Basic Map Creation

This guide is intended to show you how to create basic maps in Cities Skylines. It’s by no means perfect but will show you how to use the basic tools of the Map Editor to create a map.

My basic Tropical Costal Map

Basic Shape and Water

1. Pause the game
   
2. Select the water tool and Move Sea Level. Set this to 20 and click the Reset Water to Sea Level. This make things a lot easier later on.
   
3. The default level of a starting map is 60. This is actually quite high and is too high for you to place a seaport if you don’t change it.
   
4. Select the Level Tool from the Terrain tool. By default the height is set to 0 but it will retain the last value you set it to. Set it to 30. Now set the brush size as high as it will go. Select the full circle brush and flatten the terrain.
   
5. Now set the height to 0 and brush size 300 and brush type to the solid circle. Then drag out an area fairly close to the city boundaries but just outside it.
   
6. Slowly work inwards to include some of the city building area. Remember here that you are reducing the buildable area here. You may find it useful to reduce the brush size here.
   
7. Create an estuary area for where your river should go.
   
8. Increase the brush size and fill in the sea area.
   
9. Unpause the game and watch the sea fill up. It’s worth putting a water source in the estuary at this point as well.
   
10. To do this select Water and then Place Water Source. Use the mouse to set the water height. The Water Capacity will determine how fast the water moves. I like to set it to the maximum.
    
11. Click on the Roads icon and the select Ship. This will show you the water flow on your map. This is just about the most important thing to get right. You should see water flowing out from your estuary waterpoint into the sea
    
12. Now pause the game again and extend the estuary inland to form a proper river. Put some bends even on a flat map because otherwise it looks dull and boring! Make sure your rivers start from the edge of the map - not the edge of your buildable area.
    
13. Remove the estuary water source and add one at the start of your river(s). If you have tributary rivers then add one at these otherwise water will flow the wrong way as it pushes in from the other river source where it meets the confluence of two rivers.
    
14. Unpause the game and set it to fastest speed and wait for the water flows to correct themselves. If you have a lot of water sources this may take several minutes. You also need to look out for flooding. If this happens it indicates that your water height is too high.
    
15. Open up the Roads/Ship option and check your water flow. It should all been from the river sources to your estuary and coastline. What you need to check is that water doesn’t flow both downstream and upstream in your river. I’ve played on a few community created maps where this is the case and it often cause problems later on where you start to have polluted water move upstream back to your water pumps. In a well designed map this shouldn’t be the case.
    
16. Open up chirpy. You might now need to move your starting area so that it is on the coast or contains part of a river. To do this click on map settings and then Start Tile and click on the tile you want to use.

The river around your starting area should look something like this. Notice the flow arrows.

Connections

1. Select the Road Option and then Intersection. You have an option here. If you are just going to have one highway running from one edge to another then just select a three way junction. If you want a highway running across this from one edge towards your coast select a cloverleaf. (You can also select any other workshop intersection here if you don’t want to use the default ones)
   
2. Place the intersection just outside your starting area and then extend the highway to just inside it.
   
3. To keep the highways straight just extend both sides in the same direction and keep them snapped to 180 degrees. Then for the ones that are the wrong direction select the Upgrade road option and right click on the sections that are the wrong direction to reverse them. However don’t do this on the pieces at the edge of the map. Make sure they are drawn the correct way and at the connection arrows are point the same way. Chirpy will also show you that this is wrong as you will have more connections going one way than the other.
   
4. If you don’t want straight highways then having them follow part of your terrain is a good idea. For my map I have one highway, part of which is straight and parts are curved.
   
5. To lay down a rail connection select the Train option and then use the same tools to lay down your track. I like to follow one highway with my rail line with a guide of getting it to go towards what will be the major industrial area in my city. This is not necessarily the starting area.
   
6. Unfortunately you cannot use rail tunnels in the editor. You can however elevate them. You might not be able to do this with a complicated intersection. So either redirect them or leave them unconnected. Once you are ready to use them you can add a tunnel joining the two pieces in game.
   
7. To add a Shipping lane select the Roads/Ship icon. Starting outside one area of coast drag a line slightly parallel with your coast. Lay it down just like you would a road in one or more sections until you drag a section off another edge of the map.
   
8. Optionally you can now add a plane connection. This is exactly like a ship connection but you want to at least cover some land where you will put your airport.

At this point open up chirpy. The only unchecked items should now correspond to the Resources. I’m going to add some forest and fertile areas to my map later

Terraforming

I’m actually going to leave the buildable part of my city mostly flat. However in game that is going to look pretty boring. I’m going to use the principle of contour lines to create hills.

For each contour of my hill I’m going to increase it by 30 or 40.

1. Select The terrain tool and then the level tool. Increase the height to 80, the brush type to the second round one and the Brush Size to 100. I’m going to create a hill between the two river tributaries which have the highway next to one.
   
2. Drag around the edges of the rivers keeping a gap between the river edge and the first contour.
   
3. This creates a pretty jagged edge but we will fix that in a minute.
   
4. Try different contours. For my hill I started with 40 then had some at 30 and finished with 20 at the top. This produced a reasonable hill with a smoother top.
   
5. Next select the Smooth tool. Work on one side of the hill at a time until you have finished. You can use a reasonable sized brush here but if it is too large and the gaps between your contour lines are large it will just smooth out the hill.
   
6. Remember that there is an Undo Terrain Modification button.
   
7. Right clicking with the Level Tool will automatically set the elevation to what you click on.

Hill creation can be incredibly time consuming but the outcome is worth the while.

Resources and Final Touches

At this point open up chirpy. The only unchecked items should now correspond to the Resources. I’m going to add some forest and fertile areas to my map but you could add Oil and Ore if you want.

1. To create a simple forest open Forest Resources and select an appropriate tree. You need to be careful here as there is a limit on the number of trees you can place.
   
2. I recommend not using the full round brush here as it plants an incredibly dense forest. and you will run out of trees really easily.
   
3. Set a brush size of 200 and then just paint an area..
   
4. To create an area of Ore, Oil or Fertile Land select the Ground Resources Tool.
   
5. Click on the one you want to create and then create an area in the same way as you did a Forest.

Now just a few final touches

1. In the terrain tools as well as the move starting square tool there is a snapshot tool. Select this, move the map around until you have a nice view and click.
   
2. Then just save it. Annoyingly you have to give it both a name and a Saved Map name but you can cut and paste to avoid having to type it in again.
   
3. Remember to tick the Publish Map in New Game Panel.
   
4. Now to test it. Go to the Content Manager/Mods section and turn on Unlimited Money and Unlock All.
   
5. Now select New Game, Choose your Map.
   
6. You now want to purchase any particular square that you might need and make sure that you can place a Seaport and Airport.
   
7. If you want to Share your Map in the Workshop select Content Manager/Maps and find your map. Then simply click on the Share button and fill in the details.

[Brain Damaged Canuck]

How do I manipulate the grids you can buy in-game? I want them to be more of a rectangle that follows the coast of a body of water, but instead its just a big square. :S

Does this question make sense?

[Aturchomicz]

T0XIC@ go to the mod maneger and maps and then click publish

[T0XIC]

The share button is greyed out and I get a message saying I need to publish my map to the new game panel? How?

[EdenStarGazer]

Simple. Right What could go wrong? My 1st try, I managed a terrain & water map with resources, once I lowered the water level to clear the sea level off my highway. But, I couldn't seem to understand how to set up any of the connections. So, I just saved it intending to learn a little more before editing later, and the Brrr! achieviement popped with the map being incomplete. So. Yeah. The achievement is easy. The map-making, not so much. Thanks for your guide. Do you have a video for noobs?

[Friki]

With the Tree brush, right click.

[WannaSeeSomethingStupid?]

Is it not possible to remove masses of trees that have already been placed?

[Friki]

Cool guide, I wanted to make my own map. Thanks!

[Jagrodz]

Ok, hope to see you make some, looks like youd be good at it :D

[Rolfil]

I've been playing XCom 2 recently but as soon as the Snowfall expansion is released I'll be looking at the new Theme Editor with a view to creating a few new maps

[Jagrodz]

You have any other maps that youve made for the community? If so, any particular "favorite" map? GG (good Guide)