In Cities: Skylines, money isn’t too hard to make. Once the city reaches a few tens of thousands - assuming it’s relatively well-managed - you’ll probably be sitting on a few million in the bank and have enough to build pretty much whatever you need.
But in the early game, it can be difficult to balance the books. That’s especially true in your first few cities, when it can be quite easy to accidentally tank by expanding too quickly. Here’s a few tips that I hope will help you out.
Note on compatibility: these tips should apply across all platforms (PC, PS4, Xbox, Switch, Mac) of the unmodded game.
Put up your taxes straight away
As soon as you unlock the taxes panel in the UI, head in there and put them up to 12%. Your residents will happily pay that much without complaining, even without better services. That’s a full third more income right out the gate, which makes a big difference. Don’t forget to head in there again when you unlock high density zoning and offices.
If you ever struggle with getting people to move into new areas, you can always put draw a district over it and lower taxes just there with a city policy.
Residential taxes are your biggest source of income
In most cities, the taxes your citizens pay on their homes makes up by far the largest chunk of income. Doing what you need to do to upgrade housing will help you make consistent profits. Once they’ve maxed out at level 5, housing will put millions in the city’s bank account and fund all your investments.
Every city milestone gives you a nice cash boost
Fairly obvious but the game doesn’t actually tell you. Each time you pass a population milestone, you’ll get a nice injection of cash to help you reach the next marker.
Don’t add services until it’s really necessary
It’s tempting to build police stations and other city services as soon as they unlock. But the reality is they unlock a long time before you really need to build them. Crime rates will stay low for a long time - and if push comes to shove you wait until you start seeing residents complain before adding services.
Not all service buildings are good value
When deciding what city services to add, pay careful attention to their weekly upkeep. Although they might affordable to build, if they cost 2,400/week to maintain, they’ll put a big dent in the budget of a small or medium sized city.
Generally, hospitals are overkill. In most cases, a few clinics can easily handle the city’s needs. That is, unless you’ve done like something like put the sewer pipes upriver from the water intakes and poisoned the water supply.
The health buildings that arrived with Green Cities are also inexplicably expensive, which is shame. The sports centre and public pool are great for flavour and really add to the sense of a community, but their upkeep is really high. They improve resident health, but unless you’ve made a mistake, health basically takes care of itself.
Bigger buildings often represent savings over small ones
Police and fire headquarters are overkill for small cities, but as the place grows, it can make sense to close down three police stations and replace them with single headquarters, for example. You’ll save some space and over time the lower upkeep should pay.
The same applies to certain transit buildings. The multi-platform train stations cost more than normal stations but the same maintenance. In exchange you get huge flexibility for your train lines and a free metro station underneath!
Similarly, the cargo hub is expensive but cheaper than a cargo harbour and cargo station next to each other. So as these buildings unlock, it’s often worth investing in them, or replacing your existing infrastructure.
Bridges and tunnels cost a bomb
In-game, the prices of roads and tracks are listed for their default state: running along the road. It’s not that easy to keep track of how much extra it costs when your roads go up or down, but a few other players have done tests to help us out, like this one. They cost a lot!
The best road and transit networks don’t need a lot of bridges and tunnels but it’s often inevitable that to keep improve difficult areas you’ll want to avoid creating intersections at key points.
The main to know is that early on, sticking to ground level will help keep your infrastructure costs in check.
Stick to money-making public transport early on
Trains, particularly, are really hard to make profitable. Actually, I’ve never managed even to break even with my train network. That doesn’t matter much once you’ve built the city up and have cash to spare. But early on, it’s best to stick to services that easy to budget-neutral.
Buses are the obvious answer here. They use the existing road network, so their main additional cost is the depot. The most routes you add, the more the depot cost is lowered per bus.
I’ve done a rundown of all the transit type here.
Mothball buildings you’re not using
All your service buildings have an On/Off toggle, which is really useful if your budget suddenly takes a turn and you need to get back into the black. By turning off things you can do without - police stations, clinics etc - for a while, you can cut your weekly outgoings enough to get things going in the right direction.
Use the budget sliders
In most cases, you can leave budget sliders at 100%. They give diminishing returns: doubling the budget doesn’t double the service effectiveness, for example. So the most value for money comes from leaving them where they are.
But they’re really handy in pinch, and especially early on. For example, putting up the electricity budget will increase your power output without needing to build new generators. That gives you enough time to squeeze past the next population milestone without suffering through blackouts.
Thanks for reading! I hope you found these ideas handy. If there’s anything really good I missed out, let me know. I’d be glad to add it.