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Greetings everyone! The newest expansion for Cities: Skylines called Industries was announced on 11th of October 2018, and we are happy to tell you fellow city-builders all about it. In the previous Dev Diary we gave a short introduction, so be sure to check that out if you haven't already!

So what is an Industry Area? The new Industry Areas uses a similar system as the Park Areas in Parklife expansion. Users can define Industry Areas with the Paint Industry Area tool and place highly specialized industrial buildings inside the area to create a multitude of different production chains. From extracting the raw materials all the way to the final end product.

Cities: Skylines - Industries tutorials

TwoDollarsTwenty has made lovely tutorial videos for Industries expansion! The first episode is available here:

All the tutorial videos will be available on this playlist at Paradox Interactive Youtube channel!

Note: Tutorials were made with a beta version of the Industries so you might notice some differences compared to the Dev Diary screenshots.

Creating your Industry Area

To better understand how to approach creating your first Industry Area it might be wise to make couple of things clear. Firstly the new Industry Buildings can be found in the revamped Garbage Service menu, which is now renamed to Garbage and Industry. Each Industry Area type has it's own Extractors, Processing Buildings, Auxiliary Buildings and Raw Material Storage Buildings. For example, Farm Industry includes buildings such as Crop Fields, Milking Parlor and Barns while Oil Industry has Pumps, variety of different kinds of plants like Oil Sludge Pyrolysis Plant and Crude Oil Storage buildings.

Secondly, and this is very important so sharpen your eyes, just like city service buildings the Industry Area Buildings do not spawn but are placed next to a road. Without road access the Industry Area Buildings are unable to send out trucks full of precious resources.

Now that we have the basic information let's get back to how to actually make an Industry Area.

Much like with Parklife and Park Areas or base game districts, defining an Industry Area happens with a brush tool. The new Industry Area tool is located in the same place as "Paint Park Area" or "Paint District" tools. So just select the tool, use it like you would use "Paint Park Area" or "Paint District" tools and when the desired area is painted you can determine its type by placing the Main Building.

And that's it! After the Industry Area has its type determined you can start placing Industry Buildings inside the area and start creating your first full production chain, more buildings are unlocked when your Industry Area progresses through the levels. But more about production chains and leveling the industry areas in upcoming Dev Diaries!

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After successful start, Oak Oil Products is looking forward to expanding

Types of Industry Areas

Industries expansion comes with four types of Industry Areas, each of them require different raw material and all of them have their own buildings fitting for their own distinctive style. It's only natural that the industry areas require different natural resources which is exactly the reason why we have Forestry, Farming, Ore and Oil Industries included in the Industries DLC.

Ever dreamed of maintaining your own lumberyard and having the workers rocking that eternal lumberjack look? Or wishing that your city would be absolute number 1 in paper production? Then the Forest Industry is definitely for you. Forest Industry can take advantage of the areas rich in forests and use those gathered forest raw materials to produce forestry special goods: planed timber and paper.

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I know, I won't get tired of watching those rows after rows after rows of trees being so... orderly placed.

Or perhaps the modest lifestyle of countryside is more of your thing, and instead of trees you want to create vast crop fields. In that case the Farming Industry with all its variety in crops, fruit and animals could be the thing for you. In order to produce special goods, like Flours and Animal Products, the farming Industry's processing buildings need crops to operate. That's why fertile land is the perfect place to build your Farming Industry, crop- and fruit fields nourish on fertile land, and the more the fertile land is, the more crops your fields produce! With Snowfall maps certain Farm Buildings are replaced with greenhouse versions for the buildings.

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A variety of appearances for fields really brightens up the country-side!

But some you may find it more satisfying to drill into the ground and look for the ore that it holds within. Ore Industry will do just that for you. Ore can be extracted from the ground with the help of mines, extracted ore can then be exported, stored or transferred to ore industry's own production buildings to produce special goods such as Metals and Glass.

Also! Don't forget that ore is not naturally replenishing resource so once it is depleted you might want to transfer your mines to a new location!

And just like with ore, oil is not a replenishing resource and can also be found within the ground. And if you want to get into that black gold you are going to need the Oil Industry. Oil can be pumped up from underground or underwater reserves and be processed into Oil special goods, like Plastics and Petroleum. While Oil Industry might be the most polluting Industry it also can be highly profitable.

Specialized and non-specialized Districts can be built inside Industry Areas and both can benefit from each others but we will get back to how they work together in more detail in the future Dev Diaries.
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Industry Area Info view and Industry Areas Overview

To quickly get a nice view of your Industry Areas we've added a new Info View dedicated to Industry Areas. From the Info view you can easily switch between different Industry types and access the Industry Areas Overview panel. Industry Area Overview panel nicely lists all the Industry Areas that are located in your city, shows their type, name, levels and how many workers are working for the Industry Area. From the Overview you can also easily open each Industry Areas Info Panel that shows even more details!

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Overview of the Industry Areas quickly summarizes how your Industry Areas are doing

Benefit of having Industry Areas in your city

When properly maintained the Industry Areas can provide a great boost to your city's economy and offer many work places for your educated citizens. Each Industry Area type has a wide selection of buildings to choose from. When placed inside the same-type area they will become operational and will start to produce goods and other resources which can be exported, sold to zoned industry or to Unique Factories.

The Basic resource chains from base game are now expanded upon and exposed for the players to create the ultimate, most honed and perfected production chains, this should keep even the perfectionists entertained for hours to come. The production chains provided by the Industry Areas expands the basic resource chains into more detailed and manageable system, but more about Production Chain Management, types of buildings and different resources in our next dev diary!
 
Hi all,

I am exited about this expansion! Cant wait! :) I would like to ask you 2 questions please:
1 - how to approach ,,old,, yellow zoned general industry buildings when it comes to new 4 types of specialized industry chains? Should we still build them in the city? Less amount? Will workers prefer to go there or to the new chain industries?
2 - should we also connect some transportation to every industry zoned area we create? Or the workers will go there automatically - I saw youtube that once the lets say tree plantation is placed, it starts accumulating workers automatically slowly. So is transportation to the are important?

Thank you very much for some reply :D
 
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@co_emmi
Thank you for your answers, even if they grieve me a little.

The presence of resources is unavoidable for Forest, Ore and Oil, but the man knew how to adapt different cultures according to the quality of the grounds which he had. The system (growable) of the specializations requires fertile lands, but the Industries system (ploppable) would make it possible to get out of them. By reducing yields and limiting accessible levels, possibly adaptable by specific policies ("Use of fertilizers and pesticides", "Organic farming", "Transgenic crops"...), the interest of the resources would be preserved while widening the options of players, including by the development of an offshore "farming". I propose you to rethink for a future patch.

About oil special products from farming, there is no technical difficulty since it's just a matter of authorizing the establishment of Processing Buildings for Plastics and Petroleum in an agricultural area and, to be complete, also in a Forestry area (Biomass Pellet Plant, for example, could very well produce Petroleum). There would be no distinction of these products in the rest of the production chain (even if it could have been used to supply Green Cities biofuel buses). The only "technical difficulty" would be to adapt the info panel to show more than 2 special products. I propose you, again, to rethink for a future patch.

Contrary to what Avanya seems to think, it's not a question of complicating management, but, from my point of view, of "simplifying" it by proposing alternatives. I don't wish that the choice of the visual impact the type of production: if a player wants to make clothes with potatoes or tails of cherries, it's his problem. :cool: But that we can replace certain exhaustible resources with renewable resources seems to me a strategic issue in the development of a city. With that in mind, I would also have liked to have Recycling Centers providing Metals and Glass.

Which brings me to a more general digression on DLC. I understand very well the need for each DLC to be independent of others, and the meaning of your answer to Glitcher in the Dev Diary #5. I don't want to say stupidity, but it seems to me that you can set only one RequiredDLC for assets.
But couldn't you create identified mini-expansions that would use features or assets of one or more DLCs? For example: helicopter or cycling tours (Natural Disasters or After Dark + Parklife), Recycling centers providing Special products (Green Cities + Industries), Woodfall (Snowfall + Industries), Sports (Parklife)... You could market these mini-expansions or offer them as a bonus, which would renew interest in old expansions. :rolleyes:


To return to Industries, I mentioned previously other Luxury products. On this point, I could see the complete list that actually contains Sneakers and Clothes and several other very interesting products (Printing Products, Steel Products, Fuels, Shipyard ...): I find it varied and balanced. Although I also hope that we will be able to edit new Unique Factories, with other combinations of Special Products.

It also allowed me to better understand what each Special Product included and, again, I think it's almost enough. "Almost", because I remain convinced that "Fruits and vegetables" should exist, not for the type of products that it provides, but for the transport alternative that it would offer: directly from the extractor to shops, possibly using warehouses.

I'm totally convinced of the interest of this expansion. I just wanted to give you some suggestions to further increase its interest (in my opinion), without penalizing the gameplay, nor requiring lengthy developments.
 
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@co_emmi
Thank you for your answers, even if they grieve me a little.

The presence of resources is unavoidable for Forest, Ore and Oil, but the man knew how to adapt different cultures according to the quality of the grounds which he had. The system (growable) of the specializations requires fertile lands, but the Industries system (ploppable) would make it possible to get out of them. By reducing yields and limiting accessible levels, possibly adaptable by specific policies ("Use of fertilizers and pesticides", "Organic farming", "Transgenic crops"...), the interest of the resources would be preserved while widening the options of players, including by the development of an offshore "farming". I propose you to rethink for a future patch.

About oil special products from farming, there is no technical difficulty since it's just a matter of authorizing the establishment of Processing Buildings for Plastics and Petroleum in an agricultural area and, to be complete, also in a Forestry area (Biomass Pellet Plant, for example, could very well produce Petroleum). There would be no distinction of these products in the rest of the production chain (even if it could have been used to supply Green Cities biofuel buses). The only "technical difficulty" would be to adapt the info panel to show more than 2 special products.

if theres no mechanics related with green cities stores and other -new stuff - I don't see much interest since trees are renewable resources

I think Green cities buses are the only biofuel while others are electric cars, no interest in distinguish oil and biofuel for those industries then....

About expansions, why would they do that when I think to all special prices more than one time in a year.....
that' would be waste of time for Paradox and its better for the player to get the full content...
and prices for CS DLC's are correct, imo.
 
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@co_emmiWhich brings me to a more general digression on DLC. I understand very well the need for each DLC to be independent of others, and the meaning of your answer to Glitcher in the Dev Diary #5. I don't want to say stupidity, but it seems to me that you can set only one RequiredDLC for assets. But couldn't you create identified mini-expansions that would use features or assets of one or more DLCs? For example: helicopter or cycling tours (Natural Disasters or After Dark + Parklife), Recycling centers providing Special products (Green Cities + Industries), Woodfall (Snowfall + Industries), Sports (Parklife)... You could market these mini-expansions or offer them as a bonus, which would renew interest in old expansions. :rolleyes:

I really really hope they never do that. It isn't that I don't want those features, I'm just very much against the idea of DLCs requiring other DLCs to work - and making them require 2 just makes that even worse. I'd much rather see something where the main features aren't tied to a DLC, but then if you own another DLC it adds a bit for that. For example have walking tours on a snow map be people skiing instead of walking. They'd function the exact same way, it would just be another animation for people on the walking tours. Another example would be recycling centers picking a specific resource when Industries is enabled instead of just "oil resource" (not actually sure that this isn't already the case). That way DLCs wouldn't be required, but a bonus. Ofc that means the features have to be smaller as it has to be worth the dev time when it's not a main feature.
 
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indeed, too silly...

Paradox marketing policy on that is just fine.
rather this than ones from some others, but its my opinion...
 
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I really really hope they never do that. It isn't that I don't want those features, I'm just very much against the idea of DLCs requiring other DLCs to work - and making them require 2 just makes that even worse. I'd much rather see something where the main features aren't tied to a DLC, but then if you own another DLC it adds a bit for that. For example have walking tours on a snow map be people skiing instead of walking. They'd function the exact same way, it would just be another animation for people on the walking tours. Another example would be recycling centers picking a specific resource when Industries is enabled instead of just "oil resource" (not actually sure that this isn't already the case). That way DLCs wouldn't be required, but a bonus. Ofc that means the features have to be smaller as it has to be worth the dev time when it's not a main feature.
We agree. I only wanted to propose a technical solution that allows to evolve DLC functionalities when they have an impact or interest in a new DLC.
 
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Can't be lack of interest when are special prices....

Either the DLC content is interesting for tthe gamer and so he will buy full price or on special price
Either the DLC content is not interesting and then, the player will never buy.

DLC also means the player can make choices and probably its not in base game because some people won't use
i think to snowfall for example... but DLC could also mean time to create stuff for the devs, i guess...
like free updates could mean some attempts as well such as match day- probably as for DLC - that Parklife system reproduced in industries

I wouldn't like mini expansions all the time - thats kinda what is doing EA btw at least with the Sims 4 ...
more more more expansions with lack of content and sick prices .....Good strategy, I stopped to buy stuff there
Meanwhile some fire sum devs, some others like Paradox & their strategy are able to keep the devs working on a game project for quite some times in addition of keeping the game active and satisfying the gamers, also by listening to the community (unlike some others, again, a pity)

For the Sims 3 was that digital store for people to buy asset one by one - No thanks. as I am also against that marketing idea used for world of warcraft or that one for russian fishing...

Paradox strategy is the right one for me. My main problem with them is when can I play other games (including Surviving Mars :p) when new CS content is :D
That's a real problem! héhé but how good to see when a publisher is in his role supporting the devs, satisfying the users

I can only support.

Do not change, Paradox.
 
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I wouldn't like mini expansions all the time

I would not want it all the time, and I suppose it could easily turn into a slippery slope that nobody wants CS to go down. I don't want to have to keep paying for every little thing.

That said, I sometimes think that some small packs I could be okay with.

One example: I wouldn't mind a "Planes and Trains" pack. Small rural airstrip with a few small aircraft. Throw in something like a Dash 8 or Q400 at the main airport, maybe an E190 type.
Trains... add a 2-track and/or 3-track station for passengers. Maybe a smaller rural station. Add a 2-track and/or 3-track station for Cargo. If it isn't too much, maybe a few models for cargo trains depending on the cargo. Lastly, some multi track metro stations. = # X +
 
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I assume the Concerts DLC wasn't too popular, or we would have seen more of these.
I can't say since am not checking Paradox Economy but they can make their opinion from those attempts, I guess

I loved Concerts DLC, mainly with the update that came after the release but thats probably because am Culture supporter.
However, even mini DLC would need more content again.

I would not want it all the time, and I suppose it could easily turn into a slippery slope that nobody wants CS to go down. I don't want to have to keep paying for every little thing.
We agree then.
 
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industries DLC installed and able to see the options and click on them. The main building for each type places OK, but when I try to place additional buildings the put up a message "not in industry area" even though they are next to the main building. Have tried making new districts but still no luck. Have uninstalled all mods and still no luck! At my wits end trying to work this one out as I am convinced this DLC is go going to be an advatgae once it works. Desktop pc win 10 latest update installed. i7-7700K 32Gb Ram.
 
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industries DLC installed and able to see the options and click on them. The main building for each type places OK, but when I try to place additional buildings the put up a message "not in industry area" even though they are next to the main building. Have tried making new districts but still no luck. Have uninstalled all mods and still no luck! At my wits end trying to work this one out as I am convinced this DLC is go going to be an advatgae once it works. Desktop pc win 10 latest update installed. i7-7700K 32Gb Ram.

Have you checked you are painting an Industry area, not a district area (or specialization)? And the area is big enough that the buildings fit in there?
 
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