How far in advance do you plan your cities?

[Rituro]

With many of my early cities, I often ran into problems once I tried to get services up and running. I'd end up building over residential and commercial areas that were fairly productive just to make sure fire coverage, for example, existed.

For my latest, I've made a conscious effort to reserve space and plan for upgrades well in advance. Projected major blocks have space for a strip of bike lane or walking path right down the middle. Roads are set aside for access to schools, police, fire, etc. It feels like I've gone a bit too far out the other side and am over-planning my city's future, though the functioning cycling network would beg to differ.

So, asking all of you out there, how far in advance do you plan your cities? What elements do you set aside space for? What parts do you leave out entirely?

 

[MarkJohnson]

I try to build as far in advance as possible, and I always try for a million population.

But like you, you run into road blocks and your city starts failing. They you try to fix it, then sometimes start over because it will be more work to fix than just start a new city.

After a while you get to know how the city wants you to build and you learn most of the game mechanics, and you can build a fairly successful city in your your head.

I am not very creative, but I know more of what not to do, than I do plan ahead. I can get an idea of the types of areas needs certain layouts.

For example. My last city had a long narrow extension into the bay. These make great tourism sections for all of your unique buildings and monuments. The you have shipping to get tourist in and out, plus run rail lines into the area to get tourists in and out as well, plus an airport on the back side to move tourist about. Tourists love subways, so lots of metro with bus helping. of course taxis help a lot as well.

But anyway, in the beginning it won't matter on planning until you understand how the game wants you to build. Using mods to fix issues will usually hurt you as you will not fix your problems and eventually the issues become worse and worse. Once you get food at building larger cities in vanilla, then you can use mods to help make it work the way you want to but fudging things a little bit here and there.

 

[Vimes]

Every time that I start a new city (which is very often it seems) I always start with the intent of being minded to future rail and road developments. Often I start enthused having watched a series or two on YT, which has inspired me to forward think about the use of multi rail tracks and access to major roads etc etc. However creating and developing a city is as elusive to me as drawing anything other than simple stick people. I not only lack any sort of creativity I seem to have a block between what my mind thinks that it wants to create and what my clicky click fingers place down.

I watch people with absolute precision draw their districts to include or exclude roads from restrictions etc and then I look at mine, my districts take the form of some form of jelly like amoeba.

Still with nearly 300 hours in, not much by many peoples standards I know, I continue to have fun

What has helped, so far anyway, is to severely cut down my addiction to assets and building themes. That has improved loading times and RAM consumption, as well as trying to no longer need to merge the styles so that the city flows somewhat better than often looking like it was a modern day Gotham.

I suppose the above is one reason why I do not post any screens of my cities....! lol

I do like to use mods tho and I take Mark's well made points. I had a four track railway running up to a four lane road and it suited that situation, for me anyway, just to select that section of the road and use the Move it tool to sink it down to go under the rail.

 

[Pops121]

My method of planning a city depends mostly on the map. I like playing with 25 tiles and aim for a population of around 500k as my pc starts to slow down. I first look at the map and look for where my water is, the layout of highways, where the train line is, and finally a flat area where I can work on a startup grid of low density housing. This grid area needs to be enough to house 8k so I can reach the high density milestone, but most of all a good income for my budget. I also like placing my downtown district on a bit of a hill, (makes the skyscrapers just look a little higher than they really are.)

I always leave green space around highways and especially highway interchanges as ultimately these will need upgrading in future as city grows. Knowing where the trains come in and out is essential for planning industry. There arent many cities that dont have dirty industrial areas, trying to also keep close to ship connections. I play from start and with the budget, having unlimited money and all buildings open, imo, is only for when I want to just build a purely ascetic pretty city that may or may not be profitable. I will always leave space for pathways and late on buildings, eg cemeteries, crematoriums etc, very important. Knowing what is needed later on and allowing the space for it early saves a lot of rebuilding. I will look to increase the number of highways as well so need space for these.

I will spend up to an hour studying the map before I even lay the first road. Knowing what you want and where you want it, included into the terrain of the map always makes for a better city so always leave space for future. Some dont like the use of the power pylons but early on I dont care, as the city grows how Ive seen it grow when I studied the map these pylons ultimately get eaten up with structures. Plan to the terrain of the map and visualize your finished city before you start, leaving space for transit hubs etc and any other infrastructure the future may offer is the best advice I can think of. I study the start tiles and all connected to at the start.

 

[Rituro]

Great stuff so far -- thanks @MarkJohnson , @Vimes and @Pops121 for your insights. Much appreciated!