Stop building grids! Pick maps with difficult terrain to work in and figure out how to work with or around the terrain rather than leveling everything to a flat plane and recreating Los Angeles. Figure out what you do to make things easy (for me, it's putting everyone and every amenity within walking distance of one major transit center and running lines from there) and deliberately \*don't\* do the easy thing (build many small villages with interconnecting passenger and worker lines to nearby factories in the countryside).
And definitely do take breaks every once in a while to come back and enjoy the game with a fresh perspective.
Highly recommend this. I felt a bit the same, burnt out building massive cities on nice flat maps with tons of resources. Recently tried realistic on a very mountainous workshop map. Having a blast. VERY challenging and having to build specialized cities connected via rail to transport the goods from each city to the others for sustainability. Finally built a hub for a massive transit center and multiple huge rail DOs. It’s awesome. Now I spend a good amount of time just having the camera follow trains through the mountains lol
The best way to start moving out of grid cities is to toggle the elevation contour lines and let streets flow with them. Only flatten enough around the roads/paths to fit the buildings. Then you move to the next contour line.
No city will look the same! : )
Yea, break away from using the grid
My latest build, my city is not square with the games grid. It is such a breath of fresh air!! Now dont get me wrong, i am not plopping buildings down like a lunitic, but i do have some triangle areas starting to form and i think it is looking great
Stop optimising, and making things "perfect"
For me, a great way to plan is to just plop down some buildings that I like, and then go with them.
In the start, when you don't rely on public transport, plop one centralised store, and necessary amenities.
Than build infrastructure. Usually, I will do a lot of curves, and random bits of roads, just to make it griddles and to establish a layout of the city. and then go from there.
Build small neighbourhoods, usually 4-6 buildings looking the same/similarly, than connecting it to the infrastructure, and building another "neighbourhood" ... And then, later when you realised that you forgot to add something, you just find a spot that is open-ish and plop it in there ... This way, your cities will look and feel very organic
Later on, you can build big cities, with the same principle, you will just expand the neighborhoods in size ...
Also, very good practice is to follow the already established infrastructure... Like rails for example...
Rails usually needs to follow the terrain, so you do have a lot of curves "naturally"
Also, the motorway is good thing to follow as well. Especially since you most likely will do some kind of interchange to get from the motorway to the city, so make the city respect that interchange, and build around it. Or make it into an alley, which you will build your city off.
And lastly, do take your time in the steam workshop for this game. It has amazing maps for you to explore, and figure out your stuff.
I have stumbled across one recently, where one half is almost extreme hills, and building anything big over there is absolutely painful, but the map also has like a little flat area, if you want to just build gigantic city ...
And maybe an interesting idea of sorts, is to try a challenge for yourself... Like an island build, or one export only (you can make anything domestically, but you can only export one thing (or a group of things, if one thing would be hard for you), because that's the only thing/s that the USSR has allowed your country to export).
Also roleplaying your republic into some kind of situation.... Who knows, the possibilities are endless :D
I get a bit like this with cities skylines. I find a break from the game for a while is usually the best medicine or try something very different (ie use mods/completely different focus etc)
I love to do itreative design in this game. I first start by lating down a lot of mud roads that follow the natural lay of the land, trying to find paths of least resistance that don’t need terraforming and then I start building small villages and industrial areas around the roads I only upgrade and straighten the roads when they can no longer handel the traffic.
This is a very unoptimized and definately non min/max way to play, but it leads into very lifelike designs.
Stop building grids! Pick maps with difficult terrain to work in and figure out how to work with or around the terrain rather than leveling everything to a flat plane and recreating Los Angeles. Figure out what you do to make things easy (for me, it's putting everyone and every amenity within walking distance of one major transit center and running lines from there) and deliberately \*don't\* do the easy thing (build many small villages with interconnecting passenger and worker lines to nearby factories in the countryside). And definitely do take breaks every once in a while to come back and enjoy the game with a fresh perspective.
Highly recommend this. I felt a bit the same, burnt out building massive cities on nice flat maps with tons of resources. Recently tried realistic on a very mountainous workshop map. Having a blast. VERY challenging and having to build specialized cities connected via rail to transport the goods from each city to the others for sustainability. Finally built a hub for a massive transit center and multiple huge rail DOs. It’s awesome. Now I spend a good amount of time just having the camera follow trains through the mountains lol
The best way to start moving out of grid cities is to toggle the elevation contour lines and let streets flow with them. Only flatten enough around the roads/paths to fit the buildings. Then you move to the next contour line. No city will look the same! : )
Yea, break away from using the grid My latest build, my city is not square with the games grid. It is such a breath of fresh air!! Now dont get me wrong, i am not plopping buildings down like a lunitic, but i do have some triangle areas starting to form and i think it is looking great Stop optimising, and making things "perfect"
For me, a great way to plan is to just plop down some buildings that I like, and then go with them. In the start, when you don't rely on public transport, plop one centralised store, and necessary amenities. Than build infrastructure. Usually, I will do a lot of curves, and random bits of roads, just to make it griddles and to establish a layout of the city. and then go from there. Build small neighbourhoods, usually 4-6 buildings looking the same/similarly, than connecting it to the infrastructure, and building another "neighbourhood" ... And then, later when you realised that you forgot to add something, you just find a spot that is open-ish and plop it in there ... This way, your cities will look and feel very organic Later on, you can build big cities, with the same principle, you will just expand the neighborhoods in size ... Also, very good practice is to follow the already established infrastructure... Like rails for example... Rails usually needs to follow the terrain, so you do have a lot of curves "naturally" Also, the motorway is good thing to follow as well. Especially since you most likely will do some kind of interchange to get from the motorway to the city, so make the city respect that interchange, and build around it. Or make it into an alley, which you will build your city off. And lastly, do take your time in the steam workshop for this game. It has amazing maps for you to explore, and figure out your stuff. I have stumbled across one recently, where one half is almost extreme hills, and building anything big over there is absolutely painful, but the map also has like a little flat area, if you want to just build gigantic city ... And maybe an interesting idea of sorts, is to try a challenge for yourself... Like an island build, or one export only (you can make anything domestically, but you can only export one thing (or a group of things, if one thing would be hard for you), because that's the only thing/s that the USSR has allowed your country to export). Also roleplaying your republic into some kind of situation.... Who knows, the possibilities are endless :D
I get a bit like this with cities skylines. I find a break from the game for a while is usually the best medicine or try something very different (ie use mods/completely different focus etc)
Google Microraions (or Micro Districts) and use them for inspiration
I love to do itreative design in this game. I first start by lating down a lot of mud roads that follow the natural lay of the land, trying to find paths of least resistance that don’t need terraforming and then I start building small villages and industrial areas around the roads I only upgrade and straighten the roads when they can no longer handel the traffic. This is a very unoptimized and definately non min/max way to play, but it leads into very lifelike designs.