Stories 2022-08-19 Green Peaks Game-play
2022-08-19T10:41:00Z Started savegame on Green Peaks, all outside connections, suitable area for building 54%, base theme: european.
Goal is to reach population 100k today as quick as possible while still enjoying the game.
Addons used: BrokenNodeDetector, CargoHoldFix, CitiesHarmony, CSLShowMoreLimits, ExtendedGameOptions, FirstPersonCamera_Updated, Harmony, LifecycleRebalanceRevisited, RealPopRevisited, RoundaboutBuilder, ShowIt, TMPE, TransferManagerCE.
This is my starting setup, pretty much sucks but hey, its a start.
2022-08-19T10:46:00Z Unpaused game, we have officially started.
2022-08-19T10:52:00Z Little Hamlet population 460.
Taxes on, lets make some money 
First save game for Green_Peaks_1 file name.
Turned on TMPE vehicle de-spawning.
2022-08-19T10:58:00Z Worthy Village population 950.
2022-08-19T11:04:00Z Tiny Town population 1.4k.
2022-08-19T11:05:00Z I had to take a quick break...
2022-08-19T11:20:00Z Back.
2022-08-19T11:20:00Z Boom Town population 2.4k.
Cemetery and bus depot became available in this milestone, cemetery is essential for life heh.
Saved game for Green_Peaks_2 file name.
And now we wait for growth again. This is the life with realistic population addon, waiting for small 1 or 2 household buildings to build.
Scanned several rows of those 2 x 2 unit square grid buildings, they are 99% single 1 household buildings, I found literally one 2 household building in the rows I checked. Well this is interesting. So guess I'm back to making those 1 x 1 unit square zonings then before reaching high density zoning option.
Explanation for a random person who doesn't know what I'm talking about: realistic population addon sets amount of people (households) in a building to realistic levels, single homes only host 1 or perhaps 2 households, but a tall 22 floor apartment building can host 37 households, same for tall commercial or office building they can host up to 300 (!) workers. Default Cities Skylines values are like 7 households in a single home and tall office buildings have like 10 people working there, they are very game-y values. Downside is that new savegame starts are kind of painfully slow with this addon, but in the end its much better, well its realistic.
Saved game for Green_Peaks_3 file name.
2022-08-19T11:47:00Z Busy Town population 4.8k.
PMC Industrial 1 and PMC Farming 1 districts. Had no specific plans of doing specialized industry, but oh well did farming and forestry now.
2022-08-19T12:21:00Z Big Town population 7k.
High density zones, metro, incineration plant and university are now available. Okay now we get to start the real growth. While I did place some industry stuff again, now I'm trying to get some real office worker stuff going on for fastest population growth. Only problem is education, uneducated people arent welcome in offices.
Saved game for Green_Peaks_4 file name which is the fourth and last in the file name rotation.
2022-08-19T12:32:00Z Small City population 10k.
This milestone gives us cargo train station and two good policies. Activated small business enthusiast and big business benefactor policies.
Offices coming up, with not enough workers heh.
2022-08-19T12:37:00Z Big City population 15k.
Crematorium, large water tower and advanced inland water treatment plant are now available.
2022-08-19T12:43:00Z Grand City population 19k.
Cargo train terminal setup, maybe that eases off some of vehicle import / export traffic, or increases it... 
2022-08-19T12:59:00Z Capital City population 30k.
Cargo harbor is now available.
2022-08-19T13:19:00Z Colossal City population 42k.
This milestone gives nuclear power plant and cargo hub (ship + train terminal).
Long wait here as I mass zoned high density residential and offices, now game is choking or so it feels like as there is very little progress done.
Slowly but surely population increases, residential buildings come up and while I have not checked specifically but I assume some offices come up as students graduate from schools and have enough education to get a job.
2022-08-19T13:59:00Z Metropolis population 60k.
Haven't been doing anything, city is just zoomed out in view right side of the monitor while I'm ALT-TABbed to EditPadPro writing text, for example this one now, but mainly I'm documenting other Cities Skylines stuff, making plans. Growth has been slow, population slowly increases as game fills in new citizens moving in and fills jobs, but dunno if the game has some sort of "flood fill" limit that it will not populate big city from 0 population to 50,000 in few seconds due it simulating the actual citizens driving cars from the highway into the city and their new home. Or something like that, overall it just takes a really long time for the city to populate itself when mass blobs of zoning has been done.
2022-08-19T15:02:00Z Megalopolis population 75k.
Last milestone achieved, now I get to purchase all terrain grid tiles. Quite a bit of the terrain is lost in water.
Expansion, now that we have room to breathe.
2022-08-19T15:32:00Z Its my lunch time, saved game and let it run on 3x time acceleration speed while I eat, hopefully nothing goes wrong.
2022-08-19T15:45:00Z Feeding time is over, back to building this european city.
We had a slight death wave and while crematoriums had capacity, it was well on the green with deceased 290 and capacity 420, we still got plenty of red skullz following abandoned buildings. All crematoriums were running 7/7 hearses so they were maxed out. I tried to streamline my system because previously I spammed crematoriums in every few strees it felt like heh, also life cycle addon should reduce death wave a great deal.
Added bunch of crematoriums now, wont fix the issue but prevents a next death wave.
This should take care of the next death wave
New residential district is coming along nicely, center has high density commercial line around the collector road.
Seems to also generate bunch of traffic, most are probably delivery trucks and vans for the commercial zone.
2022-08-19T16:11:00Z Boom! We reached 100k population, we have achiveved our goal! 
Hmm that felt really quick, I mean I just started this savegame ... well today to begin with but mere few hours ago, 1041hrs seems like, so sure its been over 5hrs of straight game-play, but hmm still, really fast. But this time I didn't "play with barbie dolls" making something realistic or cool, except little bit of farming and forestry industry specialization.
Hmm so yeah there you have it, another terrain savegame in the bag, 100k population reached.
2022-08-19T16:14:00Z Saved game and shutdown Cities Skylines, we are done here.