Greetings mayors! I’m delighted to present our free content update, Roads & Vehicles, coming on the 15th of November! As the name suggests, it includes new roads and vehicles, not just for the base game, but for several DLCs as well - including cross-DLC roads! Yes, we have pedestrian streets with trams for you, and much more!
Previously, we haven’t included content that uses features from more than one expansion. This has meant not including some options, like pedestrian streets with trams, but it has also meant that no matter what DLCs you might have, you would have access to all content when purchasing a new expansion.
But we see the cool ideas and suggestions you have, and we have wanted a way to add cross-DLC content. The Roads & Vehicles update is our first step to include some of these ideas and focuses on the base game, After Dark, Snowfall, and Plazas & Promenades content.
New Vehicles
Let’s dive into the new content starting with vehicles! The update adds 20 new vehicles to the game: 8 new buses for everyone who owns the base game, and 12 new trams for Snowfall owners, all in different styles and with different capacities. If you’ve played our previous games, Cities In Motion in particular, you may find these new vehicles familiar. They certainly bring out some fond memories for us, and we’re excited to see them in all your cities!
The new buses include both double-deckers and articulated buses
I love using the new bus and tram options in my city! Instead of increasing the budget for busy lines, I switch to higher capacity options to transport all my passengers, resulting in fewer vehicles on the roads. My bus lines can transport up to 80 passengers per vehicle, while tram lines can reach 140 passengers! But size isn’t everything, I adore the tiny tram that holds just 65 passengers, and the older bus styles just look so perfect for the lines reaching villages or industrial areas of my city.
The new fleet of trams offers much more variety for your transport lines
New Roads
In the roads category we have 25 new additions tied to After Dark, Snowfall, and Plazas & Promenades expanding the options for roads with bicycle lanes, trams, and pedestrian streets. To give you an overview of which roads are available with each expansion, we’ll go through them in groups, starting with After Dark.
After Dark added cyclists and roads with bicycle lanes offering pedestrians a faster way to travel without needing a car or public transport. The 7 new bicycle roads expand the existing options and are available to anyone who owns After Dark. I’m particularly fond of using the Four-Lane Road with Decorative Trees and Bicycle Lanes and have been replacing a lot of my existing four-lane roads with it - and if you need more lanes there’s a six-lane version of it as well!
Give the cyclists of your city room to roam the roads
If you own Snowfall you will have 8 new tram roads to choose from when building your cities, featuring both dedicated and shared lanes! I’m a big fan of the Four-Lane Road with Tram Tracks and Trees for the extra greenery in the city and of course the Six-Lane Road with Median and Tram Tracks for those extra busy parts of the city! The new small roads with tram tracks are very handy too though, offering a Four-Lane Road with Tram Tracks for the narrow but busy areas and a Two-Lane Road with Tram Tracks with the middle lanes being tram-only.
Take trams to the next level with the new roads and vehicles
For anyone who owns both After Dark and Snowfall we have 4 new roads mixing bicycle lanes, trams, and bus-priority lanes - perfect for creating cyclist-friendly cities with busy public transport. The Six-Lane Road with Tram Tracks, Bus and Bicycle Lanes has to be my favorite as it’s just perfect for busy main roads throughout my city. The shared lanes for tram and bus allow my public transport priority lanes while still leaving 4 lanes for regular car and truck traffic, and the bicycle lanes integrate so well with the rest of my city.
Prioritize space for your public transport and cyclists with the new roads combining trams and bicycle lanes
Last, but certainly not least, we have pedestrian streets with tram tracks, which are available when owning both Snowfall and Plazas & Promenades. As you may have guessed they come in both small and large versions and all three different styles for a total of 6 new pedestrian streets. Like regular pedestrian streets, you will need a pedestrian area and service to handle garbage and goods for buildings placed on these streets, and emergency vehicles and buses can use the tram lanes, allowing you to combine pedestrian streets with bus lanes and tram tracks seamlessly.
Bring tram lines into the heart of your pedestrian areas
That brings us to the end of the line and the dev diary. Roads & Vehicles include many bug fixes besides the free content, which can be found in the patch notes below. We’re grateful for all the reports, and should you come across any new issues please continue to report them on our Bug & Support forum. We’ll have additional fixes with the Financial Districts expansion and future patches to come.
Patch notes for 1.15.1-f4
Added to Base Game
Bus (bus01) - Capacity 22
Bus (bus02) - Capacity 30
Bus (bus03) - Capacity 25
Double Decker Bus - Capacity 60
Double Decker Bus - Capacity 65
Articulated Bus - Capacity 50
Articulated Bus - Capacity 70
Articulated Bus - Capacity 80
After Dark (added to paid content)
Two-Lane Road with Median and Bicycle Lanes
Two-Lane Road with Grass Median and Bicycle Lanes
Two-Lane Road with Median Trees and Bicycle Lanes
Three-Lane One-way Road with Bicycle Lanes
Four-Lane Road with Decorative Grass and Bicycle Lanes
Four-Lane Road with Decorative Trees and Bicycle Lanes
Six-Lane Road with Decorative Trees and Bicycle Lanes
Snowfall (added to paid content)
Tram - Capacity 90
Tram - Capacity 80
Tram - Capacity 65
Tram - Capacity 70
Tram - Capacity 72
Tram - Capacity 105
Tram - Capacity 132
Tram - Capacity 110
Tram - Capacity 140
Tram - Capacity 114
Tram - Capacity 130
Tram - Capacity 116
Six-Lane Road with Median and Tram Tracks
Four-Lane Road with Tram Tracks and Trees
Two-Lane Road with Tram Tracks
Four-Lane Road with Tram Tracks
Six-Lane Road with Tram Tracks
Six-Lane Road with Decorative Grass and Tram Tracks
Six-Lane Road with Decorative Trees and Tram Tracks
Two-Lane Road with Median and Tram Tracks
Snowfall (added to paid content and unlocks when you also own After Dark)
Six-Lane Road with Bicycle Lanes and Tram Tracks
Four-Lane Road with Bicycle Lanes and Tram Tracks
Two-Lane Road with Median, Tram Tracks and Bicycle Lanes
Six-Lane Road with Tram Tracks, Bus and Bicycle Lanes
Plazas & Promenades (added to paid content and unlocks when you also own Snowfall)
Small Sandstone Pedestrian Street with Tram Tracks
Small Bluestone Pedestrian Street with Tram Tracks
Small Cobblestone Pedestrian Street with Tram Tracks
Large Sandstone Pedestrian Street with Tram Tracks
Large Bluestone Pedestrian Street with Tram Tracks
Large Cobblestone Pedestrian Street with Tram Tracks
Paid content Content Creator Pack: Heart of Korea
8 New Unique Buildings
6 New Service buildings
17 New High Density Commercial Buildings
29 New Low Density Residential Buildings
1 New District Style
Paid content Content Creator Pack: Skyscrapers
44 New Unique Buildings
47 New Props
Paid content 80’s Downtown Beat Radio Station
16 New Songs
DJ Content
Paid content K-Pop Radio Station
16 New Songs
DJ Content
Bug fixes & improvements
Tag system for roads added to the asset editor
Recycling Container 01-04 props available ingame
Pedestrian Street Bollard Static available ingame
Radio stations overflow screen tweaked
Improved the loading of mods with dependencies
Added a warning message for game updates and mods
Added an info button to content manager which shows if mod was not made for the current game version
Added ability to search assets by creator name
Fixed: Quit after saving feature can cause data loss if Steam cloud is full
Fixed: Direction signs on incorrect highway segments
Fixed: Rail buffers missing in one direction for train and metro station tracks
Fixed: Disappearing traffic light props when intersections are close together
Fixed: Harbor and Ferry stops get garbage piling up in pedestrian areas
Fixed: Bus AI prioritizes Bus-Only Highways regardless of the situation
Fixed: Modern planter props missing text
Fixed: Modern planter props missing tooltip images
Fixed: Office02 corner 1x1 building mural is separate object in LOD model
Fixed: Park Maintenance Building attempts to dispatch vehicles to Parks built on Pedestrian Streets
Fixed: Parklife and Campus buildings do not display warning when on pedestrian streets
Fixed: Large food truck and ice cream plazas missing highlight beam in Leisure info view
Fixed: Pedestrian streets with bus-only lanes unlock before creating pedestrian areas
Fixed: LOD issue in Office02 2x2 lvl 2
Fixed: Commercial building LOD murals saturated
Fixed: "Slow Driving" policy reduced the speed limit too much
Fixed: Large cobblestone pedestrian street with bus-only lanes has LOD issues
Fixed: The Airfield Expertise achievement is activated by selecting the paint brush for the airport
Fixed: LOD issues with Pedestrian street intersections
Fixed: Intersecting large pedestrian streets/roads deform intersections
Fixed: Selling Luxury Products to Pedestrian Area Service Points does not generate income
Fixed: Industry Area's processing buildings do not send products to Pedestrian Areas through Service Points
Fixed: Small and Large Service Points share the same noise pollution value
Fixed: Different types of pedestrian paths connected over uneven terrain cause clipping
Fixed: What's New panel text is cut off/has a typo in French
Fixed: Missing "la" in French translation of "Quit after saving" option and save menu
Fixed: Minor issues with Mid-Century Modern pack
Fixed: Submesh variations aren't saved in the asset editor
Fixed: "NetInfo.Node.m_forbidAnyTags" is never used anywhere
Fixed: Creating a custom service point causes "Array index is out of range" error
Fixed: Asset editor has no options to change truck capacity for service points
Fixed: Custom Service point buildings causes new audio to stop playing
Fixed: Custom pedestrian streets with bus-only lanes created in the asset editor are not working
Fixed: Saving/loading data of networks that use the new tag system in the game editor
Fixed: Pedestrian street option for vehicle categories not saved in Asset editor
Known issues
Small Two-Lane Road With Tram Tracks missing connecting tram tracks when elevated (visual only)
Small Four-Lane Road With Tram Tracks missing connecting tram tracks when elevated (visual only)
Large Six-Lane Road with Median and Tram Tracks has lower speed than other Large roads
Buses do not always use bus-only lanes on highways
Visible gaps in steep terrain at the connection of roads and bridges (visual only)
Trams Capacity 132 and Capacity 72 get "squashed" at stops
The new buses are invisible in left-hand traffic cities
Hello City Builders! Welcome to an end-of-the-year Cities: Skylines Frenzy! We're so thrilled to announce our newest upcoming mini-expansion Financial Districts, along with new Content Creator Packs, Radio Stations, a massive free update, a free-to-play weekend on Steam and a World Tour Kick-off.
Find below our release schedule for the rest of 2022.
HEARTS OF KOREA - CONTENT CREATOR PACK
RELEASE DATE: 15TH NOVEMBER 2022
Expand your City with Heart of Korea, a fresh, South Korean-inspired Content Creator Pack by Content Creator Elvis. Explore new cityscapes and get inspired by 60 new assets including service buildings, growable buildings that expand as your area develops, and 8 new unique buildings.
Heart of Korea features 60 assets, including:
29 Growable low-density residential
17 Growable high-density commercial
6 service buildings
8 unique buildings
SKYSCRAPERS- CONTENT CREATOR PACK
RELEASE DATE: 15TH NOVEMBER 2022
The only way is up!
Touch the sky with the “Skyscrapers” Content Creator pack by Feindbold. Enjoy 24 unique skyscrapers and high rises and their 20 variants inspired by iconic buildings from all over the world.
Skyscrapers Content Creator Pack Key Features:
North America: Four buildings reaching up to more than 200m, inspired by iconic structures from the late 1900s.
Europe: Ten skyscrapers from countries all across the continent, including Germany, France, Italy, the United Kingdom, Spain, and Poland.
Asia: Four buildings based on modern structures from Japan, Singapore, and Taiwan.
Australia: Two skyscrapers reaching up to more than 250m inspired by landmark Sydney buildings.
Africa: Two buildings higher than 200m based on South African structures from the late 20th century.
South America: Two skyscrapers inspired by high-rise buildings in Brazil and Argentina
K-POP STATION - RADIO STATION
RELEASE DATE: 15TH NOVEMBER 2022
Get in the groove with some K-pop tunes! Straight from South Korea, K-Pop Station arrives to energize your city-management skills.
K-Pop Station features 16 songs for more than 45 minutes of music!
80’s DOWNTOWN BEATS - RADIO STATION
RELEASE DATE: 15TH NOVEMBER 2022
Feeling the asphalt melting under your feet? Got stuck in a traffic jam? What about stepping on a cramped train? Breathe in the modern City! Put your headphones on and lace up your roller skates with the 80’s Downtown Beat radio.
The Radio Station includes 16 songs for more than one hour of music!
ROADS & VEHICLES - A FREE UPDATE
RELEASE DATE: 15TH NOVEMBER 2022
Follow along on our socials & forums for more information on the free update.
FINANCIAL DISTRICTS - MINI EXPANSION
RELEASE DATE: 13TH DECEMBER 2022
Boost the economy of your City with a financial district, and use your funds to invest in the best industries for your population. Financial Districts is a mini-expansion from Colossal Order that adds the new feature “Investments” and more than a hundred assets to the game.
Financial Districts’ key features include:
Investments
Invest your money wisely and improve the lives of your citizens. Many sectors await your support such as deathcare, healthcare, oil, ore, farming, generic industry, and logistics. Keep track of your investments with the new stock trading tab.
Stock exchange
Level up your investment funds with the stock exchange. This new building also unlocks the tax income bonus for office zone buildings in its area.
Bank buildings
Money, money, money! Banks add a new service to your city and improve its safety thanks to their transport vans that, while collecting cash from commercial zone buildings, decreasing the criminality rate in the area.
Financial District Specialization
Unlock a new district for office zones when you reach the “Big Town” milestone. Financial Districts feature a new visual style, and generate higher taxes than basic office zones but decrease happiness. The tax income bonus increases if a stock exchange is nearby.
MAP PACK 2 - CONTENT CREATOR PACK
RELEASE DATE: 13TH DECEMBER 2022
Get some new inspiration and build more diverse Cities with “Map Pack 2” from the community modder Sidai. This Content Creator Pack adds 10 maps that represent different biomes such as Boreal, Desert, Tropical, and Temperate.
AFRICAN VIBES - RADIO STATION
RELEASE DATE: 13TH DECEMBER 2022
Influenced by traditional African music, this Radio Station will inspire every city planner with 16 tracks and more than one hour of music.
FREE TO PLAY WEEKEND
LIMITED TIME ON STEAM
Dates & Time: 19:00 CET, 10th November 2022 - 19:00 CET, 14th November 2022
Plazas & Promenades Expansion is NOW AVAILABLE! 🏗️
Build your own unique walkable cities and say hello to pedestrian streets, car-free areas & modern plazas. Let your citizens walk freely on pedestrian-only streets while you build brand new city-service buildings and 3 new special districts.🌆
Get excited for the brand-new wall-to-wall specialization and a whole collection of new buildings, assets and props to detail your cities. Create, manage and progress your pedestrian areas, small pedestrianized neighbourhoods, park & bus plazas and huge downtown commercial strips just to name a few!
Accompanying Plazas & Promenades are two unique Content Creator Packs, 2 Radio Stations & a free update!
Hello again city-builders! Plazas and Promenades is almost here, and I’m so excited that you will soon be able to enjoy it. As with every major expansion, we have a little something for all players who own the base game, and today’s Dev Diary is all about the free content!
Let’s start with a convenient new feature, Quit After Saving, which can be enabled when saving your city. As you may have guessed from the name, it will quit the game once it finishes saving, allowing you to skip the process of saving, waiting for it to finish just to select exit and get a warning about losing progress if you haven’t saved. Very handy when you’re done playing and just need to save and quit the game.
Check the box before saving to quit automatically
New roads
As roads are a central part of any city, we are expanding the options even further with 18 new roads. We had a look through the road types you have wished for over the years and added as many of them as we could in this patch. This includes a series of roads with bus-priority lanes, which can be used by other vehicles if they need to turn, and for the first time ever bus-only lanes and roads!
In the Small Roads category, you can soon find the new small road with wide sidewalks and small one-way road with wide sidewalks, as well as small roads with a concrete median, grass median, and tree median. For the busier parts of the city, you can grab the small 4-lane road or the 4-lane road with bus lanes, or expand your one-way road system with the 3-lane one-way and 4-lane one-way roads.
Stylish and practical selection of new roads
New in the Large Roads category are the new large roads with medians, featuring 6 lanes in two directions separated by either a concrete median, grass median, or tree-lined median - the latter of which comes in both a regular version and a bus-priority lane version.
Expand your busy roads using these new options
Lastly, we have a handful of new Highways for you using the all-new bus-only lanes. Create a high-speed bus network with the two-way bus-only expressway which comes both with or without sound barriers, or integrate bus-only lanes into your existing highways with the highway with bus-only lanes, both with or without sound barriers. And to connect them all you can use the bus-only expressway ramp.
Build a bus rapid transit system using the new highways
We look forward to seeing how your cities will benefit from these new options and which ones will be your favorites. And while it isn’t a road we do have another network for you, namely the new one-way metro tracks, allowing you more control and customizability over your metro network.
Now, all there’s left to do is check out the tutorial video by Overcharged Egg, have a look at the patch notes below, and wait for Plazas and Promenades to release. We hope you’ll enjoy the new content!
Patch notes for 1.15.0-f5
Paid content Plazas & Promenades expansion
Pedestrian Area
Service Points
Pedestrian Area Service Point
Large Pedestrian Area Service Point
Garbage Service Point
Large Garbage Service Point
Cargo Service Point
Large Cargo Service Point
Pedestrian Streets
5 Small Sandstone Pedestrian Streets
5 Small Bluestone Pedestrian Streets
5 Small Cobblestone Pedestrian Streets
5 Large Sandstone Pedestrian Streets
5 Large Bluestone Pedestrian Streets
5 Large Cobblestone Pedestrian Streets
10 Pedestrian Area Plazas
4 Policies
New City Service Buildings
High-Capacity High School
High-Capacity Elementary School
High-Capacity University
High-Capacity Hospital
High-Capacity Police Headquarters
High-Capacity Fire Station
New Public Transport Stations
Elevated Train Station
Elevated Metro Station With Shops
Parallel Underground Metro Station
Large Underground Metro Station
Compact Bus Station
6 New Unique Buildings
Pedestrian Street Market Hall
Museum of Post-Modern Art
Sunken Plaza Shopping Mall
Residential Zone Landmark
Commercial Zone Landmark
Office Zone Landmark
District specializations
48 Residential Wall-to-wall Buildings
48 Commercial Wall-to-wall Buildings
48 Office Wall-to-wall Buildings
5 New Maps
2 New Chirper hats
3 New Steam achievements
New Chirps
Paid content Shoreline Radio Station
Shoreline Radio DLC
16 New Songs
DJ Content
Paid content Paradise Radio Station
Paradise Radio DLC
16 New Songs
DJ Content
Paid content Content Creator Pack: Mid-Century Modern
Content Creator Pack: Mid-Century Modern DLC
147 Residential Buildings, 5 Park Buildings, and 32 Props
New residential district style
Paid content Content Creator Pack: Seaside Resorts Content Creator Pack: Seaside Resorts DLC 29 Service and Unique Buildings
Free update for all players and DLCs owners
New Roads added
9 New Small Roads
4 New Large Roads
5 New Highway Roads
One-Way Metro Tracks added
Quit After Saving option added
Fixed: "Allow Intercity Trains" and "Disable University Boost" buttons cannot be disabled
Fixed: Airplane models are not displayed properly in the Asset Importer
Fixed: Incorrect display of burned-down Terminals
Fixed: Collapse flag does not work on bend network segments
Fixed: Crime rate icons don't appear on Airport Terminals
Fixed: Chirper Balloon icon is missing in the Asset Importer
Fixed: Fields, pastures & tree plantations no longer randomize their type/submesh
Fixed: Some spelling mistakes
Fixed: Names in Simplified Chinese do not display correctly
Fixed: "Allow Intercity Trains" is missing or hidden when Simplified Chinese is selected
Fixed: Incorrect seating position for Modern Table Set
Fixed: Highway bridge towers are missing light props
Fixed: Duplicates RequestItemDetails sometimes causes the game to crash
Fixed: Vehicles are not highlighted in vehicle selection UI
Greetings city-builders, and welcome to the fourth Dev Diary covering Plazas and Promenades. Today’s dev diary is all about the new district specializations and new maps, so let’s check them out.
First up we have the three new Wall-to-wall specializations that can be used for residential, commercial, and office zones. They unlock at Milestone 6 - Big Town, along with high-density zoning. Each specialization features 48 new modern low-rise buildings to create a unique area in your city. As a new feature to the game, these buildings have murals, which are randomly selected each time a building spawns to create additional variation and color in the neighborhoods.
A sprawling wall-to-wall neighborhood
The new wall-to-wall specializations don’t just look cool, but as a specialization, they also work slightly differently from regular zone types. To reflect their modern construction, these buildings have a lower risk of catching fire, but as they’re built close together, fires spread more easily between them. So make sure to keep a few fire stations nearby just in case they do catch fire.
Like previous specializations, they can be found in the Districts and Areas menu under each zone tab and are applied to a district by selecting the specialization and clicking on a district. For pedestrian areas, however, there is no need to create a district, as specializations can be applied directly to the area. If a district and a pedestrian area overlap and have different specializations applied for a specific zone, like commercial, the pedestrian area specialization will be the one used.
New maps
Now we can’t have an expansion without new maps for you to build on! For Plazas and Promenades, we have 5 maps for you to choose from, featuring different landscapes and themes.
First is the temperate map of Cape Apple. You start centered on a long peninsula with easy access to the surrounding landmasses, creating an excellent environment for a thriving metropolis. Take advantage of the ship connections to bring in tourists or set up a bustling industry along the coast as you build your new city.
Cape Apple offers wide open spaces ready to be developed
Next, we journey to the tropics with Coastal Gem. It features long wide beaches and lots of open space to build a city on. You can expand inland to reach some of the area's many ore deposits or claim the coastline and benefit from the added land value of waterfront property.
Coastal Gem lives up to its name with its beautiful beaches
Gondola Islands is the first of our two new European maps. It is made up of a cluster of islands of varying sizes only connected to the mainland by a bridge. Whether you create island communities focused on walkability using pedestrian areas or connect the many islands using the new roads, Gondola Islands will shape any city built here.
The island cluster of Gondola Islands have much to offer
The boreal map of Oracle Lake offers a large valley filled with forests and lakes for you to build your city on. Base the city’s industry on the large forests, extract the abundant ore in the area, or focus on creating a vibrant tourist destination. The choice is yours.
Oracle Lake features many scenic views
Last but not least is our second European map, Splitz Tributary. Build your city at the foot of the mountains or along the banks of the rivers meeting here. With lots of buildable land, your city can take many forms.
Splitz Tributary is an ideal location for a new city
This concludes our Dev Diaries for the new content coming in Plazas and Promenades. On Tuesday, we’ll have a look at the free update that adds something new for everyone, as well as the patch notes so you’re completely up to date before release. Below Overcharged Egg has another tutorial for you, showing off the new content. Enjoy!
Alright mayors, it’s time for another Dev Diary as we count down to the release of Plazas and Promenades. Today is all about the new plazas & high capacity service buildings coming in this expansion, so let’s get to it.
Plazas and Promenades adds 10 new plazas, which can be found in the Pedestrian Areas menu under Parks & Plazas. Some of these are available as soon as you create your first pedestrian area, while others require you to reach certain goals before unlocking. They provide your citizens and tourists with entertainment, whether used inside a pedestrian area or anywhere else in the city.
Plazas and Promenades offer lots of variation to beautify your city
As the plazas were designed with pedestrian streets in mind, several of them are placed across the road, providing decoration on both sides. These can be used with small or large roads, and are placeable on both pedestrian streets and regular roads.
But plazas aren’t the only way to decorate an area! We’ve also included 23 new props and 20 new decals. These can be found in the Pedestrian Area Plazas tab. They provide a colorful modern look to your city and allow you to put a personal touch on your pedestrian areas.
The new props can be used to decorate corners of your city
New Service Buildings
Besides decorative buildings, we have a selection of new service buildings in the form of 6 new service buildings and 5 new public transportation buildings. All of these have a modern style and high capacity, offering both practical and stylish new options.
The High-Capacity Elementary School is quite a bit larger than the other schools we have, and it’s able to accommodate up to 800 students, making it ideal for neighborhoods with many families. In a similar fashion, the High-Capacity High School can educate more than twice as many students as the existing ones, with a capacity of 2400. And last, in the education menu, you will find the High-Capacity University, which can accept up to 10,000 students at a time.
Educate even more citizens using the new high-capacity options
Moving on to health and safety, we have the High-Capacity Hospital, able to handle a substantial number of patients, and the High-Capacity Police Headquarters and High-Capacity Fire Station, both of which have a significant number of vehicles available to allow them to respond to more emergencies at once.
New high-capacity services to keep your citizens healthy and safe
There are also new buildings in the Public Transportation menu. The new Compact Bus Station only takes up a little space but has 4 bus stops, which makes it easy for passengers to transfer between multiple lines. The new Elevated Train Station moves tracks off the ground to allow for zoning between the building and the street.
Modern and compact new options for buses and trains
In the Metro department, we have 3 new options to choose from. For the elevated metro system, there is the new Elevated Metro Station with Shops in a style similar to the new train station. For the underground metro, we have the Parallel Underground Metro Station, which has 4 parallel tracks for areas where one line isn’t enough, and the Large Underground Metro Station, which features two sets of tracks crossing at different heights.
Take your metro system to the next level with these new options
And with that, we’ve come to the end of this Dev Diary. I hope you enjoyed this look at all the new service buildings and parks in Plazas and Promenades. Do you have any favorites already? The next Dev Diary is on Wednesday at 4PM CEST / 7AM PDT and looks at the new specializations and maps! Hope to see you then!
Welcome back mayors, to the second Plazas and Promenades Dev Diary! Today we explore the details of how to manage pedestrian areas, what progression looks like for them, and what an area focus is. So get comfortable and let’s get started.
The key to a successful pedestrian area is managing the service points and keeping citizens happy and entertained. As mentioned in the previous Dev Diary, service points have a maximum capacity. This is the number of trucks that can visit them per week. It can be seen both on the tooltip of each building as well as when selecting it.
If a service point nears its capacity for either cargo or garbage, it will notify you of high traffic but will continue to function. If it reaches its capacity for one or both types of trucks, it will be unable to service all buildings. This will lead to garbage piling up or goods not being delivered. Make sure your pedestrian area has enough service points and that these are spread out to avoid traffic congestion.
Add more service points when you reach maximum capacity
Pedestrian Area Panel
To see how well your area is doing, select the name of the pedestrian area or use the button on any service point to open the Pedestrian Area Info Panel. The panel displays the average happiness of all buildings in an area, and the entertainment provided by parks and plazas divided by the size of the area. These are combined into a land value bonus, which is applied to the entire area, just like the entertainment is, making pedestrian areas more desirable for citizens and businesses.
The Area Panel also shows a breakdown of the different zone types in an area, as well as the area focus, which is determined by the most prevalent zone type in an area. The focus can be either residential, commercial, workplaces (industry and offices combined), or mixed. Only the zones on pedestrian streets in an area count towards the area focus.
Last but not least, the info tab contains a handy overview of the area’s service points and their capacity for both cargo and garbage, as well as information about the area’s size and maintenance cost.
The Pedestrian Area Info Panel provides an overview of your pedestrian area
Progression & Focus
Pedestrian areas do not have levels like other area types, but instead have different categories of buildings that get unlocked simultaneously. Some of these are universal and can be unlocked by any pedestrian area, while others are tied to a specific zone type. The Unlocking tab on the Pedestrian Area Panel shows you what is required to unlock each building and how close you are to unlocking them.
Additional Service Points can be unlocked by any area as it grows and as service points are visited by more trucks. New service points in turn help you better handle the demands of the area as it grows. Like service points, Plazas can be unlocked by any area. As their unlocking depends on the land value bonus the area provides, make sure to have plenty of services, education, as well as parks and plazas in place.
Unlock more service points, plazas, and unique buildings as your pedestrian area grows
Next up we have the 6 new unique buildings, which come in two categories and can be found in the Unique Buildings menu. Pedestrian Area Landmarks tie into the area focus for an area and require either a number of residents, goods sold, or workplaces in an area to unlock.
Meanwhile, the Tourism Buildings are unlocked by reaching certain levels of weekly tourists visiting a pedestrian area. While these are not tied to a zone focus, you will need to provide attractions for tourists to visit in the form of parks and plazas, unique buildings, or commercial buildings.
Increase the attractiveness of your city using the new plazas and unique buildings
Area Policies
The one tab on the Pedestrian Area Panel we haven’t talked about yet is the Policies tab. On this tab, you can apply four different policies to your area to customize how it works. The policies are free to use, but each has downsides to consider.
Slow Driving affects all roads in the area, forcing a speed limit of 20 everywhere and, as a result, decreasing noise pollution. Sugar Ban deals with the health of your citizens, increasing the lifespan of citizens, but with an increased crime rate as citizens start smuggling illegal candy bars into the area.
You can also allow Street Music, which boosts the happiness of commercial buildings in an area but also increases the noise pollution slightly. And lastly, Deliver Everything routes all cargo and garbage through service points for all buildings in a pedestrian area. So in addition to handling the cargo and garbage needs for buildings on pedestrian streets, the service points need to handle cargo and garbage for buildings on regular roads too. I hope your service points are ready for the extra traffic!
That concludes this Dev Diary. I hope you now have a good idea of how pedestrian areas work and if not, don’t hesitate to ask! In the next Dev Diary coming Friday at 4PM CEST / 7AM PDT, we’ll cover the new plazas & service buildings, which can be used on their own or as a part of pedestrian areas. For now, I will leave you in the hands of Overcharged Egg with this video tutorial:
Greetings mayors, and welcome to another set of Dev Diaries! Are you excited about Cities: Skylines Plazas and Promenades? Over the course of the next two weeks, I will walk you through all the new content from pedestrian areas and streets to new specializations and service buildings - and plazas of course! And without further ado, let’s have a look at the announcement video:
At the center of Cities: Skylines Plazas and Promenades we have pedestrian areas and streets, which give you the tools to create neighborhoods focused on walkability. These will work to reduce traffic as well as noise pollution. To ensure you are able to create areas suited for your specific city, the pedestrian areas work with all existing zoned buildings!
Creating Pedestrian Areas
Pedestrian areas take advantage of the Area Tool, which you may be familiar with already. It can be found in the Districts and Areas menu and becomes available when you reach Milestone 3 - Tiny Town. Paint over empty land if you want to create a new pedestrian neighborhood, or over an existing part of your city if you wish to turn it into a pedestrian area. Like other areas and districts, it can be adjusted later as needed.
Paint a pedestrian area to unlock service points
Once you are satisfied with the area, it’s time to place a Service Point, which can be found in the Pedestrian Areas menu under Parks & Plazas. Service points are essential to pedestrian areas as most vehicles, including garbage and delivery trucks, are not allowed on pedestrian streets. Instead, garbage is automatically collected from buildings on pedestrian streets to be picked up at the service point. Similarly, resources, goods, and mail are all routed through the service point, so make sure it’s placed on a road that can handle increased truck traffic!
Service points come in two different sizes and three different types: The general Service Points, which cover all the listed needs, Garbage Service Points, which focus on waste management, and Cargo Service Points, which handle resources, goods, and mail.
Service points are vital for your pedestrian areas
The different service points are important as they each have a capacity and if the area exceeds this, some buildings on pedestrian streets will not have their needs taken care of. Large pedestrian areas will need more service points to provide for the buildings on pedestrian streets, and depending on the mix of buildings in an area, you may need a higher capacity for garbage collection or cargo delivery.
Pedestrian Streets
With the pedestrian area created and a service point placed, it’s time to place pedestrian streets! These paved roads can only be used by walking or biking citizens and, when necessary, emergency vehicles like ambulances, hearses, police cars, and fire trucks. As citizens are the main users of the pedestrian streets, vehicles have to obey slow speed limits unless responding to an emergency.
We have included a lot of variation in the pedestrian streets so that you can customize the look and feel of your areas. There are 3 styles: Sandstone, Bluestone, and Cobblestone, which come in two different widths. Each street also comes with 5 different variations with things like added grass, trees, and bus-only lanes. That’s a total of 30 different pedestrian streets for you to choose from!
Bluestone on the left, Sandstone in the middle, and Cobblestone on the right
As you’re building your pedestrian streets, you may go outside the pedestrian area you defined earlier. If that happens, the streets will automatically extend the area to follow them. This option can be enabled or disabled when placing the streets. Pedestrian streets can also be placed outside pedestrian areas, but keep in mind that any buildings placed on these streets will need a pedestrian area and a service point to function.
Lastly, pedestrian streets come with a cool new little feature: Bollards automatically appear at the entrance to pedestrian streets to discourage vehicles from entering. When a vehicle needs to enter or exit the pedestrian street, they will stop and wait for the bollards to retract into the street before driving past. Isn’t that cool?
Bollards retracting for a waiting police car
That’s all we have for you this time! In the next Dev Diary, we’ll cover the management and progression of pedestrian areas, so stay tuned for more information on Monday at 4PM CEST / 7AM PDT! And don’t forget to check out the video tutorial by Overcharged Egg below:
Coming soon to PC & Console - Cities: Skylines newest expansion, Plazas & Promenades introduces Pedestrian Zones, Specialized Districts & Service Buildings. Say hello to pedestrian streets, car-free areas, and modern plazas and let your citizens walk freely on pedestrian-only streets while you build brand new city-service buildings and 3 new special districts.🌆
City Builders, Global Build-Off is back and ready for take-off! With two rounds of the competition, we invite you all to share with us your best work in Cities: Skylines to secure your place in the main competition where you will be pitted against some of our favourite content creators!
Submit your creation before March 23rd, 2021, 10pm CET for a chance to enter the Global Build Off-Airports Edition.