Getting Started with Cities: Skylines Modding

Cities: Skylines modding has a small set of mods that effectively function as expanded base game features. Install those four first, then everything else builds on them. This guide walks the standard install flow.

Step 1 — Subscribe to the Big Four

Every serious Cities: Skylines modded build runs these:

• Move It — drag-and-drop placement of any object after building. Game-changing.
• Network Extensions 2 — adds road and rail network variants the base game lacks.
• Traffic Manager: President Edition (TM:PE) — comprehensive traffic-flow management. Adds lane configuration, signal timing, priority signs, vehicle restrictions.
• Find It! 2 — searchable asset browser. With thousands of subscribed assets, this is how you find anything.

Subscribe to all four on Workshop. Launch the game. From the main menu → Content Manager → Mods tab → enable each mod.

Step 2 — Subscribe to a starter asset set

Workshop assets (buildings, vehicles, props) are the visual identity of a modded Cities: Skylines build. Some starter picks:

• Realistic Vehicle Pack — replaces vanilla generic vehicles with branded equivalents.
• A road infrastructure pack (e.g. one of the highway network packs).
• A handful of building assets in your preferred aesthetic (American suburb, European, Asian, etc.).

Don't go overboard initially. Each subscribed asset adds to game load time. Start with 50–100 assets and grow.

Step 3 — Configure mods

The in-game Options menu has a Mods category. Most mods (especially TM:PE) expose extensive settings here:

• TM:PE has dozens of options for AI behaviour, lane management, and signal logic.
• Move It has hotkey configuration.
• Find It has display filter preferences.

Spend a few minutes the first time exploring each.

Step 4 — Start a new city

Most mods can be added to existing cities, but some (Network Extensions 2 added road types) are best installed before placing infrastructure that the mod's new types would have improved.

A pragmatic rule: install your core mods, start a new city, learn the workflow. You can add asset mods anytime; structural mods (TM:PE, Network Extensions) ideally go on a new save.

Step 5 — Manage Workshop subscriptions

The in-game Content Manager has separate tabs for Mods, Assets, Maps, and others. Each lists everything subscribed via Workshop. Toggle individual entries to enable/disable per save.

If your game load time is unacceptable, you have too many subscribed assets. Unsubscribe from packs you're not using. The CS1 engine doesn't unload unused asset memory.

Common gotchas

• Game crashes on load with many assets. Steam Workshop downloads sometimes corrupt. Verify game files via Steam → Properties → Local Files → Verify.
• TM:PE not interacting with vanilla traffic AI. TM:PE overrides vanilla pathing. Some interactions need configuration in TM:PE's settings page — particularly the "AI" options.
• Asset placed but invisible. Texture or LOD missing. Often a Workshop asset that hasn't fully downloaded. Re-subscribe.
• Save file corrupted. Most often a mod was disabled while the save still referenced its placed objects. Re-enable the mod, load, save fresh.
• Game loads for 10+ minutes. Too many subscribed assets. Cull the subscription list.

For Cities: Skylines II, the modding ecosystem is different — Paradox Mods rather than Steam Workshop, no asset modding at launch, smaller mod catalogue. See the Cities: Skylines II guide for that game's specifics.