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Introduction to Park Areas

Greetings everyone! The latest Cities: Skylines expansion called Parklife was announced 18th of April, 2018 and we couldn't be more excited because this time we got to take our cims for a amazing stroll in the many parks.

But doesn't Cities: Skylines already have parks? Not like this. The main new paid feature is Park Areas, which not only increase your city's happiness, the area's Entertainment and Land value but also offers you a chance to collect ticket income, level up the Park Area and turn larger and more complex areas into buzzing parks filled with life and activities! You are finally able to utilize areas to be meaningful for your cities without zoning them. The parks themselves have a progression, so by creating successful tourist destinations you unlock new content to expand your parks with.

Creating your park area

Defining a Park Area happens with a brush tool much like painting a District. The new Park Area tool is located under the current Districts menu. The flexible brush gives you the freedom to decide the exact shape, size and location of your park.

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Including Ruins found in a map into Nature Reserve is easy with the brush tool.

Types of Parks

Parklife DLC comes with four types of new Park Areas, each with their fitting style, park props and buildings: City Park, Nature Reserve, Zoo and Amusement Park.

City park is your multi-purpose go-to park capable of being tiny filler park in the city blocks and huge, impressive park that generate happiness to citizens and attract tourists to the city. The new buildings include everything from regular Park Cafe, Park Restrooms and Park Info Booth to Park Piers and even Trampoline Park. Whee!

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Overlooking City Park.

How would you feel about building a Nature Reserve trail going through that steep mountain that has previously been unsuitable for building? Now it couldn't be easier! Just paint your Park Area, place down your Nature Reserve Main Gate located under Parks & Plazas and let your creativity roam wild. New buildings include a variety of tents, campfires, lookout towers and cabins that you can mix-and-match to your own preference!

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Voilá! A breath taking view over the city and entry fees in my pocket!

Here we have a large flat area which is perfect for creating a Zoo! Each Park type differs from one another not only visually but expense and size wise as well. The large, bold zoo buildings host several new animals for your visitors' entertainment. We've also added new paths fitting for each Park type so that connecting your new buildings is both easy and visually pleasing.

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The elephant Enclosure is unlocked at Zoo level 3.

Amusement Parks are all about FUN FUN FUN! Observe your cims take a ride in Bumper Cars and witness the daring Pendulum Ride. The bright colours spark up any downtown but make sure nobody's trying to sleep too close - the excited screams might be too much for the light sleepers! And just wait till the sun goes down. This one's a real beauty.

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The sun might go down but the Amusement Park has a party all night.

Park Area Infoview and new panels

To quickly get a general view of your parks we've added a new tab for Leisure Info View that highlights all the park areas in your city. From there you can easily access Park Areas Overview that provides you the general information of all your city's parks. Further clicking on your desired park name opens that park's own Park Info Panel with even more details and information of how your park is doing. Sounds simple, right?

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Welcome to Washington Oil Meadows!

Gates, what is the role of Gates?

In order to get all of the benefits your Park Area has to offer it requires a Main Gate. Placing a Main Gate defines the type of your park, allows level progression, visitor count, ticket income and handle all the necessary city service traffic through the Main Gate that is connected to your road network. Park Area is also able to function without a Main Gate but all buildings will then require regular road network access for the city services (you also lose potential ticket income, visitor count and levels.) That is why there are two different sized Main Gates to choose from in each park type so you can more easily find a suitable gate to both huge park areas and small corner parks. However, even without a Main Gate you do get that small boost to your happiness and land value! Time to go parking!

Other Park buildings built inside the Park Area only require a path access - which is why we've also added several new paths to choose from. Note that your non-park buildings connected to road can also exist and normally function inside a park area.

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A Park Area with a Main Gate will have a fireworks show once a week!

Park Area Attractiveness

Decorating your Park Area with props, buildings and their type and your park level contributes to your park's Attractiveness. A park with buildings and decorations in it is more attractive to citizens than just a park area with nothing to do. The more attractive your park is - the more visitors you get. Simple!

Benefits of having Park Areas in your city

Each Park Area type has a selection of buildings and props designed for them but mixing props and buildings freely is easy and gives you the final control of your park's style. Unlock new buildings through engaging gameplay and notice how the buildings and props inside a Park Area contribute to various Park Area stats and visitor count. The buildings and props can be placed anywhere on your City, but when inside Park Areas they affect the park stats and give boosts based on park level. Adjustable ticket price opens a whole new source of income for your city and new Park Policies along with many new buildings are added to make sure you can go for even more versatile City of your dreams!

Park Leveling
Leveling your park. How?

To get you, dear players, on the way of further beautifying your city's skylines the Park Area tool will unlock at Tiny Town Milestone. After the first Park Area is created, all Main Gates and Props are ready to use. Placing a Main Gate to a Park Area grants the park it's first level, after that you can really get cracking on your park. Each Park type with a Main Gate have a level maximum of five. Park Areas start from level one and progress through levels when the requirements are met.

To further improve Park Areas and make them even more awesome, player should aim for leveling up the park. This is achieved by increasing the entertainment value of your Park Area with the sweet new park buildings, props, rocks, trees and vegetation. And in my opinion the most important reason of having a park is getting visitors who get to enjoy the wonders of your beautiful park.

Park_Leveling_Up.png

Congratulations! Next level achieved!

So what does it take?

All parks need Visitors and Entertainment to level up. Each Park Building yields a certain amount of Entertainment so feel free to place any amount of park buildings in your park. However it is worth noting that placing more than two similar buildings in the same Park Area reduces their Attractiveness and Entertainment value they give for each additional building. This is why pairing the buildings with new props, trees, rocks and vegetation is both cost-efficient (no upkeep cost for those) and good for your Park's Entertainment value. Yes, that's right! Whenever placed inside a Park Area your props, rocks, trees and vegetation also add Entertainment inside your Park Area. Just keep in mind there's a limit for how much Entertainment you can get from these!

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Creating a playground using props, trees and rocks both looks nice and adds to my Park Area's total Entertainment value.

Park Area levels are shown in the map view and in the Park Area Overview Panel. To provide little challenge to your park management each level is a bit more harder, for each level the parks need more Visitors and more Entertainment.

Please note that “Unlock all” mod works also for parks, unlocking everything that would normally unlock through park levels.

Beneficially effective leveling

Higher level parks provide sweet bonuses to the buildings that are inside the Park Area and match the Park Area's type. e.g. Amusement Park provides the bonus to all amusement park buildings, like Rollercoaster, Ferris Wheel and the House of Horrors! The Park Area level also determines the entertainment effect's range around the park, and increases the general attractiveness. More Park buildings unlock as the Park Areas level up so you are constantly motivated to hone your park to perfection. Needles to say that the benefits of leveling up parks are HUUUUGE! Everything from new buildings to higher ticket income, all for the good of your Cims (and City).

So the only question that remains is: What's your dream park like?

Cheers,
Cities: Skylines development team!
 
@metatoaster Did you try it in game? Because it really isn't that often it comes up and it will be even less so for parks, because you won't have them join up to each other. There's no point in having 2 tiny parks right next to each other, you'd make that one park instead. You can make tiny districts perfectly fine, they only start misbehaving when there's another one right next to it sharing the edge. I really don't think it will come up much if at all with park districts, so I wouldn't worry about it. Same with district limits. I've never heard of anyone reaching that limit except one person who dotted the entire map with small districts to see how many he could have.

If however we do start hitting that limit a lot then I'm sure CO will have a look at it to see if anything can be done. Ofc we're assuming the districts and park districts share the same limit. Could be we're wrong and park districts are seperate in that regard with their own limit, in which case there's no reason to worry at all. But let's see if we even get close to the limit first. It's a waste of development time if they work on upping a limit that no one hits in a build. ;)
 
@Avanya Perhaps I'm worrying for nothing about the small size then. Parks are on a different layer than districts so don't interfere IIUC?

However the limit sounds easy to hit if we make a lot of tiny parks in building recesses.
 
If we start to hit the district limits often the way to go about it is describe the situations where we hit the limits (including perhaps screenshots and saves), so CO can assess the issue. If it's common for players to hit the limit I'm sure they'll increase it if possible. But we don't even know if that will happen - and considering no one has hit the limit just playing the game (even with 81 tiles) I wouldn't worry so much. Sure if the districts and park districts share limits we might get there, but 128 might also be plenty. Many people are likely to have the game slow down so much they move on to a new city before they even hit the limits. :)
 
Park Area Attractiveness
Decorating your Park Area with props, buildings and their type and your park level contributes to your park's Attractiveness. A park with buildings and decorations in it is more attractive to citizens than just a park area with nothing to do. The more attractive your park is - the more visitors you get. Simple!

Hi, I have few question about that.
Adding props increase the attractiveness of the park,I understand that, but :
• Can we mix City park props and zoo park with the same effect?
• Props in the new (?) Props tab (Spinning wheel, fountain, standing stone ) also increase attractiveness or only Park props?

Thanks :)
 
1. As far as I understand, now there are no sightseeing ships. This is a drawback.
2. I would like to see an addition with trolleybuses.
3. It would be nice to make a ticket price for transportation. It is possible that someone from the residents, by virtue of a cheap ticket, would prefer to travel longer by bus (trolleybus) than by metro.
4. I would like to see the possibility of holding festivals in the city (for example, a city day, etc.) that would be different from the already released supplement of the "concert venue" which. The festival would have been costly and perhaps more profitable, and the venue was zoned. For example: holding a festvala in the city center with the appointment of transportation detours for the period of the celebration.
5. We need to improve the transition system. It is possible to execute them as ready transition objects. Currently, this system is not very well implemented (underground and overground transitions)
 
1. As far as I understand, now there are no sightseeing ships. This is a drawback.

How so?

2. I would like to see an addition with trolleybuses.

It would offer no considerable benefit to gameplay that isn't already provided. Can we have a rule against Trolleybus posting? It's getting most tiresome...

3. It would be nice to make a ticket price for transportation. It is possible that someone from the residents, by virtue of a cheap ticket, would prefer to travel longer by bus than by metro.

Could be interesting. IPT mod offers this functionality for the meantime.

4. I would like to see the possibility of holding festivals in the city (for example, a city day, etc.) that would be different from the already released supplement of the "concert venue" which. The festival would have been costly and perhaps more profitable, and the venue was zoned. For example: holding a festvala in the city center with the appointment of transportation detours for the period of the celebration.

Also interesting. Rush Hour mod.

5. We need to improve the transition system. It is possible to execute them as ready transition objects. Currently, this system is not very well implemented (underground and overground transitions)

Do you mean the peds sinking into the floor/ceiling? If so, yeah I guess, but would it affect performance?
 
It is part of the free update and more information coming in upcoming dev diaries ;)



The services are handled at the gate (so garbage is moved there for pick-up) and with fires the citizens are careful not to cause them unless they have a chance to put them out.



They can use the side gates for entrance, but the main gate is the one which you use to change the ticket prices and they will pay the same price at the side gates.



More information about the animals coming in future dev diaries ;)

Do we please know when the ,,Animal,, Dev diary will come up? :) I started new game and I have many questions about the animals that need answering :)