12 Best Cities: Skylines Mods 2024

Sim games aim to provide players with an inexhaustible supply of content and mechanics to engage with. However, development time for any game is finite and sometimes we won’t find all of our requests inside of the game or its DLCs, that’s when we choose to go for mods.

Cities: Skylines is no stranger to mods. With over 2,000 mods on the Steam Workshop being aimed at this game. Let’s check some of the best ones on offer. Let’s get into the best Cities: Skylines mods.

12 Best Cities: Skylines Mods 2024

Realistic Population Revisited

Realistic Population Revisited aims to hash out certain areas that weren’t covered by the base game. Uploaded by user marcocons, the mod makes in-game households reflect real-life ones.

The baseline changes deal with the number of people that can live in a single household or be employed inside of a single work building. The goal of this main change is to reinforce a more realistic design of suburbs and towns in general.

But that’s not the end of this mod’s effect. Education also plays a part in employment mechanics far more than it does in the base game. As the creator notes, this is meant to increase the required investment into your education infrastructure.

There are plenty of additional tweaks made to the game, be it the amount of rash produced or the taxes of larger households. With all these details both small and large, the mod provides a much closer-to-life depiction of cities than the base game.

City Vitals Watch

No mod is complete without a proper quality-of-life mod. Especially ones that extend or affect UI. For our list, we’ve picked City Vitals Watch which displays real-time stats on service usage, and citizen safety, allows the players to select stats they wish to watch, toggle the visibility of the panel with a single button combination, and ability to open service menus through a simple click on the label. The overall stats covered by this mod are numerous and in any city sim, these stats can make or break a run.

City Vitals Watch also comes with a slew of fruitful features for its own panel that makes the entire display easier to move, hide, and use. This is especially useful for those who do not wish to clutter their UI, as the City Vitals Watch can even be hidden by pressing Alt + V. This mod is still in progress though the stats themselves are all present. What further development does plan to include is more tools that allow you to control the panel with stats even more.

Precision Engineering 2.0

Drifting away from UI and into helpful tools for general game mechanics, we have Precision Engineering 2.0. The mode aims to aid with the placing of pipes, train lines, power lines, and roads by providing players with more information on their placement. This includes angle and distance measurements which can help quite a bit if you are low on space or cash. Better control over the angles these components are built under also has its place in this mode along with guidelines.

Height differences are also noted, so a road you are building will always be fully described to you during the process without having to double-check the location you are placing it in. This is a purely quality-of-life upgrade that cuts down on going back and forth on a piece of our road or power line placement because we misjudged the positioning.

Network Multitool

Speaking of roads, here’s a mod that makes sure you can build a fully customized road. Network Multitool 1.3.5 is a massive mod, taking up over 2 GB of storage. The actual contents of the mode are all tied to the new node mode which can be used on roads. Put simply, adding a node to a road allows you to alter it simply while using functions built into the mode.

These include options to make a union, split, invert segment, arrange in line, arrange in a circle, create a loop, connect two nodes, and many more. Allowing for the simple creation of complex roads that address any concerns of traffic or space. The level of control is quite high, which is always welcome when it comes to roads as they are key to making our city in Cities: Skylines work.

Roundabout Builder

Another tool to add to our road-making arsenal is Roundabout Builder. It’s a rather straightforward name for a mod all about roundabouts. The mod allows players to create mini-roundabouts rather than exclusively big ones.

Though the latter isn’t any less possible with the mod, in fact, the mod allows you to build roundabouts for cable cars, power lines, and other similarly placed items.

Obviously, these act more as “place in circle” tools than proper roundabouts but having that extra bit of utility is never bad. The mod can stutter at times but if you need traffic resolved quickly, this might be the mod for you.

Extra Landscaping Tools

For those who prefer to alter nature rather than infrastructure, Extra Landscaping Tools provides ample options. Resources, water, terrain, and tree tools are all available along with a tree brush and pencil.

The extent of modifiable nature is enough to truly enhance the greenery around your town. The mod speaks for itself, so try it out now!

All 25 Areas Purchasable

Although reaching the last milestone in Cities: Skylines allows you to access only 9 areas on the map, this mod changes that. All 25 Areas Purchasable mod makes the last milestone unlock areas from 10 to 25 rather than stop at 9.

This means you’ll have a lot more room to build your city and experiment. With the lightweight nature of the mod, there is no reason not to try it especially if impressive city projects are your goal.

Move It

Another self-descriptive mod, Move It allows the players to, well, move structures and objects around the map. Things that can be moved include: buildings, trees, props, decals, surfaces, network nodes, and procedural objects.

Move It is a mod that helps players correct their placement mistakes without having to break down entire buildings. Something that is unavoidable no matter how good you are at the game or how long you’ve been planning the placement.

Real-Time

Following similar principles as Realistic Population Revisited, Real-Time aims to make your Cims act more realistically. They follow the time of the day and will only do certain actions during the time of the day that seems fitting for them. For example, they will not stay up late at night in a park and will opt to sleep during nighttime.

The list is tremendous as it includes changes to traffic as well, more pedestrians and more vehicles during work hours means roads can get clogged rather fast. And lest we forget, the time will go by much slower.

All in all, Real-Time provides a massive overhaul focused on realism. Changing the balance of the entire game drastically which can be a great way to shake up your next city.

CSL Map View

CSL Map View is a mod that allows players to export a drawn map of their city. It is an external file that’s formed and can be viewed either with the viewer or any appropriate software that can open the file.

It’s perfect for showcasing your city to others in a more abstract manner or just for some interesting city planning when you are away from the screen.

Bulldoze It

Ever wanted to make bulldozing easier in Cities: Skylines? Well, there is no lack of possible mods that will achieve that. However, Bulldoze It is one of the better ones.

Using other mods as inspiration, it provides more abilities to clear out lots without compromising performance. Making restructuring harmless even for those whose machines aren’t the best

Quay Anarchy

If you ever wanted to put down a quay away from the shoreline, Quay Anarchy is the way to go. This mod also fixes a few bugs and issues caused by usual quay positioning mechanics. Thankfully, with this mod, the overall positioning of quays on and off the shoreline is made simple.

Cities: Skylines Mods by Reddit

Here are five mods that are particularly popular among users in the CitiesSkylinesModding subreddit:

1. 81 tiles
2. Traffic manager
3. Realistic Population
4. Move it
5. City Vitals Watch

Bottom line

While the baseline game of Cities: Skylines has plentiful mechanics and structures, mods can provide us with even more tools. Most of these mods aim to add more control and versatility to the already present mechanics, providing a better experience without requiring a huge shift in playstyle.

However, those who wish to go a step beyond can try out mods such as Real Time and Realistic Population Revisited to change the current balance. This is a great way to shake up a new run of Cities: Skylines after hundreds of hours played.