In an ongoing video series that’s premiered each week, the devs at Cities: Skylines 2, have revealed new features coming to the highly anticipated sequel. Today’s video highlights one of the more exciting aspects of Cities: maps and themes. 

Cities: Skylines 2 will have maps “roughly five times bigger” than that of its predecessor. Colossal Order confirms that you’ll start with 9 tiles for building, with a maximum of 441. In total, nearly 159km² of playable area will be available once all tiles are unlocked. Comparatively, Cities: Skylines had a total playable area of 5×5 tiles, with 9 in total once all were unlocked, with a cumulative 92.16km² of area to play on. Colossal Order encourages players to build smaller cities far away from your main priority city with the increased map size and improved transportation systems. 

Of course, in Cities: Skylines numerous mods helped expand upon the default, so it wouldn’t come as a surprise if mods come and increase Cities: Skylines 2 default total map size.

Another feature highlighted in the trailer was themes, where players can choose a North American or European theme. Choosing one will from then on influence the aesthetics of buildings, police cruisers, ambulances, street markings, and more. 

There’s also the added feature to individually zone a theme within your city, for example, if you’ve already chosen North American, setting a zone and indicating it as ‘European’, will influence the architecture to a European look. 

Ten maps will be available in the base game, with a variety of plains, rocky fords, archipelago, and a map that features a recreation of San Francisco’s terrain. Each map is varied in resources available, buildable city area, and if any cities outside the map are connected. Terrain heigh within the map editor has also increased, including the height at which cities can built on. 

There are still yet to be more videos in the coming weeks ahead of the October release for Cities: Skylines 2, revealing more new details.