Why does your city exist? Is it originally a mining town? Is it originally a railway stop at the head of a junction or shift change? Does it have significant fertile land making it a farming town? Is it a highway stop where weary truck drivers stop to eat, get fuel, sleep and go to the toilet? Does it exist because it's located along a river, being the perfect place to establish a factory? There are a whole variety of reasons why a city could exist, and CS2 could reflect that by allowing you start with a certain industry then moving on from there.

Very few cities just pop into existence like they do in CS1, and if they do, it's because they're deliberately designed to, like Washington DC or Canberra, or Dubai. Rince and repeat until mining is only one industry of the very large and diverse city. As the next generation passes, they might not want to work in the same industry as their parents, so they find other sources of employment. Then workers move in to get employeed at the supermarket, etc. The town grows bigger, so a major supermarket moves in. People then move to that town to serve the factory. Then the town grows bigger, so therefore, a factory might move in. See what happens, say a small town is built because of a nearby mine. In dry climates, some cities exist solely because they're located near a water source. The Romans and in the USA, they built cities around rivers because they could build a port there and have a source of drinking water, so they set up a settlement expexting all the industries to move in. But in the old world, we also have cities that exist solely to service the Silk Road. The people who weren't growing crops were also located in the city, close to the food source, doing othet stuff, and that's the city formed. In real life, most cities start off as small towns surrounding a centralised industry, with other industries forming around it to support that industry, until it becomes a city in its own right.įor example, many old world cities started off where farmers began to settle down and grow croos. So CS1 would have you believe that you just plonk a few houses and people will eventually move in, and keep moving in, until you have a major metropolis, but that's not how it works in real life.

Cities skylines river map