. So I will give you an example.

I have a large Central European style based on assets by Feindbild (great assets) I also have an international style using buildings from across the workshop.

I use a lot of mods and assets and although I have 32gb ram I like to keep my ram usage down.

So I disable all custom growables in the asset list in content manager. When I want to use only European assets I enable the Central European style and disable the International style. When I want to use only International assets I disable the Central European style and enable the International one. When I want both styles I enable them both. I use this method also for different commercial, office and industrial style buildings. It saves me time going through the asset list disabling and enabling individual assets.

I also use 'loading screen' mod to skip all the growables and anything else I don't like that came with the base game (not the ones in the content creator packs as they are just too good and most have there own styles).

[Strategikal]

Ah, I think I understand now. So if I disable all growable assets, none of them will load if I don't load any custom styles that use them?

What if I disable all assets? Will props be missing? Will I be able to plop anything? Or does this just apply to the growables?

Thanks a lot for the info, things are becoming much clearer now.

[Termite]

Only applies to growables. As far as I know props still need to be enabled otherwise they will not appear in game, but it might be worth testing!

[Termite]

Originally posted by Strategikal:

Ah, I think I understand now. So if I disable all growable assets, none of them will load if I don't load any custom styles that use them?

Yes if you disable all growable assets, none of them will load if you don't load (enable) any custom styles that use them.

[Royal Raven]

If you have not tried this mod, check it out:
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=466158459

You can change what assets are used on a certain district if you like. For me I have modded Ore and Oil Industry assets. So I un-check a bunch of vanilla ones, so my modded ones spawn.

You can either do this globally or per district. Globally I got to Theme Manager on bottom of District window when I open it. I go under my International ones since that is what my map uses. After that it is pretty user friendly to know what is going on.

[Strategikal]

Yes, I've been trying out that mod recently, that's why I was wondering about the differences between themes and styles. Looks like a really useful mod, very impressed with it so far.

[Avanya]

I only have one thing to add to Termite's great explanation of the differences and that relates to spawning. If a style doesn't include something (a certain lot size or type of zoning), then the game will just fill that in with random buildings. As an example, if you have a style for low density residential, then you will just have random commercial grow in the district with that style applied.

Building Themes will ONLY allow buildings in a theme to spawn in a district. So in the same situation, where a theme only has low density residential buildings, you would have no commercial spawn at all. Ofc you can add multiple themes which makes it easy to deal with (I used to have several residential themes and then 1-2 themes with commercial, offices and industry), but it's something that's important to keep in mind in case you have nothing spawn in a district. :)

[Termite]

It is a good point Avanya makes. On many occasions I have found no commercial or industrial spawning due to not having them in a theme. I now use different themes for residential, commercial and industrial then mix and match what I want to spawn.

@Avanya I would never skip your excellent 'European Suburbia' pack, in fact I use it all the time for my low residential. :)

[Strategikal]

Thanks for the additional clarification Avanya. I think I have a good understanding of it all now.

[Strategikal]

One more question: if I use a map with the European/Vanilla style enabled, which buildings will be used for the city as a whole?

I can set the overall city style to International or European, but while they have many buildings in common, there are others that aren't. So if I set an overall city style, some buildings won't appear, right?

But if I don't set an overall city style, will it default to the "Vanilla" style and leave out the European buildings?

Does international mean vanilla when choosing a style?

[Avanya]

If you set no style, then it will spawn a mix of all of the buildings.

[Strategikal]

Thanks for the info.