Splendid isolation apart from that one road junction

[Tisifoni12]

Just started playing Cities Skylines and here are some thoughts.

The settlement you build, other than the access roads to the motorway/interstate/autobahn is a self contained unit that must source its own water and generate its own electricity.

Is there no 'national grid' to plug into ? Generating power and selling the excess to the grid might generate income, offering cheap or green power might attract residents and industry. Yes you have to provide the local infrastructure but give us the option to draw power and water from national or regional infrastructure.

It seems impossible to 'zone small'. If I want to zone just the corner or end of a block for commercial or for a different density of housing it seems not possible to do so. If I'm starting small, I'm probably going to want to zone small.

Judging spaces can be difficult. This is a new settlement on a 'green' site and if I want to deliberately place things to leave spaces for future schools, parks, hospital, it is difficult to judge spaces for that. Zoning, reservation, or less regular shapes for such sites ?

 

[Chieron]

It seems impossible to 'zone small'. If I want to zone just the corner or end of a block for commercial or for a different density of housing it seems not possible to do so. If I'm starting small, I'm probably going to want to zone small.

There are options for the zoning tool to not fill all tiles. You can fill tiles one by one if you so wish. Unfortunately, the default setting is the fill mode, which in the beginning means zoning an entire street.
These options can be found on the lower left.

Judging spaces can be difficult. This is a new settlement on a 'green' site and if I want to deliberately place things to leave spaces for future schools, parks, hospital, it is difficult to judge spaces for that. Zoning, reservation, or less regular shapes for such sites ?

You can always plow over the previous growable buildings, it doesn't cost anything to rezone or bulldoze.
If you want to mark places for later, you might want to just leave them open or zones them in a way that makes it obvious what you intended, preventing the buildup at the same time, like zoning industrial in a residential area, but leaving a gap to the street.

 

[Tisifoni12]

There are options for the zoning tool to not fill all tiles. You can fill tiles one by one if you so wish. Unfortunately, the default setting is the fill mode, which in the beginning means zoning an entire street.
These options can be found on the lower left.

Thank you !
I've been playing with a mod based on the island of Skiathos which offers fairly rugged terrain. Following the curves of the land and avoiding the steepest slopes and most broken terrain results in lots of small zoneable blocks, so one can intermix commercial and housing.

 

[Weyird]

About the national electricity grid thing; that's something I've thought of before. I'd have liked if, next to the highway, there were electricity lines that you can connect your city to. You'd be buying electricity at first before you built a massive power plant.
But then, power plants are not nearly to scale anyway...

 

[EzioAlditore]

For zoning small, as Chieron mentiones, you can change the fill effect so you select exactly which squares you want to zone. Sorry, can't remember the name, but it's those little icons left of where you select the zone type. It's also available right from the start , no unlock necessary.