Newcomer Here! Suggestions and help needed!

Hello and welcome! In addition to the required mods
(Dependency - Cities XXL Community Mod
Dependency - XL Nation Furniture Dependency Pack
Dependency - Shader Pack) and some more required ones regarding other mods
i recommend those for XXL:
Residential - XL building pack A
Buildings - Paris Pack (with no-collision version)
Buildings - Latin American Expansion Pack
Transportation - XXL Realistic Highway Mod (not sure if it works well in XXL) + Transportation - RHM addon
Transportation - Uokiok - Pedestrian Paths - XXL
NEXL - XXL NEXL Pedestrian Paths
Transportation - Monorail (XXL only)
Buildings - Mall Parking
Transportation - Modular Airport Pack
Buildings - Jakarta Pack
Industry - Modular Warehouse Pack
Modular Harbor Pack - Part II: CONTAINER PACK
Modular Harbor Pack - Part I: OIL PACK
Buildings - Elsedai High Technology Industry pack
Buildings - Warehouse & Logistics Pack
Buildings - W2W Generic Pack I
Offices - Modular Convention Center
Residential - German Residential Pack (small CB version added)
Residential - Las Vegas McMansion Pack

There are a lot more awesome mods, but i think this packs are a musthave. Please take care u have all required mods installed before. Have fun!

 

Hey, welcome to the forums!

Another one who wants to create realistic looking cities, good choice
I myself have become a fan of creating realistic looking cities after I had been going through a
phase of creating rather mixed style cities for a long time (which is not a bad thing, do not get me wrong)!

Patience is the key!

What I had often done was to do test with mod combinations on a test map (now I do not need that so often, as I now how most mods work), and afterwards, I built the final result of the combination on the common map.

I often deleted things that took me hours to work on, yeah, partially, it will feel like a waste of time...

I also tried to "copy" real things, especially interesting highway interchanges. Use Google Maps, and take a screenshot, then try e.g. to estimate the distances between two exits of that interchange, and slowly create it within CXXL. Then you will have your realistic looking interchange

A more general advice:

Start easy! A newbie who thinks that he/she can foretell how his/her city will look like in the end will always be a dreamer.

So try to focus on one project first. For instance, spend the first month with RHM (depending on the time you have to play), then move on to another project, e.g. creating realistic looking suburbs. Or the other way round.
And do not be scared of what people present here. They all also had once been newbies

Here some journals and tutorials I would recommend you to have a look at:
CJ - Malbourne
And the next is a very promising first city journal:
CJ - Port Sakaria

My two favourite tutorials:
Tutorial - How to make arcade buildings
Tutorial - How to build a fully functional elevated Tram
The next two are a bit outdated, but still nice:
Tutorial - Tutorial - Create Realistic Lakes
Tutorial - Denco Tutorials- The ultimate city guide for realism

 

2 things you must be willing to do from the start if you really want to make realistic cities(although in my opinion as long as we have only the choice of buildings for industry we have now it will never be) is you must plan before you begin, and be willing place every building as a single placement, train your patience now as you begin this game and it wont be so hard.

 

Use the 'Switch between zoning and buildings alone" button and all building icons will become visable in the menu and available for individual placement.

For money, use the "Menu/Cheat/Add Cash" option or there are a couple of cheat mods in the resource section.

 

For information:
Dependency - Shader Pack >>>>>>> This mod is not necessary in "Cities XXL".
You must remove your mods folder.
It is already included in the "Cities XXL Community Mod ".


Buildings - Warehouse & Logistics Pack: >>>>>>>>>>
This one has an addiction problem, refer to the discusion of the mod