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Welcome back to Cities: Skylines Dev Diaries regarding the upcoming Industries expansion. Today we will focus on Unique Factories, overall management of your Industry Area and different resource types required to make factories operate.

TwoDollarsTwenty's tutorial for this Dev Diary can be found 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.

Industry Area Info Panel

Let's start with Industry Area Info Panel. This is the place to look when you want to know how well your Industry Area is doing. It summarizes the total profit of your entire Industry Area and shows how much of Raw Resources and Special Goods are being produced inside the Area. Pie chart shows you exactly how much of your production is imported and how much raw materials your area is able to produce - invaluable information especially if you want to focus on producing all materials yourself for maximum profit. Keep in mind you can only import the required raw materials - the rest must be produced inside your City. Industry Area Info Panel will also show the level of your area and the level requirements to reach the next one, the size of your Area and the total upkeep cost of Industry Area buildings. You can also manage Industry Area specific Policies through Industry Area Info Panel.

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Industry Area Info Panel gives me detailed information how my Industry Area is doing.

Resource types

Everything begins with Natural Resources - Fertile Land, Forest, Ore and Oil. Placing a correct Extractor Building will harvest raw materials from the ground. Renewable resources Fertile Land, which yields Raw Material called Crops, and Forest, which yields Raw Forest Products, will not deplete from the terrain. Non-renewable resources Ore and Oil will give corresponding raw materials when excavated or drilled from the terrain. And if you worry about depleting your resources you can always import more raw materials or toggle on the unlimited natural resources mod! But even if you are not a fan of mods Industries expansion comes with five new maps filled with Natural Resources just waiting for extraction. Some Ore and Oil deposits are even under water now - and you must level up your Areas to unlock buildings to access them!

Each of the four raw material type can be turned into two different kind of Special Goods through Processing Buildings:
  • Crops can be processed into Flours and Animal Products.

  • Raw Forest Products are turned into Paper and Planed Timber.

  • Ore can be grinded into Glass and Metals.

  • Oil is refined into Petroleum and Plastics.
All Unique Factories produce Luxury Products from Special Goods which cannot be imported – you must use Processing Buildings to manufacture them yourself. A well-oiled production chain, traffic management and use ofStorage Buildings will make sure your Unique Factories remain operational and profitable. Build your Storage Buildings close to your Factories with good road connections to avoid Factory downtime as it will quickly show as a loss of income!

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Based on Estimated Production this looks like a good place to build Extractor building, Medium Tree Plantation, for Forest Industry. The terrain is rich in Forest.

Unique Factories - What's so special about them?

Unique Factories use Special Goods and turn them into Luxury Products, for example Cars from Car Factory or Pastries manufactured by Bakery. These products are then sold to commercial zones or exported through outside connections if there is no local demand for the products. Unique Factories need to be unlocked by progressing Industry Areas to higher levels and having efficient enough production chains to provide the needed Special Goods. Each Industry Area type unlocks 4 different Unique Factories so in order to unlock each factory you must reach level 5 with each Industry Area type. True to their name these factories stand alone - they can be built and operate outside of Industry Areas and you can only have one of each per City. Many of the Unique Factories require Special Goods from multiple Industry Area types to operate.

Managing Unique Factories happens individually through Unique Factory Info Panel where you can see the demand for each Special Goods the factory requires to operate. The panel has a production scaling slider that is used to adjust the production output level. This means you can match the production to your commercial demand and to the availability of the resources and logistics. It's also good to remember that the location of the factory matters as well. Unique Factories are large factories that require space and good road connections. They are ideally placed so that residential areas can supply them with workers but be careful - Unique Factories do cause ground and noise pollution. Building Unique Factories in-between different Industry Area types and the use of Storage buildings can save you a lot of delivery time between different buildings. Each Unique Factory also sends out unique vehicles tied to the specific factory when delivering luxury products. That way you can instantly tell from which factory the vehicle is coming from!

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It's only dawning but Car Factory already sent out new sweet wheels.

But that's everything for this time - stay tuned for next Dev Diary where we look at Industry Area leveling more in detail. Keep on building!
 
Kinda bummed that you can’t import special goods.
 
How do the storage buildings actually help with anything else than buying a bit of time to solve traffic problems (which could also be achieved by just pausing the game)? I mean, if I have large industry area exporting special goods to my unique factories and creating a traffic jam as a byproduct, won't that same jam still exist even if I drop some warehouses near the unique factories as the same amount of goods must still flow?
 
Good work with this DLC. Just one important question. I have noticed in some videos there are the buildings/assets which are changed dynamically. For example Large Log Yard. In the begining is empty and so on. Will be possible use them as template in the asset editor ? If yes, how does it works ?? How many models do we need for that ??
 
How do the storage buildings actually help with anything else than buying a bit of time to solve traffic problems (which could also be achieved by just pausing the game)? I mean, if I have large industry area exporting special goods to my unique factories and creating a traffic jam as a byproduct, won't that same jam still exist even if I drop some warehouses near the unique factories as the same amount of goods must still flow?
If I understand what is happening correctly as you advance more luxury good producers will require a complex mix of products, which having a mix of centralized depositories throughout the city will maximize those items getting to the various production facilities more efficiently. It's not just traffic jams but more efficient distribution, which is why warehouses exist in the first place. Additionally, if you are overproducing it allows you to store some of your goods for later use, again as you unlock more, rather than just exporting it to outside connections.
 
How do the storage buildings actually help with anything else than buying a bit of time to solve traffic problems (which could also be achieved by just pausing the game)? I mean, if I have large industry area exporting special goods to my unique factories and creating a traffic jam as a byproduct, won't that same jam still exist even if I drop some warehouses near the unique factories as the same amount of goods must still flow?

I probably won't fix your traffic, but it can help you direct it. If you have a warehouse inbetween commercial or an export area, industry traffic should go there instead of directly to the shops, and the warehouse will then supply the commercial. But if you have an area that can't handle the traffic going through it there's probably not much else to do than work on that. :/


Good work with this DLC. Just one important question. I have noticed in some videos there are the buildings/assets which are changed dynamically. For example Large Log Yard. In the begining is empty and so on. Will be possible use them as template in the asset editor ? If yes, how does it works ?? How many models do we need for that ??

I can answer this one, because it's the same way landfills get more full (at least I'm like 99% sure it's the same :p). Basically the building has a main model which is the empty version and then for something like half full and full it adds another model called submeshes on top showing for example logs. Afaik there's none of these submeshes when you open up a building in the asset editor, so you can't edit that. But it is something that modders can also do, so we can create something similar that changes as it fills up.
 
I can answer this one, because it's the same way landfills get more full (at least I'm like 99% sure it's the same :p). Basically the building has a main model which is the empty version and then for something like half full and full it adds another model called submeshes on top showing for example logs. Afaik there's none of these submeshes when you open up a building in the asset editor, so you can't edit that. But it is something that modders can also do, so we can create something similar that changes as it fills up.
That's true. Thanks Avanya. I also noticed the farms have an option where we can select a different kind of field. That is probably based on the same system.
 
That's true. Thanks Avanya. I also noticed the farms have an option where we can select a different kind of field. That is probably based on the same system.

Oh yeah, that could be. Unless they've made some new system. Either way I hope it's something we can add to with custom buildings without needing mods. Can't have too many options for fields! ;)
 
I'm loving this new expansion. It's giving me Citybuilder (Zeus, Caesar, Pharoah) vibes big time. CO, I applaud you big time; this looks like it'll be a lot of fun!

I did have a quick question/comment to make, having now watched all the tutorial videos... are Storage Buildings restricted to just store one resource at a time? Would it not make more sense to have multiple resources stored in a single Storage Building and to allow the player to adjust what percentage those resources are stored (eg. Resource A: 60%, Resource B: 40%)? I'm worried that if the expansion requires you to build a new Storage Building for every resource, that there'll be dozens of Storage Buildings needing to be built in the same area, when you could get away with a handful if you could store multiple resources in the same building.

In comparison, the old game Zeus: Master of Olympus has a similar industry set-up as this DLC, but its Storehouses were able to hold multiple resources at once, and which resources and how many could be adjusted by the player. I think something like that would be really valuable in Cities Skylines.
 

“Non-renewable resources Ore and Oil will give corresponding raw materials when excavated or drilled from the terrain. And if you worry about depleting your resources you can always import more raw materials or toggle on the unlimited natural resources mod! But even if you are not a fan of mods Industries expansion comes with five new maps filled with Natural Resources just waiting for extraction. Some Ore and Oil deposits are even under water now - and you must level up your Areas to unlock buildings to access them!” (Colossal order)

So is confirmed now that the time depleting of the oil and ore resources still is the same as Vanilla:( and the solution is import, mod, or the new maps. That’s a bad news that you can’t improved the core of the resources.

I don't want to spend hours making a nice oil or ore district and even more hours optimizing supply chains and then to have it all be completely invalidated within minutes, like it happens now. What's the point of that?” (Average CS player )

I know when the dev diary is to close to the release date , the fixed and improvements stage is over. I know that because I am always aware of all the DLCs from after dark to industries.

The core of this issue is that the vanilla game player fan base can’t depends on mods, and also I speak for the Xbox , PlayStation, Nintendo , fans out there that will receive this update months later, we deserve a nice experience on the vanilla game.

Yes import raw materials is realistic, but deploy mines of ore or oil deposits in 10 year ( in game time ) is not.

SimCity 2013 the worst SimCity has this feature done well , the resources are not infinite, and the extraction is realistic and in game time correct. To spend time developing specialization industry in the city.
 
I'm loving this new expansion. It's giving me Citybuilder (Zeus, Caesar, Pharoah) vibes big time. CO, I applaud you big time; this looks like it'll be a lot of fun!

I did have a quick question/comment to make, having now watched all the tutorial videos... are Storage Buildings restricted to just store one resource at a time? Would it not make more sense to have multiple resources stored in a single Storage Building and to allow the player to adjust what percentage those resources are stored (eg. Resource A: 60%, Resource B: 40%)? I'm worried that if the expansion requires you to build a new Storage Building for every resource, that there'll be dozens of Storage Buildings needing to be built in the same area, when you could get away with a handful if you could store multiple resources in the same building.

In comparison, the old game Zeus: Master of Olympus has a similar industry set-up as this DLC, but its Storehouses were able to hold multiple resources at once, and which resources and how many could be adjusted by the player. I think something like that would be really valuable in Cities Skylines.

Huge fan of the old city builders you mention and I remember setting those storage areas to all sorts of mixes. :p I think the approach Cities takes is pretty realistic for modern times though. At least some things you just don't store together because they have different requirements and can negatively affect each other. I also don't think we really need all resources stored together all the time - at least not from what I've seen. Actually it might even be better for traffic to spread them out more. And even in the cases where we might want to have one of everything stored together it won't be too bad as long as there's some smaller options available.

Otherwise there's always modding. This is an area I'm gonna work on stuff for, so I can say there will be some small warehouses (not sure how they compare to the default ones, but you can fit a bunch together easily) and modular distribution centers, which will look like one giant building but allow you to pick different things for each bit. So if you don't mind modding there will be options at least.

In any case, as the DLC is releasing in a week I really doubt there's time for a change like this, so we're probably gonna get what's been shown so far.
 
Cool. A bit bummed out about the resources still depleting tho, it would be nice if at least the speed of it was slowed down. Still, the DLC is a great and necessary improvement to the game.

I don't know if this was answered somewhere else, but will forestry and farm industries still only employ uneducated workers or will they employ educated ones as well? Also I'm still not entirely sure on how the new industries will work in conjecture with the old specialized industries.
 
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I don't know if this was answered somewhere else, but will forestry and farm industries still only employ uneducated workers or will they employ educated ones as well? Also I'm still not entirely sure on how the new industries will work in conjecture with the old specialized industries.

There was mention in the devstream of making the industries more education friendly as they level up. That is all we have though.

As for interaction with the old system, it seems like you can sell the things you produce to old industry as appropriate to the tier of material you are producing. So you can sell raw to old refineries, refined to old generic industry and finished product sells to commercial.