I love how the boats were trolling you as hard as they could with unrealistic behavior the entire video... changing course to collide with other boats, blinking in an out of existence... quality trolls, them boats.
It feels like the term you were searching for is "organic" (vs planned). Something that the model railroad community advocates is modeling the history of a location. It could be something as simple as old foundations where a steam-era water tower stood, or a line of decaying ties where an abandoned railroad used to cross still in service trackage. Or it could be as complex as a building with a curved wall where a siding used to curve past to reach another customer. In Cities Skylines town history could be something like that corner where you placed the trees: maybe the original road occupied that space, but a road upgrading project realigned the road and created a wide sidewalk. Or, perhaps, the trees sit where a streetcar track used to turn into the cross street or swing wide to loop back the way it came. Modeled history helps to create the illusion that your Metropolis grew, organically, from a tiny village and didn't just spring forth in a single day.
I carry that idea into the naming of things as well. The one vanilla map is basically several rivers with a few islands. So my town became "Angler's Rest" because it just felt like the sort of place that was originally a fishing community. I wound up with districts like "Four Bridges", "Fish Camp", and "The Narrows". And, yes, it does add a certain life to the game that generic "[tree name] Heights" doesn't offer.
@@johnterpack3940 Good point. I also think that naming an area and thinking about what kind of area it is can really help. For example, I always name my first district, "old town," and this means I try to preserve its layout, add in statues and plazas and cultural elements like museums. My latest city has an area which is by the river and is a modern skyscraper/business district, so it has lots of wide roads, tall buildings and has a very "planned" feel. When you look at the whole city, it has a feel of different areas, each with its own character.
3:16 in my experience, putting commercial buildings on main roads and busy intersections is a bad idea because of the traffic the buildings attract. If a lorry or a van stops in front of a shop, the other cars won't be able to pass it and this creates a big traffic jam on busy roads. Of course, it looks realistic, I just wanted to point that out.
It's about realism not in game mechanics broski and in most US based city's the commercial is on the bigger roads while Res is on the smaller ones and almost every highway ramp is surrounded by businesses. Plus you don't want citizens to bitch cause the noise from the heavy traffic
@@noncare9079 yes, I got that, which is why I mentioned at the end of the comment that it still looks good. If you only want to build realistically, sure, hi ahead, but I think having an ultra realistic city with huge traffic jams isn't worth it. I personally try to make the best compromise between realism and functionality.
@@namenamename390 there's a mod that simulates work shifts and hours so the traffic jams only happen during peak hours when everyone gets off work say like 5 pm or so but roads are empty at like 2 am it's worth it imo
I just got into this game a couple of days ago and it’s amazing. I’m a architect (it’s my profession) and I’m learning and enjoying this series so much. Thanks.
Everytime I want to create an organic city I end up with insane traffic congestion. But when I use optimized road layouts for the driver AI it works …… but looks horrible.
Keep in mind the size of the city and number of ways in and out of sections of the city. If you literally have one main road going through, it's going to back up. But if you have sections of city no bigger than 5-7 blocks with 3+ ways in/out, it won't really back up.
Yeah, there's always a balance to be struck. A rule I follow is to leave some space between districts. This allows me to construct new roads or upgrade interchanges if the traffic increases. It doesn't necessarily mean I can improve traffic within a district, but it does help.
@@FassoStyle Is there any logical reason why you would fucking say that comment is underrated? Has anybody expressed any kind of dissatisfaction or criticism at all against it? Are you delusional? Are you reading replies that are nonexistant? Maybe it's psychological. Maybe it's your own post you're replying to, like a 12 year old kiddy liking his own facebook posts thinking his swelling autism is going unnoticed. Maybe your self esteem depends on you tricking yourself into thinking someone out there thinks your post is worth something. Or maybe you are just one who thinks he's smart, the one who thinks he's the only one to have gotten the joke, to have understood the post. Well, guess what, that post is under no definition underrated so why don't you do the world a favor and go check out what the bottom of your toilet smells like?
I tend to focus on realistic road & rail networks. The first thing I do in a new map is bulldoze all the pre-made highways and just have two-lane roads running through the map in the beginning. Although, I have found that traffic volumes tend to vary, so this might not work the way you want all the time. But, I try to start with just rural two-lane roads and slowly grow the city from there. When traffic becomes such where I need to build a freeway to take congestion away from the city, I start with a four-lane freeway (2 each direction), and only widen when absolutely needed. Also, when building a freeway (and railroads), avoid sharp turns and steep grades where ever possible!!! If you're trying to carve a freeway through the middle of the city, sharp curves can add some realism, but in reality, hard turns are very dangerous on a freeway. Smooth out your curves! If you need to build an overpass, make the approaches as smooth as you can! Don't do steep inclines. And you do NOT need exit ramps everywhere! In the city I'm working in now, my main freeway has 4 exits TOTAL serving the city. This will change as it grows, but having fewer interchanges at the main roads works much better than ramps breaking off every which way as I've seen from other maps. This helps separate thru-traffic with local traffic.
I feel like the game kinda encourages it with the grid guidelines and snapping. Is you leave that off it may help you get out of that mindset. Just something i thought about that might hell
I got out of the grid mindset but accidentallyu got into the "Placing super curvy roads that mess up traffic to make it look more realistic" mindset so i guess i went too far
I've been playing city simulation games since I first played Sim City for the SNES when I was a kid, twenty years ago. Since then I played 3K Unlimited and my personal favorite, SC4. I admit with some slight degree of shame that I've become quite a "not-so-easy-to-impress" snob when it comes to seeing what other people have built. I was honestly not expecting this video to repeat pretty much everything that I've learned and followed in my time of playing Sim City and Skylines. I see a lot of people go all out in modifying the graphics rather than focus on the mistake of putting in excessive amounts of overly detailed content and this is one of the extremely rare times that I've seen someone build a city or town that looks anything remotely close to what I build and what I appreciate. I see so many cities just completely over the top dressed and nine out of 10 cities don't really impress me because it just looks 'so' realistic and so well designed that it actually looks fake and after a while a lot of city simulation players just pump excessive amounts of what I refer to as "Botox". They always look so overly modified that I end up not really appreciating anything. I get that a lot of people like that sort of thing, but to me after a while, it just gets boring looking at the same city made by a different person. I really enjoy cities with personality, color, uniqueness, and imperfections.
I like what you said about using the shape of the terrain, building round forests etc. Another thing I do is, if heavy traffic forces me to rebuild the roads in an area, I try to demolish as little as possible and fit the road in around the buildings. This creates an interesting challenge and mimics what is usually done in real life. It certainly led to some very creatively constructed roads and junctions, which makes the whole city feel more organic.
Absolutely love your work and how non-nonchalant you create such realistic cities. Learning a lot from you and wish I would have chosen that city planning career of yours :P ... Genius mate, if you are ever here in Wellington, NZ, give me a shout.
My cities' transportation usually looks something like this: trains bring people in from the suburbs and outer towns. I use monorail as the "glue" connecting the densest office/commercial areas to the train network, airport, harbor, and high-density residential bus routes. The metro provides local connections to high-density commercial, office, and industrial areas; as well as nearby suburbs. Trams are used in the city as a replacement for overloaded bus lines for residential areas, and as a link to the city for smaller suburbs. Busses bring people from residential areas to other forms of transportation and I/C/O areas. Helicopters are an alternate to monorail, and blimps carry people to and from small suburbs.
A good hint is to angle buildings in areas of low density building, when people have the room on large blocks often they have the houses not pointing straight at the road
What is it about parked cars that supposedly adds to the city looking more alive? There is nothing as boring, bothersome and pointless as parked cars. As a soon-to-be city planner myself I enjoy building the cities as I would plan them in reality (if they'd let me): Cars banned practically everywhere. I can build mostly quite small streets and never had any serious traffic issues even in dense 100k+ cities - but lots of people walking to and from bus or metro stops. THAT to me is what makes the city look alive, not cars.
makes great city with major highway road ending in big custom roundabout, do some details, plants trees, follows landscape and makes esthetically pleasing budding city *earthquake hit your city, seek immediate shelter RRREEEEEEEEEEEEE
I bought Cities: Skyline after randomly stumbling on one of your vids early last year. After trying to start a city, I quickly became overwhelmed and haven't touched it since. But I've still been watching your vids. I may try to start this up again
I really enjoy all of your videos. I've struggled with so many elements of the game and mods, but I'm gradually getting to grips with them. (I don't want to look at how many hours I've spent playing the game already). My issue now is that my laptop just can't handle too many mods and assets. Will look at upgrading. What I do enjoy about yours, is how you make your cities look natural. I've tried starting a city with a bicycle wheel or spiders web road layout, then gradually developed it. I've found that approach to be much more of an interesting game play and also mirrors older cities that have progressed over time. I think Cities Skylines is the best city builder game of all time so far (I've played a few since Simcity 2000), but it would be great, in the future, to have a simulator that starts almost at the beginning. Say for example European cities going back to the 1500's and you unlock ages and gradually develop them to the present day. It would take massive capacity, but I think it would be awesome. Anyway, thanks for you vids, I subscribed.
Trees forever! Your videos are great. Your entire approach, personality & execution. It's highly informative in a chill way. I enjoy your channel a lot.
Hello Sam! I really love your content and your cities and workings are amazing. Please keep it up, I am learning from it too (theoretical) :D So, I have some questions, maybe you could enlighten me a little: Which mods are you using without complications? Which mods can I use, as a fan of art-deco, soviet style, central european style and european style at all? You have always a pretty sharp HD look on your city, also when zoomed out which I dont have, how you do that, mod? I have currently hundreds of single objects from the steam-workshop loaded but rarely see them, any idea? That I have hundreds of single objects loaded, might be the cause why I have to wait (with a good PC) about 20 minutes when loading a map? Is there some more realistic landscape mod available which does not bring problems? City Centers in this game, never looking like grown out over centuries (from medieval times for example). How to create city centers? Could you share your installed mods? Hope Sam is reading it and answering some of the questions or in optimal all of them. Have a nice day guys
*6 main tips mentioned in the video* 0:39 - Follow your landscape 1:42 - Building heights 2:51 - Building clusters 4:03 - Make it come alive 5:30 - Road hierarchy 7:00 - The smaller details *Bonus tip* 8:47 - Don't plan too much
Thanks for the tip! I really want to try to make an old town sort of surrounded by new development. Like a Historic Downtown, but preserved while the world booms around it.
I love it bro a lot of guy don't think to do it realistically.! Plz take notes! Awesome job bro i watched a few guys do this i was not impress. You are the first one that i seen so far that have a good understand on how it supported to be laid out i really enjoy that keep them coming!
Just found this video. Great content. Would love to see more beginner tutorials, the way you explain everything it makes it so easy to follow and understand. Keep up the good work. Subscribing today.
Most Cities Skyline videos use the default cartoony colors. Changing to a more muted color scheme (or at least less pastels) helps make things look realistic.
Can you or have you made an video about spacing inbetween schools and police , fire department .. I have always built the way you do here but my biggest issue is when you do small areas everywhere you dont have area coverage of bluelight personel. How do you deal with that? Also good work!
I'm just getting into Cities Skylines. It would be really cool to see you start a few small towns in this realistic style, and then choose one or two and grow it into a small city or larger town and talk through the process.
I agree about building height but it is difficult on console with no mods. It’s too bad this game didn’t have a mid level building mode, it basically goes from low density to high. Maybe in the future they will add mid level building for the residential and commercial zones. Enjoy your videos, thx
Layering the building sizes can be quite challenging without manually plopping everything or using some sort of hard mode. In vanilla it's far too easy for buildings to upgrade. A chunk of high density residential will be happy to snowball into level 3 or even 4 with few to no services. This stems from the unrealistic fact that building height is related to affluence and desirability rather than land price.
I just want to say, thank you so much. I have slowly improved on my skills in this game, but I'm still VERY far from your standpoint. This has been the best tutorial that I've watched (and I've watched many. Believe me.). Any advice on how to make realistic highway transitions to a avenue or road?
Somewhat early on (maybe 1-2k pop) district and set aside some pretty and undeveloped areas as reserves or large parks, and when your city limits reach them add paths, tables, etc to turn it into a recreational space. Your city may even end up enclosing the reserve and it’ll turn into a big apple* style park *the big apple was not preplanned, rather a large predominantly black neighbourhood was demolished to make way for it, leaving many of the previous inhabitants homeless and destitute so that tourists and ytes have somewhere to relax and take photos
Great vid! My (beginner) tip. Download the unlock 81 tiles mod. Then unlock everything at the beginning of the game and remove all the highway and train tracks from the area of the map where you will be building. I usually make temporary roads connecting the city to the outside world untill I figure out how i want to lay out my highway and rail systems. This will give you the freedom to design how you want and you dont have to commit to existing roads nor have to plan way ahead.
How do you get the map and enviroment to look so realistic? Is it a mod? Or is it the type of map you use? The maps in vanilla are just green with a few trees
I just noticed that the city/road layout of Canberra is pretty epic. Do you think you have anything you would want to say about the design or the story of the design of the city?
It is actually epic lol I actually like the road layout of Gold Coast more by some weird reason but those circles and geometry in Canberra are just tremendously sexy
Hi, I wonder what you think of Pyongyang with regards to street layout and public transportation? The only thing I am against the bike lanes are on the sidewalks and not in the street where they should be.
Is there anyway to et maps/islands that look like that on console without mods? I'm just assuming thats made from a mod and not from landscaping tools?
Still playing Cities Skylines 1 Sam. If it wasn't for you, I wouldn't be where I am now with what I have. Thanks Again, and I hope all is well with you and the family!
I am new to the game .... how do you choose what type of residential buildings are built? I just shade them GREEN for residential and they build whatever they want.
I downloaded a district style pack and it works well but as soon as the buildings upgrade it changes to the regular buildings how do I fix this without physically going to every building in my city and making it a historical building
Sam your neighborhood at 6:15 is very pleasant ......due to the complete lack of any vehicles driving. Is that a mod running? my neighborhoods r bumper to bumper or at least a service vehicle in the area and yours is quite calm and serene...whats the secret?
You get satisfaction from seeing empty parked cars? I'd rather have bus lanes with buses full of people, or cycle lanes. Cars can park on asset parkings separate from the roads too.
Your video is well done, but I have to ask what do you do about industrial areas? They produce a ton of traffic, pollution, noise, etc., but when you replace them with offices, the commercial area just begs for the industrial resources. If you shove it to far from the city the traffic bottlenecks between.
The things is, doing various industrial zones separated from each other They shouldn't be big Of course it needs a bit of planning in case things go wrong
Great tips and greatly explained! When you talk about letting the city grow, that brings me on a tough: Is it possible to make the city grow naturally, you know from a single road with a few shops, the local diner and maybe 6 houses and then add roads to when the city grows? Like a city grows from nothing 30 years ago to the bigger city today?
From a European perspective cities that grow from nothing to a big city in 30 years do not exist (in Europe). You have cities and towns here that are 1000 years old... or at least a couple of hundred. That developed slowly over time from a single farm to what they are today. In that sense Cities Skylines will always have that unrealistic feel to a European. Sam Bur does a really good job though in making the towns look like the have grown over time rather than they have been planned in modern times to look exactly like that plan.
@@noncare9079 Apparently it's 250k. But it really isn't that much on 25 tiles especially if you have several 'forested' areas on the map. I don't like empty spaces, so I tried to fill any empty spaces with trees. Dense trees. Lol.
Far better, and with incredible mod support on the PC version. I own on Switch and PC. Can't recommend it enough if you want a far improved version of Sim City
Do you mean that commercial buildings create LESS traffic? Because you have workers+customers+trucks. I don’t see how they are better for areas with a lot of traffic. Could someone explain it to me, please?
It's about realism not game mechanics. Irl commercial on heavy traffic roads means more people passing by means more business means more potential profits. Also residents aka residential don't like loud noise produced from the heavy traffic
@@noncare9079 I think if this guy was really about realism, he wouldn't be using the in-game zoning feature in the first place. All of the vanilla assets look terrible. Check out Pres for some good looking realistic cities
@@robynhills7982 maybe I was wrong. It is about mechanics or realism in traffic flow not looks. Pres two dollars twenty and bonbonb are my cities channels
Hey I have a noob question; I see no power lines for electricity, how does that work because for me I have to put power lines everywhere for energy to get to that place
I love how the boats were trolling you as hard as they could with unrealistic behavior the entire video... changing course to collide with other boats, blinking in an out of existence... quality trolls, them boats.
lol i noticed this. cruise ships actually can drive sideways though.
@@GUSftw and even if they can't cruise ships are often assisted by tug boats to be pulled in sideways like that. Same with barges.
Those goddamn boats always killing my immersion... I didn't know they could go sideways irl tho thats cool
sandwichHLP I love it how the devs did this
Yeah, most ships have bow thrusters helping navigation in and out of harbour.
"You wouldnt put a really large avenue in a quiet area"
American suburbs: are you sure?
If you watch LA, on most of the large avenues there are industrial or commercial buildings, and next to that the residential area.
@@yannikbaltes3552 Ahhhh, Americans...
Wicker Man if your a foreigner then yes it’s strange for you but for us Americans it’s normal
@@generoushenry2389 who is foreigner where? Me in USA or you in Europe? So glass is half full for both of us.
Wicker Man I’m American Mexican which means I’m the foreigner
0:10 "a little bit more...
realistic"
*a car despawns exactly the moment he said it*
0:00 - Ship disappears for a second.
@@TheLambLive mean 00:01
@@jy_audio you couldn't press on 0:00 at the time I made this it had to be 0:01
lol I saw it
0:04 the back ship disappeared then came back
It feels like the term you were searching for is "organic" (vs planned). Something that the model railroad community advocates is modeling the history of a location. It could be something as simple as old foundations where a steam-era water tower stood, or a line of decaying ties where an abandoned railroad used to cross still in service trackage. Or it could be as complex as a building with a curved wall where a siding used to curve past to reach another customer.
In Cities Skylines town history could be something like that corner where you placed the trees: maybe the original road occupied that space, but a road upgrading project realigned the road and created a wide sidewalk. Or, perhaps, the trees sit where a streetcar track used to turn into the cross street or swing wide to loop back the way it came. Modeled history helps to create the illusion that your Metropolis grew, organically, from a tiny village and didn't just spring forth in a single day.
I carry that idea into the naming of things as well. The one vanilla map is basically several rivers with a few islands. So my town became "Angler's Rest" because it just felt like the sort of place that was originally a fishing community. I wound up with districts like "Four Bridges", "Fish Camp", and "The Narrows". And, yes, it does add a certain life to the game that generic "[tree name] Heights" doesn't offer.
Some great advice in that
And it gets better once you found the balance between being organic and being planned, as shown in this vid.
@@johnterpack3940 Good point. I also think that naming an area and thinking about what kind of area it is can really help. For example, I always name my first district, "old town," and this means I try to preserve its layout, add in statues and plazas and cultural elements like museums. My latest city has an area which is by the river and is a modern skyscraper/business district, so it has lots of wide roads, tall buildings and has a very "planned" feel. When you look at the whole city, it has a feel of different areas, each with its own character.
video about making a city more realistic
5:32 a cruise liner evaporates spontaneously
Happens all the time...in Bermuda
@@drillcream hahahahaha
You're being ignorant. That's a navy ship disguised as a cruise liner that has both an advanced teleportation device and cloak system.
3:16 in my experience, putting commercial buildings on main roads and busy intersections is a bad idea because of the traffic the buildings attract. If a lorry or a van stops in front of a shop, the other cars won't be able to pass it and this creates a big traffic jam on busy roads. Of course, it looks realistic, I just wanted to point that out.
It's about realism not in game mechanics broski and in most US based city's the commercial is on the bigger roads while Res is on the smaller ones and almost every highway ramp is surrounded by businesses. Plus you don't want citizens to bitch cause the noise from the heavy traffic
@@noncare9079 yes, I got that, which is why I mentioned at the end of the comment that it still looks good. If you only want to build realistically, sure, hi ahead, but I think having an ultra realistic city with huge traffic jams isn't worth it. I personally try to make the best compromise between realism and functionality.
If you have a good road network it’s not a problem. It’s only smart to put your businesses on busy roads since you’ll make more money like that
@@namenamename390 there's a mod that simulates work shifts and hours so the traffic jams only happen during peak hours when everyone gets off work say like 5 pm or so but roads are empty at like 2 am it's worth it imo
@@noncare9079 interesting. I might try it.
I just got into this game a couple of days ago and it’s amazing. I’m a architect (it’s my profession) and I’m learning and enjoying this series so much. Thanks.
5:23 it does look more realistic....cars parked on the street with a huge empty parking lot, because the cost of parking there is prohibitive.
Everytime I want to create an organic city I end up with insane traffic congestion.
But when I use optimized road layouts for the driver AI it works …… but looks horrible.
ikr
Keep in mind the size of the city and number of ways in and out of sections of the city. If you literally have one main road going through, it's going to back up. But if you have sections of city no bigger than 5-7 blocks with 3+ ways in/out, it won't really back up.
Use a lot of shortcuts for cyclists and pedestrians, that works. Even in real life ;)
Yeah, there's always a balance to be struck. A rule I follow is to leave some space between districts. This allows me to construct new roads or upgrade interchanges if the traffic increases. It doesn't necessarily mean I can improve traffic within a district, but it does help.
Git gud
4:39 - it seems that someone doesn't know how to park hahaha
At 6:40 theres a fight of wololo's on that cruiser
Best comment I've ever seen in my life. So underrated
@@FassoStyle
Is there any logical reason why you would fucking say that comment is underrated? Has anybody expressed any kind of dissatisfaction or criticism at all against it? Are you delusional? Are you reading replies that are nonexistant? Maybe it's psychological. Maybe it's your own post you're replying to, like a 12 year old kiddy liking his own facebook posts thinking his swelling autism is going unnoticed. Maybe your self esteem depends on you tricking yourself into thinking someone out there thinks your post is worth something. Or maybe you are just one who thinks he's smart, the one who thinks he's the only one to have gotten the joke, to have understood the post. Well, guess what, that post is under no definition underrated so why don't you do the world a favor and go check out what the bottom of your toilet smells like?
@@Andreas_Mann wow. *slow clap*
@@Andreas_Mann lmaaaaaaaaaoooooo
I understood that reference :D
I tend to focus on realistic road & rail networks. The first thing I do in a new map is bulldoze all the pre-made highways and just have two-lane roads running through the map in the beginning. Although, I have found that traffic volumes tend to vary, so this might not work the way you want all the time. But, I try to start with just rural two-lane roads and slowly grow the city from there.
When traffic becomes such where I need to build a freeway to take congestion away from the city, I start with a four-lane freeway (2 each direction), and only widen when absolutely needed. Also, when building a freeway (and railroads), avoid sharp turns and steep grades where ever possible!!! If you're trying to carve a freeway through the middle of the city, sharp curves can add some realism, but in reality, hard turns are very dangerous on a freeway. Smooth out your curves! If you need to build an overpass, make the approaches as smooth as you can! Don't do steep inclines. And you do NOT need exit ramps everywhere! In the city I'm working in now, my main freeway has 4 exits TOTAL serving the city. This will change as it grows, but having fewer interchanges at the main roads works much better than ramps breaking off every which way as I've seen from other maps. This helps separate thru-traffic with local traffic.
T R E E S
Trees in this game are almost like cheating, everything looks 2x more realistic with trees
I love trees, and use them a lot. They don't always get along with the Natural Disasters DLC though.
Its really hard for me to take myself out of the "grid" mindset.
I feel like the game kinda encourages it with the grid guidelines and snapping. Is you leave that off it may help you get out of that mindset. Just something i thought about that might hell
I got out of the grid mindset but accidentallyu got into the "Placing super curvy roads that mess up traffic to make it look more realistic" mindset so i guess i went too far
I've been playing city simulation games since I first played Sim City for the SNES when I was a kid, twenty years ago. Since then I played 3K Unlimited and my personal favorite, SC4. I admit with some slight degree of shame that I've become quite a "not-so-easy-to-impress" snob when it comes to seeing what other people have built. I was honestly not expecting this video to repeat pretty much everything that I've learned and followed in my time of playing Sim City and Skylines. I see a lot of people go all out in modifying the graphics rather than focus on the mistake of putting in excessive amounts of overly detailed content and this is one of the extremely rare times that I've seen someone build a city or town that looks anything remotely close to what I build and what I appreciate. I see so many cities just completely over the top dressed and nine out of 10 cities don't really impress me because it just looks 'so' realistic and so well designed that it actually looks fake and after a while a lot of city simulation players just pump excessive amounts of what I refer to as "Botox". They always look so overly modified that I end up not really appreciating anything. I get that a lot of people like that sort of thing, but to me after a while, it just gets boring looking at the same city made by a different person. I really enjoy cities with personality, color, uniqueness, and imperfections.
I like what you said about using the shape of the terrain, building round forests etc. Another thing I do is, if heavy traffic forces me to rebuild the roads in an area, I try to demolish as little as possible and fit the road in around the buildings. This creates an interesting challenge and mimics what is usually done in real life. It certainly led to some very creatively constructed roads and junctions, which makes the whole city feel more organic.
For the realistic skyline one, use (in order,): Houses, low density commercial, high density commercial, and then high density residential or offices.
Love this game, but it triggers my OCD like nothing else.
I never got my OCD triggered by Cites Skylines my ocd doesnt mind it much lol
None of you have OCD, stop using it so loosely.
@@josh-tp3sd Dammit, rumbled.
@@josh-tp3sd yeah idk why they pretend, they tried to diagnose me with it but I faked being like nah
I am obsessive about zoning every single cell that a road offers to be zoned. Not sure if that's OCD but it bothers me a lot. Need to stop. 🤣
7:58 On corners where buildings don't fit in. Thought it was going to be about the clipped building, not trees. Great video.
Absolutely love your work and how non-nonchalant you create such realistic cities. Learning a lot from you and wish I would have chosen that city planning career of yours :P ... Genius mate, if you are ever here in Wellington, NZ, give me a shout.
@Timothy Clark There's always the infinite money mode if you just wanna build creatively
My cities' transportation usually looks something like this: trains bring people in from the suburbs and outer towns. I use monorail as the "glue" connecting the densest office/commercial areas to the train network, airport, harbor, and high-density residential bus routes. The metro provides local connections to high-density commercial, office, and industrial areas; as well as nearby suburbs. Trams are used in the city as a replacement for overloaded bus lines for residential areas, and as a link to the city for smaller suburbs. Busses bring people from residential areas to other forms of transportation and I/C/O areas. Helicopters are an alternate to monorail, and blimps carry people to and from small suburbs.
A good hint is to angle buildings in areas of low density building, when people have the room on large blocks often they have the houses not pointing straight at the road
What is it about parked cars that supposedly adds to the city looking more alive? There is nothing as boring, bothersome and pointless as parked cars. As a soon-to-be city planner myself I enjoy building the cities as I would plan them in reality (if they'd let me): Cars banned practically everywhere. I can build mostly quite small streets and never had any serious traffic issues even in dense 100k+ cities - but lots of people walking to and from bus or metro stops. THAT to me is what makes the city look alive, not cars.
question, when you build a realistic looking city do you also consider the functionality of the city? like employment and the economic in general
I think it depends on what you build, not how, but ofc you have to obtain some amount of money for that to look realistic.
@Ng John You can use that too ofc.
Tree handling is definitely key when making a realistic and enjoyable city. Nice work folk!
makes great city with major highway road ending in big custom roundabout, do some details, plants trees, follows landscape and makes esthetically pleasing budding city
*earthquake hit your city, seek immediate shelter
RRREEEEEEEEEEEEE
I bought Cities: Skyline after randomly stumbling on one of your vids early last year. After trying to start a city, I quickly became overwhelmed and haven't touched it since. But I've still been watching your vids. I may try to start this up again
I really enjoy all of your videos. I've struggled with so many elements of the game and mods, but I'm gradually getting to grips with them. (I don't want to look at how many hours I've spent playing the game already). My issue now is that my laptop just can't handle too many mods and assets. Will look at upgrading.
What I do enjoy about yours, is how you make your cities look natural. I've tried starting a city with a bicycle wheel or spiders web road layout, then gradually developed it. I've found that approach to be much more of an interesting game play and also mirrors older cities that have progressed over time.
I think Cities Skylines is the best city builder game of all time so far (I've played a few since Simcity 2000), but it would be great, in the future, to have a simulator that starts almost at the beginning. Say for example European cities going back to the 1500's and you unlock ages and gradually develop them to the present day. It would take massive capacity, but I think it would be awesome.
Anyway, thanks for you vids, I subscribed.
Thank you. Alot of times i just lay down roads and not think too much bout it. You did really well explaining all this and im gonna subscribe 😁
Trees forever! Your videos are great. Your entire approach, personality & execution. It's highly informative in a chill way. I enjoy your channel a lot.
Hello Sam!
I really love your content and your cities and workings are amazing.
Please keep it up, I am learning from it too (theoretical) :D
So, I have some questions, maybe you could enlighten me a little:
Which mods are you using without complications?
Which mods can I use, as a fan of art-deco, soviet style, central european style and european style at all?
You have always a pretty sharp HD look on your city, also when zoomed out which I dont have, how you do that, mod?
I have currently hundreds of single objects from the steam-workshop loaded but rarely see them, any idea?
That I have hundreds of single objects loaded, might be the cause why I have to wait (with a good PC) about 20 minutes when loading a map?
Is there some more realistic landscape mod available which does not bring problems?
City Centers in this game, never looking like grown out over centuries (from medieval times for example). How to create city centers?
Could you share your installed mods?
Hope Sam is reading it and answering some of the questions or in optimal all of them.
Have a nice day guys
4:39 Black estate car in the parking lot couldn't park anywhere else but on another car eventho the parking lot is 80% free :D
Gyenge Sandor its a hearse with pre programmed instructions
It was just making some customers
*6 main tips mentioned in the video*
0:39 - Follow your landscape
1:42 - Building heights
2:51 - Building clusters
4:03 - Make it come alive
5:30 - Road hierarchy
7:00 - The smaller details
*Bonus tip*
8:47 - Don't plan too much
Thanks for the tip! I really want to try to make an old town sort of surrounded by new development. Like a Historic Downtown, but preserved while the world booms around it.
I love it bro a lot of guy don't think to do it realistically.! Plz take notes! Awesome job bro i watched a few guys do this i was not impress. You are the first one that i seen so far that have a good understand on how it supported to be laid out i really enjoy that keep them coming!
I could not agree more about trees. I love that they seem to have updated a lot of the building models with more foliage
5:25 Wait a sec. Are there any entrances to those parkings?
love the zoom out at the end. Your city looks so real!
Just found this video. Great content. Would love to see more beginner tutorials, the way you explain everything it makes it so easy to follow and understand. Keep up the good work. Subscribing today.
All I could hear when you were doing tip 5 was Bob Ross - "Happy little trees..."
Most Cities Skyline videos use the default cartoony colors. Changing to a more muted color scheme (or at least less pastels) helps make things look realistic.
Thanks for that tip. My cities look very boring. I do not use mods so it is still difficult.
*talking about his city being alive*
*three hearses drive by
The music at the end of this is gorge!!
Can you or have you made an video about spacing inbetween schools and police , fire department .. I have always built the way you do here but my biggest issue is when you do small areas everywhere you dont have area coverage of bluelight personel. How do you deal with that? Also good work!
I'm just getting into Cities Skylines. It would be really cool to see you start a few small towns in this realistic style, and then choose one or two and grow it into a small city or larger town and talk through the process.
Looks pretty good mate. I liked the way you explained, and why you did certain things. Made me learn a lot. Keep up the good work.
I'm literally downloading that map mod right now coz it's just so bloody beautiful
What’s the map
I agree about building height but it is difficult on console with no mods. It’s too bad this game didn’t have a mid level building mode, it basically goes from low density to high. Maybe in the future they will add mid level building for the residential and commercial zones. Enjoy your videos, thx
Layering the building sizes can be quite challenging without manually plopping everything or using some sort of hard mode. In vanilla it's far too easy for buildings to upgrade. A chunk of high density residential will be happy to snowball into level 3 or even 4 with few to no services. This stems from the unrealistic fact that building height is related to affluence and desirability rather than land price.
I just want to say, thank you so much. I have slowly improved on my skills in this game, but I'm still VERY far from your standpoint. This has been the best tutorial that I've watched (and I've watched many. Believe me.). Any advice on how to make realistic highway transitions to a avenue or road?
This guy really isn't that great, this city is so unrealistic, go check out Pres to see some actual realistic cities
How did you do 4:26??
Great video, and City, by the way!
Thanks for the tips.👍
Somewhat early on (maybe 1-2k pop) district and set aside some pretty and undeveloped areas as reserves or large parks, and when your city limits reach them add paths, tables, etc to turn it into a recreational space. Your city may even end up enclosing the reserve and it’ll turn into a big apple* style park
*the big apple was not preplanned, rather a large predominantly black neighbourhood was demolished to make way for it, leaving many of the previous inhabitants homeless and destitute so that tourists and ytes have somewhere to relax and take photos
I have a question how do you place specific office buildings or specific high density
braiden Rogan use the Rico mod and download Rico compatible building assets
No mods
Great vid! My (beginner) tip. Download the unlock 81 tiles mod. Then unlock everything at the beginning of the game and remove all the highway and train tracks from the area of the map where you will be building. I usually make temporary roads connecting the city to the outside world untill I figure out how i want to lay out my highway and rail systems. This will give you the freedom to design how you want and you dont have to commit to existing roads nor have to plan way ahead.
What path and building mods are you using, if any? Or are you using game defults?
What are your pc specs? (just wondering)
Sam i need to know wich mods do u use please my game crashed i have juts the basic game no expantions. thank you !!!
'Love the video, Mr Bur! I learned so much from you and playing Cities: Skyline has been more enjoyable.
How do you get the map and enviroment to look so realistic? Is it a mod? Or is it the type of map you use? The maps in vanilla are just green with a few trees
Love this! Never thought of making a road curve around trees. Can't wait to implement some of this tonight 😁 subbing
I just noticed that the city/road layout of Canberra is pretty epic. Do you think you have anything you would want to say about the design or the story of the design of the city?
Its pretty utopian i think
It is actually epic lol
I actually like the road layout of Gold Coast more by some weird reason but those circles and geometry in Canberra are just tremendously sexy
Thank you for letting me know about Gold Coast! It looks like a good Cities: Skylines game! 😄
Oh
No problem chief ^.^
Hi, I wonder what you think of Pyongyang with regards to street layout and public transportation? The only thing I am against the bike lanes are on the sidewalks and not in the street where they should be.
The most important point is the small details like trees, fences, benches, little pathways and so on.
The other stuff is sort of a given.
Is there anyway to et maps/islands that look like that on console without mods? I'm just assuming thats made from a mod and not from landscaping tools?
Still playing Cities Skylines 1 Sam. If it wasn't for you, I wouldn't be where I am now with what I have. Thanks Again, and I hope all is well with you and the family!
Thanks for sharing. What mod did you use to get the running paths, pedestrian bridge, etc.?
I am new to the game .... how do you choose what type of residential buildings are built? I just shade them GREEN for residential and they build whatever they want.
I downloaded a district style pack and it works well but as soon as the buildings upgrade it changes to the regular buildings how do I fix this without physically going to every building in my city and making it a historical building
Sam your neighborhood at 6:15 is very pleasant ......due to the complete lack of any vehicles driving. Is that a mod running? my neighborhoods r bumper to bumper or at least a service vehicle in the area and yours is quite calm and serene...whats the secret?
Brilliant tips man - thanks!
Maybe is a silly question but what are those small roads in Low density residential zones? I do not see them in the vanilla. Is it a specific mod?
I too would like to know.
how did you get those car parks? They look so good I want them
I love how cars drive on the other size, I will use it from now!
You get satisfaction from seeing empty parked cars? I'd rather have bus lanes with buses full of people, or cycle lanes. Cars can park on asset parkings separate from the roads too.
At 10:02, you show a very Chicago-style U-court plan apartment building - can you share this asset? I have to have it.
Your video is well done, but I have to ask what do you do about industrial areas? They produce a ton of traffic, pollution, noise, etc., but when you replace them with offices, the commercial area just begs for the industrial resources. If you shove it to far from the city the traffic bottlenecks between.
The things is, doing various industrial zones separated from each other
They shouldn't be big
Of course it needs a bit of planning in case things go wrong
@@aekgir4698 Ok. Would it be best to try to aim for generally opposite sides of the city too?
Thank you! That was very helpful.
Can you make a first person train ride video? (sry for my bad english xD)
Your English is correct. :D
yeah sam you should do that , and if u do that we can see your cities better
Thanks Sam....always pick up something from your vids.
Any tips for placing power lines? I struggle with making them fit in...
And it is possible to create own house or a custom buildings in city skylines?
You are great at explaining.
Great tips and greatly explained! When you talk about letting the city
grow, that brings me on a tough: Is it possible to make the city grow
naturally, you know from a single road with a few shops, the local diner
and maybe 6 houses and then add roads to when the city grows?
Like a city grows from nothing 30 years ago to the bigger city today?
From a European perspective cities that grow from nothing to a big city in 30 years do not exist (in Europe). You have cities and towns here that are 1000 years old... or at least a couple of hundred. That developed slowly over time from a single farm to what they are today. In that sense Cities Skylines will always have that unrealistic feel to a European.
Sam Bur does a really good job though in making the towns look like the have grown over time rather than they have been planned in modern times to look exactly like that plan.
On my previous city, I wanted to fill empty spaces with trees. Then I discovered CS has a feature I didn't know exist. It has tree limits 😑
there's an unlimited trees mod
Bro the limit is like 60k how the ferk you reach the limit was you building the Amazon something
@@noncare9079 How? By planting more than 60k trees.
@@RexPhalange that's what I thought the limit was
@@noncare9079 Apparently it's 250k. But it really isn't that much on 25 tiles especially if you have several 'forested' areas on the map. I don't like empty spaces, so I tried to fill any empty spaces with trees. Dense trees. Lol.
Sam what is the name of the song in the end of the video?
Is this game like SimCity only better?
Far better, and with incredible mod support on the PC version. I own on Switch and PC. Can't recommend it enough if you want a far improved version of Sim City
"cars parked in car parks" is a nice tongue twister
Do you mean that commercial buildings create LESS traffic? Because you have workers+customers+trucks.
I don’t see how they are better for areas with a lot of traffic.
Could someone explain it to me, please?
It's about realism not game mechanics. Irl commercial on heavy traffic roads means more people passing by means more business means more potential profits. Also residents aka residential don't like loud noise produced from the heavy traffic
@@noncare9079 I think if this guy was really about realism, he wouldn't be using the in-game zoning feature in the first place. All of the vanilla assets look terrible. Check out Pres for some good looking realistic cities
@@robynhills7982 maybe I was wrong. It is about mechanics or realism in traffic flow not looks. Pres two dollars twenty and bonbonb are my cities channels
In Brasília they put large avenues in desert lands and put politicians there, the city looks like noobs playing cities for the first time
This vid was posted on my birthday, perfect gift!
How do you make parking lots like that? (4:38)
i want to know too!!
Hey I have a noob question; I see no power lines for electricity, how does that work because for me I have to put power lines everywhere for energy to get to that place
Buildings carry power to the next building. You don’t really need power lines if you have power touching one house in that area.
Great video! Really helpful👍
How do u record the gameplay on screen while the cursor dont pop up when recording?
Your city building skills makes mine look like a corrupt African warlord.
Hello sam!
How do u build your medium density buildings ? Are u just turning on "ban high rise " or something?
Yes. Or you can download assets and mods from the Workshop and place buildings manually.
This helps me a lot so I'm going to get on the PlayStation 4 and do it
Tip number 7 replace all vanilla trees with workshop trees and use them boom. Your city now looks 100% better :D
Love your work, Sam. Keep it up.