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Hello there, city-builders! Cities: Skylines - Campus, the latest expansion to the game, was announced on the 9th of May and now it's time to take a closer look into what features it includes. The previous Dev Diary worked as a quick introduction to the expansion. Check it out, if you haven't already, and you'll get a nice overview of what it's all about!

So, Campus Areas. What's it all about? Well, it's about education! A great city needs an equally great and awesome-looking campus to match. The Campus Areas use the same area creating mechanics as Parklife and Industries. You can paint Campus Areas using the Campus Area tool and assign a campus type of your choosing by placing campus buildings inside the area, from campus Administration Buildings to dormitories, study halls, club houses and unique faculties. There are three types of campuses: Trade School, Liberal Arts College and University, each with their own, distinct visual style and unique faculties which provide the city with various bonuses.

Creating a Campus Area
The new Campus buildings can be found in expanded Education menu where each campus type (as well as varsity sports and museums) has its own sub-menu. Each campus type has a collection of buildings that can be divided into 4 categories: the Administration Building which defines the campus type, Education buildings, Supplementary buildings and Unique Faculties. Education buildings mainly increase the campus area's student capacity. Some Supplementary buildings also increase student capacity but also affect land value and add to the campus attractiveness, tourism attractiveness and Academic Works created on campus. Finally, the Unique Faculties give specific city-wide bonuses while also increasing the campus' student capacity.

Campus building do not spawn but are placed next to a road or campus path inside the campus area. The ability to place campus buildings alongside paths gives you that extra freedom to create nice-looking campuses where green areas and the various buildings connect seamlessly. The campus Administration Building works as a hub for all city services and therefore is the only building that has to be placed next to a road in order for the city services to be able to reach it.

It all starts with the Campus Area tool when you are creating a campus area. In the same tried and true way of painting districts, parks and industry areas, you paint a campus area in the shape of your choosing. The Campus Area tool can be found in the Districts and Areas menu. The newly created campus area doesn't have a type, it is just a generic "Campus Area". To change this and make the area functional, you need to place an Administration Building. Each campus type has its own Administration Building which defines the campus area type. Once the Administration Building is placed, the campus area has a type and it starts to function as a university level education institution.

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Painting a campus area.

From here on, you can start placing the campus type-specific buildings to increase the campus' student capacity and attractiveness as well as using the campus policies to further customize how your campus functions and creating Academic Works. As your campus meets the requirements to level up in reputation, you unlock more different campus buildings.

Campus Types
There are three campus types: Trade School, Liberal Arts College and University. The basic functionality for all three is the same; they all educated young adults into highly educated citizens. However, each campus type comes with its own Unique Faculties that provide the city with various city-wide bonuses. Each campus type also creates its own Academic Works and unlocks its own unique museum where the Academic Works created on the campus can be put on display.

Trade School is all about the practical studies such as information technology, engineering, hospitality and artisanry. When you need something actual done, these are the folks to do the job. If clothing, fashion, video games and digital entertainment in general as well as new and exciting services and technologies are your thing, Trade School is the way to go. The students are focused on improving the quality of life, bringing into existence exciting new projects such as new ways to build buildings (it's all about 3D printing!) and providing tasty take-away food.

dev_diary_1_trade_school.png

Trade School campus. The glass-domed administration building calls back to the ancient Pantheon-esque design while most of the other buildings represent modernist architecture from the mid-20th century.

Liberal Arts College is where the artist flourishes. The campus focuses on creative endeavors such as film making, literature and music with pedagogy, economics and environmental studies mixed in with good measure. Will the next great writer or film maker come from your college? Is the next platinum record awarded to an album composed within these walls? But Liberal Arts College is not only about creativity and culture. With its faculties you can affect many aspects of your city, from taxation to recycling.

dev_diary_1_liberal-arts.png

Liberal Arts College campus. It takes inspiration from the Classical Revival style mixed with hints of modern minimalist as well as the American Renaissance and even Romanesque Revival.

University is the home of scientific research and discovery. University students create and apply knowledge by thinking and doing, preparing for leadership through rigorous class work with the spirit of exploration, in a rapidly changing world. The staff is led by professors who are leaders in their fields crafting courses that suit the students' unique needs. Perhaps your university will discover the next scientific theory to rival the Theory of General Relativity. Or, perhaps the students come up with a new artificial intelligence able to calculate the right path more efficiently.

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University campus. Its architectural style has been influenced by the French neoclassicism with Gothic and Renaissance elements for good measure.

Campus Area Info View
A new Campus Area infoview is included in the Education infoview panel. From there you can easily check the current status of eligible university students in your city as well as the capacity of your campus areas.

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Campus area infoview.

Campus Budget
Campus budget can be accessed from the Campus Info panel by clicking the campus name. Here you can inspect the expenses from various campus features as well as see if your campus is making any profit. Campus budget is comprised of the upkeep of the campus buildings, campus policies, academic staff wages and varsity sports expenses. Included in the budget is also the possible reward money from varsity sports trophies and the collected tuition fee from students unless you have switched on the policy "Universal Education" which makes the campus education free for all students and doesn't yield any tuition fees. As your campus levels up in reputation, you'll gain more tuition fee per student and if you plan your campus carefully, you can even turn your campus into a for-profit institution.

Every campus comes with a base amount of academic staff members. The academic staff works as the backbone for teaching the students and creating Academic Works. You can hire more academic staff to increase the chances of creating Academic Works at the end of the academic year. Hiring staff is quite expensive and the bonus from the hired staff is not instantaneous but increases over time until it reaches its maximum effect. So, keep that in mind when hiring and/or firing staff!

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Campus budget can be inspected in the Campus Info panel. Hovering over the "i" icon will reveal a more detailed breakdown of the expenses. Varsity Sports has its own, more detailed breakdown in its own tab.

Campus Areas and Your City
Campus areas and universities share the same basic mechanic and stats regarding eligible students and student capacity because they both educate young adults into highly educated citizens. But the major difference is that the campus areas are fully expandable and customizable to your liking and give various bonuses to your city when they reach their full potential.

Campuses are a direct continuation of the base game education system and can work in conjunction with the existing school types and levels. Campuses are designed to be on the same education level as the base game university and therefore they can be used to completely replace the university if you so choose. Instead of placing multiple single university buildings in your city, you can now expand one campus with enough student capacity to cover all your high education needs.

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Campus areas can become quite large so it's important to make sure you don't run out of space when you start expanding the campus!

That's all for now! Do you already have plans for a new campus in one of your cities? Which campus type is your current favorite? Are you planning on making one continuous campus area where everything is found close to each other? Maybe you are going for a more sprawling type where the different campus buildings, dormitories and faculties are nestled within the residential and commercial areas? Tell us about your plans in the comments below!

Until next time, city-builders!

Cities: Skylines developer team
 
I would preferred to have the visual styles and faculties as independent from any predetermined "campus type", and let players customize their own university.

For example what if I want to focus my university on "scientific research and discovery" of natural sciences like Geology and Biology, but also include evironmental studies and agronomy, all with the mid 20th century style for my campus?

I guess we must wait to see all the "unique faculties".

Or think back to Parklife, where your Amusement Park could also have a zoo in the same area.

I think this will operate on the same principle, as long as there is a campus area, you can put in whatever building you please
 
Or think back to Parklife, where your Amusement Park could also have a zoo in the same area.

I think this will operate on the same principle, as long as there is a campus area, you can put in whatever building you please

Just that if unique faculties have determined styles I dont want to have buidilngs that dont match with the others from the campus and/or my city (without reasons).

In real life most of campus buildings for offices, classrooms, auditoriums, stores and laboratories can harbor many different disciplines without be associated by their architecture style from outside. Devs can create buildings for all faculties in every style, in most of the cases without major effort.

All they need to add to recognize the specialization of most of the "generic buildings" are small flavor visual hints on the outside. For example:
- DNA helix statue for Genetic Engineering institute (if there is any on the DLC).
- Some Socrates bust for Philosophy (same as above).
- A big engine at the lateral garage of the Mechanical Enginnering laboratory (again).

After all each style have common elements that are used in many of the buildings of the set, so the modelers save time modeling more building for those styles.
 
Just that if unique faculties have determined styles I dont want to have buidilngs that dont match with the others from the campus and/or my city (without reasons).

In real life most of campus buildings for offices, classrooms, auditoriums, stores and laboratories can harbor many different disciplines without be associated by their architecture style from outside. Devs can create buildings for all faculties in every style, in most of the cases without major effort.

All they need to add to recognize the specialization of most of the "generic buildings" are small flavor visual hints on the outside. For example:
- DNA helix statue for Genetic Engineering institute (if there is any on the DLC).
- Some Socrates bust for Philosophy (same as above).
- A big engine at the lateral garage of the Mechanical Enginnering laboratory (again).

Think of it as being built over time and the different styles are a reflection of that. ;)
 
Think of it as being built over time and the different styles are a reflection of that. ;)
This is kind of ironic considering the obvious lack of real "old styles" for zone and administrative buildings.:(

In this game if you want to recreate some old downtown or traditional rural towns, you must rely on modders. I would love official building styles to represent old architectures from different eras and places around the world.

I like that devs did this in a lesser degree with campus, but the style must be an option independent of the disciplines you want to develop on that building. Or is that all A.I. research is done in french neoclassicism style buildings?
 
I'm actually way more interested in using these buildings to make realistic 'mid-rise' areas (the transition from low-density suburbs to full-blown downtown skyscrapers). A lot of these buildings looks like mid-rise office, residential, government buildings. Especially the large ones (what looks like the medical school building, for example) is the sort of thing you see as office buildings in many places. This is something I find lacking in the game (without downloading dozens of workshop items), and these buildings are the right sizes to make cities look more interesting.

Excited!
 
Or think back to Parklife, where your Amusement Park could also have a zoo in the same area.

I think this will operate on the same principle, as long as there is a campus area, you can put in whatever building you please

Actually it looked like they don't mix when they showed some stuff of on stream. At least I think Luca was trying to place a building from one type in the area of another type and not outside an area.

In this game if you want to recreate some old downtown or traditional rural towns, you must rely on modders. I would love official building styles to represent old architectures from different eras and places around the world.

I like that devs did this in a lesser degree with campus, but the style must be an option independent of the disciplines you want to develop on that building. Or is that all A.I. research is done in french neoclassicism style buildings?

The problem here is there are soooo many styles I just don't think they can include them all. Or if they did none of us would have enough RAM for all those buildings. :p I spent a little time googling different European countries' universities to get some ideas of styles and they are sooo different. They all seem pretty unique and one wouldn't really work to represent them all. Heck, even tiny Denmark with just a handful of universities can agree on a style (and that's despite we build pretty much everything in either brick or concrete). It's just such an impossible task to represent the world and it's many many different styles. No matter what styles they picked, most players would look at them and feel like they are wrong. And even with all our talented creators and years to add styles, we still wouldn't be able to represent all styles in the world.
 
Actually it looked like they don't mix when they showed some stuff of on stream. At least I think Luca was trying to place a building from one type in the area of another type and not outside an area.

Disappointing if true!

Every proper uni needs a Brutalist monstrosity in the middle of it! :p
 
The problem here is there are soooo many styles I just don't think they can include them all. Or if they did none of us would have enough RAM for all those buildings. :p I spent a little time googling different European countries' universities to get some ideas of styles and they are sooo different.

Agree 100%, there is no way devs can cover all the different styles from real universities. Also we dont know how many buildings are exclusive to each one of the 3 kinds of campus, but I guess a hanful should not be so difficult to add for the 3 sets. If they made dozens of unique faculties for each one then story is other.
 
Great dev diary! I only have couple things to say here.

Creating a Campus Area
<snip>

View attachment 479458
Painting a campus area.

From here on, you can start placing the campus type-specific buildings to increase the campus' student capacity and attractiveness as well as using the campus policies to further customize how your campus functions and creating Academic Works. As your campus meets the requirements to level up in reputation, you unlock more different campus buildings.

I think we probably can do this but I have to ask this anyway. Can we have more than one schools with their own campuses in a city? And I think this is also given but again I have to ask this, can we name the buildings as well?

View attachment 479464
Campus areas can become quite large so it's important to make sure you don't run out of space when you start expanding the campus!

Satellite campus proposal
I was aware of real-world examples where some schools tends to have more than one campuses even in the same city. This may be done for various reasons but a common reason would be a difficulty of acquiring lands at a reasonable cost for expanding the main campus. I can't remember if bulldozing cost in C:S is always same or dependent on what you were bulldozing (i.e. demolishing high-wealth properties costs more). Can anyone clarify this point of information? But I think there may be scenarios where it might be more desirable to create a satellite campus for a given school than to expand the main campus in some circumstances.

Linking campuses
Therefore, I suggest introducing a linking mechanism where you would link two campus areas so that it acts as a single school. The first campus area for a school would be designated as the "main" campus while all linked campuses would be designated "satellite". Each "satellite" campus may or may not need an administrative building. I think it probably should do without that and just simply tie them back to the administration building in the "main" campus. We could also name each campus, perhaps after the district or neighborhood they are in.

Avoiding too many campuses per a school
If we want to maintain a number of satellite campuses for each school at a reasonable or realistic level, I suggest adding some sort of penalties relative to the overall size of school and/or city, perhaps impacting the school's efficiency. So excessive number of campuses for a school would negatively impact it overall. Actually, penalties might not be necessary if each campus area have their own base cost (only active if at least one building existed on that campus area so it would not cost anything if no buildings existed on it). The main thing to make it a challenge to be cost-effective.

Campus specializations per a school type
One interesting implication of this "satellite" system is that, if Colossal Order wanted to go back and expand more on this in a future patch or even a DLC, it could permit specialization for, say, a trade schools. In the United States, we have land-grant universities (see Wikipedia entry for background information), one of which is Texas A&M University. A&M stood for Agricultural & Mechanical. This led me to suggest that we could have a trade school with a "main" campus focused on agricultural education and a "satellite" campus focused on mechanical engineering. I imagine that these two sciences complemented each other, so having such campus specializations could increase its impact on agricultural sector more than having a trade school that are more general with no specialization per a campus.

The potential downside of the campus specializations for a given school type, though, is the possibility of adding more micromanagement if it goes beyond simply designating the specialization of each campus. I don't think there is need to add any other things to manage per a campus as opposed to managing each school but there is probably something I haven't foreseen here.

Rationales for satellite campuses
Linking mechanism to enable "satellite" campuses would also permit expansion of a school that would otherwise destroy a valuable tract of the city, especially the properties with high property values that in turn generated significant amount of tax revenues.

... Not to mention avoiding angering the wealthy patrons of these schools if you were to demolish their criminally large mansions for school expansions. :p

Actually, that would be something to think about for a DLC focused on politics if you guys ever wanted to do that one day. ;)
 
I think we probably can do this but I have to ask this anyway. Can we have more than one schools with their own campuses in a city? And I think this is also given but again I have to ask this, can we name the buildings as well?

I imagine this works in exactly the same way as it did in Parklife.

And yes, you can re-name nearly everything else (why not your Match Day football team, I don't know) I think the same thing happens here.
 
Satellite campus proposal
I was aware of real-world examples where some schools tends to have more than one campuses even in the same city. This may be done for various reasons but a common reason would be a difficulty of acquiring lands at a reasonable cost for expanding the main campus. I can't remember if bulldozing cost in C:S is always same or dependent on what you were bulldozing (i.e. demolishing high-wealth properties costs more). Can anyone clarify this point of information? But I think there may be scenarios where it might be more desirable to create a satellite campus for a given school than to expand the main campus in some circumstances.

Linking campuses
Therefore, I suggest introducing a linking mechanism where you would link two campus areas so that it acts as a single school. The first campus area for a school would be designated as the "main" campus while all linked campuses would be designated "satellite". Each "satellite" campus may or may not need an administrative building. I think it probably should do without that and just simply tie them back to the administration building in the "main" campus. We could also name each campus, perhaps after the district or neighborhood they are in.
Based on Friday's live stream you can split a campus area in half by first expanding the area way out, plop some buildings further away and then erase the excess area; effectively a satellite campus. Buildings didn't complain.
 
I actually wonder about this, and didn't managed to get a response earlier, so here goes:

Does zoneable residential inside a campus area, and to some extent the tiles surrounding the campus area, contribute to increasing student capacity?
 
I actually wonder about this, and didn't managed to get a response earlier, so here goes:

Does zoneable residential inside a campus area, and to some extent the tiles surrounding the campus area, contribute to increasing student capacity?

I wouldn't imagine so. It would contribute to the number of eligible students though.
 
Based on Friday's live stream you can split a campus area in half by first expanding the area way out, plop some buildings further away and then erase the excess area; effectively a satellite campus. Buildings didn't complain.
This idea of a «campus» spread across the city, with buildings added where there's room as part of the development of the city rather than having a single big area reserved from the start is really what matches IRL in Europe (or at least parts of it where I've been).. so, if I can extend an area to a secondary location, plop a few buildings, sever the link, and do the same over and over for each location would allow to do that, that ought to be good enough. Thanks for the info!

EDIT: grammar fixed