They're so versatile and efficient, and used correctly, can remove almost all non-essential car traffic from your inner city streets. I can't imagine trying to build a large or even medium-sized city without trams. Trams are, simply, the best short-to-medium range transit in the entire game, somewhat outclassed for longer, regional trips by metro and regular old trains. I'm talking about trams, which are attractive, high capacity, low noise light rail transit vehicles that can run along the same roads that carry cars.

And call me biased, but I think that exception makes Snowfall more or less essential. So you're pretty much choosing to be locked in eternal winter, or you can't use… just about anything that comes with this pack. A lot of the features, like heating, snow plows, and gorgeous snow textures on buildings, roads, and terrain are only available on special snowy maps. Generally, Snowfall is one of the least well-regarded DLCs for Cities: Skylines. Okay, I know I'm going to get a lot of flack for this. It also comes with a skatepark, a marina, and lots of other water-themed leisure buildings that I love to use. The Cargo Terminal is excellent for shipping goods off to sea in a coastal city, and the International Airport is great if you don't have the Airports DLC.

Some of the custom, ploppable assets like the Casino and the Luxury Hotel are great though. You're going to be mostly restricted to building a couple blocks here and there of these zones unless you want to see a lot of distractingly repeated buildings. And for another, they don't come with enough assets to fill large areas. But for one thing, they're a bit hard to fit into your city because they generate a lot of noise.

The headline feature of After Dark is new district specializations for nightlife and tourism, which are cool in theory. Almost every city I build includes extensive infrastructure for bikes. It's hard to overstate how much this is a win-win for reducing traffic, improving accessibility of jobs and services, boosting public health, and keeping your city a nice place to live. The standout feature here is independent bike roads and shared roads with bike lanes, as well as a policy that lets you encourage biking across your entire city or in select districts. Skylines' first major expansion is also maybe the best overall.

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