The City Plan Contests are a chance for you to show off your settlement building skills, share your work with the community, and earn cool prizes!
There is no current contest.
City Plan Contests have been retired as announced in Kinggath's News Video:
News - April 28th: Addons, Public Issue Tracker, and the end of the CPC!
Download the City Plan entries from past contests to use in your own game.
¶ Contest Information
Note that the choices of merchandise and game keys may vary month-to-month depending on availability. Once the Top 3 are decided, they will be notified of available options for prizes.
Most prizes will be distributed digitally, in the form of gift cards, or online store credits to purchase the actual prize. Though on occasion, a physical, limited edition item may be available, in which case the recipient would need to disclose a mailing address in order to receive that prize.
Winning a prize is contingent upon being compliant with all official rules, and fulfilling all other requirements in this document.
If your country is not eligible to accept Steam gift cards, we will do our best to accommodate with a similar prize.
If you would prefer not to have your City Plan included in a pack, please let us know.
Each month the contest details will be announced on the 28th and you will have until 11:59 PM CST on the 28th of the following month. After which, the first round of judging will begin.
Judging is done in two rounds; the first is limited to Sim Settlements team members, Patreon supporters, and long-standing community members. From this first round, a top 3 is selected, which will be announced within two weeks of the contest closing.
Afterwards, the creators will be contacted directly for help in preparing their settlements for the public judging round which will involve video tours and a public voting session, which will be handled on the simsettlements.com forums.
Video tours will be released and public voting announced on kinggath's YouTube channel, as well as the simsettlements.com forums, around the 21st of each month, with the winners being selected and announced on the 28th alongside the announcement for the next contest’s details.
Only active accounts on the simsettlements.com forums are eligible to vote on the public voting section. Active status requires existence on the forum before the contest begins, having made a small number of posts, and maintaining a positive post reaction rating (which means not spamming random threads to hit the minimal posting threshold). This is to reduce the likelihood of fake accounts being created to skew voting.
Anyone not currently on the City Plan Contest Management team may enter, provided you are building your settlement on PC. We currently lack the tools necessary to export a settlement from Xbox. If that ever changes, we'll likely expand to allow Xbox players to enter as well!
Each person may only submit one entry per month. If it is found that an individual is submitting multiple entries under different usernames, all entries from that person will be rejected.
Anyone who has not maintained good standing with the community (i.e. has been banned from Sim Settlements, Nexusmods, Discord, Forums, or other community platforms) is not eligible to enter.
While there aren't going to be strict criteria on how people vote, you do have to follow the rules of the contest or your City Plan will be disqualified. So be sure that you have the appropriate numbers of plots, settler support, and any other rules laid out in the current month's requirements.
Voting will be largely subjective, but you should aim to make something that is immersive, detailed, and functional, as each judge on the team will likely have a bias towards one of these things.
Immersive - Keep it lore friendly. If you build a modern day shopping mall, it might look cool, but likely the judges will find it jarring as a City Plan.
Detailed - Don't skimp on the detail; little touches go a long way. Think things like clutter, wall decorations, and other little touches that show you've really thought about how the place would feel if lived in.
Functional - Some judges will really care about whether or not your settlement could actually function. It could be from a pathing perspective, from having a good mix of plot types, or from just seeming like it has a common theme.
¶ Official Rules
These are the general rules that apply to all City Plan Contests:
Below are some rules that have been clarified over the previous seasons.
This is a summary with links to the original posts, and you can read the whole thread here:
https://simsettlements.com/site/index.php?threads/ss2-city-plan-contest-rules.17364/
A rule clarification regarding scrapping mods and Extra Object Selection from Place Everywhere:
https://simsettlements.com/site/index.php?threads/ss2-city-plan-contest-rules.17364/post-129567
All 4 levels of your plan must have a recruitment beacon.
https://simsettlements.com/site/index.php?threads/ss2-city-plan-contest-rules.17364/post-134294
You cannot use the CK to build or alter the settlement or your City Plan. All work must be done in-game.
https://simsettlements.com/site/index.php?threads/ss2-city-plan-contest-rules.17364/post-134730
Plots and Work Items must be built inside Workshop boundaries.
https://simsettlements.com/site/index.php?threads/ss2-city-plan-contest-rules.17364/post-166660
A rule clarification regarding console spawning items in your City Plan:
https://simsettlements.com/site/index.php?threads/ss2-city-plan-contest-rules.17364/post-181545
¶ Frequently Asked Questions
Build a Settlement: Each month we’ll announce a set of settlements you can choose from to build an epic design in. We’ll also let you know what the requirements are for your design, such as any themes, expected items, and build limits.
Convert to a City Plan: City Plans have levels, which means you’ll need to tear your settlement down a bit and use a simple process to export it into a special City Plan mod to share with others. Don’t worry! The process is straight-forward and can be done without ever opening a tool like the Creation Kit. (Quick video guide coming soon!)
Upload to Nexusmods.com: After you’ve created your City Plan plugin, you’ll want to take some good screenshots and share it all on Nexusmods.com. Be sure to use Sim Settlements 2 as the category, and add the City Plan Contest Entry tag.
If you’re nervous about uploading to nexusmods.com/fallout4, reach out to us on the simsettlements.com forums and one of our contest managers would be happy to upload it in your name!
If you are chosen as one of our Top 3, you will then put together a video tour of your settlement for the voting round!
Following these guidelines can help make sure you're giving the best representation of your contest entry prior to the judging process.
Tips for a successful City Plan Contest entry!
Sort of. The City Plan Contest Assistant mod will adjust the build limit of the settlement to something higher than you can build in vanilla. After years of doing settlement modding, we’ve determined a value that is safe for most Fallout 4 players.
So follow the build limit meter, but know that it is more than you get in the vanilla game.
Yes and no. You can use Building Plans on your plots from any add-on you like! What you can't do is build extra items from an add-on, for example, custom City Planner's Desks.
Building Plans are allowed because Sim Settlements 2 can dynamically change them for players not using the add-on you had, whereas it won't know how to handle the other items.
Yes! In fact, there’s an advantage to that, as you could get valuable feedback from people about your design before the deadline in case you want to make changes and re-upload.
The judging team won’t be downloading the plans until the night of the contest deadline.
Sometimes participants don't fully understand the rules, or things may be accidentally unclear, and one may mistakenly be broken. We will be happy to help you better understand the rules and work with you to fix your City Plan to be in compliance.
When a City Plan has been submitted, and is found not eligible because a rule or rules have been broken, Contest Staff will contact you by private message on the forums to help you resolve any issues and help you submit a valid Contest Entry.
If you don’t understand the rules or need clarification, please inquire on the Forums.
Contest Staff: Chef, SirLach
We have Tutorials for City Plan Building, some advice to share with you about mod lists, some video tutorials and other information for new folks to access. See this wiki page:
City Plan Contest Building