Stories 2022-08-08 Crater Falls Game-play
2022-08-08T03:03:00Z Started savegame on Crater Falls, all but ship outside connections, suitable area for building 46%.
Goal is to reach population 100k today as quick as possible while still enjoying the game.
2022-08-08T03:09:00Z Little Hamlet population 420.
2022-08-08T03:14:00Z Worthy Village population 800.
2022-08-08T03:16:00Z Tiny Town population 1.2k.
2022-08-08T03:24:00Z Boom Town population 2.2k.
2022-08-08T03:30:00Z Busy Town population 4k.
2022-08-08T03:38:00Z Big Town population 6k.
2022-08-08T03:43:00Z Small City population 8k.
First screenshot time.
Activated small business enthusiast and big business benefactor policies.
Saved game to Crater_Falls_1 file name.
2022-08-08T03:52:00Z Big City population 12k.
2022-08-08T04:04:00Z Grand City population 15k.
Current city growth situation.
Created specialized industry areas for PMC Ore 1, PMC Oil 1 and PMC Farmland 1. No forest yet heh.
2022-08-08T04:41:00Z Saved game to Crater_Falls_2 file name.
2022-08-08T04:46:00Z Capital City population 24k.
Created PMC Forestry 1 specialized industry, lets chop some woods down.
Saved game to Crater_Falls_3 file name.
Guys at the industry area with cargo train terminal are keeping busy.
Then created new low density residential area, this terrain is very small or has too many water and mountains for enjoyable "free" zoning.
2022-08-08T05:27:00Z Colossal City population 32k.
Hold up, train coming through.
Forest district is slowly growing. Interesting how slow it is, possibly because its so far out from other buildings.
And low density residential is coming up as well.
PMC Forestry 1 district has grown to full specs, guess its time to enlarge it soon heh.
Done, did the same for PMC Farmland 1 district as well, which corners the terrain edge badly.
The Nasty Pit.
2022-08-08T06:09:00Z Saved game to Crater_Falls_4 file name which is the last of these rotating file names. Not that I would really need it, never lost a save game file in Cities Skylines but, why not have some security both for files and city progress.
Created metro line, hopefully workers get more easier to the industry districts and move about in residential areas.
I like to burn and blow stuff up!
2022-08-08T06:27:00Z Its my lunch break time, gotta get something to eat. Saving game to the next rotation file name and then let game run at normal speed.
2022-08-08T07:03:00Z Feeding time over, back to our city.
Police brutality!
Yup we got a fire.
New residential zone is about to born.
Making that one took way too long again, just felt like uuh wasting daylight here drawing these stupid roads and utility pipes.
2022-08-08T08:00:00Z Metropolis population 46k.
New community has born, whee.
Fire department keeps busy at downtown.
Uh oh when looking at the horizon, I think our first death wave hit, hopefully we get through this okay.
Here I'm slowly growing out this community from one center point where services were created and metro subway station placed, its a good point to continue.
Decided to try this kind of slow approach instead of pausing game, creating everything good to go and then just hit unpause and see what havoc first of all lack of power grid does, etc. Usually I've seen whacky RCI info bar results from such massive blob creation, lets see what happens with this slow method.
Another fire, uuh.
Sirens, everywhere.
Hmm I need to search for a mod which would increase fire department helicopter endurance, to me it doesn't sound very realistic that these guys have to go back to the helicopter landing pad after 7 min of flight time heh. Same actually goes for police helicopters as well. In real life helicopter can stay up for what, couple of hours? So yeah gotta look for that mod.
Just building some community, one block at the time heh.
2022-08-08T11:17:00Z Spending way too much time enjoying just placing small house blocks at the time. Dunno why but its relaxing and nice maybe even cool to watch those houses being built one by one, instead of massive kilometers wide blob zoning.
But yeah population still only 59k and seems to increase slowly, got what feels like permanent 10% residential RCI demand which is kind of odd, or maybe its because I add so few house zones at the time that it takes forever to fill the quota which would happen almost instantly when doing those massive blobs.
2022-08-08T11:30:00Z Megalopolis population 60k.
And this milestone allows me to buy all the remaining terrain grid tiles, so I did.
That is nasty looking terrain for sure, not much places to build on, but we'll find something.
Then created new cargo train terminal near our initial industrial zone.
Here you can see another road connecting the other industrial zone.
2022-08-08T12:05:00Z Now is my lunch time, days third meal, going to let game run in normal speed while I eat. Did savegame too just in case something goes wrong.
2022-08-08T12:33:00Z Feeding time over, back to zoning low density residential.
Hmm suddenly our jobs aka industrial RCI info bar grew very high, sure I have placed a lot of residential zones so we have a lot more citizens here who need jobs, but yeah, well lets get some jobs then 
Taking a look at our specialized industry districts...
Yeah lets increase this farming district size a bit, that should generate bunch of jobs.
While adding the new industrial zones, I got carried away, went back to my old ways... and zoned just way too much at once, hmph. Now I'm thinking that before I unpause game "to commit", maybe I should remove some of those zones, start to spread it out one block at the time as that has worked me so well in the new residential zone, hmm hmm. Yeah that's what I'm gonna do, one block at the time, nice and easy.
Man was I right or what... I simply added one small block and ZOC! RCI industrial bar went away to max 5% left, whoah 
Okay adding more one very small block at the time, probably just 4 x 4 unit setup at the time.
Incredible, demand for industry was there no matter how many blocks I added, ran out of blocks to zone heh. See my new warehouses storing "Zoned Industry - Farming Products" too.
Going to let it run on normal speed for a while to settle down, visit to the restroom and hopefully we have a bit more stable RCI info bar situation when I return...
2022-08-08T13:29:00Z And industrial demand is back, heh cool. Lets extend PMC Oil 1 and PMC Ore i districts a bit then
Population 65k and RCI info bars just keep growing, this is crazy, usually I have a huge problems getting any growth heh. Awesome
Well that's it then, PMC Ore 1, PMC Oil 1 and PMC Farmland 1 districts enlarge is complete.
And by miracle all industrial demand RCI info bar is gone heh (and came back while I was typing this paragraph, haaah!) 
As I'm typing population is 67.2k and unemployment is 3% whoah nice.
Created another cargo train terminal by this new residential district, hopefully this could bring in some relief from the imports coming through the highway outside connection which is other side of the main city. Most likely this ends up dumping more traffic to that city anyways hehe.
As I suspected, this new cargo train terminal will import products to the main city industrial area, well yeah its AI plotting routes so it known math and not what makes sense traffic and city economy wise. Luckily there is not too bad traffic jams.
Actually I have not even monitored the traffic much at all in this savegame, we have the six lane road going through everything here and it is a great way to travel.
Got this new residential area almost done now, yes its been taking hours but I've enjoyed myself while doing zoning, if I wanted instant speed spam I could have done it in 45 seconds.
Actually quite nice view from here
2022-08-08T16:58:00Z Alarm just went off to go sleep, been up 17hrs playing Cities Skylines, eyes are getting tired. Current population, ah just hit 80k mark, so yes this is definitely tomorrows gaming session when we reach the goal.
Actually I'm going to call it a night here, there is no point dragging this day / gaming session any longer, it makes no difference, we continue tomorrow.
2022-08-08T17:01:00Z Saved game and shut down Cities Skylines, time for bed, nites.
2022-08-08T23:30:00Z New city building day has started, first I took backups of my settings and savegames which now mounts up to 526mb and 7-zip compresses them to 195mb .7z archive which is then copied to linux computer and two other hard disk drives for safety.
Then did archive of my old savegame files so there is only the current active one in the dir, well the rotating 4 current actives.
2022-08-08T23:38:00Z Started Cities Skylines and loaded latest savegame in rotation, now going to let the game run in 3x speed while I'm going to finish morning chores with days first meal. Hopefully nothing breaks in the city and if it does, no big deal I just restart from the savegame.
2022-08-09T00:05:00Z All done, ready to be full hands on playing. During feeding population slowly crept to 81.8k, RCI info bars are roughly 5% residential, 50% commercial and 60% industrial.
Finished PMC Residential 3 district west end, now everything is filled up to the brim heh.
PMC Forestry 1 district enlarge in progress.
Then it was time to place down some warehouses for storage. These are "Commercial Zones - Goods".
This big one is "Zoned Industry - Forestry Products".
Started to create PMC Residential 4 district, we need some housing for all the people who want to live in this city
2022-08-09T01:59:00Z Everything setup, now starting to slowly grow those low density residential areas.
Its a beautiful thing to witness a new community born.
Filled PMC Residential 4 district to the brim with zoning, now its compact, tight. This was also my first mass spam zoning since probably mid-day yesterday, interesting to see how it changes RCI info bars and growth, hopefully it wont "choke the engine" which I've been speculating today.
Earlier today citys growth has been excellent to the point that I'm in disbelief, I cant believe this baby grows so fast, yes I take the time to wait until new zones buildings have grown and shown that new citizens or money icon, but yeah its one after another. Obviously this is very slow compared to just mass blob add zoning like in above screenshot, but for this savegame it seems to work great.
Here we wait, there is some residential RCI bar but industrial is pretty much covered now, seems like commercial is always 50% heh. Now its matter of time until we reach our goal, I'm guessing I'll just wait in 3x time acceleration speed until that happens because I highly doubt there is anything else I could do to generate sudden increase in population, no matter how many residential zones you got empty the city fills up its own pace.
Have to say I'm already looking forward to finishing this savegame and archiving it for the history books as another terrain finished.
Sure I'll start a new one today, but I might do some general googling for info too, maybe get inspired to try something new again like in previous save that mashup zoning style. We'll see. I actually might go back to that but with my own lessons learned type of design.
One thing I hate about Cities Skylines and its ALT-TABbing behavior, when you have the game in windows desktop center monitor, ALT-TAB and move mouse to either left or right monitors... game registers mouse being there and constantly moves camera viewport towards it where you end up at edge of the terrain, very annoying.
But hey at least it runs on the background so that is always a good thing, Farming Simulator games run on background but ArmA 3 doesn't (there is command line option for it, but never used it).
Anyways. Just saying that Cities Skylines ain't the best triple screen ALT-TAB experience.
Well after writing those above, industrial info bar was up again about 20%, so lets continue adding zones for PMC Forestry 1 district. While doing so residential demand goes up a bit again, uuh where do I find empty lot for you guys heh, oh well I'm so "lazy" that I don't want to focus on generating another community, I'll just want to finish this savegame
2022-08-09T04:23:00Z Population 93k, uuh this waiting is killing me. This savegame is kind of stress free, for example traffic is not bothering me at all as everything else seems to run pretty OK, sure we have oil/ore/farming and generic industry which says not enough raw materials which suggests traffic / outside connections is the cause, but yeah overall I'm happy with how thing are rolling. But yeah, come on lets reach that goal and be done with this already.
Went to restroom and came back, population still the same 93k, unemployment 5%, hmm. Dunno could it be that most buildings are full or is it about jobs hmm.
Hmm when checking out districts, PMC Residential 1: population 46k, households 12.8k/14.1k, so I assume houseHOLD is like apartment buildings individual apartment then(?). PMC Residential 2: population 2.3k, households 712/720. PMC Residential 3: population 35k, households 10.1k/10.7k. PMC Residential 4: population 8.2k, households 2.5k/2.6k.
Hmm so if I assume households are apartments, then besides res1 having almost two thousand apartments free, this city is pretty full.
Hmph ok I'll create almost cheaty poor high density residential area to fill in population, I want this savegame/terrain finished
So PMC Residential 5 with high density zones, should do the trick for 7k people moving in?
Well here goes nothing. Mass blob high density residential zoning with few offices and commercials around the metro subway station noise polluter hole.
Looks like this high density residential area was the key to victory, I was still setting it up, creating metro lines... when population was already 99k!
2022-08-09T05:20:00Z Its my cooking food and lunch break time, metro lines aren't done yet (there is only two, basic ones) and yeah pop 99k so when I'm done eating we have finished savegame here
... Err... was typing this text while population hit 100k already! 
But I'll let game run on 3x speed while I cook food and eat, will be hilarious to see how things are when I'm done. First savegame, then food...
2022-08-09T06:13:00Z Feeding time over.
Alright so what did happend during feeding, umm population now 118.2k and industrial RCI info bar is currently 45% but I saw it earlier been more like 90% at one point. So high density residential zone definitely is key to victory, that is how to grow population. Obviously you need the jobs so people move INTO the high density residential zone in the first place, but yeah my previous issue was that there was not enough housing, no roofs over the people's heads.
This metro station in PMC Residengial 5 is hilarious, 3802 people waiting in the station, haha!
Wanted to have one last overview shot but it doesn't fit the camera view. Here is closeup from PMC Residential 5 district.
This is the buy terrain grid tiles feature view, zoomed a bit too far out but its the only "everything on camera" view.
One more shot from a hilltop railroad tracks
2022-08-09T06:21:00Z Saved game and shut down Cities Skylines, this terrains savegame is over