The basics of the game

As the mayor of your own town, your goal is to create a modern city and to become a perfect mayor. To accomplish your mission, you will be challenged to create the right combinations of social services, leisure activities, special events and job opportunities within your city in order to feed, employ and entertain your citizens.

The game tutorial has been made for the players who want to discover the game from A to Z. You will learn how to create your city, how to build houses, how to provide jobs for the inhabitants, how to build roads and bridges, how to trade with other cities, etc.  
This tutorial will help you to successfully make your first steps into Cities XL™!

When creating cities, will players use zoning or plopping methods?

We have decided to follow our own path and invent a new method by using our brand new Mass Placement Tool.

What will you be able to do with the Mass Placement Tool? It will allow players to select a zone and the list of specific buildings that they want to see in that zone. Each building should then appear in the zone according to the selected features and characteristics. But we haven't forgotten all you plopping fans! So we are also going to allow players to select specific buildings that they can place in precise locations.

Will I be able to create my own maps? Will there be “terraforming” tools?

The game will not include an option to create your own maps. However, the game will feature terraforming tools that will allow you to level terrain. They will make it easier to build your city but are very expensive to use. For example, terraforming costs are too high to make leveling a mountain an option.

How many cities can I build?

You can build five cities, choosing between one of the following terrains:

• Mountains
• Beaches
• Islands
• Desert
• Green Plains

Each one of them contains specific resources (farm products for the Green Plains, snow for the Mountains...). Take your time to choose the right spot!

How are buildings created in Cities XL™?

Our buildings are inspired by reality. Buildings in the street are photographed and modeled. When finished, the game will feature hundreds of buildings based on architecture from all around the world, including European and American styles.

How are landscapes created in Cities XL™?

One of the objectives in Cities XL™ is to create huge landscapes in which cities can expand far and wide. We decided to go for a mix of satellite photos, erosion, and noise algorithms to generate unique realistic terrain height-fields through a set of tools.

Textures play a major role in the final result. Our 3D engine supports satellite- and ground level-views of your cities and we just can't have the terrain looking great from far away and pixilated from up close. If we used the same textures all the way, you'd be looking at pixels as large as an entire neighborhood. To avoid that, we implemented a procedural textures-based system that uses a set of reference textures to generate more detailed ones that appear as you get closer to the ground.

We also put a lot of attention into making a 3D engine that still allows less powerful PCs to run the game. You may not have all the high-end graphic options fully available, but you will still get great panoramic views, better for example than those available in City Life™.

How do roads work in Cities XL™?

We considered having a grid free system for placement to give players more freedom.

Having multiple intersections and roads that cross at arbitrary angles, and bridges that cross over other bridges, was deeply enjoyable for the players.
Cities XL™ will feature many different types of road (urban, rural, scenic, etc.) and 3 ways of building them:

• Straight roads
• Right-angle roads (45° - 90° - 135° etc.)
• Curved roads
  
  

It will also be possible to build bridges crossing over roads, other bridges, or rivers, as well as digging tunnels through huge mountains.

How is the route that citizens take through my city determined?

The main objective of our new pathfinding algorithm is to allow citizens to find the quickest route (which is not necessarily the shortest) from their home to their workplace and vice versa.

Therefore, depending on the one-way streets and means of transport available, a citizen will not necessarily take the same route from home to his workplace and back.

To add realism, we included citizen preferences according to their wealth. In this way, a well-off citizen will tend to use his car to go to work while a not so well-off person would rather walk.

Transport management is an integral part of a city builder player’s responsibility and we want to provide the most realistic options for you to do so.

How does the Cities XL™ economy work?

As the Mayor, you must attend to your citizens’ needs, which involves overseeing the city’s financial health.

The economy primarily revolves around entities that carry out exchanges. The game includes a number of these entities that enjoy freedom of choice (in choosing the behavior that suits them best). In doing so, they make decisions with their “well-being” in mind.

• The well-being of residents revolves around their level of satisfaction: it will vary according to the availability of a job that meets their expectations, the public services offered, and the access to goods and services for their personal consumption.
• For businesses, well-being consists of profits, i.e. the difference between the income generated by the company when it sells its products and the cost of manufacturing those same products. 
• For example, a company will set up a shop in the city if it believes that it can generate a profit. Alternatively, it will leave (declare bankruptcy) when it has sustained losses over a significant period of time. Equally, a resident will move to a city if he believes it will bring him adequate satisfaction, and leave when this is no longer the case.

This creates an ecosystem that develops and adapts on its own, with no need for players to understand all of its finer details to oversee it. This ecosystem incorporates exchange flows among the various entities: cash (money) flows and flows of goods and services.

What is a "Road Link"? Do I really need to connect my city to it?

The Road Link is a vital step. Its purpose is simple: connect you with the rest of the world. Without it, you won't be able to share information or trade with the other mayors... and nobody will come to visit you!

Besides, don't forget to build the Road Link from the start and to link it directly to your city hall.

How can I balance my budget?

There are many ways to manage a city and to reach a balanced budget. Here are a few tips:

• Don't let your budget drop below 50,000 C. If necessary, sacrifice the most expensive services to keep your coffers full. A mayor with a large budget surplus can carefully reduce taxes to make his city more attractive.
• A loan system is also available. Three options are at your disposal: small (100,000 C), medium (500,000 C) and huge loans (1,000,000 C). The repayment lasts 50 turns, so you'd better think twice before activating one of these...
• Bear in mind that your citizens will soon want shops, followed by a doctor… But don’t develop too quickly or you’ll be heading straight for bankruptcy!
• To conclude, don't hesitate to trade your tokens with other players. The cash you might get in return will help you stabilize the city's budget. 

All of my farms are going bankrupt. Why is that?

There are some aspects you might consider… A farm mainly needs unqualified workers and water resources. Are you sure that the number of unqualified workers is sufficient? Do you have enough water resources?

If not, build constructions for unqualified workers nearby your field(s) and make sure your city is supplied with enough resources (water for instance).