Stories 2022-08-06 Cavern Coast Game-play
2022-08-06T00:19:00Z Started savegame on Cavern Coast, all but train outside connections, suitable area for building 61%.
Goal is to reach population 100k today as quick as possible while still enjoying the game.
I'm using new mods in this savegame start, fully expecting them to fail, but lets hope they wont. Mods used: CargoHoldFix, ExtendedGameOptions, Harmony, MoreEffectiveTransfer, RebalancedIndustriesDistricts.
Well should have guessed it, two of the new mods did not work, sigh. Okay removing them. New game start then worked fine.
2022-08-06T00:24:00Z Finally in-game, new savegame created, now we start building this city 
2022-08-06T00:37:00Z Little Hamlet population 400.
This terrain matches population copy-paste numbers to my list heh, nice.
2022-08-06T00:40:00Z Worthy Village population 800.
2022-08-06T00:47:00Z Tiny Town population 1.3k.
These achievements pop up real quick now heh.
Activated parks and recreation policy. Also placed first park down (smallest).
2022-08-06T00:53:00Z Boom Town population 2.2k.
2022-08-06T01:08:00Z Busy Town population 4.4k.
This population was different from my copy-paste, heh strange.
First screenshot of our lovely town 
As population hit 5k I'm going to upgrade all dirt roads to asphalt roads. Goodbye dirt.
2022-08-06T01:23:00Z Almost ran out of money with that dirt to asphalt road upgrade, had like 75k when I started, ended up using 70k
2022-08-06T01:24:00Z Big Town population 6.5k.
Big town achievement was again 6.5k as my copy-paste text said from some other terrain, weird. Anyways this gives up high density zoning, so I'm going to start converting "downtown" of our city to high density residential area.
First high density zones are in
2022-08-06T01:38:00Z Small City population 9k.
Enabled small business enthusiast and big business benefactor policies.
2022-08-06T01:44:00Z Did first savegame for Cavern_Coast_1 file name.
And here we go, our very first traffic problems
Created new highway outside connection entry to our industry area, hopefully this eases off the main roundabout connection.
... or not! 
I own these two grid tiles now.
And I hate when choosing a new grid tile to purchase how bad the camera is with limited visibility, you cannot free fly with camera around the terrain to scope out locations where you want to expand. Although when using extended game options mod I get 25 tiles, I think the area is still pre-set for me surrounding the first tile game begins with, hmm maybe? Not sure.
Saved game for Cavern_Coast_2 file name, when I ALT-TABbed to google "free camera mod" or similar.
2022-08-06T02:11:00Z Big City population 15k.
Here is current terrain grid tile purchased, cant purchase more before population milestones are reached.
New industry zone.
2022-08-06T02:42:00Z Grand City population 18k.
2022-08-06T03:30:00Z Uuh takes so long time while creating these huge residential districts, well any road grid in general. I really think there should be some "paint a district, press a button and industry/residential/commercial is generated" hehe.
And at this point I ran out of money, oops. Okay time to take a loan and at least connect electricity to the massive district. Lets put this into the poor planning department
Uuh it was some work to get lights on to the folks
Look at that demented traffic contraption, haha!
2022-08-06T03:43:00Z Capital City population 28k.
Traffic is murder! 
2022-08-06T04:09:00Z Colossal City population 40k.
2022-08-06T04:46:00Z Metropolis population 60k.
My industry area has some problems with traffic, hmm hmm.
Saved game for Cavern_Coast_3 file name.
2022-08-06T05:11:00Z Okay its my lunch time, letting game run normal speed on the screen.
2022-08-06T05:37:00Z Feeding time over, back to growing our population.
2022-08-06T05:52:00Z Megalopolis population 70k.
And with that all the rest of 25 grid tiles were made available. Shopping! Shopping!
Purchased all the remaining land, its funny how cheap the land is, if that were real life property it would cost millions, now I had 4.? million and I didn't even fall under 4 million mark yet when purchasing all that massive landscape, heh so funny.
And we got a harbor ship outside connection.
The harbor is connected through railroad tracks to cargo train terminal by PMC Industrial 1 district.
Saved game for Cavern_Coast_4 file name, which is the fourth and last of these rotating save file names.
Dunno why but I created this kind of odd almost alike amusement park area with commercial zoning in the center, its got residential zoning on the edges but nobody wants to move into my city.
At least those folks from the nearby high density residential zone like to visit this place for relax
Then I created out in the middle of nowhere another community, cargo train terminal, all RCI zones, basic services... but residential did not grow, commercial info bar was 50% as its usually is, industrial zone started to grow.
2022-08-06T10:33:00Z Its lunch time.
2022-08-06T11:02:00Z Feeding time over.
Nothing happened in the city, lets recap: RCI info bars 0% residential, 50% commercial, 0% industrial. Industrial zone does grow buildings but they soon after go to "Not Enough Buyers For Products" and then get abandoned.
I absolutely have no fucking idea why the fuck is it always the same. Population is hilariously 95.5k so this savegame is almost done, but the thing is... exact same result awaits me on the NEXT terrain savegame again so I would really like to fucking learn what the hell am I doing wrong 
What am I doing wrong, well doh the traffic of course. But take a look at this 61% traffic flow which is bad:
Why is it that four lane road (two lanes per direction) has such traffic jam on that ONE LANE, why on earth doesn't these vehicles use both lanes, I don't get it.
Actually I let this bitch run on 3x speed slowly creeping the population up while I'm googling about residential demand fix, maybe there is something else than traffic I could do.
Reading one guide says often cities fail because too much commercial zones. Well ok, lets try an experiment. I'll demolish 95% of commercial zones and lets see what happens then.
This will be fun, if your situation is stalled, do something, ANYTHING
Here is my current zoning view, in my opinion there is not too much commercial, but hey maybe I'm wrong.
Well once I killed all the commercial zones, traffic improved a lot, it peaked above 80% at best. There was still huge number of private cars coming from highway outside connection to residential areas, those mega massive high density residential zones which unfortunately and "uh oh my bad" only has one way in really.
2022-08-06T11:59:00Z Then I added highway ramp exit to NW corner of my city area and also a very wild SE corner long long LONG way into the south side (err difficult to explain), these edits improved traffic flow so it peaked at best 87%, while I'm writing this its 84%.
Added couple of low commercial zones to PMC Residential 1 district, just to see if anything happens. At the moment city is not importing ANY goods, guess our factories produce more than enough for these few commercial zones.
2022-08-06T12:10:00Z I ran with 3x time acceleration, traffic flow seems to be 87-88% which is good for me, very little red in traffic flow view and even red is not a problem unless there is traffic jams. So dunno I'll add few commercial zones and see how things develop.
2022-08-06T14:55:00Z I tried to experiment something about zoning and, well didn't save the game, it went all belly up with my additional changes... I'm kind of tired too so didn't care much, so de-zoned all the high density areas and that was the end, heh soon after no population to mention and -1,000,000 in debt
Time to call it a night, adios.
2022-08-06T22:20:00Z New city building day has started. I just woke up, doing my morning chores and because this LAST savegame is a waiting game for my 92k population to reach the last 8k residents, why not just start the game up and run it 3x speed on the background while I'll finish my morning computer chores, with good luck this terrains savegame would be finished by the time I'm done
2022-08-06T22:33:00Z Morning chores are done, still gotta eat days first meal, situation in-game looks the same, population actually dropped to 90k now, its the same old... looks like deciding to let the game play itself for me on the background was a good decision, saves me some time looking at stale screen.
While I was at the fridge, something happened, I think power lines got cut (in-game heh) and I was shocked to come back to the screen and see ONLY 21k population with multiple problems, mostly abandoned buildings and crime rate high. Oh my, was it lighthing strike on a power line that caused all this? Can we recover from this simply by restoring power?
2022-08-06T23:07:00Z Alright morning chores with days first meal are done. Current population is 31k
So yes it was a lightning strike on a power line which cut half of my citys power that caused all this destruction. Its kind of funny to see how vulnerable my city "infastructure" is like this, I should make another power line down in the south so at least lighting cant strike twice heh. But power lines are stupid overall, you should not need to use them, just have power connected from building to building in one big blob.
Anyways that could be mostly reverted by re-loading this savegame, but it would still be another at least 20-30min of waiting time. I'm fresh out of patience to wait like that. Population 35k now and increasing, so looks like folks are moving back in. Wonder what that does to education levels hmm.
Hmm possibly the bulk of my highly educated people were living in the high density residential zone which now got demolished, I cant remember what the percentage was for these people but it was more than its now 30%.
Well yeah sorry to say but I'll reload the savegame, this is stupid, I had 90k+ population before lighting strike and I wont be wasting my time sitting here waiting for people to move back in, going to re-load the savegame.
While Cities Skylines was shutdown I removed "CargoHoldFix" mod, dunno whats its name as this dir name just comes from the DLL name. It appears not to work anyways, so its removed.
2022-08-06T23:18:00Z Game restarted and savegame loaded back up, uuh. Okay no more lighting strikes, population now 92.8k and dropping
Created third cargo train terminal by this "small" industrial area, hopefully it eases off some semi-truck traffic jams as goods are exported through shipping instead.
Its not much, but hopefully it helps traffic flow a bit.
Appears to be working, at least somewhat. Outside connections export tab shows a lot of goods going out, through this cargo train terminal.
Created new entrance to SE corner of the city, by the industrial area, this is entrance only as you can see, nobody can leave through this.
Then created another highway entrance from NW corner to the umm kinda SW corner.
Well its working at least, might be darn ugly but it gives some traffic flow ease on our roads, more access points for different parts of the city.
Continuing my roads improvements, NW corner in/out highway outside connection entrance. A hideous thing!
Here is the SW corner new industry area, just did road traffic improvement for it, you have exits from both sides now, should divide the traffic a bit.
Saved game on oldest of the 4 rotating file names, just in case we have lighting strikes twice situation
Population 92.5k, so yeah still not finished with this save... speaking of which, once I finish this and then archive the savegame along with this game-play story, I can return to this terrain some day because there are so much more stuff you can do when you have that "renewed Cities Skylines enthusiasm" again, there are all kinds of natural resources and areas to build parts of the city, harbor, train and highway connections, plenty of opportunities, even though this is tropical terrain I really like it, very nice.
2022-08-07T00:45:00Z Population hovering around 90-91k, no change. Uuh this is so boring. Stale city situation is the worst. I am not going to zone the same way as here on my next savegame, also will have to check few more guides and tutorials before starting the next save, I don't want to repeat this situation ever again.
Now with the lighting strike destruction, I'm going to save game even before stepping to the restroom because you never know whats going to happen, I don't want to lose any progress. Lets keep those rotating save file names working for us.
Our four new specialized industry districts are flourishing. These are NOT using the umm special buildings, just a simple district type setting and then standard industrial zoning.
And ore in SW corner of our populated places.
Still waiting to population to grow, still its at 92k, so boring to just sit and wait.
Overpasses for the main four lane road in the old city and industrial area. I can see some foot traffic so at least someone is walking to work, some private cars too, but unfortunately not that much to ease the huge traffic jam by the roundabout in the distance.
Traffic flow 71% which is not horrible but still could be much better, the new overpasses are not in good use, hmph. Oh well it was worth the shot, maybe it does its part in the bigger picture.
Goodness gracious, look at this gridlock
Just discovered that in order for industrial buildings to "level up", you have to have all the same services there as with any other building, now this obviously makes no sense, in your industrial area you don't want to see a PARK or ELEMENTARY SCHOOL for fucks sake
Oh well, dunno even what benefits for such "level up" crap means so its not going to be my problem, I place a zone, buildings come up and they work, good enough for me. I leave stupid uNl0cK crap to the ecstacy kidz
Then population again 90k, uuh, when does this nightmare end...
Burn motherfucker! BURN! 
This forest fire was no joke, fire department helicopters were really working to extinguish it, however I think they did not "see" the fire on south end, fire trucks cannot put it off as there is no roads, so I placed fire watch tower which will alert fire department helicopters to come work on it.
Last flames go out, nice job fire department!
But man, look at the damage on overhead view...
Our city is currently importing 11.6k and exporting 7k.
Uuh look at those trains clogged up all the way to the harbor
Was creating second harbor for ships and cargo trains, this is in our series of "When You Are Stupid."
New cargo harbor is in action
Keeping busy at the docks...
So much goods are being delayed due traffic issues. Oh man what am I going to do with the traffic.
I noticed that into the above industrial district many people are driving their personal cars when going to work, hmm, I need to step up my game with public transport, have extensive metro coverage, not buses because they just clog up existing traffic jams, I might even try passenger train station like some intercity train or something.
PMC Industry 1 district now has awesome metro line, connecting to the two other residential city districts, should reduce civilian personal car traffic a lot.
2022-08-07T02:55:00Z BTW when does this savegame, you know, end? 
Created new industry area, PMC Oil 2 which specialized in, you guessed right, oil. I did this district because industrial demand was over 50%... when I started, now its all gone again, wonder what happened in the mean time hehe.
2022-08-07T03:52:00Z Slowly adding commercial zones as RCI info bar for it is 50% or so, monitoring population unemployment percentage closely, its been said that 8% is optimum rate to have new people moving into the city. Also I'm trying to generate highly educated jobs which is high density commercial zones for example.
2022-08-07T04:01:00Z Unemployment now 10% and population just hit 95k. Lets hope this keeps progressing like this, been adding one commercial zone at the time letting game/city to settle down, not doing any massive blob adds, yeah I'm using the fill tool, but still I don't consider that a huge blob.
2022-08-07T04:14:00Z BOOM DONE! 
100,000 population, baby! Aayeah! Finally!
Saved game and exited, we are done here, I'm off to start a brand new terrain savegame