Cities Skylines 2 tips and tricks – master the art of city planning in ten steps

Looking for tips and tricks for Cities Skylines 2? Returning to a sprawling city builder with plenty of new features can be intimidating for both newcomers and veterans of the series.

Our Cities Skylines 2 vs Cities Skylines comparison covers all the neat features in the sequel. And here are the Cities Skylines 2 system requirements to consider before buying the game.

Tips to run a bustling city in Cities Skylines 2

With both quality-of-life improvements and reworks of existing mechanics, there’s a lot to learn and master in Cities Skylines 2. Your progression system no longer relies on population and instead considers how you develop your city. Here are some tips to ease city development in Cities Skylines 2.

It’s okay to pause and restructure your city

Outside of Cities Skylines 2 natural disasters like hailstorms, most issues don’t suddenly cause massive harm to your city. But if you want to optimize your rate of growth, it’s worth pausing and clearing things up. Don’t hesitate to bulldoze older buildings and services to make way for new buildings. And while you can speed up the game to spot changes more quickly, we recommend a slower pace to resolve issues as they arrive.

Don’t overzone or expand too quickly away from city services

Newcomers tend to overcommit to zones, making entire districts filled with residential or commercial buildings. This isn’t the right way to go about things. For starters, commercial stores need residents nearby for a customer base. The only zone that should be separate from everything else is your industrial sector. Expanding too quickly will force you to spend more funds on improving services like fire departments and police stations. Education and healthcare can gnaw away at your expenses if you aren’t careful.

Pick the right tiles to unlock based on resources

Early on in the game, you’ll learn how to buy more land in Cities Skylines 2. While these are inexpensive purchases, focus on tiles that grant you resources your city lacks. This will let you minimize imports and even start exporting excess resources for cash. Extracting and utilizing these resources will be cheaper than importing goods. Note that you can also buy tiles that are not connected to your purchased tiles.

Know how to keep your city financially healthy

Knowing how to make money fast in Cities Skylines 2 can mean the difference between a bustling metropolis and debt. Getting out of debt in Cities Skylines 2 primarily depends on making more revenue. Instead of raising taxes and cutting funding across sectors in a pinch, try exporting water in Cities Skylines 2. Or try other exports like oil and electricity.

Taxes and service upkeep funding are double-edged swords

These are the easiest ways to earn money in Cities Skylines 2. But it comes at the cost of your citizens’ happiness. But lowering service upkeep isn’t a bad idea at the start of the game. If your services aren’t at max capacity, reducing their funding won’t slow down your city too much. And as your city scales up, you can release some more funds into these sectors.

Upgrade service buildings before adding new ones

While the original Cities Skylines made it necessary to place dozens of service buildings across districts, the sequel tries to fix that. If your population grows rapidly, you can upgrade existing buildings first to expand their reach. For instance, you can add more fire engines to a fire house to cover fires more quickly. Do this as much as possible as new buildings are far more expensive. Education buildings in particular can go upwards of a million credits.

Keep track of Outside Connections for trade exports and tourism

There’s more to Outside Connections than just knowing how to connect power lines in Cities Skylines 2. These connections can be used to export electricity, water, and other goods. Connecting roads also allows tourism, with visitors showing up to the attractions in your city. Unfortunately, using Outside Connections means purchasing tiles at the end of the map. Some connections like flight routes can be accessed just by building the necessary buildings like an airport.

Ensure that pollution is kept in check

Knowing how to fix pollution in Cities Skylines 2 is of paramount importance. Note that this covers multiple forms of pollution like ground, water, noise, and air pollution. Fixing air pollution in Cities Skylines 2 won’t resolve the other problems. High levels of pollution will push newcomers away from your cities. It will also place a burden on your healthcare systems.

Public transportation and better roads make your city a better place

Roads are the lifelines of your city. Changing road direction in Cities Skylines 2 will help ease congestion in busy sectors. Knowing how to raise and upgrade roads in Cities Skylines 2 will help you divert traffic and speed up response times of emergency services. These pair well with the implementation of public transport. A bus depot paired with bus stops scattered across the city will help your citizens travel with ease. Access to commercial areas and other sectors will make them more desirable, boosting your economy. Taxis are a good option to consider too. As for trams, I’d advise waiting for your city to expand enough to take advantage of it.

Listen to your people directly or on Chirper 

Chirper, the in-game social media platform, isn’t always right. But it’s better than the radio. For some reason, the radio station has a habit of warning people about blackouts that never arrive. And if you’re wondering why a certain building isn’t leveling up or why it has an icon hovering over it, clicking usually helps. This will give you more context on what needs to be done. Chirper makes this even easier by amplifying the voices of your citizens. Both praise and criticism will reach you this way. You can even like posts on it, which is pretty sweet.

That covers our tips for Cities Skylines 2. Read up on how to fix low density residential demand in Cities Skylines 2 as it’s one of the first problems you’ll have to tidy up. And check if Cities Skylines 2 is on Game Pass before venturing forth.