Whats the best layout to start a city?

[LR]

Should i do circular shapes or grids? I keep struggling and i have 400 hours

[MarkJohnson]

@400 hours, it sounds like you need to abandon workshop and play vanilla. You would have the game almost mastered by now, without workshop slowing you down.

Just temporarily launch the game with the --noWorkshop flag and I'm sure a lot of your issues will disappear and you'll have no mods or assets to interfere with your game, so you can diagnose it more quickly.

Launch Options Guide:
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=466981085

The games like you to build commerce in shopping mall fashion. Also it should be on the highway and next to industry, so they can import/export easily, plus make deliveries to each other more quickly and on time.

[me22ca]

I don't find circles effective. I like grids:
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2035626231
But really, the important part is to make sure that RICO is arranged well. For example, you want industry right off the highway where it doesn't need to go through any residential.

Where are you having trouble starting? At ~400 people, 4000 people, 40000 people, or 400000 people?

[King.Lu]

i always go for grids but to easen it up a bit i make it curvy close to rivers or highways

[Justa Guy]

I tend to feel the shape of your city isn't that important. Though curves and circles do cause problems in that a lot less build able area is created by the roads. No the big thing to worry about is intersections. Try avoid as many 4 way stops as possible and even T Junctions should be semi limited with lots of space in between.

Every area should have at least two means of access to a high way if possible on opposite sides and to spread out every thing mixed. Avoid massive area's of commercial, industry, etc in one area. Only exception I find is Residential, generally speaking the traffic isn't too bad no matter how many people you cram into an area.

Plan ahead and leave room for train tracks, metro lines and such.

[Miiiiiiiiiiiiike]

I start a city the most cost effective way, which is usually grids. That's because I need the money, and as little costs as possible. As I get more money, I start changing the city up and try to follow the contours of the land where possible.

[CoolantCorrie]

This vid shows a good way to lay out the city, demonstrated with the tutor's city of 1 million population done on the Hard Mode. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zOstsQFe2o0
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d9vDcfH03gs The Reason Our (U.S.A.) Streets Switched to Cul-De-Sacs - see various concepts and why they work or don't, to inform your layout decision.
I suggest YouTube beginner 'starting a city' tutorials by Czardus, BonBonB and Sam Bur, even though you're not really a beginner at 400 hours. I've experimented with various layouts, including circular, mews, cul-de-sacs. grid, inbetween. Now I usually do a grid for fast initial population growth but with a pedestrian and cycling path network, as important as roads. Then I do Old Town on a more organic (tailored to contours, natural features like a river) where feasibly the original town would've start back in the days of yore, so much depends on the map. I often ask myself when building: if I were a cim, would I like to live here? You can vary your district layouts however you like - have fun!

[CoolantCorrie]

Originally posted by Justa Guy:

I tend to feel the shape of your city isn't that important. Though curves and circles do cause problems in that a lot less build able area is created by the roads. No the big thing to worry about is intersections. Try avoid as many 4 way stops as possible and even T Junctions should be semi limited with lots of space in between.

Every area should have at least two means of access to a high way if possible on opposite sides and to spread out every thing mixed. Avoid massive area's of commercial, industry, etc in one area. Only exception I find is Residential, generally speaking the traffic isn't too bad no matter how many people you cram into an area.

Plan ahead and leave room for train tracks, metro lines and such.

You can download spacers from the Workshop as placeholders then plop a train station down when ready. Or if you're playing with Unlimited Money, you can build placeholder basic networks and turn the buildings off until you need them. https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1590786906 https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1590796988

[wilky]

Originally posted by luisgamer:

Should i do circular shapes or grids? I keep struggling and i have 400 hours

Just want to say I understand your frustration. I also put 400 hours into this (vanilla) game and I never figured out how to play it, either. I never ended up building a single city in all those 400 hours. Like I don't even know what I did for all that time. A lot of it I was just staring at the screen blankly because I never knew what to do next (usually around 10k pop). And I probably restarted over 100 times before eventually giving up on the game.

Maybe one of the biggest things I did wrong is I tended to spread my commercial out in narrow strips along my avenues across my cities. And probably built too much commercial/industry.

But I really just think this is a flawed game. Everybody else will come into this thread and try to advise you on what you're doing wrong. But I'm here to tell you that I think it's not you.

[MarkJohnson]

Originally posted by CoolantCorrie:

This vid shows a good way to lay out the city, demonstrated with the tutor's city of 1 million population done on the Hard Mode. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zOstsQFe2o0
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d9vDcfH03gs The Reason Our (U.S.A.) Streets Switched to Cul-De-Sacs - see various concepts and why they work or don't, to inform your layout decision.
I suggest YouTube beginner 'starting a city' tutorials by Czardus, BonBonB and Sam Bur, even though you're not really a beginner at 400 hours. I've experimented with various layouts, including circular, mews, cul-de-sacs. grid, inbetween. Now I usually do a grid for fast initial population growth (but with a combined pedestrian and cycling path around each residential building to prevent dark streets and encourage walking and cycling plus cim health and less pollution/noise - if you want to liven your streets with cims walking and cycling loads, it's best to plan in a citywide network in from the very start, as important as roads). Then I do an Old Town on a more organic (tailored to contours, natural features like a river) where feasibly the original town would've start back in the days of yore, so much depends on the map. I often ask myself when building: if I were a cim, would I like to live here? You can vary your district layouts however you like - have fun! But it's worth bearing in mind certain cim ways of life e.g. cims don't visit each other, they're prepared to walk a long way, and I've found that if you build a nice scenic sparsely built posh neighbourhood but it's remote then it's not popular as cims like to have lots of facilities like shops and transport, and that parks make an area hugely attractive so they move in pronto (raised land value being a main goal) - remembering how cims live informs your layout decisions e.g. to put, or not put, in a central city square/plaza and whether to build outwards from it.

I found this video on Vancouverism. I never knew the term existed, but Vancouver, BC is a breathtaking city and wondered why other very large cities weren't built in this fashion. It is very spacious and incredible views.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P8dmVUrNt38

It might be interesting to build this city.

[CoolantCorrie]

Originally posted by wilky:

Originally posted by luisgamer:

Should i do circular shapes or grids? I keep struggling and i have 400 hours

Just want to say I understand your frustration. I also put 400 hours into this (vanilla) game and I never figured out how to play it, either. I never ended up building a single city in all those 400 hours. Like I don't even know what I did for all that time. A lot of it I was just staring at the screen blankly because I never knew what to do next (usually around 10k pop). And I probably restarted over 100 times before eventually giving up on the game.

Maybe one of the biggest things I did wrong is I tended to spread my commercial out in narrow strips along my avenues across my cities. And probably built too much commercial/industry.

But I really just think this is a flawed game. Everybody else will come into this thread and try to advise you on what you're doing wrong. But I'm here to tell you that I think it's not you.

It's only really coming together for me at 1.2K hours, still some problems to crack and best layout in some districts is one of them, though I seem to have enjoyed the twisty turny route to here more than you despite some of my frustrations and several disasters. And you're right, it's not the OP, and never is because - there are so many ways to play the game, and in general there are no wrong answers unless it's a specific such as placing sewage pipes upstream of water intake pumps. It's a great problem-solving game.

[CoolantCorrie]

Originally posted by MarkJohnson:

Originally posted by CoolantCorrie:

This vid shows a good way to lay out the city, demonstrated with the tutor's city of 1 million population done on the Hard Mode. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zOstsQFe2o0
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d9vDcfH03gs The Reason Our (U.S.A.) Streets Switched to Cul-De-Sacs - see various concepts and why they work or don't, to inform your layout decision.
...[cut]...

I found this video on Vancouverism. I never knew the term existed, but Vancouver, BC is a breathtaking city and wondered why other very large cities weren't built in this fashion. It is very spacious and incredible views.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P8dmVUrNt38

It might be interesting to build this city.

Thanks, very interesting. I'll take some of the ideas into my next city - they make a lot of sense. 'Point towers' are a good idea - an asset-making project for the talent on the Workshop? 'View corridors' had been in my subconscious and only partly designed in....until now. Underground parking - obvious but until now I've liked watching cims and their unique way of parking. And I've not been ambitious enough with my pedestrian/cycle network. Thanks again.

[Justa Guy]

Originally posted by wilky:

Originally posted by luisgamer:

Should i do circular shapes or grids? I keep struggling and i have 400 hours

But I really just think this is a flawed game. Everybody else will come into this thread and try to advise you on what you're doing wrong. But I'm here to tell you that I think it's not you.

The game is massively flawed in many ways, especially if you don't use mods, assets or DLC. The thing is while there are problems, there are also solutions. the problem facing most people is the solutions are not always obvious or logical. Don't think of how a normal person would react, think of how the AI for the game would react.

Little things like traffic being backed up is not solved by just giving them more lanes. The Ai is dumb enough to all drive in the same lane, even if 5 others are free. There will be 5000 people waiting at a bus stop, despite the fact they could walk faster than the wait time.

I've gotten a city up to 93k population with no mods or Steam assets and I am pretty happy to keep it at 83-85% traffic.

[LR]

Originally posted by wilky:

Originally posted by luisgamer:

Should i do circular shapes or grids? I keep struggling and i have 400 hours

Just want to say I understand your frustration. I also put 400 hours into this (vanilla) game and I never figured out how to play it, either. I never ended up building a single city in all those 400 hours. Like I don't even know what I did for all that time. A lot of it I was just staring at the screen blankly because I never knew what to do next (usually around 10k pop). And I probably restarted over 100 times before eventually giving up on the game.

Maybe one of the biggest things I did wrong is I tended to spread my commercial out in narrow strips along my avenues across my cities. And probably built too much commercial/industry.

But I really just think this is a flawed game. Everybody else will come into this thread and try to advise you on what you're doing wrong. But I'm here to tell you that I think it's not you.

This is my case except i never load a city i start because i find them really ugly and with 50% traffic flow

[MarkJohnson]

Originally posted by Justa Guy:

But I really just think this is a flawed game.

Little things like traffic being backed up is not solved by just giving them more lanes. The Ai is dumb enough to all drive in the same lane, even if 5 others are free. There will be 5000 people waiting at a bus stop, despite the fact they could walk faster than the wait time.

Not flawed at all, just how the game works, with emphasis on the word game. Your single lane pile up is a game mechanic to tell you to fix your offending intersection. It goes single lane so traffic can still flow a little bit so it doesn't make your city collapse, and it is your road sign of impending doom (pun intended). Otherwise, if you let it backup all lane, then it would choke the whole city and immediately die from the resulting chain reaction.

I mean, how long would you think it would to take to clear a mile long single lane backup, verses all lanes backed up for a mile?

The only thing I would change, is when the single file lane triggers, it should trigger a disaster warning to make sure the mayor can fix it ASAP. It really is that bad of a situation. It is easily the #1 issue in the game and this should help fix the issues by making it a very urgent fix.

So, wherever you seen single file backup, drop everything you are doing and fix it now!

I'm also finding lately, that after 5-years of people learning the single lane backup fixes, that now everyone is getting noise pollution poisoning in their cities and can't figure out why they have a death wave. It turns out it is caused by noise pollution overwhelming their cities. The game doesn't have a sickness mechanic, so your cims can only be sickened by pollution. So if you are seeing ambulances all over your city, you must drop everything and fix you poisoning problem NOW!

It's usually mayors placing transit options in residential that make a lot of noise, or plopping unique buildings that make a lot of noise.

[Justa Guy]

Noise pollution is a pretty big issue, with very few fixes in vanilla other than "more space". Which again is even worse in vanilla as your working with a maxim of 12 squares. Tree's help a bit, but again your limited in the number you can have placed in the world without mods. As you say there is also very little warning in game.

You get "citizens are sick" when it's real bad but little warning till it reaches that point. They can go hours with no problems and then all the sudden that metro station causes every one to die around it. I think a few of the more vital things in a city cause too much noise pollution with few means of stopping it.

Sure you have highways with barriers which work great, and roads lined with tree's helps a bit. But why not a metro stop with bushes or something built in?