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Hello there, city-builders! This time it's all about sports, sports, sports!
Nothing brings the whole student body together and builds team spirit like cheering the school's own team to victory in a sports match. Varsity sports is an important aspect of campus life, defining the entire Greek life experience for many students. In Cities: Skylines - Campus, the varsity team is the principal athletic team representing the campus in various types of sports. These teams compete against similar teams from other educational institutions from other cities and bring fame and fortune to their hometown and school if they succeed.
Varsity season coincides with the academic year during which the campus' varsity team plays in multiple matches both at their home arenas and away. If the team is successful, it is awarded with a trophy at the end of the academic year.
Varsity Sports Arenas
Varsity sports wouldn't be anything without proper varsity sports arenas. Included in the Campus expansion are 5 different varsity arenas: Aquatics Center, Basketball Arena, Track and Field Stadium, Baseball Park and American Football Stadium. The campus varsity team can represent in any of these sports types if the arena is located inside the campus.
Batter up! A baseball game is underway and the stands are filled with excited crowd.
The varsity sports arenas are grand buildings and while some are indoor arenas, some are actually open air stadiums. When a match is underway, you can take a closer look and see athletes competing in these arenas. And if you allocate funds to cheerleading, you can even see the cheerleaders performing their routine, increasing the home team's chances of winning. Now that's cool!
Varsity sports arenas can be placed outside campus areas, too. However, when placed outside they don't host the campus' varsity team but instead one of the city's possible sports teams, similar to how Football Stadiums work in the Match Day expansion. Also, varsity sports arenas are not unique and there can be multiple arenas inside and outside of the campuses.
Varsity Team Customization
Once you have placed one of the varsity sports arenas inside your campus, you can head over to the Campus Info panel. From there selecting the tab "Varsity Sports" allows you to customize your campus' team as you see fit. You are able to select a team identity, the color of their jersey, ticket price for matches as well as funding for cheerleading and coaching staff.
Team identity refers to the team's name and the mascot that comes with it. There are 7 identities to choose from, such as Spartans, Chirpers and Eagles. Each identity also affects the billboards on the varsity sports arenas, changing the logo graphic to match that of the chosen team identity. The team logo is also present in the billboards around the city if the varsity sports policy for ads is switched on. When you select a team identity, you'll also get a mascot with it. These mascots can be seen walking around campus areas. For example, choosing the Spartans identity, the mascot in question is dressed in a spartan soldier uniform. Choosing the Chirpers identity changes the mascot to the blue bird everyone loves!
What's more unifying in sports than representing the colors of your team? That's why choosing the color for the team jersey also affects the clothes' color on the people in the stands cheering the home team.
The Chirpers logo. There are seven different varsity sports team identities to choose from. The identity comes with a logo, a mascot and a customizable team jersey color.
In the Varsity Sports customization you are also able to affect the match ticket price. The lower the price, the more people are willing to visit the arenas during match days. Allocating funding for cheerleading and hiring more coaching staff increase the team's chances of winning the matches. Varsity sports policies also play their role in the matches.
Varsity Sports panel where you are able to customize the team and check various stats about it.
Varsity Sports Matches
As mentioned above, the varsity team plays in both home and away matches.
Home matches gather citizens to the arenas to watch and cheer the team to victory. Ticket income is given to you, the player, and the amount of visitors in the arenas directly affects the chances of winning for the home team. Of course, sports events are popular in the city so be prepared to manage traffic and create good connections to your arenas so that as many people reach the arenas as possible. If you have open air arenas on your campuses, you can see the teams competing in these sports during varsity sports match days as well as cheerleaders leading the crowd in a cheer. Very exciting!
Certain varsity sports options don't affect the outcome of away matches. For example, cheerleading doesn't have an effect in an away match since it's the other team's cheerleaders who are performing their routine in their home arena. Also, ticket income from away matches isn't given to the player and visitor numbers don't increase the chances of winning the away match because most of the visitors are from the other team's hometown. However, coaching staff is as important as during home matches as is the support from the varsity team's fan club.
Trophies
What are sports without trophies? Pretty lame, that's what! But don't worry, we got you covered!
There are multiple matches during an academic year. Some of these are home matches, some away matches. If you team wins 80% or more of these matches, they are awarded a trophy. Like one of those they give to the playoff champions. Trophies are not just nice to have. They also provide the campus with boost to its attractiveness. However, the boost is not permanent and degrades over time. Who wants to be a supporter of a team that won a trophy way back when, anyway? So, to keep winning in campus life you need to keep winning in varsity sports! Each sports type has its own chance to win a trophy, so you can have a swimming trophy, a baseball trophy, a basketball trophy and so on, each contributing to the fame of your campus.
Remember that each campus can have their own teams, so there is a possibility to win quite a few trophies!
Varsity Sports Policies
As mentioned above, varsity sports has its own policies. These policies are meant to allow greater control to achieve the best possible results in the various campus sports events during the academic year. Different policies have different effects and some work only during home matches.
Fan Club Support sounds exactly what it is. The varsity team works together with the fans and with funding from the campus (that means you) they are able to give out free fan merchandise to the fans to increase their spirit and continuing support of the team during matches. The fan club also organizes trips for the most dedicated fans to away games so that the campus team has fan support even when they travel far and away.
Advertisement Campaign's goal is to get as many people to the arenas on match days as possible. The campus pays for billboard advertisement and when this policy is active, you can see the campus team's logo decorating many of the commercial zone buildings.
When the Advertisement Campaign policy is active, you can see the varsity team billboards appear on the billboards in commercial zones.
Sponsorship Deals is the bread and butter of any sports team: a few ads on the jerseys here and there and a couple of billboards selling donuts and noodle soup worth around the arenas. No big deal! With this policy the multitude of billboards decorating the arenas with the team's logo are turned into advertisement billboards that feature the local businesses' brand graphics. In exchange for renting ad space for the different companies, the businesses are willing to offset a portion of the campus' varsity team expenses. Not a bad deal if you can look at a BigBite and a Go Nuts Doughnuts advertisement from time to time!
The Sponsorship Deal policy changes the arena billboards from the team logo to the various in-game brands, from Go Nuts Doughnuts to Yakisoba Noodles and more.
Coaching Staff and Cheerleaders
The varsity team has a base chance of 30% to win a varsity match, both at home and away. In addition to the visitor numbers and some of the policies affecting the match outcome, also the coaching staff plays an important part in increasing the chances to win. You can use a slider in the Varsity Sports tab to hire (and fire) coaching staff as you see fit and if it suits your current city budget. Coaching staff members increase the odds by 1% per staff member. However, similar to academic staff, the effect of hiring coaches is not instant. It takes time for the coaches to feel at home with the new team and as the team comes together, the coaching staff members' effect increases. This, of course, means that there are going to be matches where the coaches are not in their prime because the varsity sports match mechanic is on-going throughout the entire academic year.
Funding cheerleading increases the chances for the home team to win the varsity sports matches. Cheerleaders cheer the team and lead the crowd in a supporting chant to boost team morale. The higher the funding is, the better the cheerleaders are in their performance and the bigger the boost for the team. It's good to remember that cheerleaders can't affect only the home games. And in addition to the increased chance of winning a varsity sports match, cheerleaders also increase the campus attractiveness.
How was that for a new feature! I gotta tell you, I do love the customization options we have in varsity sports. And it's so cool to see your team's logo on a billboard in the city! Not to mention seeing the mascots going around on campus. It's great! What do you guys think about this? How about those new arenas? I think my personal favorite is either the baseball park or the football stadium. And it's great to see the stands filled with people cheering for the team during matches! Awesome!
Until next time, city-builders!
Colossal Order Dev Team
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