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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.

Park_Leveling_Up.png

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!
 
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Sorry for not noticing your posts for the answer in the morning. Painting a park area will work similarly as the district painting tool.
What about mine?

I noticed that the cims actually get on and sit on the attractions at the amusement park. That's great attention to detail!

And a question. Would citizens or tourists have a preference of one park over the other? (e.g, amusement parks for thrill-seekers, nature reserves for nature-lovers?)
 
What about mine?
Would citizens or tourists have a preference of one park over the other? (e.g, amusement parks for thrill-seekers, nature reserves for nature-lovers?)

I think the citizens / tourists do not have a concept of being thrill-seekers or nature-lovers but they do have preferences depending on ticket prices, location, travel, does the park have interesting content etc...
 
I tested building districts next to each other and did not face any problems, but I think there might be some corner cases where you face the situation described, but could not reproduce the issue.

Another try :

I previously tried first & second districts - dead each time
here are 3rd & 4th tries: notice the 3rd that is dead by the 4th...(again Grr)

I love to use districts - they can be big like small - I love it because they can bring a lot to the ID of my cities but its painful as it is currently, collapsing most of the time....
please, make it better, for Parklife release. x)

DojTzIQ_zPiIxfLXNV7pmz-gf8fPNVo9nU9Vij0NB2DzmxJyZHZ-wL_mnPCDk0QAI3ltN3Tjp79MtBiHp8-SO5OZAylLy34gwkRrjQS64SjrYjFy882iuj_j4oX4xlo8V389z4TMDomn7f7b628sKHsuDE8pg3inpk_641FoJb0WYUNqWXUKNJjBB1vNTvE1bFdOiYro_OkfFtqVNWxDLU_XBRSnYi2qdyxuffqHhbypGLwejFIMQ_3xlxw7Ic94yCvEDF-B_ejybA_Hp96DfVb4myNa3Oy_HRWgiL_hSAdjA8nacvwzQ40WWqdi7du-XJaHlLISBTq6-0gcyg8RpFis3Mz3RnxOgZtZUS_VRZIBx3gSLsqYiONJ5BRWjJ4AM6Dqthf3wX53aRRBNVhgWZinY0hhs9zjH-htPaFn_VcleVIFkWfC5qFOZUQBJ2r37dY9fXFz1HPUt6HyAOZxYGVkImN2MlHt83CwMD4vhx6FqGybd8cFpiYlVzaeZxIyDudpfw120nWs8O7dMAMB0B0tD4ciha3A0QjnwJreGceSpgfURrZ_Jfh-PFj27DJjO2ooLf-SvzK330AY3B0RLj8fbkMqSDaPkRytULLq=w1299-h535-no
 
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I'm sorry to say, but then that sounds like a problem that can't be helped with the current tool and I'm afraid there are no plans to update the tool at this time.

:'( :'( :'( :'(

Plan it to the top of the listing for the next patch after parklife then :D
that will be more & more helpful, first with districts, and then with parks.... and policies

anyone could customize its city its own way not just with big districts but imagine for example 3 houses EU suburbia, next are 2 self sufficient houses, beside's average size district full of EU high density followed by US style buildings with a policy and next same US style buildings within another policy. and next are specialised offices.... etc etc etc

That tool building a city is VERY important then. :)

Comfort playing game is important (mainly that kind of game players are like hours and hours playing) - about comfort, you should also plan options available with radioactive desert & fog toggler mods... (pollution will always be available to the info view map) i guess many players pc & consoles will enjoy them a lot and not just me.

Well,
Thank you for everything, Emmi. :)
 
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@Keltia_Vikinga You're gonna run out of districts anyway well before finishing your city if you use tons of tiny ones like that - well, at least on a modded game with more tiles. :p It came up not that long ago someone had filled out their city with small districts. You can have 128, which for most is more than we need, but if they're tiny you'll find that limit.

You can still do some pretty tiny one though, just do them last. Here I did the 2 large ones, then erased the area for the little one and painted it in. It's a little bit wider than the smallest brush, but we're still talking something that covers only 4 tile deep zoning and a handful of houses.

Ofc for that level of control over buildings I'd personally go for mods like Plop the Growables or RICO - then you don't have to worry about specialisations for districts either and can just use them for named areas and policies. But then again I also like having that level of control over my entire city. :p
 

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Most of the time if I do really small districts, it is for the "Heavy Traffic Ban" policy. That is why I would like to be able to add the policy to a road, instead of a district. (Not to say you shouldn't be able to add that to a district, I think that is fine.)

There are other times when I want a few tourism or leisure areas that are not very big, and I'd rather not have to make tiny districts to accommodate them. Also more recently applies to some of the "Green Cities" stuff.

Would be nice to be able to use a marquee tool (as a number of people have mentioned) to make districts. And maybe lock a district so when you add one adjacent to it, it won't change the locked existing one. (Options like this would be nice, but I could also see it potentially confusing a casual gamer. Maybe have an "Enable Advanced UI Options" button in a menu somewhere for non-casual users.)
 
i didn't mean to reach that number though ^^ but if some people needs it, i guess the number can be increased then.

Yes, we can do some small ones but its a long fight (and very annoying). Those districts can be used for buildings themes but also policies

Am not the kind of person that use mods a lot

everytime I use : fog toggler & radioactive desert (thx bloodyP) because looking at the city is killing my eyes as it is currently (@ dev^^) and I don't understand why they don't add them in the game options - no matter if mods exist - comfort of players and their health main matter so they should feat. in that released game when it reaches that level.

well,
Only some times I use more beautification (that may be needless once parklife released) and some others times to times but thats it... Traffic ones, I never used for example.

I install assets when I feel the need, yes. even this is depending... x)

With things officially available (CS & DLC's, including yrs!) we already can do a lot with districts. We don't have cadastral map (sadly - I imagine all opportunities with this but that also means to rework all assets ingame/workshop, and the map of course.... :/ )

DLC's number will also increase, and sometimes, we may need to build district only for policies....Myself some times build district for policy on road (indeed why to use mods for traffic? :p)
so the district tool is a VERY IMPORTANT thing in Cities: Skylines.

Nice tool they built that needs an update.
 
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@co_emmi I had missed the discussion above about the districts tool not working well with very small regions. That's worrying, as Parklife is advertised as a good way to use dead space between houses. Of which there is a lot as soon as you build something else than a grid. That means a lot of tiny parks, which might also make the 128 districts limit rather crippling for a large city.