Forestry Zone Beginner's Guide (Cities: Skylines) - Guide Strats (2023)

Forestry is one of the four specialized industry types in the Cities: Skylines Industries expansion. While it does take some effort and expense to set up, it opens up various supply chains that can really boost your economy over time.

How to start your forestry!

Create your first forestry area

First, you must unlock industrial areas by reaching the Tiny Town population milestone.

This milestone may vary by map, but for many maps it's around 1,300 citizens.

Next, make sure you have enough cash left over! You'll need at least ₡44,000 to construct the four forest buildings available to you at the start, plus more to construct the necessary water lines, power lines, and roads to cover the area.

Once you've unlocked industrial areas and have money to spend, it's time to find a suitable location for forestry.

You have to build your forest area around the natural forest resources.

You can see where these resources are located on your map by clicking the Natural Resources button on the Info Views toolbar.

You also get this natural resource overlay when you open thedistricts and areasmenu and selectarea of ​​the paint industry.

Use the Paint Industry Area brush to create your forest area around the forest resources. If there is no existing road leading to this area, build one to connect it to the rest of your city.

Next, build theForestry Main Building.

The main building does not have to be built on top of the forestry natural resources - save them for your extraction buildings (tree plantations) instead.

This main building is assigned to the automaticallyforestry specializationto your new industrial area. You will also receive a notification that your new industrial area has reached level 1, which will unlock new forest buildings.

Establishment of a tree plantation for raw forest products

Now that you have your forestry area, it's time to build your firstextractor building: Diesmall tree plantation.

Extractor buildings must be built on resource-rich terrain.

In this case, you should build your tree plantations on the dark green spots. The tooltip shows how productive this plantation will be depending on where you place it.

Once your small tree plantation is up and running, it will start producing the raw material for the forest industry:rohe Waldprodukte.

Raw forest products can be profitably exported as is or used locally to produce processed materials.

As your industrial area levels up, you'll unlock Extraction Buildings, which function in a similar way but produce raw forest products at a higher rate:

SCROLL

Restore Hobelware

Your forestry can process two types of processed materials (also known as "special goods") from raw forest products:planed woodandPapier.

At level 1, the Lumber Mill is the only processing building available to your forestry.

Build this in your forest area; and just like your main building, don't use resource-rich terrain for this.

It may take a while, but the trucks will collect raw forest products from the tree plantation and bring them to the sawmill.

Your lumber mill will then begin producing planed lumber, which can be used in your city's supply chain to craft goods, or exported unmodified. When exported, processed goods such as planed timber and paper sell for more per unit than raw forest products.

At level 4 you unlock themwood-based material plant, a building that produces planed wood at a higher rate.

SCROLL

Keep surplus products in your storage buildings

At level 1 you also unlock your first storage building: thesmall log yard.

This is where the raw forest products produced by your tree plantation that are not immediately required by your processing buildings are stored.

Otherwise, your tree plantation's trucks will likely attempt to export them immediately.

In general, you can think of industrial storage buildings as buffers that allow you to hold resources in your city until your processor buildings need them.

Each log yard also has its own fleet of trucks that can collect raw forest products from your tree plantation and bring them to the log yard for storage or from the log yard to the sawmill.

Leveling up unlocks new storage buildings, each with a larger capacity and fleet.

SCROLL

Level up & unlock more forest buildings

In order for your specialized industries to level up, they must meet certain milestones related toResource units producedandworkers hired. (Each specialized industrial building you place creates a certain number of jobs.)

Reaching the resource production milestone is only a matter of time.

Meanwhile, reaching the required number of workers may mean constructing multiple specific buildings (e.g. multiple plantations or log yards).

Leveling up your forest area unlocks more productive extraction and processing buildings, as well as larger capacity storage buildings. As a bonus, your territory will gain higher productivity and lower pollutant emissions with each level.

make paper

Reaching level 2 unlocks the ability to produce the second type of processed material from the forest industry:Papier.

To do this, you need a Biomass Pellet Plant, which you can also find in the Forestry menu under the Process Buildings tab.

Your Biomass Pellet Plant obtains forestry raw products from your tree plantations (or from your log yards) and produces paper.

Paper, like planed lumber, can be exported directly or used locally to manufacture goods.

Getting your forest area to level 5 unlocks the pulp mill, which produces paper at a higher rate. Here is more information on paper-related buildings:

SCROLL

Forestry products in unique factories

Besides exporting raw forest products, planed lumber or paper, your forestry area can also supply processed materials to unique factories in your city.

Unique Factories use various processed materials (often from multiple industries) to produce high-end luxury goods to be exported or sold in your own trade zones.

These are the unique factories that use goods from your forestry, as well as the other materials and industries they require:

• Furniture factory:planed wood, paper
• toy factory:planed goods, paper, plastic (petroleum industry)
• Modular home factory:Planed goods, glass (ore industry), metal (ore industry), plastic
• Shipyard:Planed goods, glass, metal, plastic
• Printing press:Papier
• Soft paper factory:Paper, grain (agricultural industry), petroleum (petroleum industry), plastic
• Food factory:Paper, animal products (agriculture), flour (agriculture), plastic
• Sneaker factory:paper, plants, petroleum, plastic

outbuildings

Each type of industrial area has its own outbuildings: a worker's barracks and a maintenance building.

You can find these under Main and Outbuildings in the Forestry tab.

Each worker barracks increases your area's productivity by 5%, up to a maximum of 100%. Meanwhile, each maintenance building increases storage capacity by 5%.

SCROLL

Each of these buildings also have jobs, so they can help you reach your worker milestones to level up.

Why is my forestry division losing money?

So let's say you've got your industrial zone up and running - you can see your buildings producing materials and the trucks exporting them.

But instead of seeing a steady flow of cash, you notice that your income around the city is fluctuating wildly and some weeks are drastically negative!

Don't panic - this happens all the time.

This is due to the timing of the production and export of your forestrydoes not always agreein the weekly income calculation.

So if it looks like your forestry is losing money for a few weeks, it could be because the trucks haven't been able to get their goods to the buyers yet. If this is the case, you will likely see spikes in your city's income.

When the materials of your forestry area go to your city's unique factories, the profit you make from the luxury goods will not be reflected in the income of your forestry area.

Despite the weekly fluctuations, it is important to keep track of your city's coffers over the long term in order to see whether your city is actually getting richer.