The Christmas Tree Unique Building in Cities: Skylines

The Christmas Tree
DLC	Snowfall
Building Type	Unique Building
Level/Category	Winter
Build Cost	₡250,000
Upkeep Cost	₡1,600/week
Milestone Required	Boom Town
Entertainment Value	70
Noise Pollution	10
Visitor Capacity	360

The Christmas Tree is a winter unique building that you can build with the Cities: Skylines Snowfall DLC. To unlock it, you’ll need to do a few things:

Play on a winter map
Use only geothermal heating plants for heating
Reach the Boom Town milestone (650 – 2,600 population, depending on the map)

Once these requirements are fulfilled, you’ll be able to build the Christmas Tree from the Winter tab of the Unique Buildings menu for ₡250,000.

Until then, you can hover over its silhouette in the build menu to see your progress (towards 100% of your city’s heating) once you’ve built a geothermal plant.

The Christmas Tree’s silhouette in the build menu.

All Winter Maps

These are the official winter maps that come with the Snowfall DLC:

Frosty Rivers
Icy Islands
Winter Hills
Frozenshire
Snowy Coast

The Snowfall winter maps in the New Game menu.

You can also get user-made winter maps from the Steam Workshop.

How Heating Works (Quick Overview)

Your city’s buildings need heating when the temperature is low (e.g., on winter maps).

You can provide heating by building a boiler station or geothermal heating plant, and upgrading your water pipe system to have heating pipes.

Without these, your citizens will need to use electricity for their heating (which means a significantly larger demand on your city’s power supply).

For this unlock, you’ll need 100% of your city’s heating to be served by geothermal heating plants, meaning none from boiler stations or electricity.

Setting Up Your Geothermal Heating Plant

Step 1: Build the heating plant

Build the geothermal heating plant from the Water, Sewage, and Heating tab.

It is unlocked at the Boom Town milestone and costs 55,000.

The Geothermal Heating Plant in the menu.

Step 2: Build or upgrade your water pipes

From the same tab, select the Water Pipe with Heating Pipes. Then use the Upgrade tool to change all your existing water pipes to ones with heating pipes.

You’ll need these upgraded water pipes to deliver heating to your buildings.

Don’t forget to connect your geothermal heating plant to your pipe network using upgraded pipes.

Tip #1: Prohibit Using Electricity for Heat

In the Services Tab of the Policies panel, you’ll find a policy called “No Electricity for Heat.”

This prohibits buildings from relying on electricity for heat.

This will make it easier for you to spot any areas of your city you may have neglected to upgrade to heating pipes, or that aren’t being reached by your heating supply.

The No Electricity for Heat policy.

Tip #2: Try to Go For This Unlock Early

It’ll be much easier to achieve this unlock before your city gets massive, since that will lead to a larger area to cover with pipes and a much greater demand for heating.

So it’s a good idea to start working towards this unlock as soon as you can afford to build the heating plant (and the ₡480/week upkeep) as well as the upgraded pipes.

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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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