Cities: Skylines is a modern take on the classic city simulation. The game introduces new game play elements to realize the thrill and hardships of creating and maintaining a real city whilst expanding on some well-established tropes of the city building experience.
Cities Skylines: Clean Install
How to remove the game and reinstall a clean version with no left over config files, most mods when unsubbed still leave behind taces that can interfere with your saves, using this method it will reinstall the game and reset all mod configs.
Clean Uninstall/Reinstall
*Make sure you backup your saves folder before moving on any further*
*Make sure you backup your workshop or at least the folder 255710 before moving on any further*
(It’s a good idea to keep up to date backups of both your saves and workshop folder)
To perform a clean install you’ll need to delete all the Cities Skylines folders, so unsub from all workshop then follow the clean uninstall guide below it.
Unsubscribe from all workshop items by going here:
https://steamcommunity.com/app/255710/workshop/
Then over on the right handside where your profile pic is you’ll see My Files, click the dropdown list and choose subscribed items and unsubscribe from all.
Then go to Steam / settings / downloads and clear the download cache.
Uninstall the game again, then go to these locations and delete any folders that may be left over:
C:\Program Files (x86)\Steam\steamapps\workshop\content delete the 255710 folder
C:\Program Files (x86)\Steam\steamapps\common delete the Cities_Skylines folder
C:\Users\<username>\AppData\Local delete the Colossal Order folder
Reinstall then verify the cache, then try loading the game and play a new game, if alls good close the game and move to next step.
https://support.steampowered.com/kb_article.php?ref=2037-QEUH-3335
*Copy the Saves folder back across
*Optional: Copy 255710 folder back if you don’t want to go back through downloading all your assets and mods again, but still click subscribe/enable to all on your save game as below.
To get all your mods and assets back, go to Content Manager / Saves section click subscribe to all on the save you use most and wait for all the downloads to finish, you game may freeze or even crash if you have a lot of mods and assets, if this happens restart steam again and let the downloads continue.
After all downloads have completed go back in game Content Manager / Saves and click enable all, you now should have all the active mods and assets back as you were
All configs will be reset at this point.
*If you have assets missing after resubbing as above then copy the contents of the backed up workshop folder back to their original folder.