Let’s talk about Cities: Skylines DLC. This is a Paradox game to the core and a really decent city-building game to boot. The vanilla package alone is perfectly playable, but most of the creative freedom and meaningful options are locked behind expansions; if you want to place bus lines, build a university, or construct a single park with a few trees, the vanilla title is perfectly capable. But if you want to design your own Central Park, or build a full transport hub complete with taxis, metros, trains, and even blimps and cable cars, you will need to fork out money.

As the full package can easily surpass a hundred dollars outside Steam sales, the inevitable question of “which expansion should I get?” raises its ugly head. With a varying degree of quality and the inherent personal interest in each separate package, it can be hard to identify which expansions to spend your hard-earned money on.

That’s where we come in. We looked at every single Cities: Skylines DLC out there, so you wouldn’t have to. We’ve started this guide with just covering the major expansions that add new mechanics. There are a lot more DLCs that are essentially just cosmetics.

These are best Cities: Skylines DLC packs:

Highlights:

  • Night time activities and shoreline/beach specialisations add zoning variety
  • Taxis, bikes, bus lanes/terminals, and the international airport help flesh out your city’s transport infrastructure

Is it worth it?

No big city is complete without a booming nightlife and tourism, and Cities: Skylines addresses those very two concepts head-on. The addition of two commercial district specialisations to the base game allow you to set areas on the shoreline as beaches and set zones anywhere as leisure sectors, which function normally during the day but are super active at night (a bit of a weird prospect given Cities: Skylines day/night doesn’t even matter, since its rather flat and doesn’t even reflect rush hours).

  • Temperature fluctuations require the construction and maintenance of heating infrastructure
  • Trams are nice to have (I like SanFran)
  • Snowplow depots allow you to remove snow from roads during winter

A new temperature mechanic on every map is accompanied by a Winter-themed map covered in snow, forcing players to either see their electricity consumption skyrocket during cold fronts or upgrade their whole infrastructure — heating pipes, centralised boilers, the works — to provide heating to their citizens.

  • SimCity-like disasters are here, from sinkholes and tornados, to tsunamis, and meteors.
  • Bunkers, radio masts, and evacuation mechanics allow you to build your own early warning systems and countermeasure directives in the event of a catastrophe
  • Disaster Response Units allow you to put cars and helicopters on the road to rescue citizens, and the building looks cool as heck

This one straddles the line between fun and annoying. Fun because events look cool and cause a moment of panic as they head the area and you’re never sure of the impact they will generate. Annoying because some disasters, like sinkholes and earthquakes, screw up the terrain to the point they cause bugs on the map — I had more than one geological disaster rip a hole in level geometry and expose the blue nothingness of the game’s engine below it — and it was pretty goddamn difficult to fix even with the included terrain editing tools.

  • Even more transport infrastructure, including blimps, cable cars, monorails, ferries, and transit hubs that connect all transportation modes together.
  • New road types, including bridges and canals, allow you to plan your city’s roadways and waterways the way you want it to

For any logistic-lover, this one is a must. New roads and canals allow you to meticulously design your city’s pathways, while the addition of ferries, blimps, monorails, and even cable cars as transportation methods help make the city look super alive.

  • 350 new objects, buildings, and alternative service buildings to give your city that eco-friendly look
  • Environmental specialisations, including the first leveled-up options added to the game

This is mostly a cosmetic DLC, but not in the classic sense — with several new assets dedicated to environmentally-sound structures, Green Cities helps make your city prettier by generating less pollution.

  • Create parks by placing several new park options, or build your own by designing roads, fences, and zoning out a whole portion of the city into a giant Central Park
  • Sightseeing buses, nature reserves, amusement parks, and zoos are all part of the pack, as well as the new monument “Castle of Lord Chirpwick”
  • The park assets allow you to fill the gaps between zoning squares, making your city look fuller and more realistic

Hot off the heels of Green Cities, another DLC dedicated to making your towns closer to nature is here. Parklife is all about designing and maintaining parks — not just the small kind of preset asset you plop out somewhere, but actively zoning out huge areas and intricately designing the layout, from roads and pedestrian pathways to the fences.

  • Farming, forest, ore, and oil are now natural resources you can use, and new roads and warehouses let you plot out whole specialised industrial areas
  • Fully working industrial chain lets you design processes from harvesting to exportation
  • Post Office is now a thing, and people really like to receive their mail

This one is a bit less my style, but it should hit the Factorio/Satisfactory/Terraria fans right in the sweet spot. If you thought “people” and “citizens” was too boring of a concept for a city-building game, Industries lets you focus on… well, industries.

Highlights

  • College campus (uni, for you Commonwealth folks) is now a thing
  • Design everything the same way you would a park, by designating areas and drawing paths and fences and everything in between
  • Add football, basketball, and baseball stadiums, as well as running and swimming arenas — and manage the teams by hiring coaches, selling tickets, and designing merchandise

Yet another DLC benefited by the painting map tool mechanic, Campus is all about cordoning off an area of your city and turning it into a bonafide university hotspot. Administration buildings, dorms, book clubs, even groundskeeping — you got everything you need to create your own Trade School, Liberal Arts, and University campuses.

  • Aviation club lets citizens take small planes for a ride, while intercity buses connect towns to each other
  • A new fishing industry commercial element and water treatment plants process water for additional uses

After Campus, Paradox seems to have hit a bit of a slump. This DLC took over a year to come out after campus, and it is exceptionally flat and disjointed, similar to Cities: Skylines first “expansions”. This is one of those, bringing 1. An intercity bus terminal to receive and send buses outta town, 2. A private aviation club so citizens can take small Cesnas up for recreational flying, and 3. A fishing industry.

  • Build your own musical venues and plan your own musical concerts
  • From ticket sales to music numbers to ad campaigns and security, you can manage all the aspects of throwing a show together

This mini-expansion is quite interesting, as it covers an aspect hitherto ignored by Cities: Skylines — music. Starting with a festival ground with a small stage and steadily levelling it up to host bigger and bigger concerts with more and more crowds, this DLC lets you manage the advertisement, ticket sales, and lineup of the shows you throw together.

The first major expansion in a few years, it may surprise you to learn that the new Cities: Skylines DLC pack will introduce dedicated airport areas to the game. Key features include a modular airport building, which can be customised depending on what you want to build.

We’ll keep this guide update as more DLC gets announced and released.