I just finished watching the "Zlín City: Arch Moderna" announcement trailer for the nth time, and wow, it hit me with a full-on wave of nostalgia.
Visually, it doesn’t feel like a typical city builder at all. It feels like a miniature world on a table — the kind I obsessed over as a teenager, building my own model train layout piece by piece. Laying down tracks. Placing buildings just so. Tweaking little details until the whole thing clicked and felt alive. That same quiet, tactile satisfaction is all over this trailer.
Before you place a single building, you’ve already made the most important choice of the run.
You want the obvious stuff: wood, stone, berries. That’s table stakes. But the real early-game hero is fish. A river or coastal start gives you a food source that’s reliable, low-maintenance, and doesn’t require processing chains. Fish buys you time — and in Foundation, time is everything.
If you’re playing your first serious game, don’t crank difficulty or custom rules. This isn’t about proving you’re clever. It’s about learning how the systems breathe.
There is no road tool. Villagers create paths simply by walking where they need to go. Those paths harden over time into roads. Your job isn’t to design infrastructure — it’s to encourage movement.
So, despite recently diving back into EVE and getting that old familiar itch for Caldari steel and space pirates, I still wanted to make room over the weekend for something a little calmer. A little greener. A little less likely to pod me. And that meant heading back into Foundation, a city-builder I’ve already sunk just over 50 hours into (so far), and one I keep finding myself returning to when I want that meditative “one more tile” flow. I've still got a long wait to go to push pass the 518+ hours spent/sunk/wasted/enjoyed in Cities Skylines though!
And the timing couldn’t have been better, because the first Quality of Life Update 1 just dropped (last Wednesday, November 26th) and honestly? It’s a nice little upgrade pass that fixes a bunch of those small frictions you don’t notice until the game quietly removes them. The devs even call it their "more freedom, less friction" update. That's exactly what you'd call it!
I actually hit pause on my current village, Brackenwood (above screenshot), right as the update landed.
Something about the new tools and cleaner systems made me want a real fresh start, so I wiped the mud off my boots and founded a brand-new settlement: Greenshire. New land, new plans, new opportunities. You know the drill.
I’ve been a fan of city-building games for years, drawn to the blend of strategy, creativity, and the satisfying rhythm of watching a settlement grow. From meticulously planning road layouts in Cities: Skylines to managing survival in Frostpunk, I love the challenge of building something from the ground up.
After finally diving in over the weekend—despite having picked it up in Early Access in 2023—I found myself completely losing track of time. Somehow, four hours vanished out of thin air. The way villages grow organically, without a rigid grid, gives the game a unique feel, and balancing resources and villager needs is incredibly rewarding. Add in its gorgeous visuals, and I can already tell this is a city-builder I’ll be spending a lot more time with.
Of course, learning a new game like Foundation can be a challenge, and that’s where great content creators make all the difference. I’ve followed City Planner Plays (@cityplannerplays.bsky.social) for years—first for his Cities: Skylines content and later for his deep-dive How-To guides in other games. His approach is what makes him stand out: clear, structured instructions, useful background context, and a willingness to show his own mistakes when they serve as valuable lessons.
This post is as much a learning tool for myself as it is a guide for anyone new to the game.
Below, I’ve broken down City Planner Plays’ step-by-step instructions for starting a village, prioritizing buildings, and setting up a successful economy.
If you’re diving into the game for the first time (or coming back like me), this should help you get started—and I highly recommend checking out his full video (below) for even more insights.
How to Start Your Village in Foundation | by City Planner Plays
A step-by-step guide based on City Planner Plays' gameplay.
It took me a while to get a good start building a city in Memoriapolis, but watching TheOnlyL0nzY's full playthrough, helped me gain valuable insights into how to tackle the game’s unique challenges and develop an efficient city with minimal missteps.
Here, I’ll share a structured, detailed breakdown of the main steps he outlines in his play through, the choices, and strategies that TheOnlyL0nz went through in much details, in his two hours and forty minute long playthrough. You read that right - his full play through is almost 3 hours long!
If you don't have time to watch the full play through, this guide should give you a solid foundation to build upon, whether they’re new to Memoriapolisor are looking to improve their city-building skills.
As a gamer dad, life can get a little chaotic, right? Between work (or trying to find my next role), family, and the general madness of daily life (soccer practices and games, lifts to here and there, the dog, etc.), finding the time to sit down and really immerse yourself in a game can feel like a luxury.
That's where city-building games come in, and let me tell you, they've been a game-changer (pun totally intended).
The Magic of the Pause Button
First off, let’s talk about one of the biggest perks of city-building games: the ability to pause or stop the game whenever you need to. Whether you're deep into a session of Cities: Skylines meticulously planning the perfect road network or trying to ensure your colonists survive another day in Surviving Mars, you can hit pause and step away without missing a beat. No need to worry about respawning in an FPS firefight or letting your team down in the middle of a MOBA match (I could write a whole posts on all the insults I've taken from World of Tanks players).
These game wait for you, not the other way around.
"Surviving the Aftermath" is a post-apocalyptic survival game that challenges players to build and manage a colony in a world devastated by disaster. After eyeing the game for some time, I finally got my hands on a free copy, thanks to the Epic Store promo. This guide, as outlined below was provided in the above tutorial by @PartyElire, aims to equip new players with essential strategies and insights to thrive in this unforgiving environment.
Ah, transport. If you played Cities: Skylines, you might remember it as the dance of urban planning - sometimes a graceful waltz, and other times a dance akin to stepping on LEGOs in the dark. Who among us hasn't unleashed a chaotic snarl of buses, trains, and trams, creating a masterpiece that resembled spaghetti more than a transportation system? Ah, the memories, and the digital traffic jams.
But my fellow city-builders, Cities: Skylines II is here, and Colossal Order's new video, "Public & Cargo Transportation I Feature Highlights," has given us a sneak peek at what to expect. Buckle up, because we're about to take a wild ride!
Strictcoaster's tutorial video provides a comprehensive guide to designing realistic slopes in Cities Skylines.
He covers various techniques to help players create stunning city layouts, starting with examples of unrealistic slopes to avoid. The video then delves into specific slope design tips, including using slopes for tunnels, combining terraforming and bridges, creating smooth slopes for overpasses and bridges, building road switchbacks, and designing tall inclines for railroads.
This tutorial is perfect for anyone looking to take their Cities Skylines design skills to the next level.
"Farthest Frontier" is a simulation game developed and published by Crate Entertainment. The game was released in early access on Steam in September 2021 and is currently in development.
In "Farthest Frontier," you play as the leader of a group of settlers who have landed on a new planet. Your goal is to build a thriving settlement by managing resources, constructing buildings, and exploring the surrounding wilderness. You must also defend your settlement from dangers such as wild animals and hostile aliens.
Mods provide players with more customization options, allowing them to create a city that is truly unique and personalized. City builders can add new buildings, props, vehicles, and other assets to their city, making it more diverse and interesting, as well as add new functionality to the game, providing players with more tools and features to work with. For example, traffic management mods can help players control and optimize traffic flow in their city, while building and asset mods can provide more options for construction and decoration.
So here's my list of the Top 15 Best Mods to use while playing Cities: Skylines - I've linked each to their Steam Workshop.
Starting a new city on a fresh map in Cities: Skylines can often times be a daunting experience. Hell, even after start fresh dozens of times I'm still sometimes overwhelmed by a blank map. Here my top 10 tips when starting on a new map and planning for building a successful city build.
Start small: Starting with a small city is the best way to gain experience and learn the game mechanics. You can gradually expand your city as you become more familiar with the game, and avoid becoming overwhelmed.
I am excited to announce the start of a new post series dedicated to Cities: Skylines, in which I've invested almost 500 hours in the last few years. In this series, I will be sharing video tutorials from some of the best players in the community.
For those who don't know, Cities: Skylines is a modern take on the classic city-building game genre, where players are tasked with creating and managing their own virtual cities. The game offers a wide range of features, including zoning, transportation, public services, and more. With its complex and in-depth gameplay, Cities: Skylines has quickly become a favorite among players, both new and experienced. It's been a sort of addictive - almost meditative - experience for me.
If you're like me, you'll jump straight into the game and start laying down buildings and streets, trying to make the best, but ending up making a mess. You're likely to restart a few times before realizing there's a lot more to this game than meets the eye.
That's when you'll begin looking for Starter Guides and Tips & Tricks videos.
This 30 minutes "Let's Play" video by Deadite from Boomstick Gaming proved to be very helpful for me.
