Players can customize their industrial areas with supply chains for the four different resource types and unique factories. Well managed industry areas will level up and become more efficient. Aside from production chains, there is a new city service for handling mail and the cargo airport eases import and export of factory goods. . Define an area with the industry area tool and place highly specialized industrial buildings to build and manage the production chain from raw material extraction up to final end product. New industrial buildings include Extractors, Warehouse Facilities, Processing and Auxiliary Buildings, Industrial Props and Roads.
Cities Skylines Industries Guide
Recently cities skylines PS4 and Xbox fans received the new Industries DLC. In this particular DLC Cities Skylines brings us some focus on the creation of supply chains for different industries. I decided to write a detailed guide for this DLC because it’s not that easy to start over with the new approach to industries.
New Approach to Industries.
In cities skylines industries expansion we still have good old industrial branches: oil, ore, forestry, agriculture. However, if before that you were just setting a specialization to different industrial districts in accordance with sources of raw materials, now you are equipped with a variety of specialized objects that are individual for each of four industries. Moreover, now you have control over the entire production chain starting from mining and ending with the production of complex goods.
The approach is very similar to the new parks we received in Parklife – one of the previous Cities Skylines expansions. You just place industrial zoning on your map with a special brush and then place the main building to define the specialization of this district. The new industrial districts have the same 1 to 5-star rating as the new parks. As your industrial district produces some amount of goods and is expanded to some number of employees it receives a new level. In this way, you unlock some additional buildings that usually are either the bigger versions of fields, plantations and so on or unique factories (we’ll talk about them later).
The production chain of the specific industry is pretty simple in the beginning and more complicated in the end. On the first level, you start with a simple source of two kinds of raw materials – e.g. a field and a plantation of fruit trees. Those materials are to be moved to a processor – a special facility that will turn raw materials (like crops, ore or oil) into an intermediate product (like flour, metal or petroleum). You also can build unique factories that produce more complex products like ships and cars and require a bunch of intermediate products. Once the products are produced they will be distributed among your commercial zones or exported.
One of the most interesting new features is Cities Skylines warehouse. They can have different sizes and it’s wise to use them in the correct locations to make sure your factories get the needed resources in time.
Cities Skylines Industrial Layout
Let’s start with placing your industries. Just like it was before, your extracting industries should be placed where the specific raw material is present. For example, for cities skylines forestry you need to find a good dense forest. It is usually more complicated with ore and oil so you need to plan your development in advance.
It is interesting that even if you don’t have access to certain raw material (let’s say oil), you still need to place extractors to unlock more complex buildings and then your city will start importing those raw materials. That wasn’t obvious to me and turned into some hours of butthurt because I didn’t have proper access to oil even when unlocked all the tiles.
Sure besides the presence of the raw materials your new industrial area will need access to transport, electricity, water, and workers. And just as always you’d better not place it near residential areas. Some industries such as oil also may need access to the seashore if you want to extract oil on the shelf. Note that a fully-fledged industrial district would need pretty much space.
Pretty similar to parks, industrial areas have their ratings. With each new level, you unlock more buildings. The levels are unlocked once you fulfill two requirements: a certain number of employees and some volume of goods produced. With the last level, you unlock a unique factory.
Once you have several industries of different kinds, you need to start thinking over logistics. For example, plastics produced by your cities skylines oil industry may be needed for the proper functioning of the printing press unique factory along with three other products such and petroleum, paper, and grains. This means it’s wise to place the storage of plastics somewhere in between your oil industry and the unique factory. Also, industries generate a lot of traffic so you would need good roads. If the raw materials are imported then don’t forget about access to seaport or railroad. These exercises guarantee you a lot of engaging city planning.
Other New Features in Cities Skylines Industries Expansion
Cargo airports are used for import and export of your goods by air which is useful considering the increased amount of heavy traffic that appeared in Cities Skylines Industries.
Finally, we have Cities Skylines toll booth feature in the vanilla game. The idea is to grow your income thanks to paid access of your citizens to some roads. Honestly, I didn’t use this much because this affects your traffic speed. And in this game, it’s not often that you don’t have enough cash.
Another new feature is post delivery which I find totally useless. You need to place post offices that will arrange post delivery and increase happiness. My citizens are already happy without that and I find this feature unneeded.
Cities Skylines Industries Layout
Also, 6 new policies which are related to new features which I honestly didn’t use much.
Cities Skylines Industries VS Industries Plus
The only difference is a techno radio station available in the cities skylines industries plus edition. That’s all.
Should I Buy Cities Skylines Industries?
Cities Skylines Industries Review
As an owner of all the Cities Skylines DLCs I can say yes, you should. Here are the advantages I noticed:
- Industries now aren’t just an annoying dirty type of districts that may be replaced with offices. It’s a fully-fledged subsystem which is well-integrated into your city ecosystem
- Logistical challenges add a lot of fun
- I like the unique factories, the unlocking system creates a goal for the player which is fun to complete
- Finally, in cities skylines farms look like fields and gardens and not just like a bunch of iron things, you can try to create realistic countryside which lacked in previous versions.
- And sure new Chirper hats 🙂
I hope you liked this Cities Skylines Industries DLC guide. That’s a really good expansion to our beloved game that will bring you a lot of excitement if you love city planning as much as I do.