Desert Oasis Map Guide for Cities: Skylines

Desert Oasis
DLC Required	Sunset Harbor
Map Theme	Tropical
Buildable Land	76%
External Connections	Highway Railway Air
Natural Resources	Fertile Land Forest Ore Oil

Map Overview

Desert Oasis is a map from the Cities: Skylines Sunset Harbor DLC.

Desert Oasis in the new game screen

The entire map is on an expansive desert, with various hills and oases scattered.

Towards the southwestern part of the map is a lake surrounded by mountains.

Despite having 76% buildable land, the undulating terrain can make things a little more complicated.

A bird’s eye view of the Desert Oasis map

Unsurprisingly, there’s very little water on this map.

The inland water treatment facilities from the Sunset Harbor DLC will come in handy here, so you won’t have to dump sewage into the few bodies of water you have access to.

Starting Tile

Your starting tile on Desert Oasis provides a large amount of flat land, and dunes towards the eastern edge.

The starting tile on the Desert Oasis map

There’s a small oasis in the southwest for your water source.

You’ll find strong winds (enough to get 8MW from a wind turbine) in the slopes in the eastern part of the tile.

The eastern part of the starting tile has strong winds to get max output from your wind turbines

External Connections

Desert Oasis has three out of the four possible external connections: highway, railway, and air.

There is no ship connection as it’s a landlocked map.

There are highway and railway connections both in the east and west of your starting tile.

Highway and railway connections northwest of your starting area

Highway and railway connections past the mountain range east of your starting tile (highlighted in green).

As for air transport, the irregular terrain on this map means you may need to spend a bit of money on leveling land for your airports.

Natural Resources

Desert Oasis isn’t a particularly good map for early-game specialized industry as natural resources aren’t abundant.

The natural resources on Desert Oasis

For example, there isn’t a usable amount of fertile land on this map. Alternatively, there is a small patch of forest resources near the various oases (including the one in your starting tile).

There is a good amount of ore if you’re willing to expand towards the east of the map.

And although not abundant, there is enough oil on this map to make it viable if you really want to extract it locally.

Fishing

This map has few bodies of water, but you will find anchovy in the oases, and anchovy and shellfish in the lake in the southwest.

You’ll find anchovy (yellow) in this map’s small bodies of water, as well as shellfish (magenta) in one part of the lake.

First Expansions

The four possible tiles you can choose from for your first expansion are fairly similar: all entirely dry land with some undulating terrain.

The four tiles adjacent to your starting area.

Since none of these tiles is particularly easier or more difficult to build on, you can make your choice depending on which part of the map you’d prefer to build towards (e.g., the lake in the southwest, or the mountains and ore resources in the east).

North Tile

The tile north of your starting area gives you access to an external highway connection.

Purchasing this tile will get you close to the highway intersection as well as the oases in the northwest.

These oases, highway junction, and external railway can be found northwest of your starting tile.

East Tile

This tile is a good choice if you’re interested in making use of the railway in the east, or build specialized industry on the ore resources near the eastern mountains.

South Tile

This tile has some oil deposits if you’re looking to start an oil industry.

It’s also an option if you’d like to start expanding your city towards the lake in the southwest.

West Tile

Purchasing the tile west of your starting area opens up a few options. After purchasing this tile you can either go for the oases north of it, or start expanding towards the lake south of it.

Milestones

Below are the population targets for each milestone on Desert Oasis.

Milestone	Population Required
Little Hamlet	500
Worthy Village	1,000
Tiny Town	1,500
Boom Town	2,800
Busy Town	5,500
Big Town	8,000
Small City	11,000
Big City	18,000
Grand City	22,000
Capital City	36,000
Colossal City	48,000
Metropolis	70,000
Megalopolis	90,000

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Liz Villegas

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Liz is a writer and photographer with a love for building and strategy games. Her spare time is often split between lifting, reading, drawing, annoying her dog Mr. Porky Butt, and squinting at stat tables on the wiki pages of whatever game she's currently playing.

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