“When I’m done, we’re subscribed to 528 items on the Steam Workshop”
The city begins to take shape as PHIL goes on a mod hunt
I’m used to cities that sort of fall together by accident
Opening the Steam Workshop, I spend a while playing with various district styles. My plan is to give each district a theme. I want vibrant, contrasting communities— pockets of cyberpunk techno-living next to medieval townships and fantasy wonderlands. But then I change my mind. After all, isn’t PC gaming one big melting pot—a confluence of community and individuality? I hope so, because using district mods is complicated, and keeps making the game crash. Instead, I just download pages and pages of buildings that will automatically construct on any residential, commercial, or industrial zones I lay. We’ve got neon skyscrapers, we’ve got classical architecture, we’ve even got a KFC. When I’m done, we’re subscribed to 528 items on the Steam Workshop. I open up Cities: Skylines and wait for a new map to load. It takes a long time.
I christen this land ‘XxxxxxXxx’ in the hope that something clever will come to me later. I hit pause to stop the clock, giving me time to lay some bones. Roads are built, zones are designated, power and water is sourced. I build fire stations, schools, and hospitals. I create suburbs. It’s efficient, but I get bored of forming grids. I’m British, which means I’m used to cities that fall together by accident. I start putting in curves and odd angles. 102 degrees! 84 degrees! I’m tearing the rulebook apart.
I know from experience that I’m terrible at creating intersections that link the state highway to the sprawl of the town proper. Inevitably, I end up with an unworkable mess that causes massive traffic problems years down the line. To this end, I download Timboh’s Marvelous Interchange Emporium, the most popular mod collection on Cities: Skylines’ Steam Workshop page. I look through Timboh’s creations, but they’re all massive—far too big to fit into the space I have remaining. Instead I botch something together, once again ensuring massive traffic problems. I name this junction Please Fix This, in the hope that the next mayor will try to do better.
I create a district for agriculture, named ‘Farming Simulator 2018’, and a district for nightlife and tourism, named ‘Just Dance 2018’. Then I set up a transport network consisting entirely of blimps. Ready, I unpause and wait for the magic to happen. It does—slowly. Six months in, and most of my land is empty. I panicbuild more roads and designate more residential land—I’d underestimated how much you need to support even a small amount of industry and commerce. I drop taxes to 1%, tanking profits, but boosting growth.
My tenure flies by, and I’m largely happy with what I’ve created. I need to put the city in profit before handing it over—it’s not a utopia if you’re in debt, even if you’ve got an unlimited cashflow. I crank up tax, and turn down funding on all the public services. Good luck with that, Andy. I email him the save file, only remembering at the last second that I forgot to name the place.