Cities: Skylines 2

Like any city management game, Cities: Skylines 2 needs players to keep crime from spiraling out of control. To do so, players must build several police stations that can send patrol cars out to watch for crime, catch criminals in the act, and otherwise keep the population safe.

However, crime is a complex variable in Cities: Skylines 2, and police aren't the only way to deal with the problem. A good administration and welfare system can work wonders for reducing crime, and players must use several buildings from the Police and Administration to make sure criminals never prosper. Here's how to keep cities peaceful in the game.

Policing and Crime Basics

Cities Skylines 2 Crime View — The crime info view in Cities: Skylines 2.

Players get access to police and administration buildings after reaching milestone three. This unlocks the police station for free, and players must pay development points if they want access to anything else.

Much like other services, players can place the police station next to any non-highway road, and the road network will turn green based on how close it is to the station. This represents how quickly the police can respond to a crime. Players will see each station's patrol cars out and about on the green roads as they keep the city safe. This also means that bad traffic can reduce the police's effectiveness and response time.

In the Police and Administration development tree, players can buy the Police Headquarters building for two development points. This building costs a lot more than a station to build and maintain, but it comes with a fleet of patrol cars and a vastly longer range. Players can also upgrade it to give it more cars, more jail space for criminals, and a helipad for aerial patrols.

But even with all these advantages, players should still keep a few stations in strategic locations around the headquarters. Police depend on good traffic to reach crimes in progress and stop criminals, so frequent traffic jams and bad roads can boost the Crime Success Rate and cause citizens to complain about crime even if the Average Crime Probability is down to 1%.

Welfare and Administration

Cities Skylines 2 City Hall — A city hall in Cities: Skylines 2.

One branch of the Police and Administration tree leads to the Police Headquarters, while the other branch starts with a Welfare Office and leads to City Hall. This relates to policing and crime, because citizens who aren't poor and desperate are less likely to commit crimes. This means players can also reduce crime by dealing with its root causes.

The welfare office is cheaper than a police station to build, but more expensive to maintain, and it doesn't have any upgrades. Instead, it has a large service area and the ability to boost the wellbeing of every residence in range. Wellbeing involves other factors like entertainment, rent, and education, but a welfare office can keep households from dropping into unhappiness and crime. Even better, they don't rely on traffic flow, and unlike the police, they only need to cover residential buildings.

Another useful building is City Hall. City Hall reduces loan interest rates and utility import costs by a small percentage, but players can also add upgrades that make it cheaper for buildings to upgrade, and reduce the whole city's crime rate by 5%. Much like the welfare office, this building has no impact on traffic, but players can only build one of them per city.

Jails and Prisons

cities skylines 2 prison — A prison in Cities: Skylines 2.

The last thing to consider is jail and prison space. Each police station and headquarters comes with a jail, a space for arrested criminals to wait for their trial. Cities: Skylines 2 tracks this separately from prisons, which is a space for convicted criminals to spend their sentence. A city should have enough room for both types of inmate, even if good crime prevention means there aren't many prisoners who need to spend time behind bars.

The only building that can house prisoners is the prison, which players can unlock with four development points after first unlocking the police headquarters. The prison has its own vehicles for prisoner transfers from jails. While the game allows criminals to become convicts without a prison on the map, these convicts can't serve out their sentence until they're in a prison.

Crime, punishment, and prevention are all active factors in Cities: Skylines 2. A police station or two is enough to handle the topic in a smaller town, but once players reach milestone 10 or so, they'll need to add new buildings to the mix.

Cities: Skylines 2 is available now on PC, PS5, and Xbox Series X/S.

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