Stories 2022-08-09 Hanami Bay Game-play
2022-08-09T09:24:00Z Started savegame on Hanami Bay, all outside connections, suitable area for building 70%, base theme: temperate.
Goal is to reach population 100k today as quick as possible while still enjoying the game.
Addons used: CargoHoldFix, ExtendedGameOptions, Harmony, RealPopRevisited, RoundaboutBuilder.
The thing is that realpoprevisited changes buildings to more realistic where a single home only includes one or two households but a big apartment building can easily hold 30, as citizens that comes to great number of people per building. But on the savegame start, its going to be long road to 8k population milestone which gives us high density zoning.
2022-08-09T09:34:00Z Little Hamlet population 550.
Hmm I'm slightly worried that game got started without real population addon loaded, hmm I'm seeing 4 household buildings here, hmm hmm. I need to save and exit to check.
Yes that's what happened, the addon was not loaded because I copied it from game dir to appData dir heh, oh well, going to try loading the savegame to see what happens, there should be some issue but its nice to see what it is.
2022-08-09T09:42:00Z Worthy Village population 1.1k.
2022-08-09T09:48:00Z Tiny Town population 1.6k.
First screenshot, can see low density residential building with only 1 household, counting those folks it comes to 5 people total.
2022-08-09T09:59:00Z Boom Town population 2.8k.
2022-08-09T10:31:00Z Uuh this is some serious waiting with real population addon. But in the end its worth it, you'll get much better, more realistic, city population.
Square.
Hopefully in a long run these realistic population buildings pay off as they sure are not right now in the beginning, I'm bored to death here in 3x time acceleration speed waiting for the next milestone, which is not even the one where we get those high density zoning buildings.
Look at all those single homes.
Busy Town population 5.5k. Finally new milestone heh.
Got some traffic going to the industrial area, hmm.
Thank goodness alarm went off in the phone, its lunch break time, I can have "something to do" while waiting for next milestone to kick in heh.
2022-08-09T11:07:00Z Lunch break...
2022-08-09T11:34:00Z Feeding time is over and Big Town population 8k.
Now we get to start placing those high density zones which gives us massive amount of commercial jobs and housing apartments.
While I was eating all the currently assigned zones got filled up to the brim 
Boom, grow! 
2022-08-09T11:45:00Z Small City population 11k.
Activated small business enthusiast and big business benefactor policies.
Here we can see how big these realistic population buildings are. Just to transcribe it in text: 37 households, 10 children, 2 teens, 2 young adults, 68 adults, 3 seniors. Education level 87 uneducated, 0 educated, well or highly educated heh.
2022-08-09T11:54:00Z Big City population 17k.
Zoned some offices, one building came up with 63 workers
2022-08-09T12:00:00Z Grand City population 20k.
Look at these time stamps, now that we have high density residential buildings our population shoots through the roof! 
Biggest industrial building I've seen so far is 25 workers.
Growth is crazy now!
Yikes! Office with ninety (90) ! workers! 
2022-08-09T12:12:00Z Capital City population 32k.
Looking mighty fine.
Hmm, growth rate is pretty silly heh, gotta love it
2022-08-09T12:40:00Z Colossal City population 44k.
Did first save game for Hanami_Bay_1 file name, almost forgot heh.
2022-08-09T13:05:00Z Took a quick 25min break here, now back in action. High density residential development has ceased, no more buildings come up, RCI is 0%, 50%, 100%. Ouch guess we need to add some industrial
Went a bit overboard with PMC Industrial MEGA district?
Electric Snake!
2022-08-09T13:59:00Z Metropolis population 65k.
Spent some time doing metro lines for PMC Industrial MEGA district.
Created cargo train terminal to PMC Industrial MEGA. Well, its on the horizon you have to squint to see it heh.
Apparently there is some randomness on those building at least office worker amounts, now found office with one hundred (100) ! workers, whoah dude!
2022-08-09T14:33:00Z Saved game for Hanami_Bay_2 file name.
Logistics Rallye
You can never have too many warehouses...
2022-08-09T15:14:00Z Megalopolis population 80k.
Last milestone reached, aayeah, now can "buy the map!!1" hehe.
Got around and bought all the terrain grid tiles, now I own this joint
Game has fallen into the same kind of "lull" in tempo as one or two of my previous savegames where I assign high density residential zone in massive blob which results in this kind of stall or whatever that nothing is happening RCI is 0%, 50%, 0% for a long periods of time.
My last savegame where I assigned zones in almost 4 x 4 unit squares, one by one, there was no issue with any RCI info bars, there was all the time good amount of them and I could just keep on assigning, slowly but surely.
I need to try that on my next savegame or if this ever recovers from this stalled state. Maybe the game engine database is just so overwhelmed with stuff and queries etc that it takes a very very long time to resolve itself.
Saved game for Hanami_Bay_3 file name.
Now that I have played a lot of Cities Skylines, have reached 100k population in several terrains, I'm starting to get the drift, my mistake when playing is to zone way too much, especially industrial. The way it feels to me is that even though RCI info bar for industrial shows up and you add and add zones, you actually shouldn't, or at least don't add more zones if the bar gets below maybe 25% or so, keep the game wanting more. Also industrial bar is same for offices, so who knows maybe game wants offices but cant tell you the difference so you just spam industrial which game accepts even though it wants offices, then you get just bloated with industrial with nowhere to put those gazillion products they over produce.
Maybe, dunno, just speculating, going with my gut feeling.
As said the next savegame I will not spam zones senselessly, just small blocks at once keeping RCI info bar well above 25%.
Also thinking that game has no way to tell you that there is too many industrial zones and we are at stalled mode until something happens like you removing some of the industrial zone. Again, maybe, speculation, a gut feeling at best.
2022-08-09T15:48:00Z Noticed that education is lacking, elementary 4.9k eligible and capacity only 3.3k heh. High school eligible 10k and capacity uh 3k ouch. University eligible 8.7k and capacity 4.5k ouch again.
Alright going to fix those, they definitely wont because RCI info bar stalled state but hey lets get them sorted anyways.
2022-08-09T15:57:00Z Alarm went off, been awake 17hrs now, don't feel tired, just enthusiastic to keep going so I will
Okay got education on track. Then saved game to Hanami_Bay_4 file name which is last of the four rotating file names.
After adding those schools there was a lot of "leveling up" buildings, when they do that there is the "person icon" appearing over the building which initially means people moved into the building, so apperantly now that leveling up also increases their capacity. Now highest capacity building I could quickly find was 70 households, on quick calculation there was over 200 people living in the building, pretty nice.
I'm not a big fan of this leveling up bullshit, that feels like something for little girls than realism players, but guess its got some benefits to have better buildings.
2022-08-09T16:33:00Z Hmm I think on the next savegame I'm taking this "gimme some room to breathe!" attitude towards city design, what I mean is when placing roads right at the start it will be so that six lane road fits with plenty of space on the middle, so down the line when city grows I don't have to face the tough decision to bulldoze buildings down when upgrading into that new six lane road.
Right now this city would so badly need an road upgrade, but seeing all those massive and nice looking buildings... I just don't have the heart to tear them down for road upgrade as it would take down buildings BOTH sides of the road.
Most importantly with the 25 terrain grid tiles addon there is absolutely no shortage of empty space in terrains, so you don't have to pack everything so tight around two lane roads in claustrophobic grid setup.
Next savegame will be done with some relaxed "leave plenty of room" type method. Cant wait
While writing that above timestamp text I didn't even realize, our population is 98.8k now, whoah how did that happen, must have been the building "level up" thing as it increased body count, great. This savegame will be over tonight, in few minutes in fact
2022-08-09T16:42:00Z That's it, we got 100k population! Whohoo! 
This is awesome, its past my bedtime and what better feeling going to sleep when having just finished another terrain savegame, I love it
2022-08-09T16:43:00Z Saved game and shut down Cities Skylines, we are done here, good night.