The Archipelago Map Guide for Cities: Skylines

The Archipelago Map in Cities: Skylines
The Archipelago
DLC Required Natural Disasters
Map Theme Tropical
Buildable Land 21%
External Connections
  • Highway
  • Ship
  • Air
Natural Resources
  • Fertile Land (very little)
  • Forest

Map Overview

The Archipelago in the New Game Screen / Cities: Skylines
The Archipelago in the New Game Screen

The Archipelago is a map from the Cities: Skylines Natural Disasters DLC.

The map is mostly water, with small islands scattered around.

An overview of the Archipelago map / Cities: Skylines
An overview of the Archipelago map

Unlike some of the other tropical or island maps in the game, which typically have at least one large island to start with, none of the islands in this map is particularly big.

Some of the relatively larger islands are found towards the edges of the map, so they’re a few tile unlocks away.

The islands with more buildable land are northeast and southeast of the starting area / Cities: Skylines
The islands with more buildable land are northeast and southeast of the starting area.

This may make growing your city challenging in the early game, when you don’t have high-density buildings unlocked yet.

Fortunately, to make up for the meager building space, the population requirements for the milestones are rather low.

This can help prevent the problem of running out of space before you’re able to unlock the various services and assets you want to build.

Highlights:

  • Only 21% buildable land
  • Low population numbers required to hit milestones
  • Interesting coastlines island shapes can work great for a touristy map

Starting Tile

Your starting tile is mostly water, with several small islands and half of a medium island near the bottom edge.

Your starting highway connection comes from part of a small island to the north (which itself has little space to build on).

Rather than building on that island, consider building a bridge to the nearby island just southeast of it, and starting there instead.

The starting tile on the Archipelago map / Cities: Skylines
The starting tile on the Archipelago map

Water and Power

As well as having water everywhere, there’s also strong winds all over this map, including on your starting tile.

This makes it easy to find spots for your early game wind turbines (or advanced wind turbines) where they can perform at max efficiency.

There’s strong wind all over this map, including in your starting area, making wind turbines efficient / Cities: Skylines
There’s strong wind all over this map, including in your starting area, making wind turbines efficient.

External Connections

The Archipelago can connect to outside the city by highway, ship, and air. The map has no external train connection.

The external highways are located on the north and northwestern portion of the map.

The highways leading towards the north and northwest / Cities: Skylines
The highways leading towards the north and northwest.

While the external ship route, on the other hand, is towards the southeast portion of the map (and this can be accessed from the various islands).

The external ship route goes between some of the islands in this map, giving you plenty of options for building your harbor / Cities: Skylines
The external ship route goes between some of the islands in this map, giving you plenty of options for building your harbor.

Airports can work well, especially if you’re going for a touristy build.

Just make sure to plan ahead since you don’t have much space to work with.

A single airport takes up nearly half of this island in the starting tile / Cities: Skylines
A single airport takes up nearly half of this island in the starting tile.

On top of figuring out where to squeeze in your airport, you may also encounter a “slope too steep” problem when you try to place it (since the islands aren’t very flat).

You may need to spend a significant amount of money to level out some terrain before you can build your airport. If you need some help with this then check out our slope tool guide for more info.

Natural Resources

The Archipelago isn’t a great map for specialized industry (base game) or industry areas (Industries DLC).

Apart from the fact that there’s very little land, you also only have forestry as the only viable natural resource.

There are some patches of fertile land across the map but the amount is negligible; it is not nearly enough for your industry (especially for industry areas).

There is also no oil or ore on this map.

Forestry is the only viable natural resource for specialized industry or industry areas on the Archipelago / Cities: Skylines
Forestry is the only viable natural resource for specialized industry or industry areas on the Archipelago

Fishing

There is shellfish pretty much everywhere here, and some anchovy and tiny amounts of salmon along the coastlines.

But Tuna is not present on this map.

The Archipelago in fishing industry view / Cities: Skylines
The Archipelago in fishing industry view

First Expansions

The four tiles adjacent to your starting area / Cities: Skylines
The four tiles adjacent to your starting area

North Tile

The tile north of your starting map gives you long stretches of the highway connection (both extending north and west), but not much else.

So it’s probably not the best choice for your first expansion.

Buildable land is scarce on this tile as the islands are tiny. Much of the space on its largest island, which connects to your starting tile, is taken up by the highway junction.

East Tile

The tile directly east of your starting tile gives you a few small islands.

While this doesn’t give you much more room than the north tile, it can be an attractive option if you’re planning on growing your city towards the slightly larger islands in the northeast of the map, or the crescent-shaped island in the southeast.

South Tile

This tile is mostly water, but it does give you the other half of the island towards the bottom of your starting tile.

This is also a good option if you’re eyeing the crescent island in the southeast.

West Tile

The tile west of your starting area gives you a nicely sized island—for this map, anyway—with a long stretch of the highway going through it.

The highway also goes through several smaller islands on that tile.

Milestones

Below are the population targets for each milestone on The Archipelago:

Milestone Population Required
Little Hamlet 120
Worthy Village 240
Tiny Town 360
Boom Town 650
Busy Town 1,200
Big Town 1,800
Small City 2,600
Big City 4,000
Grand City 5,000
Capital City 8,000
Colossal City 11,000
Metropolis 16,000
Megalopolis 20,000

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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