14 DAY TRIAL // In my first Gamer Diary about Cities: Skylines, I talked about the importance the title gives to the transport system when compared to the other building blocks of a metropolis and the fact that this focus means that it's relatively easy to create a big city but hard to make it feel complete.
I have created several settlements that have steadily and relatively quickly grown to over 20,000 people, and by buying new plots and building more areas horizontally, I could have easily increased that number.
But each time I thought about putting together a new neighborhood built around the same core principles, I was held back by one simple fact: my already existing city was nowhere near optimized, with plenty of areas that could be improved.
As in other games in the genre, Cities: Skylines makes each building able to increase in level as the player delivers more services and luxuries.
I tend to have about one third of a city reaching its maximum potential, about the same evolving to level 3 or 4, and one third that tends to remain a slum in the long term.
Almost all problems can be solved with cash (and money is relatively easy to generate in Cities: Skylines), but it's much more satisfying to try to improve a city tweaking small elements rather than re-creating everything from the ground up.
Location, location, location
There's no clear attribution for the "Location, location, location" mantra, but Cities: Skylines players will quickly understand how true it is.
I initially plopped down big hospitals and universities mostly based on personal preference, but I quickly found that rather than investing in more buildings to improve a city, it would be a better idea to find the best place for the ones I already had.
Cities: Skylines has a lot of overlays that deliver information about the inner workings of a metropolis and it's a good idea to take a look at them and then explore the urban layout to see where a hospital might offer access to a larger number of people or which area could do with some more parks.
Colossal Order knows that city builder fans tend to be perfectionists and has all the tools required for those who want to agonize for half an hour about the best placement for a bus stop.
