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Introduction to Park Areas

Greetings everyone! The latest Cities: Skylines expansion called Parklife was announced 18th of April, 2018 and we couldn't be more excited because this time we got to take our cims for a amazing stroll in the many parks.

But doesn't Cities: Skylines already have parks? Not like this. The main new paid feature is Park Areas, which not only increase your city's happiness, the area's Entertainment and Land value but also offers you a chance to collect ticket income, level up the Park Area and turn larger and more complex areas into buzzing parks filled with life and activities! You are finally able to utilize areas to be meaningful for your cities without zoning them. The parks themselves have a progression, so by creating successful tourist destinations you unlock new content to expand your parks with.

Creating your park area

Defining a Park Area happens with a brush tool much like painting a District. The new Park Area tool is located under the current Districts menu. The flexible brush gives you the freedom to decide the exact shape, size and location of your park.

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Including Ruins found in a map into Nature Reserve is easy with the brush tool.

Types of Parks

Parklife DLC comes with four types of new Park Areas, each with their fitting style, park props and buildings: City Park, Nature Reserve, Zoo and Amusement Park.

City park is your multi-purpose go-to park capable of being tiny filler park in the city blocks and huge, impressive park that generate happiness to citizens and attract tourists to the city. The new buildings include everything from regular Park Cafe, Park Restrooms and Park Info Booth to Park Piers and even Trampoline Park. Whee!

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Overlooking City Park.

How would you feel about building a Nature Reserve trail going through that steep mountain that has previously been unsuitable for building? Now it couldn't be easier! Just paint your Park Area, place down your Nature Reserve Main Gate located under Parks & Plazas and let your creativity roam wild. New buildings include a variety of tents, campfires, lookout towers and cabins that you can mix-and-match to your own preference!

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Voilá! A breath taking view over the city and entry fees in my pocket!

Here we have a large flat area which is perfect for creating a Zoo! Each Park type differs from one another not only visually but expense and size wise as well. The large, bold zoo buildings host several new animals for your visitors' entertainment. We've also added new paths fitting for each Park type so that connecting your new buildings is both easy and visually pleasing.

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The elephant Enclosure is unlocked at Zoo level 3.

Amusement Parks are all about FUN FUN FUN! Observe your cims take a ride in Bumper Cars and witness the daring Pendulum Ride. The bright colours spark up any downtown but make sure nobody's trying to sleep too close - the excited screams might be too much for the light sleepers! And just wait till the sun goes down. This one's a real beauty.

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The sun might go down but the Amusement Park has a party all night.

Park Area Infoview and new panels

To quickly get a general view of your parks we've added a new tab for Leisure Info View that highlights all the park areas in your city. From there you can easily access Park Areas Overview that provides you the general information of all your city's parks. Further clicking on your desired park name opens that park's own Park Info Panel with even more details and information of how your park is doing. Sounds simple, right?

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Welcome to Washington Oil Meadows!

Gates, what is the role of Gates?

In order to get all of the benefits your Park Area has to offer it requires a Main Gate. Placing a Main Gate defines the type of your park, allows level progression, visitor count, ticket income and handle all the necessary city service traffic through the Main Gate that is connected to your road network. Park Area is also able to function without a Main Gate but all buildings will then require regular road network access for the city services (you also lose potential ticket income, visitor count and levels.) That is why there are two different sized Main Gates to choose from in each park type so you can more easily find a suitable gate to both huge park areas and small corner parks. However, even without a Main Gate you do get that small boost to your happiness and land value! Time to go parking!

Other Park buildings built inside the Park Area only require a path access - which is why we've also added several new paths to choose from. Note that your non-park buildings connected to road can also exist and normally function inside a park area.

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A Park Area with a Main Gate will have a fireworks show once a week!

Park Area Attractiveness

Decorating your Park Area with props, buildings and their type and your park level contributes to your park's Attractiveness. A park with buildings and decorations in it is more attractive to citizens than just a park area with nothing to do. The more attractive your park is - the more visitors you get. Simple!

Benefits of having Park Areas in your city

Each Park Area type has a selection of buildings and props designed for them but mixing props and buildings freely is easy and gives you the final control of your park's style. Unlock new buildings through engaging gameplay and notice how the buildings and props inside a Park Area contribute to various Park Area stats and visitor count. The buildings and props can be placed anywhere on your City, but when inside Park Areas they affect the park stats and give boosts based on park level. Adjustable ticket price opens a whole new source of income for your city and new Park Policies along with many new buildings are added to make sure you can go for even more versatile City of your dreams!

Park Leveling
Leveling your park. How?

To get you, dear players, on the way of further beautifying your city's skylines the Park Area tool will unlock at Tiny Town Milestone. After the first Park Area is created, all Main Gates and Props are ready to use. Placing a Main Gate to a Park Area grants the park it's first level, after that you can really get cracking on your park. Each Park type with a Main Gate have a level maximum of five. Park Areas start from level one and progress through levels when the requirements are met.

To further improve Park Areas and make them even more awesome, player should aim for leveling up the park. This is achieved by increasing the entertainment value of your Park Area with the sweet new park buildings, props, rocks, trees and vegetation. And in my opinion the most important reason of having a park is getting visitors who get to enjoy the wonders of your beautiful park.

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Congratulations! Next level achieved!

So what does it take?

All parks need Visitors and Entertainment to level up. Each Park Building yields a certain amount of Entertainment so feel free to place any amount of park buildings in your park. However it is worth noting that placing more than two similar buildings in the same Park Area reduces their Attractiveness and Entertainment value they give for each additional building. This is why pairing the buildings with new props, trees, rocks and vegetation is both cost-efficient (no upkeep cost for those) and good for your Park's Entertainment value. Yes, that's right! Whenever placed inside a Park Area your props, rocks, trees and vegetation also add Entertainment inside your Park Area. Just keep in mind there's a limit for how much Entertainment you can get from these!

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Creating a playground using props, trees and rocks both looks nice and adds to my Park Area's total Entertainment value.

Park Area levels are shown in the map view and in the Park Area Overview Panel. To provide little challenge to your park management each level is a bit more harder, for each level the parks need more Visitors and more Entertainment.

Please note that “Unlock all” mod works also for parks, unlocking everything that would normally unlock through park levels.

Beneficially effective leveling

Higher level parks provide sweet bonuses to the buildings that are inside the Park Area and match the Park Area's type. e.g. Amusement Park provides the bonus to all amusement park buildings, like Rollercoaster, Ferris Wheel and the House of Horrors! The Park Area level also determines the entertainment effect's range around the park, and increases the general attractiveness. More Park buildings unlock as the Park Areas level up so you are constantly motivated to hone your park to perfection. Needles to say that the benefits of leveling up parks are HUUUUGE! Everything from new buildings to higher ticket income, all for the good of your Cims (and City).

So the only question that remains is: What's your dream park like?

Cheers,
Cities: Skylines development team!
 
Looks good, but I do have to ask, what if I want, say a basketball court, in some empty space in the middle of a block? Is that possible? Or could I just use the plops to put down a playground or something?
 
Thank you for this informative overview, really looking forward to the release! This is the feature I've been waiting for for quite some time :)

Two questions:

- What happens to the existing parks and plazas? Will they still be a thing? Can one completely replace them with City Parks or are they meant to be complementary features?
- Does placing a gate mean that the park can't be entered for free? :D
 
Looks good, but I do have to ask, what if I want, say a basketball court, in some empty space in the middle of a block? Is that possible? Or could I just use the plops to put down a playground or something?

The basketball court will need a road connection.

- What happens to the existing parks and plazas? Will they still be a thing? Can one completely replace them with City Parks or are they meant to be complementary features?
- Does placing a gate mean that the park can't be entered for free? :D

Existing parks and plazas continue to work as they have before so they will still be a thing. They need a road connection though.

With Park Gates you are able to adjust the pricing so you can have the park free of charge.
 
This does beg the question. Just what is the entertainment value of a rock, and does it beat the value of a tree? I do imagine cKnoor and Sandra would like to know, just to settle the rock vs. tree debate once and for all. :p


So, the Main Gates are how road access is primarily handled. How does the Park District work without a Gate (if we don't add buildings that require road access)?

To name a specific example - What happens if I have, say, a 12 x 12 square with roads on the side, leaving a 4 x 4 'open', unzoned area in the middle and paint a Park District there without adding a gate - would it still spawn a park, and would it still be functional? If no, would it be functional if it got a single path connection to the nearest road?

This is the one thing I want to know, since this sort of tiny, non-roadside pocket is by far the most common occurrence of 'wasted space' in a grid layout city.
 
To name a specific example - What happens if I have, say, a 12 x 12 square with roads on the side, leaving a 4 x 4 'open', unzoned area in the middle and paint a Park District there without adding a gate - would it still spawn a park, and would it still be functional? If no, would it be functional if it got a single path connection to the nearest road?

The parks don't spawn like zones, but you'll actually place the assets yourself like Service Buildings.
 
I got an orgasm reading this but I also have a question.
These park areas. Are they independent from districts? I mean if I have a huge district with different type of buildings like homes and offices and stuff but it has a place that I want to make into a park, what can I do? Can I paint this park zone inside the district or it creates its own district?
Because it would be nice if the park areas would be independent from districts. Multi-level way. That would make me a very happy man. Keep up the good work!
 
I got an orgasm reading this but I also have a question.
These park areas. Are they independent from districts? I mean if I have a huge district with different type of buildings like homes and offices and stuff but it has a place that I want to make into a park, what can I do? Can I paint this park zone inside the district or it creates its own district?
Because it would be nice if the park areas would be independent from districts. Multi-level way. That would make me a very happy man. Keep up the good work!

Park districts are independent from normal districts so you can have them on top of each other.
 
So, the Main Gates are how road access is primarily handled. How does the Park District work without a Gate (if we don't add buildings that require road access)?
.

Park Area is also able to function without a Main Gate but all buildings will then require regular road network access for the city services (you also lose potential ticket income, visitor count and levels.)
 
Looks great but I'm concerned about the fact that you can't have a public park of this type (where tickets are not required) without a road connections to the buildings. There must be a far more public parks than the city-owned ones that requires visitors to buy a ticket to visit them in the real world. I mean, I can visit the city park in my area without a need to buy tickets and yet some of the buildings are off a bit from the road that requires you to use a trail to reach them. I've also visited some national parks where buildings are a bit off the road as well.

Unless the park trails/paths counts as a road in this game?
 
Looks great but I'm concerned about the fact that you can't have a public park of this type (where tickets are not required) without a road connections to the buildings. There must be a far more public parks than the city-owned ones that requires visitors to buy a ticket to visit them in the real world. I mean, I can visit the city park in my area without a need to buy tickets and yet some of the buildings are off a bit from the road that requires you to use a trail to reach them. I've also visited some national parks where buildings are a bit off the road as well.

Unless the park trails/paths counts as a road in this game?

The Park Area gates are needed to handle the City Services. The building needs either road connection or a park gate to have the City Services functioning. You are able to set the park ticket price to zero it to function as a free park for the visitors :)
 
Like I said before, I think this is definitely going to be the best expansion to date. I can't wait!

I have a couple of questions:
Amusement Parks - What is the trade-off for picking this type of park over the others? Besides causing a lot of noise pollution, does it also provide more entertainment and / or also cover a wider area (e.g. put it far away from the city, and still get a decent amount of coverage) than the other parks?
Walls / Fences - I noticed in some of the screenshots here and on the store that a line of walls / fences can be placed down (e.g. castle wall). How many types of walls / fences will there be? Also, besides maybe affecting the entertainment value when placing within a park, will they have any other impact on gameplay (e.g. walls reducing noise pollution)?
 
i like the giant chess boards. this DLC is gonna be so cool.

looking forward to some of the Skyline's youtubers creations to help inspire my own. as well as the creative assets/mods....