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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!
 
Let's say I want to create a super large park in the middle of my city, kinda lika central park. Would the cims be able to enter it from several directions or can they only enter from the main gate?

EDIT: or maybe place several "main" gates as entrances?

This looks great! I think this is a clever way to allow modular parks. Two questions:

Can a park have two different entrances?

Can existing parks and plazas, like the basketball, be placed on paths if you have a main gate?

Yes, in the stream there were three types of entrance. Main, Small Main and Side Entrance.
 
I would like to have park-specific transportation means:

internal tram / monorail / aerial cableway

For people to move faster, and for good looks.

Also, I would like to model super-attractions, using road-like tools to create amusement rides:

kart lanes
rollercoasters
log flume rides - like a rollercoaster, but is a waterway with a boat (and no loopings of course)

I feel all of these can be accomplished with a little skinning and just take advantage of the current road tools available. The networks would have a different "traffic type" of roads of course, and it would be even simpler than an actual road network, since there are no intersections. At most the player will use elevation to move the lane above another track of rollercoaster.



Will there be any of these?
 
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Hi! A park can have one main gate, but Parklife has a collection of side gates which you can place as many as you like and the citizens can use them for entry / exit.
In engine, so to speak, the attributes of the Park are stored as a special district. So why would it not be possible to allow more than one main gate? The park district has access to city services if any of the main gates have access. When you change the ticket price, it updates the park district internally. So all of the large 'main' gates see the same info.
 
Please add some parking lots to the dlc. just plain and simple parking. i don't want to use user generated content in every save game, but the lack of parking bugs me every time. I can't wait for the dlc to come.
 
Please add some parking lots to the dlc. just plain and simple parking. i don't want to use user generated content in every save game, but the lack of parking bugs me every time. I can't wait for the dlc to come.

Honestly, I have to agree that parking lots would be a great addition to the game- I’ve been working on some public transport related stuff for my job, and one of the things I’ve learned is that where you do (and don’t) place public parking can be a rather important part of where you funnel commuters- adding parking calculations as part of a larger update to traffic could really enhance the game, although it probably won’t be part of this update.
 
Parking lots are something that I would not want to see be needed all over the place. I think it would ruin the look of many a city if they were.

That said, I would like to see some parking lots and garages in the game. I used several from the workshop in the past, and used them sparingly, but found they could really add a touch of realism to some areas.

I haven't used workshop stuff in a long while, mainly because it starts with just a few things, and the next thing you know you have a bazillion assets. But I do miss some things, and parking lots and garages are one of them. (Two of them?)

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The only screenshot I could find of one area that came to mind shows a "transport hub" (bus-metro-train) before that was a thing,,, predating "Mass Transit", but based on the flames, after "Natural Disasters". Anyway, it had two small parking lots and two small parking garages in the main part of the hub. Also a small parking lot across the street (at bottom) where there is a (custom) passenger train station. Accordion buses... I miss those too.

Pretty sure the garages are these:
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=909628972
I liked these too:
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=511604483

In a nutshell, I would like them as optional things you can plop... but not be required in every block. Something that would cause no harm if you chose to not use them at all.
 
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 :)

@co_emmi sorry to pester you, but could you clarify how city services interact with events inside the part area, please? I.E. the questions below:

How the city services interact with park areas? Do they interact only with the main gate, do they get to drive along those paths or do they have to park near the main gate and then walk to the specific target with the park? For example, what happens if some trees catch fire within a park (and I don't own Natural Disasters, so no helicopters) or someone dies during a rollercoaster ride?
 
I think I read (or heard on the stream) that sick and dead people would be brought to the gate for pick up. Presumably garbage would too. Not sure about fire though. Good question.
 
This is great! I am so excited and I have already pre-ordered! This will definitely be what brings me back to the game, which I had set aside for a few months to take a break. One question. For the nature parks, can you have native wildlife wandering around like in the zoo parks? It would be awesome to see deer, bear, or the occasional wolf wandering through the trees!
 
One question. For the nature parks, can you have native wildlife wandering around like in the zoo parks? It would be awesome to see deer, bear, or the occasional wolf wandering through the trees!

There is the odd animal roaming the woods now. Pretty sure that in the map editor you can add "animal spawners". It would be interesting to know if they have anything in mind for this in Parklife. It would be cool to see a higher density of wildlife in the Nature Parks.
 
There is the odd animal roaming the woods now. Pretty sure that in the map editor you can add "animal spawners". It would be interesting to know if they have anything in mind for this in Parklife. It would be cool to see a higher density of wildlife in the Nature Parks.
I can confirm this. It appears to just spawn a single animal that roams in a general vicinity and I think its only a deer.
 
Ok, so what is this menu? It's part of expansion, or is it some kind of mod?

It is part of the free update and more information coming in upcoming dev diaries ;)

How the city services interact with park areas? Do they interact only with the main gate, do they get to drive along those paths or do they have to park near the main gate and then walk to the specific target with the park? For example, what happens if some trees catch fire within a park (and I don't own Natural Disasters, so no helicopters) or someone dies during a rollercoaster ride?

The services are handled at the gate (so garbage is moved there for pick-up) and with fires the citizens are careful not to cause them unless they have a chance to put them out.

Let's say I want to create a super large park in the middle of my city, kinda lika central park. Would the cims be able to enter it from several directions or can they only enter from the main gate?

They can use the side gates for entrance, but the main gate is the one which you use to change the ticket prices and they will pay the same price at the side gates.

There is the odd animal roaming the woods now. Pretty sure that in the map editor you can add "animal spawners". It would be interesting to know if they have anything in mind for this in Parklife. It would be cool to see a higher density of wildlife in the Nature Parks.

More information about the animals coming in future dev diaries ;)