Stories 2022-08-21 Woodgarden Game-play
2022-08-21T20:10:00Z Started savegame on Woodgarden, all but ship outside connections, suitable area for building 62%, base theme: boreal.
Goal is to reach population 100k today as quick as possible while still enjoying the game.
Addons used: ActionCam, BrokenNodeDetector, CameraPositions, CargoHoldFix, ChirpyExterminator, CinematicCameraExtended, CitiesHarmony, CSLShowMoreLimits, EmergencyCam, ExtendedGameOptions, FarmingCam, FirstPersonCamera_Updated, ForestryCam, HelicopterCam, LifecycleRebalanceRevisited, OilCam, OreCam, PublicTransportCam, RealPopRevisited, RoundaboutBuilder, ShowIt, TMPE, TrainCam, TransferManagerCE.
Oh man this terrain sucks again just like previous one I finished playing minutes ago (twin fjords), this has a lot of water not just rivers but huge wide lake size rivers which ruin enjoyable city building. Well, lets push through it as fast as possible, this terrain wont go away if I'm just bitching about it 
Horrible starter setup.
2022-08-21T20:17:00Z Unpaused the game, lets start this thing.
First save game for Woodgarden_1 file name.
2022-08-21T20:21:00Z Little Hamlet population 340.
Okay lets put taxes on and start to make money so we can build this city.
TMPE turned vehicle de-spawning OFF.
2022-08-21T20:33:00Z Worthy Village population 700.
Saved game for Woodgarden_2 file name.
Put some farming and forestry industry up just because the natural resource was RIGHT THERE heh.
2022-08-21T20:40:00Z Tiny Town population 1.1k.
Saved game for Woodgarden_3 file name.
2022-08-21T20:51:00Z Boom Town population 1.8k.
Cemetery and bus depot became available in this milestone, cemetery is essential for life heh.
2022-08-21T21:20:00Z Busy Town population 3.6k.
Save game for Woodgarden_4 file name which is the last of the four rotating file names.
Was difficult to find educated workers for the processor buildings in specialized industry area, several buildings got abandoned. This is the start with life cycle thing addon and who knows might be realistic population as well.
2022-08-21T21:49:00Z Big Town population 5.5k.
High density zones, metro, incineration plant and university are now available.
Now that high density residential zones are up, there are so many private cars heading to that neighborhood. That causes a lot of traffic.
2022-08-21T22:01:00Z Small City population 7.5k.
This milestone gives us cargo train station and two good policies. Activated small business enthusiast and big business benefactor policies.
Hmm just realized that this terrain has no TRAIN outside connection 
Purchased two medium size warehouses, set them to zoned industry farming and forestry. Hopefully this doesn't unleash flood of trucks
2022-08-21T22:10:00Z Saved game and let it run on 3x speed while I go grab a bite to eat...
2022-08-21T22:23:00Z Feeding time is over, back to city shuffle. Nothing happened while I was gone, good 
This area, the small industry road covered with generic industry buildings is now the only "funnel" out of this industry area, it gets quite busy. This is good ballbark reference of how much such single road can take traffic before its clogged up.
Also ugly 2D top-down view to show the scale properly.
Next I have to create new industry area somewhere else so not all the traffic will be funneled into one narrow spot in the terrain and road network. Man am I bummed out that this terrain has no train connection.
New forestry and farming specialized industry is coming up with intersection. My hope is that traffic is now divided into this intersection, but most likely some vehicles drive straight to the city using that six lane road too, so then they are back in the "funnel" heh. But hey, at least I'm trying to be smart with roads.
Ore drilling is open, lets make some raw materials.
Hmm honestly this savegame was not supposed to become some industry fetish one, just wanted to get some nice action with natural resources even though main goal is to get 100k population using high density residential and offices.
Whole overview so far.
2022-08-21T23:27:00Z Big City population 12k.
Crematorium, large water tower and advanced inland water treatment plant are now available.
Medium warehouse for ore raw materials, or ore products whatever it means heh.
2022-08-22T00:06:00Z Grand City population 15k.
2022-08-22T00:13:00Z Two office buildings now with enough employees that there wont be any issues. Slowly but steady.
We need more residential soon, offices is a huge district but my idea is that I don't want to generate any more traffic with industry, traffic kills city quicker than a flaming meteorite.
Small new high density residential district. Interesting to see how it plays out here behind other intersection and other side of the highway.
2022-08-22T00:58:00Z No oil in this terrain either, interesting. Train connection and oil missing, also according to the main menu selection ship connection too. Its not an issue, just changes your game-play style a bit when something is or is not available.
Third office building also has over 50% workers available so no problem there. Giving it a bit more time to fill in more jobs, then creating fourth office.
Dunno if it does any damage when spamming big office zones and you have no workers, abandoned buildings and such.
2022-08-22T01:07:00Z Capital City population 24k.
Cargo harbor is now available, except we have no ship connections heh.
Playing with life cycle and realistic population addons is interesting, right now I have industrial demand about 80% and that would be awesome fill with generic industry work places... except that those generate just ridiculous amounts of traffic.
People want jobs, I don't want traffic, I win 
2022-08-22T01:16:00Z Now definitely some high school and university student graduation batch has came through, plenty of people to take jobs.
Yeah you can see amount of well and highly educated people from the err people menu, sure, but that is ALL of them, you have no idea how many of your highly educated population already has a job. Would love to have more detailed addon about number of unemployed well educated etc people.
Commercial aka "fun" demand is 100% and rightfully so, I have zoned very little commercial because I ruined my previous savegame with a massive zoning which caused traffic gridlock. It was scary.
But yeah guess I have to do some commercial. Customer traffic is not a problem because you can bypass private cars with metro and even buses, but the goods still need to be delivered to the shops and that generates insane amount of trucks and vans, I am terrified that my traffic goes to the dogs if I start to do some fancy or big commercial zones.
2022-08-22T02:16:00Z Colossal City population 34k.
This milestone gives nuclear power plant and cargo hub (ship + train terminal). Nuke plant has not gotten use in my last and I think one before that savegame as I used wind turbines so much. Also in this one I got coal power plant by the ore mines so it gets fed fuel straight outta ground which is cool.
Expanding rich ore mines, this might not be good for the traffic heh.
Hmm need to add only few 4 x 4 unit square zones at the time and observe how to traffic starts to increase.
Outside connections export tab tells you the tale. We are exporting "full bore" from our ore buildings, buffered through warehouses. Guess our generic industry is happy as they have plenty of local ore raw materials.
With this info I know that adding more special industry ore would just cause traffic jams, I gain NOTHING out of increasing ore production. I also read somewhere that budget will not get money from exports as most money is made with taxes and exporting has no tax, or something. No idea, never cared for money but just thinking about why would I increase ore production here.
I'll leave it be
2022-08-22T03:12:00Z Alarm went off that I've been up 17hrs, blah, don't feel tired yet lets keep going
Hah, I found train tracks after all
They were hidden sneakily right next to the highway
2022-08-22T04:21:00Z Metropolis population 48k.
Todays progress.
2022-08-22T04:25:00Z Now I'm so dead tired, in full zombi mode, too scared to do any city changes I might break something heh. Time for sleep, nites.
2022-08-22T12:17:00Z New Cities Skylines building day has started, just woke up and finished morning computer chores, haven't eaten yet, will start Cities Skylines and let it run on 3x time acceleration speed while I eat, so I can see what happened last night before crashing to bed.
Looks like no warning icons appearing in the horizon, have a lot of RCI info bar demand though, commercial is maxed out while residential and industrial is 40% up there. I'll let this run during my days first meal now ...
2022-08-22T12:36:00Z Feeding time is over, lets finish this savegame.
New PMC Residential 4 and PMC Commercial 1 districts road grids laid out, water pipes done and electric connected. Ready for grand opening
That should take care of our commercial demand. In the middle we have a metro station there for the traffic, plus pedestrial walking paths from residential 4 too. Not to mention that stuff is in within walking distance anyways.
Just as reference point, traffic flow was 88% before opening that new commercial district.
Well it didn't take long
I knew this is going to happen, my only hope (meaning SPECULATION, I do not know this as a fact) now is that this is the initial filling up the stores with goods and once that is done then re-stocking them requires much less vehicle traffic.
Look at the hilarious amounts of people walking into the commercial zone
Added pedestrial walking path over the roads, funny to see all those ants crawling around there heh.
Traffic is backed up all the way to the bridge for PMC Ore 1 district, umm err 
I knew such high density commercial zone mass blob would be bad, but had no idea it would be this bad.
And there you have it, see the horizon with first "not enough buyers for products" icons
Aww man this sucks. Maybe I should have done smaller commercial area, maybe few 4 x 4 unit square blocks at the time and see how the traffic develops. Speaking of traffic flow its now down to 22% hehe.
Traffic does still flow, but its very very slow. Its not completely gridlocked for kilometers.
When looking at PMC Commercial 1 district top-down, it doesn't look that big. Later Edit: yeah but its HIGH DENSITY commercial zone.
And the streets there are surprisingly empty of traffic.
You need crematoriums everywhere, building is a building, I had several people dying in commercial zone soon after its grand opening, so dying and dead persons piling up is not only a residential zone problem.
Traffic jams has caused disruption in our services, well doh! and now our garbage collection trucks cannot access all areas in regular manner. Don't think just adding bunch of recyling centers on the trouble spots would help, AI might go after a long distance garbage anyways, hmm hmm.
Situation is so hilarious as last night and this morning I felt like this terrain looked like it sucks for game-play with all those big bodies of water or "rivers" if you want to call them that, but this savegame, roads, zones, etc, turned out to be oddly rewarding and satisfying experience. I really like this savegame, yeah not fan of those big bodies of water but how this city runs within this context, I am extremely happy...
... until this traffic jam I created with that huge commercial district
Traffic flow overview. Its so crazy that a small change I did behind two intersections and highway connection... causes traffic gridlock in my PMC Residential and PMC Forestry 1 district neighborhoods, heh crazy.
Got four incinerator plants, all of them are maxed out 27/27 trucks in use. Guess the trucks are stuck in that traffic gridlock right now.
I wish there was a way to assign incinerator plant to a specific district only, that way you could limit the cross town traffic with these guys. Later Edit: there is, with Transfer Manager CE, I just didn't know at the time heh.
Lets see if recycling center in tactical location would clear up only this residential district.
This kind of vehicle routing is what I was afraid of, recycling center is just there where the truck left, it took this kind of looping turn route and then is traveling to completely different fucking district even though there are garbage to be collected within fucking line of sight for crying out loud!
And I'm running that one addon Transfer Manager CE or whatever it was which should fix all this kind of routing to a far away destinations when there is service to be proved closer range.
I don't get it...
Lesson learned here, don't create huge blob commercial or industry districts as they are vehicle magnets. This is not really a new information, I knew this before hand but at least now I have concrete screenshot evidence to show "don't do this" regarding the size of that commercial district. Its just way too big for roads to handle all that traffic.
Also as separate topic, wonder how many commercial buildings these people actually need to be happy. I mean are there some sort of "quota" one building sells as in truck / van loads of goods, hmm.
Was following a garbage truck that left from the recycling center, I went to the restroom for a few minutes and when I came back... was shocked to see this truck somewhere between PMC Residential and PMC Forestry 1 districts and still the same 4% garbage load on-board. Err what the hell is he driving around like this? This kind of de-tour to that area without even collecting any garbage makes no sense what so ever!
Uuh head hurts with Cities Skylines AI logic
Created large warehouse for commercial goods, lets see if this makes the traffic better or worse heh. Actually it might make it worse in the beginning, but hopefully it would settle down later.
Truly a sad sight to see garbage collection and dead person waiting for pickup icons peppering the horizon like this. Its amazing how a single zoning decision crippled city like this.
My only hope is to sit it out and wait, maybe the traffic gets better over time.
Starting to get abandoned buildings because dead people / garbage is not being collected, also fires are a big risk because our fire department helicopters might not even reach every place quickly enough especially if there are multiple fires. This commercial zone has truly crippled our beautifully flowing city.
Nothing is worth destroying your city, I have a hard decision to make... I'll nuke that commercial zone to a single block of high density commercial buildings.
After nuking the commercial zone to bare bones zoning, traffic started to improve immediately. At the time I'm writing this its already 55% traffic flow.
2022-08-22T14:42:00Z That's it, all the garbage problems have been taken care of now that traffic flows 55%, basically that is not a great number but as long as there is no gridlock traffic jams, services can do their work.
Can hardly recognize the place for the previous screenshot, eh?
This medium size goods warehouse is causing bad traffic jam, I'm not even sure if this kind of warehouse is needed, never had any issue with the commercial zone buildings in the collector road by the intersection.
So I moved this warehouse by the large goods warehouse where I just nuked the commercial zone.
2022-08-22T15:32:00Z Megalopolis population 60k.
OK last milestone achieved, now we own this landz
2022-08-22T16:47:00Z Had to restart the game, but now Cities skylines and savegame back up, alright lets continue. Well, now we focus on high density residential to get our population to the goal.
Constant stream of private cars arriving to PMC Residential 5 district heh.
Saved game and let it run with 3x speed while I'm having lunch.
2022-08-22T17:54:00Z Feeding time over, back to see my city grow huge.
During eating I saw there was a garbage collection problem again due the increased traffic from new people arriving to the city and increased PMC Forestry 2 district extractor zoning. It was momentary traffic issue which sorted itself out now when it ran for several minutes 3x speed.
2022-08-22T18:06:00Z Currently creating PMC Residential 6 district, we have 92k population so that district will push us into our goal no problem.
Created filthy nasty polluting incinerator plant at outskirts of that new district.
2022-08-22T18:18:00Z Boom! Done! Heh uuaah, objective complete, 100k population reached! 
2022-08-22T18:19:00Z Saved game and shutdown Cities Skylines, this savegame is in the bag.