Stories 2022-08-03 Biomes Valley
2022-08-03T23:49:00Z Started savegame on Biomes Valley, all outside connections except ship, suitable area for building 73%.
Goal is to reach population 100k today as quick as possible while still enjoying the game.
On the first grid tile we had railroad tracks going straight through E-W direction and river seems to be wide enough not to run out of water soon as has happened in two of my other savegames. We got plenty of forest and enough farmland in this grid tile, can see it even without the info panel indicators being available, so industry can get a good start.
And we have started, 100k, here we go! 
2022-08-04T00:03:00Z Little Hamlet population 500.
Hmm looks like population achievements are different for most if not all terrains, I have copy-paste list of the above line and in Azure Gulf it was 400, now its 500 in this biomes valley terrain, interesting. Oh well so much for that copy-paste idea.
We keep growing.
2022-08-04T00:11:00Z Worthy Village population 1k.
Worthy Village was 800 on azure gulf, now its 1k.
Assigned districts for residential, farmland and forestry areas. Farmland and forestry got the specialized industry tags too.
2022-08-04T00:24:00Z Tiny Town population 1.6k.
This terrain has building objects also different style, I think these are some european or something as they look old and stupid. For example high school is this L shape structure which does not fit into usual road grid, sucks.
2022-08-04T00:34:00Z Boom Town population 2.8k.
Keeps growing and growing.
2022-08-04T01:03:00Z Busy Town population 5.5k.
Oh forgot to start saving too heh, ok saved game for Biomes_Valley_1 file name.
Some new zoning
2022-08-04T01:40:00Z Big Town population 8k.
2022-08-04T01:44:00Z Needed space for another high scool, had to cut off one road to make the stupid shaped building fit.
Just a couple of landscape screenshots for current situation.
Our old arch enemy is back, traffic jams...
2022-08-04T01:55:00Z I decreased low residential zone taxing from standards 12% to 10%, lets see if that boosts new people moving into our city.
Its been said in forums etc that people need to have some motivation to move into your city, that nobody wants to move into an empty farm field in middle of nowhere, you need to have services and such entices to lure the folks in. Well I have garbage, fire, police, education (elementary and high school), bus and even couple of parks. Dunno what else to use to lure them to come to the dark side.
City view from the west.
And from the east.
2022-08-04T02:04:00Z Small City population 11k.
We got ourselves a cargo train terminal, lets start hauling some cargo
First customer arriving, here's to millions more! 
2022-08-04T02:40:00Z Uuh another large residential zone assigned, also did the farmlands and forestrys as well.
Its interesting how long time does it take to create such dirt road grid, there should be some kind of zoning tool that you could just drag a box and choose road type, distance from other road and boom then it just generated those roads for you, would be pretty cool.
Or a button "play my game for me, NOW!!1" 
She is growing slowly.
Oh did I mention I built second cargo train terminal in the west side? Well, here it is.
Had a slight garbage problem, but hopefully this nest of pollution solves it.
2022-08-04T03:09:00Z Big City population 17k.
Had to buy those east and west most grid tiles so I can sort out my water problems, not enough water and too much sewage again, this is the same in every terrain it seems.
My intake river is almost dry now.
New water intake pumps at the west side of the city, well not new they are the same pumps from the previous location but just moved them to the west.
Then it was time to do another savegame, next is Biomes_Valley_2 file name.
2022-08-04T03:32:00Z Grand City population 22k.
The tax relief for low density residential zones did not make people flock in, so I increased it back to standard 12% as I seem to be running out of money all the time.
2022-08-04T04:13:00Z Metro is done, nice loop clockwise and counter clockwise.
We have a lot of not enough uneducated workers, I think this is because the mass specialized industrial zoning, I did the districts first according to terrain natural resources map and now the game is just catching up with my crazy zoning. I'll wait.
Activated policy: small business enthusiast and big business benefactor. I had activated parks and recreation previously.
2022-08-04T04:30:00Z Saved game to Biomes_Valley_3 and then it was my lunch break time...
2022-08-04T04:54:00Z Feeding time over, back to building a city.
Just before heading out to eat I created quick and nasty pollution nest for short road with several incineration plants to handle garbage.
On the west side I'm creating a new low density residential zone.
Created new metro subway stops, tracks and route. Added bus route as well. Now also schools, crematoriums, fire, police and even parks are in, residents should be happy to live there heh.
Farming Simulator is definitely a time sink game, but Cities Skylines is not that far after it either, man it takes forever to create/draw these road networks and all that comes along with a new residential zone.
2022-08-04T06:08:00Z Okay residential district created with all of the above again.
Waiting for folks to move in.
2022-08-04T06:27:00Z Capital City population 34k.
This terrain really looks like dog shit because even the high density commercial buildings look like adolf hitlers backyard from 1939.
Hmm with next terrain savegame start I need to check if there was some optional theme thing, wonder if that might change how the buildings looks, which types are used.
Residential and industrial indicators are flat zero, however commercial has been howering steadily in the 50% mark for a long long time, now I started to add in small areas / increments high density commercial zones to this new area and buildings come up almost instantly and indicator is still half way there.
This is the whole city. My industrial areas are not working properly, abandoned buildings because previously they complained about lack of uneducated workers. There has been no changes in a long time with 3x time acceleration its been like this for the past couple of hours in real life time.
I assume Cities Skylines engine checks industrial areas and there is just so massive amounts of it that ... that... something, dunno, was going to say that it needs huge number of residential zones, but I already have those and nothing changes. So no idea whats going on. Maybe the engine doesn't like when you mass zone stuff, you should do it in small increments like I did here the high density commercial zones, no idea just guessing.
There is of course these traffic jams, maybe this cloggs up the whole engine / city.
Obviously I need to get the highway outside connection fixed and even the cargo train terminal neighborhood roads.
Next those new high density commercial buildings started to show "not enough customers" issue. The low residential zone is sparsely populated, so dunno I wouldn't say no customers, but hmm.
2022-08-04T07:48:00Z Saved game to the last Biomes_Valley_4 and then started to work on the road upgrades, gotta get those massive six lane roads in so traffic will flow.
Okay fixes done, technically its not that difficult to upgrade dirt road to six lane asphalt road, but philosophically it is because you destroy your precious city. Sure subways stations cant be moved which is a shame if you didn't plan ahead of which roads you placed them.
Going to let this roundabout highway outside connection run a bit and see if clears up now that the roads have been opened up. Although I didn't check if traffic lights and stop signs are set or not, I think they default to traffic lights hmph.
Well trying to rework the roundabout and roads around it was a mess, first cargo train terminal roads were hilariously bad, uuh heh this is not fun
2022-08-04T08:42:00Z Colossal City population 46k.
Was fixing roads when new achievement popped up, hmm now I'm thinking maybe I should go google some study learning material of how to properly handle crazy number of vehicle import/export traffic from a highway. I am lost when looking at it now, no idea how to fix it as highway got just insane backlog of vehicles as far as eye can see heh.
2022-08-04T10:03:00Z Road fixing has been challenging but I actually did manage to fix the roundabout, its embarrassing to admit but its direction was the wrong way around, heh hilarious mistake and so glad I figured it out, now roundabout flows nicely but the problem lays ahead on the six lane road, the next intersection is "red" on traffic info panel, its clogged up.
Anyways, I'm starving time to get some chow...
2022-08-04T10:30:00Z Feeding time over, back to checking out traffic.
Hmm a lot of farm buildings shows not enough buyers for products, meaning either goods don't get to the commercial zone or there is nobody to buy stuff. But I wonder if I could buffer the issue a bit with a warehouse grabbing these extra goods. Also why aren't that stuff exported then, hmm.
Looking at my own notes for this issue and yeah they emphasize on either too many industrial zones or traffic jams, I kinda have both, ouch!
2022-08-04T11:31:00Z Dunno what to fix on the roads, they could all be made with asphalt two lane but not sure if that helps anything, if I switch to four lane roads then whole design kind of breaks with buildings close to the two lane existing road, zoning goes belly up etc. Also just simply replacing two lane roads with four lane everywhere is not the right solution.
I'm going to just time accelerate 3x speed and see what happens, RCI indicator kind of fluctuates just a bit in the bottom, something is definitely happening under the hood but what, no idea... hopefully city would balance itself out, I mean all the ingredients for flourishing economy is there.
Currently I have 12.2 million in cash, population is 57.8k and slowly increasing.
2022-08-04T12:31:00Z Added warehouses for specialized industry ore, one of the forestrys and two farmlands, they immediately started to get deliveries, the big forestry areas huge warehouses got full real quick. I wonder if warehouses can be used as buffers so to avoid some of those building issues like "no buyers for products" or whatnot.
Was following one semi-truck out of ore products warehouse, it was going to export products to cargo train terminal, but disappeared (or "despawned" as some people say) before it reached it, hmm.
That is a bit troubling, the distance to the terminal was very short, semi-truck disappeared soon after it hit a traffic jam. Wonder how many other vehicles disappear like that due traffic jams and what does it mean to the economy as a whole, do the goods simply get deleted, poof, or what happens, hmm.
Did a quick google and its been reported plenty of times, even colossal order devs have explained that vehicles that get stuck in traffic will be deleted, I'm not exactly sure if they are just reset to starting point and then they try again or is it the mentioned "poof" gone for good. Its actually pretty decent way to prevent game-breaking traffic jams.
I was following one box truck coming from the highway outside connection, it traveled really far and emptied 90% of its cargo to commercial building, then proceeded to do another unload on another commercial building nearby, then it set destination to outside connection and traveled again really far away before reaching my roundabout and highway outside connection. No issues.
I believe game has a proper check that if a vehicle coordinates haven't changed in whatever amount of time, then it will get deleted, but it takes into account traffic lights which are legitimate reason for vehicle to stop on the road.
So far it looks good, if you have traffic jams, fix them and if you're unable then game has fail safe method to keep some sort of traffic flowing.
Looks like people are moving in, just really really slowly...
2022-08-04T13:44:00Z Metropolis population 70k.
New area is created again and I am really tired, going into zombi mode again, still almost an hour left in this day, uuh tired.
Now population seems to be growing again.
2022-08-04T15:15:00Z Megalopolis population 85k.
That was the last achievement, now all grid tiles are available and nothing to "unlock" so to speak. Hmm this has taken a really long time, all day. And now while 85k is quite close to hundred... there is no way I can finish this savegame today, unless being very lucky and game changing its mind suddenly.
These are all the grid tiles I now own.
2022-08-04T15:21:00Z And here we go, alarm went off, I've been up 17hrs now, well yeah going to get some sleep soon but just few more minutes heh.
2022-08-04T15:35:00Z Saved game and shut down Cities Skylines, too tired, gotta get some shut eye, nites.
2022-08-04T22:32:00Z New city building day has started, just woke up and finished computer morning chores, not eaten days first meal yet, launched Cities Skylines, loaded savegame up and let it run on 3x speed while I read some industry tutorial, hopefully we could reach our goal soon this morning, maybe even while I'm eating and getting this day started. My fear is that something goes wrong while I'm ALT-TABbed to firefox reading text, so need to constantly TAB back to check heh.
Population is now 86.5k. It slowly started to increase when running at 3x speed, everything else seems the same, not enough buyers and abandoned buildings pepper the specialize industrial and commercial areas, nothing new there since last night.
Was reading some industrial tutorial and it was right off the bat in the morning a depressing news, it listed a quite big flaws in Cities Skylines engine when it comes to the industrial buildings, trucks and warehouses. I did not like to hear that this early on the morning at all, makes me want to stop playing and go back to ArmA 3 or Farming Simulator 19.
But we'll continue.
2022-08-04T22:57:00Z Finished reading the tutorial page and now I'm starving, gotta get that food, will let game run in 3x speed while I'm eating, can keep an close eye on things that nothing breaks. BTW I placed one warehouse with commercial goods storing and FILL mode, which means it should order and buy stuff from elsewhere or import it, still nothing though, it sits there empty, that leads me to believe there is some serious industry and still a traffic issue hmm hmm.
2022-08-04T23:24:00Z Feeding time over, now lets fully begin todays game-play session, lets get biomes valley to 100k population
Hmm no change in anything while I was gone, population is 87k so pretty much the same. Same not enough buyers and abandoned buildings icons float the landscape. There is definitely something wrong in this savegame now.
How I understood Cities Skylines works is industrial is the jobs, commercial is to sell the goods and residential is the work force, thinking about that and looking at my zoning, yes I do have plenty of (specialized) industry but residential wins overwhelmingly. Could this mean that the tiny piece of generic industry property we have is nowhere near enough to satisfy the insane amount of commercial zones, hmm.
But why is RCI indicator blank, nothing shows up in any graphic bars now?
Specialized industry forestry district has two large warehouses and two medium warehouses, they are all FULL. So that forestry district at least provides plenty enough "Zoned Industry - Forestry Products".
One other forestry district has medium warehouse which is full. One farming district has small warehouse full of "Zoned Industry - Farming Products".
However the small and large warehouses by the huge residential district do not get any "Commercial Zones - Goods" even as the small one is on FILL mode. No idea why, well I mean other than the obvious that we have no generic industry.
Outside connections import: 5.7k, there tiny fraction of oil, a small pie of ore and then everything else like probably 85% is goods.
Outside connections export: 5.6k, we export a lot of agricultural products, quite a bit of forestry, small amount of ore and tiny fraction of oil.
I'm actually confused, oil? Where do we get oil? I have not tapped into any oil natural resources, so where do we export oil. Hmm.
Placed medium warehouse to PMC Farmland 1 district, it started to get full right away.
This is the one and only GENERIC industry district I have.
I simply do not know at this point will forestry, farming, ore and oil industries produce commercial zone sellable goods directly, or are those more like feeding raw materials for GENERIC industry. I believe generic industry factory building is the one producing the sort of goods products that commercial buildings can sell.
So if that's true, then our generic industry is ... ok lets make it short; completely fucking missing. This one small tiny spec on the whole terrain is NOTHING. But still there are empty units in this zone, if we were to assume generic industry is lacking, shouldn't this be packed full to the last available unit then?
Hmmm.
I
Don't
Know
This is a bit frustrating, playing Cities Skylines is like voodoo magic, playing the lottery, heh.
Re-structured this tiny generic industry district a bit, then placed small warehouse in balanced mode, stored resource "Commercial Zones - Goods", not sure what this would do but in theory if this industrial zone is producing anything it should be buffered through this warehouse, in theory.
2022-08-05T00:17:00Z Now measily 6 tons of goods appeared in the small warehouse (2% full), took some time heh.
Population now 89.7k so it is extremely slowly increasing. Not sure what to fix in this city so guess I'll play the waiting game, sit here in 3x time acceleration speed and hope we reach our goal population soon.
I have already decided that the next terrain / savegame I play will be dominated by road logistics, massive residential, proper GENERIC only industrial with small commercial zoning. I wont be using natural resources on the next one or this kind of mass zoning for industrial.
This current city build feels like its sick and dying, there is something wrong inside it but no idea what, so all we can do is time accelerate and hope for the best.
What I mean is when looking at the city it clearly shows we have lack of workforce and industrial, ok fine, but how do you explain that we have endless un-built zones of both low and high density residential and several units of generic industry with RCI info bars not visible at all.
I just dont get it, so I'll wait. Cant wait to start new terrain and savegame so it can be done properly from the beginning. Lessons learned in biomes valley terrain for sure.
2022-08-05T00:23:00Z Population 90.3k, slowly creeping up, keep going, keep going...
While waiting, just for experimenting I created one short road near PMC Residential 6 district, then set it to generic industry zones, also removed heavy vehicle ban from the residential district just to make sure there are no issue with work vehicles entering there. Lets see if this zone starts to grow.
2022-08-05T00:36:00Z Nope, nothing. Well it was worth the shot, we are not lacking generic industry, guess in that sense RCI info bars are correct, we don't need anything.
Now we wait in 3x time acceleration speed. In the mean time I'll google and read more about Cities Skylines tutorials, I want to learn, to get better.
2022-08-05T01:06:00Z Was reading some tutorial which said too many commercial zones ruin the balance of the game, so I did massive commercial to residential switch on PMC Residential 5 district and few other places, dunno if it was enough but lets see what happens.
Immediately large warehouse started to fill up with commercial zones goods, well this is interesting, guess all the traffic going to the massive high density commercial zones in this district now can re-route to this warehouse.
Now RCI commercial graphical bar started to show a little bit, it was pixel or two so very little.
2022-08-05T01:16:00Z Removed some more low density commercial zones, now budget went to -10k per day and population was dropping, unemployment was 30% but now RCI commercial bar was heh almost full
There was a slight death wave going on in PMC Residentical 6 district, but our crematorium hearses were on top of things.
2022-08-05T01:55:00Z Been adding 4 x 4 unit commercial zoning, the RCI indicator comes down, then goes back up again. Now I'm going to let it settle down while I continue googling tutorial info.
Hmm going to discontinue several specialized industrial zones; PMC Farmland 4 through 6 and let game settle down to see what happens.
2022-08-05T02:11:00Z Not seeing too much change in RCI, keeps stable 0% residential and industrial with about 50% commercial. Going to discontinue PMC Forestry 2 which is the smaller of the specialized industry forests. I doubt this does much, but again lets see...
2022-08-05T02:20:00Z Well no changes I could see during this waiting period, have to assume things have settled down by now. I'm going to discontinue PMC Farmland 3 district next.
Whoah that was a big chunk of real estate, that's gotta make a big hit. Immediate effect was that outside connections pie chat remains pretty much the same, but total export dropped from 8.7k to 7.9k.
Then created a few more low density commercial zones, just a few not too many, near the highway outside connection roundabout area, just to see if that makes impact on RCI info.
2022-08-05T02:46:00Z Well... not exactly ground breaking stuff, but I do see pixel fluctuating at RCI industrial info bar, that is new. Outside connections export is now about same 7.8k but forestry is biggest in the pie chart, as its kind of expected at this point.
Next going to nuke half of PMC Forestry 1 district as its so huge. I bet this will shift our results a bit.
Immediate effect was that outside connections exports pie chat for forest is the same, total export dropped to 6.8k and RCI industrial info bar is about stable two pixels now. I'll give it a bit more time to really settle down, maybe visit the head while waiting etc
2022-08-05T03:00:00Z Whoah now RCI industrial bar is 100% FULL! 
That was, unexpected, yeah I was expecting to see some movement in status but not that much, commercial is about 40-45% now but industrial shot through the roof.
And now guess what, the GENERIC industry zoning is banging hammers, hard. Every single zone unit is occupied with big industry buildings, awesome
Going to borrow PMC Farmland 4 district area, make it generic industry and then start placing industry zones there, lets bring the RCI info bar down a bit.
Also set the nearby small warehouse to commercial zones goods mode.
Its a beautiful thing when industry is growing instantly after you assign zones to it
In the background you have small warehouses also almost full, things are looking real nice, good to see generic industry making a comeback
Still no sign of industrial info bar going down, cool
Was looking at outside connections export tab, now we are exporting, a lot. I was hoping this stuff would be sent to our own commercial zones for sell, hmm, or is "export" the same thing, no idea.
Here is good example how the industry works: lumber mill is somewhere in the horizon on PMC Forestry 1 district and this semi-truck is just arriving to Frank's Fish Stick Factory which is in our new raped PMC Farmland 4 district.
After forestry semi-truck unloaded stuff to frank, it proceeded to "exporting forestry products" and at the time of typing this he is going towards highway outside connection (or first cargo train terminal).
2022-08-05T03:46:00Z Because RCI industrial info bar is still 100% I'm going to do the same treatment for PMC Farmland 3 district, hijack it to generic industry and fill it up or until RCI bar comes down.
Coming along nicely, RCI industrial info bar remains full.
Another filthy polluting industrial nastiness nest is complete, I love it
2022-08-05T04:12:00Z Now its my lunch time, I'm starvin', going to leave game running in 3x speed while I feast, lets see what happens during that time.
2022-08-05T04:38:00Z Feeding time over, lets see what happened to our city in the mean time.
Uh oh, several new industrial buildings had "not enough buyers for products" and even couple of abandoned buildings already. Argh. OK let me guess, traffic issues, hmm. So first thing I did is to create new commercial zoning around these industrial sites, as close as possible, maybe that helps a bit.
Hmm 40% of our population are highly educated, these people don't want to work in a shitty dirty factory, hmm wonder if commercial zones need highly educated people, at least offices do. Hmm I'm going to create few office blocks somewhere to see what happens with industrial RCI info bar then.
Added offices, they got built right away and RCI came down, then RCI went back up again heh. Added some more commercial. Now commercial info bar was three or so pixels (5-10% at max), and industrial was again 100% heh, its never going down
2022-08-05T05:07:00Z Time to discard PMC Farmland 6 into industrial use, its perfect because it already has commercial zones around it.
Been adding new industrial zones like crazy and only now unemployment has fallen a bit to 18%, I read somewhere that optimal rate would be 8% to make new people move into the city, not sure if that is true.
2022-08-05T05:15:00Z Now outside connections import tab shows ONLY oil and ore, no other imports. Hmm cool I guess, it was forever with agricultural and forestry stuff too I think, now it looks all weird with only two colors heh. Total import: 2.2k.
Created high school "campus" on SE corner, I noticed citys high school education was really low we were lacking the schools. So I spammed four high schools back to back in that area, plus two elementary schools. High schools were filled instantly, full capacity 1k students. Also created walking path over the four lane road so students can walk from the metro station and whoah did they start walking like crazy.
2022-08-05T06:06:00Z And still no changes to overall setup, RCI commercial is about 50% and industrial is roughly 90%, its not completely full but very close.
I'm going to hijack PMC Farmland 5 district into generic industry use, its fairly small area but will use what we can.
2022-08-05T06:16:00Z Unemployment 12%, hopefully soon we start to get new people moving into the city.
2022-08-05T06:27:00Z Goal has been reached, population 100,000! 
2022-08-05T06:29:00Z Saved game and shutdown Cities Skylines