The Ultimate DLC Guide for Cities Skylines | DLCs Ranked in 2022! 

Personally I would move industries down. A lot of what you listed as for good about it for me just isn't fun (again, just my personal preference.) I understand the appeal (and I know that a lot - possibly most - people might disagree with me), but managing supply chains isn't what I look for in a city building game. I'm happy with the zoned industry mechanic. I'd also move Green Cities up. I bought it after I started playing, and found I really enjoy sprinkling my residential areas with organic and local produce buildings. It added a lot to my game.

My ranking based on time spent is currently #1 Airports #2-whatever everything else. I'm an aviation nerd lol

I just made this comment before reading. It is a great deal. I got all my missing content.

Pretty much agree with your rankings. As a console player, I'm not buying Airports until we get more tiles (which is unlikely at this point). I find myself using Green Cities a lot, especially for micro-districting (thanks Egg!) farmers markets and things like that in the middle of vanilla neighborhoods, and with that in mind I was a bit disappointed by your first rankings. Great video and I'm glad you put the time and effort in to make this as polished as can be. Let perfect reign supreme over the good!

Whoa, that's a crazy bundle, what a steal..! o.O Thanks a bunch for the heads up!

This. 100%! Emergency vehicles should be able to drive on paths in emergency situations. Would make the fire mechanic much less annoying and the game much more realistic.

Without ND, though, they can't catch on fire in the first place.

@@mugwump242 true, but mods fix pretty much all problems with every dlc. Not everyone can or wants to play with mods

That is a GREAT point! That's the reason the Goodall institute burns down every few years in VB. I'm never going to add roads to it, either

see this is one of the reasons there should be service vehicle only roads in the game.

Thank you so much, Joy!

@@CityPlannerPlays re-release during Humble Bundle DLC deal. Big brain moves

@@CityPlannerPlays Let's just hope some of the devs are actually watching this video... Wink Wink .. Hint Hint ... Get the clues here, devs? ♥ Thanks for your great content CPP!

You mean tourism oriented? That would be cool yeah

Yesss seeing the sims on beaches would make me happy

finally they released a seaside resort dlc🤣

ski resorts should have been in snowfall. Imagine being able to make a ski resort in your city (like on a mountain)

This is what After Dark should’ve included.

Agreed. The 9 tiles are not enough. I have the 25 tiles mod and highly recommend it. There’s also the 81 tiles one if your computer can handle it. 😉

I think the size thing is a great point that I missed. You're basically giving up a full tile if you want to take advantage of everything the DLC offers.

@@CityPlannerPlays I just recently built my first airport and I somehow managed to make it take up two tiles. 🥲

@@autotechxbox163 The Heathrow effect

@@CityPlannerPlays And not just Airports, but Industries and Campus as well

I have the same issue.

Agreed. I constantly had issues of a factory never having enough of a particular material even though I had placed a warehouse for that material right next door to it and set it to full. Thankfully there are mods that can fix this issue, but you really shouldn't need to have to use a mod for this to work properly.

This is because you have too much production and not enough storage. You need to keep adding storage until they have spare trucks that are not in use.

Also, trucks from warhouses, storage facilities, extractors DO NOT de-spawn until they return to their origin building. Which means one large warehouse will give you 40 more non-despawning trucks in your roadways. Also, It would be amazing to have an option of an industry area delivery only to specific districts instead of random.

Too bad they didn't follow the notes of some other game developers, which would've given out all of the content here for free as updates

@@littlenyancat5754 VERY few games give out 10 DLC’s worth of free content.. Small updates here and there for buy once games like this is normal but not anything like aaaallll the new content that comes in fair DLC’s. The only other way publishers are putting out this much content for “free” is for games that have pay to win features or games you need to pay a subscription for like MMO’s

@@littlenyancat5754 how dare the developers make money

pirate the game and get them all for free, pretty sure you can stil mod it too

@@more_less yeah modding a pirated game is hard and very annoying

Thank you so much!

Coming back to this game after a few years, picking up some DLC, I'm a bit surprised beaches aren't a thing, especially considering how visually prominent they are in some maps.

agreed Sunset Harbour has three new transit options One airport New industry New hubs And an amazing aviation club lemme be more specific The trolleybuses are absolutely amazing as well as the intercity bus which saves money instead of the expensive rail. Helicopters are kind of not useful, theyre like blimps (mass transit) The metropolitan airport is amazing, it has lots of gates and is better than the international after dark offers. The fishing industry is amazing, it is not polluting and it's beautiful. The hubs are only 4, and the best is by far Train-Metro. The aviation club offers a general aviation offer which attracts tourists Water treatment - should've been in Green Cities but it's here, and it's absolutely amazing. also a critique of after dark The international airport is kind of bad. The bus terminal is not useful now because the Compact Bus Station was released to the more useful Plazas & Promenades DLC Taxis arent working.

Green Cities is God-tier DLC. 300 new building models across 3 zoning types?? Anyone who disagrees is wrong.

You’re not alone. I found I don’t have motivation cause nothing is sparking my imagination but I downloaded Park Life long time ago and have never touched it until a few days ago, it got me totally back into the game. I felt discouraged starting a wildlife park and figured screw it let me just start with the first road and side walk path and I didn’t stop for a few hours and built out a huge park and it’s actually pretty cool. I think the art is in the detail and usually I just build roads, zone, and keep up with the needs/wants and toy around with things like trains etc but I figured out I like making the smallest details too. Just start small forget everything else (I use sandbox mode for this) and just start building out something super specific. Push yourself outside of the game to think of something crazy and cool/creative then if it sticks when you hop on you’ll have some file to get going 💯🔥

@@TheJroddude Hey man, thanks for the kind words and for sharing your struggles. I face similar issues when playing... I see a guy like CPP and how he does all of that naturally alongside his major game knowledge that makes me rethink my life hahaha.. but yeah, I will definitely give it another try, this game is amazing and worth it! I have most of DLCs, so it is just a matter of messing with them... I had the same issue with Prison Architect, and recently I started playing and now I a pretty confident to get things going, I bet it is the same with Cities Skylines. Have a good one and thanks! :)

I thought this would happen to me but then I decided to play along with City Planner Plays, I've been building roughly the same city (Tutoria) form his Ultimate Begginer Guide playlist (ru-vid.com/group/PLXdi-Ns7w3jjfNPMl836BKjxZONnxvXPw) and it has been a lot of fun even when things don't work the same for me, my city grew faster but I get more abandoned buildings. And while playing I have found my self thinking on new things to do in the game, I hope that soon I'll be able to do my own city without following along.

Try driving through a 55 mph speed zone then get stuck behind a tractor doing 30 mph. Double yellow no passing and a quarter mile of cars riding your ass behind you. Then come back and talk about farms don't create traffic.

@@BoldWittyName exactly

summer sale on steam is live and the dlcs are on sale.. just wanted to let you know if you have the game on pc

Going to refactor code in a 7 year old game with constant upgrades and 10 DLCs on the back. Good luck, some of the limitations are surely due to legacy code, which is a blocker for what needs to be done and refactoring that will take up so much time and effort not to mention the risks and the ROI on that is not a nice calculation.

@@Borninthedenmark oh it gets better. You can forget about RoI. It's not going to be profitable on a 7 year old game unless you are grand theft auto... But it really should be done. Either that or we'll have to wait 30 years for the code to become legacy enough that it either can be bought or goes open source. :'-(

Realistically I think at this point we’re mainly looking ahead to C:S2, whenever that might come out. I hope they use the opportunity to put together many of the functionalities provided by the various dlcs (not to mention user-made mods like Move It, Roundabout Builder, TMPE and Building Themes), and deliver them in a coherent package.

the amount of effort that went into designing the houses in Green Cities is also incredible.

Plus.. Cities in snow are the most beauties cities to build. Period.

yea i thought i would get them with mass transit while buying this dlc. now i have to buy it even if im not interested in the snow maps :/

One of the issues with this game is that money stops being an issue after the early game. This means that unless you care a lot about realistic transit, you can just put metro lines everywhere and replace most of the other transit modes. Trams take a bit of care and attention to avoid them getting stuck in traffic, so average players or even CPP tend to ignore them.

@@ahsdfkdasdahdkas2887 Yep. I personally try to aim for somewhat realism which naturally leads to the trams being useful. But for purely progression based play, you just plop metros everywhere after the 10k peeps or so to get practically infinite money

He did mention however that it's not so realistic on tropical maps to have the sand gardens. As someone who lives in an area with huge rainfall, it's pretty true. Your laws require practically no potable water and all the maintenance is having to mow the fucken thing because the grass grows so fast. Most water is going to be used by people who have really intense, massive gardens that they regularly maintain.

@@thejake1453 agree. The grasses can grow as tall as you in just few weeks in tropical areas.

I'm pretty sure thats only true in a limited part of the world. Grass grows just fine where I live.

You can still have ground coverings that don't require too much water or upkeep and are actually great for pollinators.

Tropical don't matter. Anytime I'm in Florida I see automatic sprinklers and landscapers bi-weekly. That ain't got shit on a sand garden.

You have all the DLCs? How would you rate em'? Would be cool to see others rate opinions

@@jfracchia Be warned, this comment will probably be long, knowing myself :D To give a little bit of context, I love this game overall but the two areas that I enjoy the most are probably detailing and transit. I do play with a bunch of mods and unlimited money usually, so kind of in "sandbox mode", but i do not use many assets from the workshop, other than some additional roads and parking lots basically. So these things obviously influence how i rate the DLCs, that's why I wanted to let you know. So here we go: - On top for me personally would probably be Mass Transit and Parklife. MT adds some new road options that I find myself using quite a lot and that some modders use as base for their roads, aswell as the Transit Hubs that are very nice and useful for building interesting transport systems. Parklife adds the ability to build your own park areas and comes with A TON of really beautiful assets that are very very versatile to use throughout your city. - After that I would go with Sunset Harbor and Green Cities, with the former for me mainly adding even more transit options (especially the intercity bus stations are actually great for creating central bus hubs in your city, because they also include multiple spots for normal bus routes to connect) and the latter for introducing even more really beautiful zonable buildings that once again can be used in a very versatile way to make your city look really varied and awesome. Green Cities has a ton of versatility to it visually. - My next tier would probably be Campus & Industries (since they are both relatively similar) together with After Dark. Campus and Industries let you build custom universities and custom industrial areas respectively, in a very similar way to how Parklife lets you build parks. Lot's of options for creativity and freedom. The industries from the DLC also let you make quite a bit of money for your city if you play without unlimited funds. After Dark has a few commercial specializations with a bunch of new zonable buildings similar to Green Cities but also a bunch of transit options like Cargo Train/Harbor crossovers and the biggest thing might be bycicles and roads with bike lanes. This DLC is a bit difficult to rate, it could easily be in my higher tiers, I would say, especially if you enjoy building bike infrastructure in your city. - I guess I will mention Airports here before the rest, because it is a great DLC that adds very interesting stuff mainly regarding airports. I love it, I enjoy it, but it is relatively specific so that's way it's in this category. Heavily depends on your preferences again. - The last tier is Natural Disasters and Snowfall. These two are definitely not "bad" by any means, they are still great DLCs in my opinion, they are again just pretty specific and depend heavily on personal preference. Snowfall adds snowy map themes, not seasons. So you can choose to start a city on a map that is perpetually winter, but you will never have snow on your "normal" maps (though I will say there is ways to change a map to the snow theme via mods if you have the DLC, bit of work but possible). The greatest thing about the Snowfall DLC is the trams for me personally, they are very fun and beautiful and can be used on ALL maps, the rest is pretty niche I would say. Natural Disasters mainly adds catastrophes that can happen and impact your city, tsunamis, tornados, wildfires, etc etc, along with buildings to prepare for them. If you like that sort of gameplay the DLC is probably a bunch of fun, but if you are the sort of person to turn the disasters off most of the time, then the DLC is pretty much just a few buildings that can look kinda nice or be helpful in very specific situations and not much more. So yeah, that was all the major DLCs, I hope my presentation is not too messy and my points come across. I tried to emphasize what i like about them and why, to explain how i get here. Again, keep in mind that this has a lot to do with personal preference and with what is most fun and interesting for you personally. In my opinion there is no "bad" DLCs for this game, they are all good, just some of them fit my style better or more than others. I do want to point out that the Content Creator Packs are also really really great in my personal opinion, they mostly add new buildings and assets to your game. Some of them ploppable, some of them zonable, they all look cool and can bring a lot of diversity to your city and enable your creativity. But there are two CCPs that i want to specifically emphasize: - The "Train Stations" pack adds a whole bunch of transit stations for trains and especially metro, which look really nice but also can really help you build much better metro networks since many of those stations have multiple platforms or specific bypass tracks, so that trains don't back up as easily. - The "Vehicles of the World" CCP adds a lot of service vehicles like police cars, medical cars, etc that all have their own stats and can be selected per building, but more importantly for me it adds a lot of new metros, trains and busses, again with unique stats like speed and capacity. Many of these transit vehicles have much higher capacity than the ones in the base game so really help tremendously to improve your transit networks. As I mentioned, i really love building public transport in my cities, so I personally would consider these two CCPs to be pretty essential, they really help A LOT in building better transport. Yup, long comment, you have been warned :D I hope it helps and isn't too overcomplicated! All the best ^-^.

@@NoMercy8008 This is a great list and good justification! You know, I had comments about some of the CCP relative to the DLCs (I think that all things equal, Airports vs the two CCP that came at the same time would be a HARD choice), but removed them to save it for the next video.

@@CityPlannerPlays Yeah i can totally understand that. This is already by any means not a short video, there's TONS of info in here and I'm sure you've worked long and hard on this, so putting the CCPs into their own video makes sense ^-^ And as i mentioned in my list, ranking DLC is generally not a trivial task, because it does have lots to do with personal preference and so on. That's why I made sure to include my personal reasons, so whoever reads this may know from which standpoint I'm coming from. Especially for the two CCPs that I specifically highlighted, I think it has lots to do with how important public transit is for you when you play C:S. For me, as i said, it is one of THE main things I enjoy building, so the Train Stations and Vehicles are indeed pretty essential for me. But someone who puts significantly less emphasis on transit, they might well be just two "normal" CCPs without any special importance over the others. It's similar with for example Green Cities from the main DLCs. I enjoy detailing the aesthetics of my cities a lot, so the variety and creativity that this pack enables I do value quite a lot, which is why i ranked it high on my list. For someone who cares much less about the aesthetics of their cities and much more about gameplay and functionality, the ranking might be vastly different.

CCP as in the Chinese Communist Party? They did build a superb rail network I suppose.

Ooo thank you for specifying that. I’ve been wondering why After Dark didn’t appear to be available on PS4 and was a bit disappointed. I just got the game and can’t wait to get started…

It's great fun once you get the hang of it, it can be super relaxing.

The hardest part is just understanding how to manage the roads. Apart from that, it’s really just building grids as best and creatively as you can, managing your water and power (power kinda runs itself apart from making sure you’re producing enough, as long as it’s linked) and establishing your zoning and districts.

@@tetsusiega2 I just started playing do you have an advice that can help me on why some of my commercial buildings keep getting abandoned?

Im also considering byuing Green Cities just for the visual part of it.. i like it green hahah