Cities: Skylines

After reading many positive reviews on Steam and being a fan of the SimCity series, I decided to give Cities: Skylines a try on the Xbox One; however, I didn't have much time for gaming after buying the game. I skimmed through the achievement list and found this achievement. Seeing as it is possible to 'afk' this achievement, I decided to go for this achievement first. I was lucky enough to actually be present and see when the achievement popped. Because I didn't do anything else in the game before or while going for this achievement, I am able to share the exact amount of time it will take to pop this achievement as well as provide a basic guide including some hopefully valuable tips for anyone who wants to go for this achievement.

This achievement is very time consuming. If you are planning to actually play the game and unlock the rest of the achievements, you should leave this for last. (Don't do what I did.) You will probably put several hundred hours into this game by the time you unlock the rest of the achievements.

This achievement is for experiencing 1001 nights in the game. This should not be confused with the in-game date at the bottom left of the HUD. A night is experienced when the screen darkens. According to my final figures, on triple speed, a day/night cycle takes a little over 9 MINUTES. In comparison, on regular speed, it would take almost 30 minutes.

The fastest way to unlock this achievement is to start a new map. You can select any map. Do not build anything on the map. This will prevent you from possibly going bankrupt and allows for less processing to occur which slows down time. Speed up time to 3x. On the Xbox One, you change the speed that time passes by clicking on the left thumbstick. You can check what speed you are currently at by looking at the bottom left of the screen. This area also shows the date you are currently at which is a good way to keep track of how close you are to unlocking this achievement. Make sure the day/night cycle is on in the options menu.

Here are the accurate stats:
To experience 1001 nights in Cities: Skylines at 3X speed on a blank map, it will take:
6d 8h 50m of in-game playtime, that's
approx. 153 hours (152h 50m)
111156 Total Days Passed (in-game)
2324 Year Unlocked (starting year was 2018, I believe)

To get a more general picture of what this entails, I was leaving on my Xbox One for at least 12 hours a day. For several days, I left it on for almost 24 hours. Doing this it took approximately 2 full weeks to unlock, possibly a bit more.

Also, while going for this achievement by using this method one other achievement should unlock:


As far as I am aware of, this is the only way to unlock this achievement. If anyone unlocked this achievement in less time than this, it's either because they found some kind of glitch or they cheated. Like I mentioned earlier, from the first few minutes I put the game on, I was grinding this on 3X speed, and I literally saw the achievement pop, so my statistics are very accurate.

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Just to clarify, this is a cumulative achievement. Nights experienced on multiple maps/saves count. That's why earlier in the solution I mention to leave this achievement for last if you intend on completing the game. Thanks to KingyOwl and Henri Stadzisz for confirming this.
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If you have any questions or can provide any additional information, please leave a comment. Also, please leave a comment before voting negatively so that I can make any improvements or corrections.

This solution will save 145 hours in real time to get this achievement. With this solution, this achievement can be done in as little as 5 1/2 hours.

Small edit, solution still works as of 6/20. I personally tested on a dummy tag. However the time to unlock is incorrect now because of game updates to the menus and the time it takes to load a save, the new time to unlock is 9-10 hours.

1st start a new map and pick Lagoon Shore (this can be done on any map/save you have I just found this map easiest to see the moon and tell the time).

2nd run the game time to nighttime point the camera at the lagoon and watch for the moon
once you see the moon pause the game clock.

3rd set your tv brightness low so the moon is easy to see against the dusk fog (not too low) it makes the next step easier.

4th two things you need are an index finger or an X1 game case put ether one against your tv above the dusk fog horizon (where the red and blue sky meet) and run the game time until the moon touches the top of your finger or case. (this is roughly 04:00 game time the night count "counts" +1 at 05:00 game time).
EDIT
The screenshot below is how the moon should look in step 4.


5th SAVE AT THIS POINT pick any save slot I used the top one.

6th once you have the map saved go 3x clock speed turn the camera 180° to look at the sun once it has fully risen over the horizon you added +1 to you night count. Simply reload your save you made and repeat until you get the achievement!

EDIT 2
To clear up some confusion I'm going to add some extra pics below. I took these pics from the PC version with the scene explorer open to show the raw time data for night count, current hour, sunrise/set time and day/night length.

This what 0400 looks like, one hour before a night gets counted.
https://imgur.com/a/KbEOJbw

This is 0430.
https://imgur.com/a/jbFCTuI -Moon

Recommend moon position.
https://imgur.com/a/QlIuytG

Best possible moon position 0450 is the time. (hypothetically)
https://imgur.com/a/X24XRza

This is how the sun looks at 0500 it's safe to reload your save at the point. https://imgur.com/a/Yxyl5Xc

6/1/2017

This achievement was patched with the recent update. It would appear that you need 1001 VISUAL day/night cycles, not simply the in-game day timer rolling over to the next day. There is a new time speed up feature, and it appears to also speed up the visual day/night cycle. Use it to your advantage. You're still looking at 150+ hours of gameplay to reach this at 3x speed.

As an addendum to the other guides.

Currently at the moment of writing, this can be achieved on the Windows 10 version that is now in the PC Pass. The game is actually "Play Anywhere" and yet it requires a double purchase! The PC Pass of course eliminates the need to buy it again, however this doesn't count for the DLC's.

For this achievement however I just loaded a blank map and just keep it running on the background. It won't even pause when watching a different screen. It doesn't even slow down my PC! I recommend having it auto-save.

EDIT: I got my achievement on the year 2182. So it's cumulative across all maps