Struggling with City Design

[No Nōryoku]

Now I don't know how to go on about this but... I can't help it.

Everytime I start up the game, load my save and try to build my city I can't seem to figure out where I need to put down streets and zones for it to be effective or look good. Watching a few videos from Sam Bur (a real town planner playing CS) inspired me to tackle the adventures of creating a city well-planned, thought-through city from scratch. But whenever I go on about it I get completely overwhelmed, as in I worry if the industry might be too close to my residential households. Or if I followed the road hierachy correctly (main road > collector > local).

Could you give me some advice on how to cope with (I don't want to sound weird but...) stress that props up playing any city builders of this complexity?

[MarkJohnson]

This is the most simple city builder ever made. It's so simple that everyone makes it more complicated than it is.

First, avoid the workshop. That just adds complexity to the game.

This game focus on zoning. Your zones need to be balanced with each other and close together.

zone 2 parts residential to 1 part commerce and 1 part industry.

At first try to build just 1-tile and optimize it as best you can. Then start another new city.

Try to only use the starting highway entrance only and no other entrances or on or off ramps.

Then you'll be better to see the city in action.

Last thing is to ask tons of questions.

[ancienthighway]

Don't worry about trying for perfection on your first attempts. You can always redo things you want to improve or start over.

Start your city just using gravel roads. Start just using grids, 10x30 works well. As population grows and traffic increases, you'll be able to see where to upgrade your roads and create your main roads and collectors naturally.

By using grids only, you'll get a feel for how the terrain and elevation plays into the equation and where free form roads following the terrain would improve the city.

[mbutton15]

Don't be afraid to pause the game. Most of my planning I do when on pause so I'm not worrying that I'm missing any 'complaint' icons pop-up.

Road hierachy is not an exact science. These days it is very rare I use a 6 lane road. All my industry roads are 4 lane as I found 2 lane roads cause lots of hold-ups. Traffic gets block by lorries turning in to make their deliveries so having a second lane helps keep traffic flowing.

[No Nōryoku]

Thanks for the responses. I will get back to you the next time I come across a problem.

[NoirMoutton]

You could create a rough plan on paper to begin with. Think about how the city will grown and devlop over time. Identify the areas of your map that would best suit your railstation airport port industrial area etc, grow slowly and organically. You could use a real world town.city plan as your starting reference- try to improve it. Experiment- there is no right or wrong way!

[Solitude]

First of all you need to take it slow.
Second you need to just do what ever you think will be good. Just dont build to many high density zones in one area because that will cause traffic jams. This method will work for a city with around 90k cims. You should start with cities like that so you can just learn how traffic works and stuff. It wont be the best traffic jamless city but its the best way to learn, after building a couple of cities like that you will start understanding the game mechanics and will be able to plan ahead. Thats how I learned and I think its the best way. In the middle of the process you should read some guides because they can help understand how the ai and other things in the game (but mostly the ai) work. If you have any questions you can ask the community (I did it many times) or you can add me and Ill be happy to help!

[No Nōryoku]

Originally posted by NoirMoutton:

You could create a rough plan on paper to begin with. Think about how the city will grown and devlop over time. Identify the areas of your map that would best suit your railstation airport port industrial area etc, grow slowly and organically. You could use a real world town.city plan as your starting reference- try to improve it. Experiment- there is no right or wrong way!

That's a great idea. I could use Google Earth for that too, right?

Originally posted by Chinnamasta (TheOriginalErez):

If you have any questions you can ask the community (I did it many times) or you can add me and Ill be happy to help!

Quite gladly.