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Events and Announcements for Cities: Skylines
📢We have arrived at the last stop of the Cities: Skylines: World Tour!🗺️Our last mini-expansion Hotels & Retreats along with 3 Content Creator Packs & 2 Radio Stations is NOW AVAILABLE!🛎️The Hotels & Retreats bundle includes a mini-expansion for Cities: Skylines, alongside a selection of content and music to keep your cities thriving for a long time. Get the new Hotels & Retreats expansion and boost your hospitality features, and enjoy buildings and music inspired by cities the world over!The full “Hotels & Retreats bundle” includes:“Hotels & Retreats” Mini-expansionSpruce up your City with the finest hôtellerie with “Hotels & Retreats”! With everything from conference hotels for your business travelers, to mountain hotels for nature lovers. Start with a small hotel chain and unlock more luxurious options as you make your way to a successful hotel business- with a significant tourism boost for your city. “Brooklyn & Queens” Content Creator PackCities are ever-changing, and this Pack from Content Creator “Prosper” explores the neighborhoods of Brooklyn and Queens. “Brooklyn & Queens” is a set of medium-rise high-density residential buildings and props for decorating the facade and rooftops. “Railroads of Japan” Content Creator PackDiscover Japan by train thanks to “Railroads of Japan” from Content Creator Ryuichi Kaminogi. This Content Creator Pack adds authentic Japanese railroad scenery to Cities: Skylines with stations, trains, buses, and more!“Industrial Evolution” Content Creator PackWalk the path of history with “Industrial Evolution”, from Community Creator Samantha “Avanya” Woods. This Content Creator Pack includes a new set of growable buildings that span different eras of industrial building styles, from red brick walls to modern, sleek industrial complexes.“Piano Tunes” Radio Station“Piano Tunes” is the perfect Radio Station for those of you who love classical, whimsical, elegant piano music. With 16 songs and approximately one hour of music, your city will rise flawlessly from your fingertips!“90’s Pop” Radio Station90’s lovers out there, this Radio Station is for you! With “90’s Pop” you'll fall in love with this incredible music once again: enjoy 16 new tracks and almost one hour of music.
Watch your cargo get delivered by the new vans, trucks, and the train engineWith Green Cities, we introduced the biofuel bus depot and its buses, and with this update, we’re expanding the fleet with two new biofuel buses. The new biofuel bus has a slightly higher capacity than the original and can carry 40 passengers, while the articulated biofuel bus can transport up to 75 passengers making it ideal for those busy lines. Like the existing biofuel bus, they are quieter and produce less noise pollution.
Go green with one of the new biofuel bus optionsWhile we’re on the subject of buses, let’s take a look at the new options available if you own Sunset Harbor. We have a total of 8 new buses for you to choose from with two new trolleybuses, 5 articulated trolleybuses, and a new doubledecker intercity bus to bring in more tourists! The new trolleybuses range in capacity from 26 to 90 significantly increasing the options for your lines. Additionally, we have rebalanced trolleybuses which includes making them quieter than regular buses, but more on that later in this dev diary!
The new buses are ready to service your cityBefore we move on from vehicles and look at what else this update includes, there is one more vehicle we need to show you: The Park Maintenance Vehicle. This vehicle is added to the game if you own Parklife and will service your parks giving them a boost to their entertainment. Who doesn’t enjoy a clean and well-kept park? You can select this new version, the existing vehicle, or let the game randomly pick between the two by using the vehicle selector on the Park Maintenance Building.
The new park maintenance vehicle headed out to main the city’s parksNew RoadsNext in line, we have a bunch of new roads starting with 3 new industrial roads added to Industries. They all generate more noise pollution than regular roads but in turn, they’re cheaper to build and cost your city less upkeep. The Small Four-Lane Industry Road brings those extra lanes to tight industrial areas teaming with traffic. But sometimes 4 lanes just aren’t enough and that’s where the Large Industry Road comes in handy with its 6 lanes. Last, but not least, we have the Industry Highway offering 3 lanes in one direction as a cheaper alternative to the base game highway.
Industry roads are ideal for areas like industry districts where noise pollution is always highAnd of course, Sunset Harbor gets new roads to compliment the buses and bring you more flexibility in building your trolleybus lines. If you own just Sunset Harbor you will get access to 4 new roads, in the medium roads category you will find the Four-Lane Road with Trolleybus Wires and Trees, while the large roads category includes the Six-Lane Road with Median and Trolleybus Wires, which also comes with a grass median and trees.
Expand your trolleybus network with the 4 new roadsAdding bicycle lanes to the mix we get 3 more roads available if you own both Sunset Harbor and After Dark. You don’t have to sacrifice your dedicated bicycle lanes when adding trolleybuses to the roads, whether it’s small neighborhood roads or large main roads, there’s an option for you to use. Both the medium and large roads have medians, with the Six-Lane Road with Median Trees, Trolleybus Wires and Bicycle Lanes adding a green touch to the road.
Combine trolleybuses and bicycle lanes to provide more green transport options in your cityIf you’re looking to integrate trolleybuses into your pedestrian areas, we have you covered. When you have both Sunset Harbor and Plazas & Promenades installed, you get access to these 6 new pedestrian streets with trolleybus wires. They include both sides and all three styles you have come to know, and the bus lanes allow both regular buses and trolleybuses to use them. Trolleybus roads have also been improved to be able to intersect with roads with tram wires, making it easy to include both tram and trolleybuses in your pedestrian areas without needing elaborate intersections where they cross paths.
No need to choose between trolleybuses or trams as the pedestrian streets can intersectNew Buildings & DecorationsThis update isn’t all roads and vehicles though - we already did that one - it includes a selection of new buildings and decorations for you to enjoy. As part of the base game, we have 3 new trees: Silver Birch, Norway Spruce, and Large Scrub. If you spend time in the asset editor you may also enjoy the two new hedge props available to decorate any buildings.
Bring nature into your city with the new trees and hedge propsGreen Cities gets a new power plant, the Advanced Coal Power Plant, which is available from the start offering a less polluting alternative to the existing Coal Power Plant. While this plant doesn’t provide clean energy and comes at a higher cost, it produces more energy than the regular Coal Power Plant making it a great option to reduce pollution while still being able to supply a starting city.
The Advanced Coal Power Plant offers a less polluting alternative to coal powerFor Parklife, we have 3 new buildings, one for amusement parks, one for zoos, and one for nature reserves. Give your citizens a new thrill with the Log Ride, educate your citizens about tarsiers with your city zoo’s new Tarsier House, or preserve the local cultural history with the Nature Reserve Museum. Each park building adds to the entertainment of the park area they’re used in or they can be used as standalone parks placed alongside a road.
The Tarsier House (left), Log Ride (middle), and Nature Reserve Museum (right) are sure to be a hit with touristsIf you have Industries you will notice a new warehouse in your menu, the Warehouse with Railway Connection. It functions like a regular warehouse but is able to ship and receive goods directly via your city’s rail network, making it ideal for areas needing to import or export industrial or commercial goods. Its capacity sits between the Medium Warehouse and the Large Warehouse with 600 tons of storage space.
Storage and a rail connection combined to save space and truck trafficIf you have both Industries and Sunset Harbor you will find a new unique factory, the Seafood Factory, combining fish and plastics to provide your citizens with delicious fermented fish in easy-to-open plastic containers. Additionally, your warehouses are now able to store fish making the production of fish-related products more convenient.
Combine fish and plastic to produce seafood goods for your cityAirports gets two new decorative concrete aprons, a large and a small one, which can be placed almost anywhere! They snap to networks and block zoning tiles, but they can overlap with both networks and most buildings, making them perfect for filling in spaces between your aircraft stands, hangars, parked planes - or anywhere in your city you want a paved area. We have made these as flexible as possible and we look forward to seeing the uses you come up with!
Add paved areas to your airports or anywhere in the cityLastly, we have two new variations for the Small Fountain Plaza and the Flower Plaza from Plazas & Promenades. Where they previously only had one type of stone available, they now come in sandstone, bluestone, and cobblestone matching your pedestrian streets and the Large Fountain Plaza for even more variation when decorating your city. When placed they select a random variation, but you can change it to your favorite using the submesh variation selector on the building info panel. 
Which type of stone is your favorite?ImprovementsWe’re nearing the end of this dev diary, but before we get there we have a few improvements to go through. Last update we rebalanced the cost of transport vehicles to benefit from the variations in capacity, and for this update, we wanted to address your feedback on trolleybuses and improve their viability as a transportation option. This resulted in the following changes:
Toggle zoning on both sides, one side, or offAnd with that, we have reached the end of the dev diary! This update and Hotels & Retreats will be available on the 23rd of May, and you can find the patch notes listing all the content, improvements, and bug fixes below. As we were not able to include all the bug fixes we planned in this update, we will have another small update fixing some bugs after this, the date of which is still to be determined.Until then we hope you enjoy this update and look forward to seeing how you use the new additions in your cities!--------------------------------------------------Patch notes for 1.17.0-f3Hotels & Retreats paid content
Invite tourists to stay at the Budget Hotel (left), the Mountain Lodge (middle), or the Luxury Hotel (right)Before placing your first hotel we need to talk about tourists and location. With Hotels & Retreats, tourists fall into one of four categories: Sightseeing Tourists visit the city to see the sights seeking out unique buildings and parks during their stay. Shopping Tourists are here for your city’s shopping opportunities and look for commercial zones to visit. Business Tourists do not visit for pleasure, they’re in your city for work and have business to attend to at offices. And last, but not least we have Nature Tourists who prefer to stay away from the busy city and enjoy the natural scenery your city has to offer.How much a hotel appeals to each group of tourists depends both on the hotel itself and where in the city it’s placed. The tooltip of a hotel shows how much (if at all) a hotel can appeal to these groups, while the surroundings you place it in will fill up each bar accordingly. The new Hotel Locations Infoviews will help you find the perfect location for your hotel showing a heat map for each of the four categories. When you select a hotel the Infoview is automatically opened showing the hotel’s highest potential category, but for the optimal location, you can cycle through each category and choose a spot with the best overlap. You can also give the overall popularity rating a boost by placing public transport nearby, making sure there is little to no crime in the area, and avoiding areas with heavy pollution.
Find the perfect spot for your new hotelsOnce placed you can select the hotel to see how much it appeals to each group of tourists, its overall popularity rating, and how profitable it is. You can also adjust the price per night depending on how well your hotel is doing. Lowering the price will make it more appealing to tourists even if the popularity rating is less than ideal, while you can charge a higher price for very attractive locations. Hotel expenses stay the same regardless of how many guests are staying the night, so the key to a profitable hotel is filling up those rooms!
Improve the surrounding area to increase the hotel’s popularity ratingRunning a hotel chainYou’ve found a good location and built your first hotel. Time to turn this into a chain and grow the city’s tourism! The hotel chain is automatically created with a default name and logo, which can be customized in the Hotel Management interface. You can find this through the Manage Hotels button found on all hotel interfaces or through the Hotel Locations Infoview. You can name your hotel chain anything, select one of 7 logos to use, and customize the color of both the logo and your hotels.The Hotel Management interface also provides an overview of all your hotels, their popularity, amount of guests staying there at the moment, and how profitable they are. You can sort them by popularity to increase the price of your most popular ones or sort them by profit to improve any which are struggling. At the bottom, you will find information about your hotel chain’s overall star rating and the requirements to reach the next level.
Manage and customize your hotel chain through the Hotel Management interfaceWhen your hotel chain reaches 5 stars you unlock 3 different 5-star hotels: the Heritage Hotel, the Deluxe Hotel, and the Design Hotel, which can all host events. Each hotel specializes in different event types with a total of 9 events to choose from across them all. Events are selected and started on the hotel’s interface and have 3 phases. The longest phase is the preparation phase where news of the hotel event is spreading and tourists plan their trip to the event. The active phase lasts a few days to a week as the event is ongoing, and it’s followed by the disorganization phase as things return to business as usual for the hotel. When selecting an event you will see the cost to host the event, how long the active phase is, and how much it increases tourism. The tourism boost is applied when you start the event so your city benefits from it during the preparation phase as well as the active phase.
Boost your city’s tourism with events at your 5-star hotelsBring in touristsWhile hotels give tourists a place to stay in your city allowing them to extend their visits, the city itself needs to appeal to tourists for them to visit. The Tourism Infoview shows the City Attractiveness, which is calculated from citizen happiness, land value, and unique buildings in the city. The higher City Attractiveness, the more tourists will visit the city, so if your hotel chain is struggling you can increase the City Attractiveness to encourage more tourists to stay at your hotels.One way to do this is by raising the land value through more parks and plazas, and Hotels & Retreats includes 8 new parks found in the Tourism & Leisure tab under Parks & Plazas. The Tiny Park or Tiny Playground live up to their names and fit in most places, while the larger Pond Park and Sidewalk Restaurant require more space and provide more entertainment. The new parks can be found easily using the menu filter and can be used to spruce up any part of your city.
Tourists and citizens alike will enjoy the new tourism buildingsNew mapsAs with any expansion we of course have new maps for you to create your dream city. Hotels & Retreats come with 5 new maps featuring a variety of landscapes. Coastal Flatlands lives up to its name as a mostly flat landscape dotted with hills, rivers, and lakes which provide ample opportunities to attract nature tourists. The beautiful coastline makes this map ideal for a waterfront city frequented by cruise ships.
Coastal Flatlands offers plenty of space for your new cityEmerald Cliffs is a European map with a bay stretching far inland and cliffs towering above the landscape and providing incredible scenery for any city. It offers great connections to the sea and lots of fertile land, while the mountainous areas are rich in ore. Will you build a city focused on tourism or take advantage of the natural resources the land has to offer? Either way, Emerald Cliffs has much to offer any city.
What kind of city will you build at Emerald Cliffs?Next, we have our second European map, Maze Valley, a canyon carved into the landscape through eons. The rivers flowing through the canyon are surrounded by large plains ideal for a new city nestled between the cliffs. But your city doesn’t have to be a gem hidden from the world with a shipping lane running through the rivers and a train line connecting you to other cities, there are many ways to bring goods and tourists to your city.
Build a thriving metropolis in the secluded Maze ValleyShifting Sands takes us to the tropics at the edge of the desert where the river flows into a large bay. The lush green areas surrounding the water create a stunning contrast to the barren rocky desert and the mountains on the horizon. If you’re looking to build an industry-focused city then Shifting Sands provides plenty of ore and oil to benefit your city while the bay offers great shipping connections. The flat landscape also provides the perfect conditions for a bustling metropolis.
Shifting Sands is the perfect location for your next desert cityWe finish our map tour with another European map named Weaving Waters, a map split by a serpentine river and filled with historical sites. The vast forests covering the landscape are ideal for nature retreats or forestry depending on your city. Connect your city to the outside world through the highways or railroad, or take advantage of the flat areas to build an airport. Whether you plan to embrace the landscape or make room for your city, this map has a lot to offer.
Create your dream city along the shores of the river at Weaving WatersThis brings us to the end of this dev diary covering the new content in Hotels & Retreats. Like always we have a free patch coming alongside the mini-expansion, which we will cover in the dev diary Friday at 4:00 PM CEST. What are you most excited about in Hotels & Retreats? Do you have any areas in your city ideal for hotels? We’d love to hear your thoughts!