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Introduction to Tours
We're back, this time to give you guys a peek to another new paid feature: Tours.

Let's start our tour with a quick introduction to the two most important features under this topic: Walking Tours and Sightseeing Bus Tours which are designed to give you a better control over how tourists and residents move around your City. These features help you guide the cims inside Park Areas and through the city visiting its various interesting locations. In addition to Walking Tour acting as a preset path for the pedestrians, it will also attract more tourists to different parts of the city and increase the Entertainment Radius of the buildings along the route. Sightseeing Bus Tours on the other hand give you a new source of income in the form of tickets. Nice!

New panels

The new Tours Info View unlocks at Milestone 4 Boom Town and provides detailed information about the Walking Tour and Sightseeing Bus routes and the effect of various attractions like Unique Buildings, Parks, Plazas and terrain features around the city. To get more detailed information about the lines you can check Public Transport Lines Overview which also now provides the information about the Walking Tours and Sightseeing Bus tours in separate tabs. We also shouldn't forget the Line Details where you can for example adjust the ticket price for individual Sightseeing Bus tours, see your Tour's Appeal value and number of stops.

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A Walking Tour to each Park Area (and a few extra!)

Appeal

The Appeal value depends on the attraction value of all the Unique Buildings and Landmarks along the route, the Entertainment value of parks and plazas and the length of the route. The player can see a heat map of the places and terrain affecting the Appeal value while drawing the line to help create as appealing Tour line as possible. The higher the Appeal value, the more likely the tourists and citizens will choose the tour in question over other attractions. It is important to remember that certain terrain features like shore lines and props like trees and ruins add to the Appeal value!

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Looks like this coastline is ideal for a Walking Tour! Just needs some buildings!

Gameplay tips

Use Tours to help your cims reach distant and isolated locations with sightseeing bus tours and draw in even more visitors for your Park Areas to gain levels. You can guide your tourists to take a walk around the newly built shopping street and encourage them to choose the new scenic shoreline route back to the airport.

Walking Tour Tool

Walking Tour Tool is located in the Transport menu under the new Tours tab and it can be used both inside park areas and outside, allowing walks to be created anywhere where pedestrians can go. Setting up a Walking Tour is easy: just select the Walking Tour Tool and place your first Point of Interest as the starting point for the Tour. Extend the Walking Tour by adding more Points of Interest (traffic direction is not relevant.) Complete the Tour by selecting again the starting point.

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Done! A Point of Interest is marked as small signs along the path.

If the Walking Tour is placed inside a Park Area the visitors can use this path to move around the Park when they enter. Note that pedestrians can start and drop the walk from any waypoint along the line and too long lines will have reduced effects as the tourists and citizens prefer Walking tours that can be completed within a reasonable timeframe (makes sense!) In all Walking Tours can give your City and Parks just that extra little boost just when you need it.

Sightseeing Bus Tour Tool

The Sightseeing Buses are a new transport feature that acts as a new form of attraction for the tourists – and for an occasional citizen too. With Sightseeing Bus Tour Tool the player can create Sightseeing Bus Tour lines which will have Double Decker buses travelling along the lines. For increased convenience, the Sightseeing Bus Tour Tool is located in the same menu as Walking Tour Tool! Also creating a Sightseeing Bus Tour line is as simple as baking a muffin! It is just like creating a regular bus line. First player needs to construct a Sightseeing Bus Depot, after that it is just like creating a bus line. Select the Sightseeing Bus Tour Tool, set the first stop on the side of the road and extend the line by adding more stops. To finish the line just select again the starting point of the line. The Sightseeing Buses act as an extra source of income and as with the Walking Tours they also boosts the effectiveness of the parks, plazas and Unique Buildings along the route! To gain the best results it is a good idea to create the Sightseeing Bus Tour line through high appeal areas.

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This tour is surely a hit!

The Cherry on top of the City

As a extra bonus way to increase tourism and create the ultimate way of sightseeing, player can also build Hot Air Balloon Tours! Hot Air Balloon field is located in the same place as the other tour tools.

Unlike other new Tour tool player doesn't actually create their own lines but instead the balloons will automatically wander around your city. And just like with Walking Tour and Sightseeing Tour tool, placing the Hot Air Balloon to an area with high appeal gives the best results.

This will truly take your Cims to new heights!
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Perfect spot to watch the sunset

Cheers,

Cities: Skylines dev team!
 
Hot air balloon tours is an unexpected surprise. :)

Too bad there is not a heliport with helicopter tours as well. :(
 
Finally we will be able to fill those empty spaces between our streets and make use of the vast stretches of land that would otherwise be hard to zone! Excellent!
 
I think this is going to add more content than most previous expansions. Much of the previous expansions was just adding different options to things we were already doing. Look at the two most recent that I think were the best thus far.

Green we built recycling instead of incinerators and clicked a few extra options on our districts. All things I was already doing. The extra options were nice but it didn't extend my time on a city as much.

Mass Transit added more options for including mass transit into my city, but again, that was something I was already doing and just adding options. I got more out of the free addition of being able to micro how many vehicles are on each transit line (which is a glorious addition, cannot praise it enough).

Parklife is adding more things for me to do. Designing the parks is huge. Allocating space and placing the components is going to add a lot of time to each city. On top of that the tours add another layer of management to play with.
 
I think this is going to add more content than most previous expansions. Much of the previous expansions was just adding different options to things we were already doing. Look at the two most recent that I think were the best thus far.

Green we built recycling instead of incinerators and clicked a few extra options on our districts. All things I was already doing. The extra options were nice but it didn't extend my time on a city as much.

Mass Transit added more options for including mass transit into my city, but again, that was something I was already doing and just adding options. I got more out of the free addition of being able to micro how many vehicles are on each transit line (which is a glorious addition, cannot praise it enough).

Parklife is adding more things for me to do. Designing the parks is huge. Allocating space and placing the components is going to add a lot of time to each city. On top of that the tours add another layer of management to play with.

Exactly, couldn't have said it better myself.
 
I think this is going to add more content than most previous expansions. Much of the previous expansions was just adding different options to things we were already doing. Look at the two most recent that I think were the best thus far.

Green we built recycling instead of incinerators and clicked a few extra options on our districts. All things I was already doing. The extra options were nice but it didn't extend my time on a city as much.

Mass Transit added more options for including mass transit into my city, but again, that was something I was already doing and just adding options. I got more out of the free addition of being able to micro how many vehicles are on each transit line (which is a glorious addition, cannot praise it enough).

Parklife is adding more things for me to do. Designing the parks is huge. Allocating space and placing the components is going to add a lot of time to each city. On top of that the tours add another layer of management to play with.

While overall, I agree with your assessment, building parks and things is also, as you say, "something I am already doing".

However, I think that it will make some things easier, give us some nice new assets, let us place props without mods, and even have them count for something. Trees do something. It will definitely be a huge improvement. I even mentioned tour buses awhile back. (As a DLC synergy, mind you.)

I build big parks like this (most recent):
20180422180648_1.jpg 20180422180725_1.jpg 20180422180755_1.jpg 20180422180822_1.jpg

And make smaller parks and fill in stuff like this:
z_20171207233320_1.jpg

And this (can't see from here, but was putting in picnic tables and all kinds of props all over, it was awhile ago):
z_20170203174811_1.jpg

Which ever since "Natural Disasters", burns down like this:
z_20170204131505_1.jpg

I feel like this DLC will help me do much more, and, mostly, easier.

I'll be away at work for a few weeks when it comes out, with not very good internet, so it remains to be seen if I will be able to download it or not when it comes out.
 
PS I also bulldoze every tree off the map and place every tree that you see, so... please make a tree eraser and tree brush. (I really need to go back to using at least a few mods!)

I suspect with being able to plop props, I will be back to having way too many assets again as well. :)
 
Promethian; I think this is even bigger than that. It's adding a whole 'nother layer to the game that CO can build off of to bring some hella new content. Not to mention what modern will do with this! I'm pretty pumped.
 
2 things:
  1. Will walking tours have clumps of tourists following a tour guide a la real life
  2. Are the double decker buses open topped with tourist animations to take photos etc. a la real life
Also, are you adding new tourist models?
 
All looks good and adds another layer of management to the game. The glaring omissions for me are why no helicopter tours like in NYC or adding some life to the beaches- one of THE biggest tourist destination spots? Seeing those tourists flocking to the beach would look awesome. Also the number of tourists out and about could be linked to the weather/temperature system. When it rains watch those tourists disappear. Also any park life element added to Snowfall maps? Number of occupied hotel rooms/generated income could be factored in to create more depth. It would be nice to see a bit of linking up between these various elements of the game