Mastering the urban-rural transition in Cities Skylines 2! | NB Ep. 5

"sir, step away from the surface painter. this is final warning."

We need a sheep farm named Ba Ba Baaaaaa Farm now.

Ba ba baaaaaaaaa..... how many did you count? Let me know below👇

Me: wait did he check for fertile land? 10min later: oh no he didn't

You need a rural petrol (gas) station out along the farms road, possibly with an attached diner.

26:37 When you remove all the trees under the powerline for safety, only to plant them back a few moments later

1. "This series is going to be a little bit faster paced." 2. The Vegetable Farm Incident of 2026

I don't comment too often but I wanted to offer some thoughts of how you've done landscaping for Banff, as an Albertan myself. Banff in real life doesn't often use those kinds of orderly, evenly spaced tree lines since it's a tourist town situated in a national park and it leans into a european, natural looking kind of vibe. A lot of the urban landscaping, even downtown, is actually more like an alpine forest with irregularly spaced conifer trees and needle-bushes in clusters, with stones and such. The whole town really leans into the alpine aesthetic with log-benches and decor. The grid is also relatively limited to mostly downtown, but I see your vision for that and of course you aren't going for 100% realism. My biggest point is that I hope you really lean on natural-lookjng confierous vegetation (there are still leafy trees but they are usually pretty small like poplars). The city is also generally pretty walkable and has a lot of pedestrian-streets and bike lanes around. Banff and Canmore in particular have had some more progressive civil engjneering as they grew. I'm also gonna add that Banff as a city ***REALLY*** respects topography because of how much height variation is there. The cost for infrastructure and developments that would require more terraforming was prohibitively expensive and hard to justify, and Canadian Suburbanism more broadly has tighter spacing and more elevation variation within and between each neighborhood block. Just some pointers to hopefully help the city feel like it belongs with it's surroundings. In my opinion, these kinds of principles are what make a lot of Canadian cities feel different from US cities. Finally, I hope you add a castle-like hotel at some point for the Banff Fairmont hotel, which was built to look like a giant european castle and has it's own section of the city. It's a fixture of Banff and very historic for the CP Railway (which was the reason it was built). You can even make it like a little shopping district since it is a large resort now.

I am once again suggesting we name the twin lakes Lake Dipper and Lake Mabel. Great video! Ba ba baaa

Canadian here: one little nitpick is that the sports center has too many flags. we generally don't put it everywhere in the same way Americans do. in my town there are two places that are kinda equivalent, one is just an ice rink and the other is a large community center with two arenas, a pool, community gardens, and a bunch of other stuff (suffice to say a much larger facility) both only have a single flag. so what I'm saying is that for Canada those what look like four flags at the sports center is a crazy amount. Going forward I'd suggest that the only places that should have flags are government owned (schools, municipal administration type places, community centers, etc.) and that it should be limited to one flag per facility unless you can also find a provincial or city flag to go along with it. but also not all of those types of places necessarily have a flag

Not having random rotation turned on hurt me, made those tree grids look like magic eye images lol. Loving the series anyway!

32:10 Lightpole in da lake

In (i think) episode 2, you put the concrete batching plant in the industrial area near the city. I work in industrial sales. It's my job to visit batching plants, block/brick plants, and quarries. Not all quarries I visit are by batching plants, but nearly all batching plants I visit are very close to quarries. Your batching plant is always going to need the quarry. If it's next to the quarry, a 200m/600ft conveyor is a far cheaper option than trucking it in

I am once again a non-cyclist who thinks the pedestrian path connecting downtown and the industrial area should have bike access. (I am also so invested in this series that I finally joined the channel. Diabolical planning on your part, Phil.) I chuckled a little at the beginning about the game called Cities: Skylines not having much consideration for non-city stuff Typical of cities in the real world too.

BA BA BAAAAAA

The parking lot at the geothermal power plant needs lighting (especially considering it never closes)

32:54 I think for a collection of lakes that size that peir might be just a bit big xD. A jetty or single peir with less berths and a majority of the boats not on the lake being canoes and dingies upside down on the shore would look more realistic (or maybe a canoe shed?) In a similar vein most of the boats docked or on the lake look more like sea going vessels or for a larger body of water, the yachts especially because the river between the two lakes would be impossible to sail due to boats of that size usually having a reasonably large keel. Also its Canada, YOU GOTTA HAVE CANOES!!!

The timing of the Energy Drink Factory was serendipitous considering how building that farm turned out lol. Really enjoying this build. As always, looking forward to some more trams and trains lol.

"We. . . have. . . a ton of fertile ground right here. . ." YOU DON'T SAY!

There's another reason for a lack of farming or ranching at Banff. It's in the middle of a national park. Without the park, it would likely be ranching if anything.