How do district styles work?

[Red Earth]

The game comes with the European/Vanilla style, which I have used with the base game district style selection function. However, various videos I've seen use a different style selection interface. I downloaded the American Eclectic style and although it does show up in the interface, it does not work with the base game style selector.

So, what's the deal? Does the base game style selector only work with official styles? Do I have to use a mod to use other styles? Why is that?

 

[Ragga Muffin]

i had some confusion with this, certain maps have different styles as their default, the alternate is a different building tile set.

Euro style (not green, not IT, not specialist commerse) will show when you use high density
It gives nice corner buildings that lock into each other. Offices, commerse, res all give change shape with euro style
American style gives more stand alone buildings with the dense zoneing

There are others i dont have,

You can mix styles by using a specialisation setting for the zone,
For example, if you were to mix some green + office in a euro zone, the green would grow as normal green but the office would make square (multi piece) buildings

 

[TTJ]

The game comes with the European/Vanilla style, which I have used with the base game district style selection function. However, various videos I've seen use a different style selection interface. I downloaded the American Eclectic style and although it does show up in the interface, it does not work with the base game style selector.

So, what's the deal? Does the base game style selector only work with official styles? Do I have to use a mod to use other styles? Why is that?

Maybe what you have seen is the building theme mod by Boformer. It introduces building themes which are incompatible to the vanilla building styles.

Steam Workshop::Building Themes

steamcommunity.com

 

[MarkJohnson]

Yes, building themes mod is a good way to make your own custom district styles.

Here's a recent video on using the mod:

There are other older videos that are more detailed, but this one should get you started.