Urban planning / THE FIELD NOTES
Cities: Skylines II
Build somewhere worth living. Then work out why everyone is stuck in traffic.
The basics
Find your footing. Three short notes to get you into the game.
Build the foundations first
Roads and infrastructure make daily life possible. Start with a small settlement whose connections you can understand before attempting a complete metropolis.
Try it next sessionTrace how your first neighborhood connects to the wider city.
A city is also an economy
Residents, industry, trade, and public spending are connected. A city needs a working budget as well as a pleasing shape, so keep both views in mind.
Try it next sessionIdentify one recurring expense and the service it supports.
Watch the lives inside the city
Citizens have individual life paths and needs. The simulation changes over time, so use what residents experience to understand whether your decisions are working.
Try it next sessionFollow a citizen and look for a need you could address.
Connect the dots
Intermediate starting points: questions to explore once the main systems feel familiar.
Plan growth around supporting services
Expanding a district creates demands elsewhere in the city. Before growing outward or upward, consider the infrastructure and services needed to make that growth work.
Try it next sessionList what one new neighborhood would ask of your existing city.
Investigate before rebuilding
Connected economic and transport systems can produce problems far from their cause. Try observing one trouble spot over time before making several changes at once.
Try it next sessionWrite a hypothesis for one problem, then change a single thing.
Account for the map and the seasons
The map sets your climate, and weather and pollution are part of the simulation. Include environmental conditions in your city plan rather than treating the terrain as decoration.
Try it next sessionChoose one planning decision shaped by your map’s conditions.
The deep end
PLANNED / NOT YET WRITTENThis is our desk. Joshua and I will fill it with tested strategies, campaign notes, and the mistakes worth learning from.
Traffic diagnosis and transport experiments
This guide is on our list. We’ll add the approach, an example from a real campaign, and where it falls apart.
Before it joins the notebookRecord the game version, expansions and mods, starting conditions, and what we actually tested. No strategy has been published here yet.
Budget recovery case studies
This guide is on our list. We’ll add the approach, an example from a real campaign, and where it falls apart.
Before it joins the notebookRecord the game version, expansions and mods, starting conditions, and what we actually tested. No strategy has been published here yet.
District design and growth planning
This guide is on our list. We’ll add the approach, an example from a real campaign, and where it falls apart.
Before it joins the notebookRecord the game version, expansions and mods, starting conditions, and what we actually tested. No strategy has been published here yet.
The reading behind these notes
These starter notes draw on the official game descriptions below. The exercises and intermediate connections are suggested ways to learn, not tested optimization guides.
Official Paradox game overview ↗ · Publisher’s Steam description ↗Sources reviewed 16 September 2026. Broad concepts only; no patch-specific validation. Features and interfaces may vary with updates, expansions, mods, and platform.