Hadron Collider Monument Unlock Guide for Cities: Skylines

The Hadron Collider is a monument that you can build in Cities: Skylines.

To unlock the Hadron Collider, you have to unlock 6 specific buildings and reach some endgame milestones. Here’s exactly what you need for the Hadron Collider:

• Reach the Megalopolis milestone
• Unlock all 9 map tiles
• Unlock and construct the following unique buildings:
• Statue of Shopping
• Posh Mall
• Colossal Order Offices
• Grand Library
• Aquarium
• Theater of Wonders

Once you have unlocked and built those six buildings, you will be able to build the Hadron Collider from the Monuments menu for ₡800,000

Then when you build the Hadron Collider it will basically provide for all your city’s education needs, across all levels (elementary, high school, and university). Your citizens will not have to physically go to the Hadron Collider building in order to be educated either.

Below we’ll cover everything you need to know about unlocking all 6 unique buildings for this monument.

Unlock: Statue of Shopping

Unlocking the Statue of Shopping requires you to have less than -₡1 in your city’s bank account (in other words, going into debt).

This is much easier to achieve (and to recover from) early on in the game when your bank account is small to begin with.

Here’s a quick overview of what to do though:

Step 1: Spend all your money

Spend as much of your money as you can by building various city service buildings, even if it is much more than your city actually needs.

Step 2: Lower your taxes

Eventually, you’ll reach a point in your spending spree where you still have a positive bank account but can’t afford any more buildings.

This is the time to go to the Taxes tab of the Economy panel, and drop the taxes all the way down for all your zones.

Doing this will mean that your city’s expenses will far surpass its income. Soon you’ll find your bank account in the negative.

Recovering from the Debt

Here’s how to get your city’s income back in the green:

• Make sure you turn off all the excess city service buildings you don’t need
• Raise taxes back up to normal levels (9-12% is usually a safe range)
• Lower the budget temporarily for services like education, fire coverage, and transport; you can raise them back up when you notice your city lacks coverage
• Fulfill any zoning demands to keep growing your economy

Unlock: Posh Mall

To unlock the Posh Mall, you’ll need to have the tax rates in all your zones no higher than 4% for at least 20 weeks.

Doing this will be very detrimental to your city’s economy, because your weekly income will be in the negative (a tax rate of 9-12% is usually recommended).

It’s best to do this in the early to mid-game. This is when you don’t yet have a massive city and huge weekly expenditure for services, but it’s also when you’ve saved at least several hundred thousand ₡ to survive 20 weeks without going bankrupt.

To start the 20 weeks, go to the Taxes tab of the Economy panel and take all the tax sliders down to 4%.

Once all the tax rates are 4%, a 20-week counter will start.

You can check this counter by hovering over the Posh Mall’s location in the unique buildings tab (shown below).

Tip: To minimize the amount of money you lose per week, you can temporarily lower the budget for services like transport, education, and park maintenance.

Unlock: Colossal Order Offices

To unlock the Colossal Order Offices, your city needs to have weekly education expenses of at least ₡20,000 for 10 weeks.

Your education expenses represent the total weekly upkeep costs of all the educational facilities you have running in your city.

Once you hit ₡20,000, the progress bar in the unique buildings menu will be replaced with a 10-week counter.

The table below shows the build costs and weekly upkeep costs of various educational facilities.

Unlock: Grand Library

Unlocking the Grand Library requires you to have seven universities standing in your city for 10 weeks.

Although this unlock is simple, it is quite expensive, as each university costs ₡75,000 to build and additionally costs ₡1,920 per week in upkeep.

You’ll also need to keep the universities running for 10 weeks before the Grand Library is unlocked.

But if your city does not currently need 7 universities’ worth of student capacity, you can switch off the unneeded ones after the 10 weeks are over.

Unlock: Aquarium

Unlocking the Aquarium requires you to have 5,000 children attending your elementary schools.

This is a very straightforward requirement—all you have to do is make sure you build enough elementary schools for 5,000 student capacity. But you’ll need a large population for this.

This is because only a small fraction of your population will be made up of children.

So the only play here is really to just grow your population by whatever means necessary, and possibly to encourage more family/residential areas where your citizens will want to raise a family.

Here’s a list of all the elementary school buildings you can build:

Unlock: Theater of Wonders

Despite being a level 6 unique building, the Theater of Wonders is the easiest to unlock among these six required buildings.

You simply need to build 3 universities.

That’s it!

How To Reach the Megalopolis Milestone

Monuments can only be built upon reaching the last population milestone in the game: Megalopolis.

But this milestone can happen anywhere from 20,000 – 90,000 citizens, depending on the map you’re playing on.

Generally the more buildable land is available on a map, the higher the population is required per milestone.

How To Unlock All 9 Tiles

Without mods, the game starts with a single tile and allows you to expand to 9.

You unlock each of the 8 remaining tiles at different milestones:

Each time you hit one of these milestones, you can choose a new tile to purchase by going to the Areas panel.

Note that you can only purchase a tile that is adjacent to any of the ones you already own. And each succeeding tile is also more expensive than the previous one.

Tile prices can also vary depending on the map and the amount of buildable land, so there’s a lot of variation here.

Tips for Unlocking the Hadron Collider

Tip #1: Unlock the Theatre of Wonders, Grand Library, and Colossal Order Offices at the same time

The progress paths for these three buildings overlap:

• You’ll need to build 3 universities for the Theater of Wonders, so you’ll only need to build 4 more to get the Grand Library
• The universities that you build can greatly increase your education spending, putting you well on your way to the unlocking the Colossal Order Offices

Tip #2: Consider creating a restore point

Some of these progress paths can wreak havoc on your city’s economy, such as:

• Going into debt for Statue of shopping
• Negative income for weeks because of low tax rates for the Posh Mall
• Potentially going over budget on education expenses for weeks to get the Colossal Order Offices and Grand Library

If you’d rather not have to deal with the headache of recovering economically from these, you can try using a save point to restore your game instead.

Here’s how this works:

Step 1: Create a ‘good’ save point of your city before you attempt these unlocks. (Name it something like “beforeposhmall” or similar so you know which one it is.)

Step 2: Make sure that autosave is off.

Step 3: Then work towards the unlock path of whatever building you need.

Step 4: Once you’ve unlocked your desired unique building, simply close your game without saving.

Step 5: Load your ‘good’ save point and play as normal. This works because once a building is unlocked in one game, unique buildings stay unlocked across your different saves.

BACK TO THE MAIN GAME Cities: Skylines Full Strategy Guide

Guide Navigation

• Cities: Skylines
  • Hadron Collider Monument Unlock Guide for Cities: Skylines

Liz Villegas

174 articles

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.

View Writer's Posts →

Related Posts:

Eden Project Monument Unlock Guide (Cities: Skylines) Space Elevator Monument Unlock Guide (Cities: Skylines) Colossal Order Offices Unlock Guide (Cities: Skylines) Fusion Power Plant Monument Unlock Guide (Cities: Skylines) How To Unlock the Academic Library in Cities: Skylines Medical Center Monument Unlock Guide (Cities: Skylines) Cities: Skylines Servicing Services Offices Unlock Guide Cities: Skylines Stock Exchange Guide (Tips + All Building Levels)