19 Absolutely Essential Cities Skylines Mods
Given how long Cities Skylines has been around, the stockpile of mods for it has gotten all the way out of control--the Steam Workshop hosts more than 350,000 mods, custom maps, and assets. That's a lot to navigate when seeking out Cities Skylines' best mods, particularly since a large number of those mods have been abandoned for years. But that's what we're here for.Despite the fact that the sequel has been out since 2023, the original Cities Skylines remains the gold standard for city-builder games. It's not just that Cities Skylines 2 was such a huge mess when it launched--the original game has a decade of updates and DLC from the developers, plus the massive mod library on Steam Workshop noted above. Cities Skylines 2, by contrast, doesn't even have monorails.We'll help you get started on your Cities Skylines modding journey by going through the mods that pretty much everybody will have a use for. While the game may accuse some of them of being outdated when you install them, everything listed below currently works just fine. Traffic Manager: President EditionSee on Steam WorkshopOne of the biggest issues with Cities Skylines has always been traffic--it's very easy to accidentally create new traffic jams once your population has ramped up, and you'll spend a lot of your time with this game smoothing those jams out. Fortunately, this Traffic Manager mod has all the tools you'll need to micromanage all aspects of your city's traffic flow. Move itSee on Steam WorkshopThis mod simply allows you to select any object on the map and move it however you want, which often makes life easier than it would be if you had to delete and replace every building you plopped in slightly the wrong place. It's an incredibly useful tool in many small ways, solving a ton of minor irritations. 81 TilesSee on Steam WorkshopFor some reason, Cities Skylines does not let you use the full map by default--and unlocking all the available tiles still only gives you about a third of the available space. This mod solves that problem, giving you access to the entire map so you can build as much as you're able. Network AnarchySee on Steam WorkshopNetwork Anarchy is a combination of a pile of different road mods that will let you do whatever you want when you're building your city's streets, like forcing the ground to follow the elevation of the road or removing all limitations regarding slope angles. Game AnarchySee on Steam WorkshopGame Anarchy is essentially a cheat mod that allows you to control the fundamentals of your city--you can eliminate pollution, make your entire populace educated, unlock all the unique buildings and place as many of each as you want, give yourself money, and on and on. Even if you don't want to cheat, Game Anarchy is necessary for helping deal with some of Cities Skylines weirder quirks, like its "death waves" that often overwhelm your crematoriums and cemeteries. Tree ControlSee on Steam WorkshopTo make your digital city feel like a real one, you're going to need to decorate it with foliage like trees and bushes--this mod lets you remove the restrictions on tree placement so you can place them on roads or on a building lot and make your town much more immersive. Prop ControlSee on Steam WorkshopThis is essentially the same mod as Tree Control, but for other types of ploppable "props," such as statues, lightposts and other similar things. Network MultitoolSee on Steam WorkshopThis mod is similar to Network Anarchy, but it's got a very specific focus: enabling new types of road junctions so you can much more easily design complex roadways. While no mod will make road-building as intuitive as it is in Cities Skylines 2, the Network Multitool will let you come fairly close. Loading Screen Mod RevisitedSee on Steam WorkshopOne of the more annoying things about Cities Skylines is that its load times tend to get all the way out of control if you're using a lot of mods and have a large city--we're talking 10+ minutes of loading here. The Loading Screen Mod streamlines the loading process to make it so much faster and more efficient. Parallel road toolSee on Steam WorkshopIt's not overly difficult to place roads in parallel in Cities Skylines by default, but it does require some effort. Fortunately, this mod takes a lot of the effort out of it by letting you place as many parallel network paths as you want--roads, train tracks, walking paths, and so on. First Person CameraSee on Steam WorkshopYou'll spend most of your time looking at your city from above, but a big part of the fun of building a city in Cities Skylines is taking a look at it from the ground every once in a while--and this mod makes doing so much easier. You can simply click on any citizen or vehicle in your city, and you'll have a new option to take on their point of view, following a person as they walk around, or a bus as it drives its route. IOperate It RevisitedSee on Steam WorkshopThis is actually
Given how long Cities Skylines has been around, the stockpile of mods for it has gotten all the way out of control--the Steam Workshop hosts more than 350,000 mods, custom maps, and assets. That's a lot to navigate when seeking out Cities Skylines' best mods, particularly since a large number of those mods have been abandoned for years. But that's what we're here for.
Despite the fact that the sequel has been out since 2023, the original Cities Skylines remains the gold standard for city-builder games. It's not just that Cities Skylines 2 was such a huge mess when it launched--the original game has a decade of updates and DLC from the developers, plus the massive mod library on Steam Workshop noted above. Cities Skylines 2, by contrast, doesn't even have monorails.
We'll help you get started on your Cities Skylines modding journey by going through the mods that pretty much everybody will have a use for. While the game may accuse some of them of being outdated when you install them, everything listed below currently works just fine.
Traffic Manager: President Edition
One of the biggest issues with Cities Skylines has always been traffic--it's very easy to accidentally create new traffic jams once your population has ramped up, and you'll spend a lot of your time with this game smoothing those jams out. Fortunately, this Traffic Manager mod has all the tools you'll need to micromanage all aspects of your city's traffic flow.
Move it
This mod simply allows you to select any object on the map and move it however you want, which often makes life easier than it would be if you had to delete and replace every building you plopped in slightly the wrong place. It's an incredibly useful tool in many small ways, solving a ton of minor irritations.
81 Tiles
For some reason, Cities Skylines does not let you use the full map by default--and unlocking all the available tiles still only gives you about a third of the available space. This mod solves that problem, giving you access to the entire map so you can build as much as you're able.
Network Anarchy
Network Anarchy is a combination of a pile of different road mods that will let you do whatever you want when you're building your city's streets, like forcing the ground to follow the elevation of the road or removing all limitations regarding slope angles.
Game Anarchy
Game Anarchy is essentially a cheat mod that allows you to control the fundamentals of your city--you can eliminate pollution, make your entire populace educated, unlock all the unique buildings and place as many of each as you want, give yourself money, and on and on. Even if you don't want to cheat, Game Anarchy is necessary for helping deal with some of Cities Skylines weirder quirks, like its "death waves" that often overwhelm your crematoriums and cemeteries.
Tree Control
To make your digital city feel like a real one, you're going to need to decorate it with foliage like trees and bushes--this mod lets you remove the restrictions on tree placement so you can place them on roads or on a building lot and make your town much more immersive.
Prop Control
This is essentially the same mod as Tree Control, but for other types of ploppable "props," such as statues, lightposts and other similar things.
Network Multitool
This mod is similar to Network Anarchy, but it's got a very specific focus: enabling new types of road junctions so you can much more easily design complex roadways. While no mod will make road-building as intuitive as it is in Cities Skylines 2, the Network Multitool will let you come fairly close.
Loading Screen Mod Revisited
One of the more annoying things about Cities Skylines is that its load times tend to get all the way out of control if you're using a lot of mods and have a large city--we're talking 10+ minutes of loading here. The Loading Screen Mod streamlines the loading process to make it so much faster and more efficient.
Parallel road tool
It's not overly difficult to place roads in parallel in Cities Skylines by default, but it does require some effort. Fortunately, this mod takes a lot of the effort out of it by letting you place as many parallel network paths as you want--roads, train tracks, walking paths, and so on.
First Person Camera
You'll spend most of your time looking at your city from above, but a big part of the fun of building a city in Cities Skylines is taking a look at it from the ground every once in a while--and this mod makes doing so much easier. You can simply click on any citizen or vehicle in your city, and you'll have a new option to take on their point of view, following a person as they walk around, or a bus as it drives its route.
IOperate It Revisited
This is actually an add-on for the First Person Camera mod above which allows you to actually drive vehicles rather than just view their perspective. It's not the smoothest driving experience, of course, since Cities Skylines does not actually have mechanics for this, but it works better than you'd probably expect and is pretty amusing.
Remove Chirper
Nobody likes Chirper, the goofy faux Twitter that your citizens will use to complain when their power goes out or whatever. This mod completely removes Chirper from the game so you can ignore it fully, but keep in mind that you may miss out on some problems that the people of your city are having as a result--but honestly Chirper is so irritating that it's a fair trade.
Node Controller Renewal
When you create an intersection to a roadway, it adds a node that this mod can customize extensively in any manner you choose--when used in conjunction with Network Anarchy and Network Multitool, you'll have almost complete granular control over how your city's roads operate.
Intersection Marking Tool
Once you've manipulated your roads and intersections to make them function the way you like, you may also need to change how they look. This mod, which is purely aesthetic and does not influence traffic flow, will allow you to paint fancy lines on your roads to match your fancy intersections.
Precision Engineering
If you're the sort of person who wants their roads to go exactly where you intend them to, Precision Engineering will be a godsend. With this mod you'll have new tooltips for angles and length on the sections of road you're building, as well as new building options, like the ability to snap an intersection in five-degree increments. That may not sound like much on paper, but these are extremely useful quality-of-life features.
Improved Public transit
This mod adds a number of new granular options for managing your public transit lines, including the ability to change vehicle types on the fly--very helpful if you've downloaded custom trains or monorail cars. And you can also edit vehicle types themselves and adjust their capacity or speed, which you'll probably need to do if you use the next mod.
Realistic Population
By default, Cities Skylines population numbers don't work on a normal human scale--it's pretty silly, for example, that there are residential skyscrapers that only have a couple dozen apartments in them. This mod rescales and rebalances the game's population calculations to generate population numbers that resemble the real world's. Just keep in mind that using this mod will add significant complexity to the gameplay.
Advanced Vehicle Options
This is very similar to Improved Public Transit, but for cars, trucks, and airplanes. You'd use this for, say, increasing the capacity of cargo vehicles so they can deliver more items from your industrial areas to your commercial zones, or allowing your hearses to carry more dead bodies before returning to the cemetery.
