Stories 2022-08-24 Mountain Taper Game-play
2022-08-24T18:19:00Z Started savegame on Mountain Taper, all outside connections and natural resources, suitable area for building 78%, base theme: temperate.
Goal is to reach population 100k today as quick as possible while still enjoying the game.
Addons used: 81 tiles, camera position utility, chirpy exterminator, cinematic camera extended v0.5.1, csl show more limits, enhanced outside connections view, extended game options, extra landscaping tools, first person camera, harmony v2.2, lifecycle rebalance revisited v1.6.4, optimize outside connections, precision engineering, random tree rotation, realistic population 2 v2.0.5, rebalanced industries, roundabout builder, TM:PE stable v11.6.6.3, transfermanager ce v1.8.10, transporttool v2.3.1, ultimate level of detail, unlimited oil and ore, unlimited soil. List updated: 2022-08-24T18:13:00Z
In this savegame I really REALLY want to get rid of traffic, hey isn't it the old story by now heh, but my arterial + collector road 4 way intersections are a huge bottle neck, today I want to replace all of those with roundabouts just to see if that makes any difference. Also I sort of want to keep arterial road in the outside and collectors going to one side, this would already limit the intersections to 3 way.
In this savegame there wont be any natural resources hunting industry, none of it. My generic industry will get cargo train terminal connection as soon as it becomes available and big high density city districts get passenger train terminal for those incoming citizens.
Hmm what else, I might have forgotten some lesson I learned from last nights savegame...
This is the virgin terrain upon starting a savegame.
So much water, hmm well lets hope it will be fun to play anyways.
First used 81 tiles addon to open the whole terrain for use. Then used lifecycle rebalance addon to change immigration apply 25% variation for education levels. Used realistic population to change schools realistic student capacities. Used TM:PE to disable vehicle de-spawning, enabled advanced vehicle AI, enabled more realistic parking. Used transfer manage ce to enable warehouses first, reserve trucks for local transfers 20%, improved inter-warehouse transfers, vehicle AI enable for all types. Used ultimate level of detail to change vehicle render distance to 3km.
And this is my starter setup, should get us going.
2022-08-24T18:48:00Z Unpaused the game, lets start this thing.
First save game for Mountain_Taper_1 file name.
Ran out of money for the first time in my life in such beginner savegame start situation 
Had to turn budget to 50% for everything.
Now I have one more option left, if I don't reach the milestone population with this config, there is the arterial and collector road available to place low density residential zoning, which is a bad idea for the long run but then again there wont be any long run if we run out of money 
Setting budget to 50% on everything helped, now I'm getting profit, can grow the road grid again.
2022-08-24T19:06:00Z Little Hamlet population 480. Uuh we made it! Whohoo! 
Turned on taxes to 12% for industrial, low density residential and commercial.
Oh wow I used realistic population (think that it was) to set realistic school student capacities and now elementary school has 234 (yes two hundred and thirty fucking four) students. Goodness gracious as default 400 was already way too low! 
2022-08-24T19:17:00Z Worthy Village population 950.
Created my first districts for PMC Residential 1, PMC Industrial 1 and PMC Commercial 1. Placed fire station, police station and health clinic.
Saved game for Mountain_Taper_2 file name.
Brought budget back to 100% where it belongs.
I'm trying now to pause the game (space bar) every time I make edits, draw roads etc, because I want to keep an close eye on the development and also at the same time relax when drawing roads which is done in 2D top-down view where I'm claustrophobically locked into extreme narrow view without any idea if existing city is burning down hehe.
Hmm community school provides 915 student capacity and its alternate for elementary school, hmm maybe I'll start to use these.
2022-08-24T19:34:00Z Tiny Town population 1.5k. Gotta love when your brain commands you to press a key in keyboard, your body starts to respond (wait, brain is not your body? WHOAH mind has blownz hehe), finger presses ESC but a fraction of a second before Cities Skylines activates milestone and your ESC press actually closes the milestone dialog
Replaced PMC Industrial 1 district roads with industry road type (small for local and medium for collector). Placed warehouse yard to PMC Industrial 1 district, set it to commercial goods and named it PMC Goods WH 1. Placed first high school using "institute of creative arts" with student capacity 2349. Started to use two lane asphalt roads for residential areas from now on.
Saved game for Mountain_Taper_3 file name.
2022-08-24T19:51:00Z Quick few minutes break is over to update into qBittorrent v4.4.4
Created PMC Residential 2 district other side of the collector road which also got upgraded into actual collector now.
Trying something new with collector and local roads, no 4 way intersections and overpasses from one district to another every where possible. Should work ok, yes?
PMC Goods WH 1 is already 100% full 100 tons. Well that was quick. Hopefully now transfer manager ce will actually make trucks use the warehouse instead of nuts import/export stuff.
2022-08-24T20:00:00Z Feeling good about this terrain and city, good settings for addons like the warehouses first, started to use community school for higher capacity education, progressing nice and slow enjoying every moment of it
2022-08-24T20:17:00Z Boom Town population 2.6k.
Cemetery and bus depot became available in this milestone, cemetery is essential for life heh.
2022-08-24T20:30:00Z Oops we got a scary looking fire in the industrial district and considering fire station is all the way over the highway, hmm hopefully they make it in time ...
They got this...
Quite scare, huh? Heh. Okay we got enough dollars in the budget so lets place dedicated fire station to the industrial site because its in high risk for fires and very valuable, well mostly compustible stuff in that district.
Created new roads for PMC Industrial 1 district, placed fire station in the middle road, then used TM:PE to ban all traffic except service vehicles (garbage and ambulance, assuming those designate service vehicles). This should leave the road always free for our fire engine trucks to blast through the whole way very close to the actual fire. Of course this means I cant put zoning next to that road but yeah still, its about fire trucks access, when they are rolling you'll make a hole real fast.
Used transfer manager ce to setup this fire station only handle calls from PMC Industrial 1 district, to make sure they are there to take care of business when the need arises.
2022-08-24T20:54:00Z Had our first fire in PMC Industrial 1 district, in 3x time acceleration when I saw the fire icon on the horizon I hit pause game and moved camera there but I was too late, first two fire engines were already at the scene guys getting out of the trucks. Always nice to see public services working as intended
2022-08-24T22:04:00Z Busy Town population 5.5k.
Fire helicopter depot became available in this milestone, this is must have to any large city, when you have traffic jams and fires, helicopters are a life savers. Placed it end of arterial road at the beach, nice place.
Saved game for Mountain_Taper_4 file name which is the last of the four rotating file names.
2022-08-24T22:33:00Z Did a quick chore, now back and we continue.
Created new PMC Industrial 2 district, I want to spread out busy industrial areas into small sizes to reduce traffic on local to collector road intersections.
Doing a new residential district on other side of the arterial road to spread out the traffic, however I'm running out of money
2022-08-24T23:25:00Z Saved game and now its my lunch time, I'm starvin' heh. This time game will be paused, just want to relax and eat maybe read some tutorials on the side, don't want city to go ruins or reach next milestone without me being there to catch it. In reality, I hate to mixup this story timestamps hehe.
2022-08-25T00:01:00Z Feeding time is over.
2022-08-25T00:11:00Z Big Town population 8k.
High density zones, metro, incineration plant, university and large warehouse are now available. However I was outta cash so only could buy incinerator plant, need to get other stuff later.
Had a close call in PMC Industrial 2 district, one building almost burnt down, its odd because transfer manager ce had properly been set to fire station but yeah well. Anyways I added access road for the fire guys now, should be OK.
2022-08-25T01:10:00Z Small City population 11k.
This milestone gives us cargo train station and two good policies. Activated small business enthusiast and big business benefactor policies.
Doing metro lines is really expensive, I have ran out of money each and every time I tried to finish them heh. Actually I'm wondering if some of those addon settings were done wrong or something because I don't ever remember having this hard time with money, usually at this stage I have so much money its not even consideration.
2022-08-25T01:22:00Z Finally got partial metro loops done in the residential area connecting commercial areas, err did I say that oddly, uh. Still need to connect PMC Industrial 1 district.
This scares me, seems like we are still in control of the traffic but if there is going to be any more... its not going to be good, at all, hmm...
Build some roads to the first high density residential area, then came back to PMC Industrial 1 and 2 districts... I'm paralyzed by fear of failure, that what if I add more industrial zoning here and it gridlocks traffic. That would not be fun. But sitting there wondering about that is not leading us anywhere, hmm hmm 
Traffic is currently 85-87% and looks like it flows just nice, so hmm yeah, would be a really shame to ruin all that.
When looking at other peoples cities, their industrial areas are tiny compared to mine so maybe my whole thinking about this is off the whack, that this size industrial area I got now is the biggest anyone can do in this game, otherwise the amount of vehicles simply cripples six lane arterial road and four lane collector road intersection, plus the industrial area itself with two lane roads.
So how the fuck do people build huge cities then if this little industrial stuff gridlocks arterial roads? Hum...
Finished metro tracks. Lately I've been having hard time designing them because if you want to do loops, you need to have all your stations already planned before you start to lay down tracks, as its really difficult to link up into existing track system.
And I really need an addon which alerts me when something goes wrong, because now that I've always paused the game when adding new stuff or even eating today, as I really want to see how things develop every moment along the way, its been really difficult or frustrating not being able to run fast speed while editing, feels like taking way too long with this careful method.
Did some googling but found nothing, so back to building this city, lets get her done.
First cargo train terminal and small expansion on PMC Industrial 1 district.
Action in cargo terminal has begun, nice to see those cargos being imported/exported.
Whoah 462 workers in this office, dude!
Yeah with my education levels that building will be SO abandoned haha!
2022-08-25T03:10:00Z Amazed how good the traffic is flowing in PMC Industrial 1 district area, traffic flow 86% now which is, something else. A lot of demand for jobs, but still scared of just spamming industrial zoning.
But got to do it, unemployment 25% now so folks start to revolt soon if they cant find a job.
2022-08-25T03:29:00Z Big City population 18k.
Crematorium, large water tower and advanced inland water treatment plant are now available.
2022-08-25T03:59:00Z Accidentially buldozered my only office building which had all jobs filled
First office building 4 x 4 unit zone finally got full workers status, then I did another next to it well that got abandoned, so I decided to buldoze it down, however my camera angle was such that mouse pointer was technically on top of both buildings and Cities Skylines accepted my left mouse button press as deleting both of them, yikes. Need to be more careful in the future.
When the buildings "grew" back, they both got over 50% workers so there will be no issues, well that was nice.
2022-08-25T04:24:00Z Seems like office buildings are slowly taking in workers even though our education info view shows only 4% highly educated citizens.
2022-08-25T04:31:00Z Need to go do a chore, this will take a while probably over an hour total, but will be back to build some city before calling it a night today.
2022-08-25T06:11:00Z Back, took a while, now started savegame up and right away going to grab a bite to eat while nice view from PMC Industrial 1 district is showing some vehicle activity
2022-08-25T06:12:00Z Grand City population k.
2022-08-25T06:36:00Z Feeding time over, now lets do final push of city building for tonight.
Current education levels are 60% uneducated, 24% educated, 9% well educated and 7% highly educated. Population is 23.9k with 20% unemployment. RCI info bars are 0% residential, 95% commercial and 90% industrial.
Office zoning is taking hold, 0 jobs available. When zoning more, they are nicely getting filled with jobs. Scary as we have so few highly educated people, well out of 23k 7% so heh. I'll keep adding offices until all jobs arent getting filled.
Everything left from this big beast of 462 worker building is already filled to 0 jobs available. Hopefully this gets positions filled soon too.
Its always a lot of fun (not) when coal power plant catches on fire and then city runs outta power heh.
Placed intercity bus station for the first time, maybe this would reduce the private car traffic caused by zoning new high density residential.
2022-08-25T07:18:00Z Nothing seems to be happening in intercity bus station, some folks walked out of there right away after placing it, but no vehicle traffic no buses. But maybe its so early that they are still traveling from outside connection, dunno. I'll keep waiting.
After waiting a bit and connecting normal bus route to the terminal "bays", intercity buses started to bring in people, very nice.
2022-08-25T07:44:00Z Game is progressing a bit too slowly, I'm being too careful, so lets start to add more offices and getting ready to expand new residential district somewhere else.
Great to see intercity buses arrive with 60 people on-board, that is many many private cars off the highway connection into the new residential area. Great building / service, wonder why I never used this before. With this and passenger train terminal, there will be no such traffic issue like I had with previous savegame with large zoning.
After intercity bus terminal got going, it had 621 passengers "last week", very nice.
For future savegames a city design tip; place intercity bus terminal right next to a metro station and of course connect your regular bus line to it. That will guarantee good coverage and connections for out of town folks.
Education buildings are location based, not so much about spamming elementary schools anywhere to get the eligible versus capacity to match or to match with high school or university. You should put schools to areas where they are not, heh sounds stupidly simple but that's how it is. Check existing schools if they are filled to the brim, there is nothing wrong by placing exact same school building right next to the existing one if its at full capacity. Obviously try to find a more suitable centralized location nearby, but side by side is fine too. If you have high school with 1000/1000 students/capacity and you then place another one right next to it, the first building starts to offload its students to the second one balancing each to a level number, if your neighborhood has more than 2000 students then soon both high schools are at 1000/1000 and guess its time to place the third one hehe.
2022-08-25T08:34:00Z Capital City population 36k.
Cargo harbor is now available. Created one of these to nearest coastline with connection to PMC Industrial 1 district using arterial road.
First ship is arriving
Got a pretty nice batch of trucks from one ship.
Did not plan for this it just happened, but my intersection is a bit offset and vehicles nicely chooses to turn specific way depending if they are importing or exporting (bringing stuff or returning from delivery). Pretty cool.
First ship is leaving with our exports, bye bye stuff, was nice knowing ya
City layout, residential and commercial areas are in the south, well away from those are industrial areas in the north, then far out in the NE is our brand new harbor. Wonder if we could NOW increase industrial zoning because in theory they would not send traffic into the city but out of the north side using that big arterial six lane road and cargo train terminal.
Hmm dunno, the individual districts local roads would still be peppered with vehicles, unless I separate them into several small sections each connected to collector road in T-intersections hmm, hmm.
2022-08-25T09:03:00Z Anyways I'm so dead tired right now that I cant get into sophisticated thinking like that
Connection to the NE harbor.
2022-08-25T09:37:00Z Okay I'm in full zombi mode dunno what to do, its time for sleep. Saved game and shutdown Cities Skylines, tomorrow city building continues.
2022-08-25T16:44:00Z New Cities Skylines building day has started, just woke up and did the morning chores, now launching savegame back up right away and start to expand the city, gotta get population up. Will eat days first meal when I get too hungry, very soon.
Created passenger ship harbor, this also helps a bit with new citizens moving into our city. Then started to create a new residential district.
Ahoy matey!
Over thousand people in the horizon now.
Somewhat ridiculous ships clipping like that, don't they have anykind of collision detector hehe.
PMC Residential 7 district on the horizon there, probably many of these arriving ship passengers are going there using the bus route from that harbor terminal.
2022-08-25T17:31:00Z Laid the foundations of PMC Residential 8 district, but now... its time to eat days first meal, I'm starvin'
2022-08-25T18:09:00Z Feeding time over, back to building some residential areas, feels like a great Cities Skylines day starting
Ships keep bringing people in, crazy.
2022-08-25T18:32:00Z Colossal City population 48k.
This milestone gives nuclear power plant and cargo hub (ship + train terminal).
Public transport system as of now. Not happy with metro loops, as there are not many, but well dunno this will have to do now.
Not sure if one method of doing metro tracks would be to always build almost never ending loop in the beginning, that never do small loops but always think about the bigger picture. I would love to have one huge loop which covers the whole city instead of this kind of messy spider web alike THiNG heh.
Anyways.
Busy at the port.
Goodness gracious how ugly that metro ramp thing is hehe. Hmm I thought to put metro right next to the harbor but the bad thing is that because its other side of the road which pedestrians must cross, it might as well be kilometer away. Well OK not really as there is a crosswalk in the next intersection but yeah still. Hmm maybe I should make a straight road out of the harbor and place metro on the same side before turning the road into the arterial road. Hmm indeed.
2022-08-25T19:12:00Z Now we got few office buildings abandoned because perhaps I zoned too many of them at once.
Overall I really like this city, perhaps its just so young and light weight with only 56k population that the horrible traffic jams have not accumulated yet. But yeah, enjoyable city for sure.
2022-08-25T20:06:00Z Metropolis population 70k.
Was checking out my metro tracks and well, few of them kind of sucks, there is a one choke spot where several trains converge and its results to quite a long waiting times. Hmph.
2022-08-25T21:00:00Z Its been a long wait for office zones not being able to fill jobs, but now finally I'm seeing 0 jobs available on the latest buildings, OK lets zone some more as industrial demand is 95% so someone's gotta get a job
Zoned few more 4 x 4 unit blocks of generic industry with fear in my mind that will this spill over the traffic and gridlock everything.
Its truly amazing how the traffic is in this savegame. Just look at this, 86% whoah!?
2022-08-25T21:57:00Z Foundations created for PMC Residential 9 district.
2022-08-25T22:25:00Z Megalopolis population 90k.
All milestone achievements done, if we didn't use 81 tiles addon we could now purchase the whole terrain heh. Now its just ten kay more for our savegame goal completed. Cant wait.
Purchased medium warehouse for goods, saw one commercial building showing not enough goods for sell, so hmm dunno if another warehouse is needed but should not hurt, unless it generates silly traffic jams, I'll keep an close eye on it.
2022-08-25T22:34:00Z Well medium warehouse is full 400 tons of commercial goods.
Was wondering if our traffic works so good because commercial and residential is on the other side of the highway than industrial, thinking about that all my other savegames have had everything funneling through one highway exit, hmm. Well last one had second location elsewhere but yeah dunno. Who knows, maybe its just luck or something hehe.
Created PMC Residential 10 district but don't bother with a screenshot because we'll have another one in just a few moments ...
2022-08-25T23:38:00Z Boom! Population 100k! Yeah baby! 
That is it, this savegame was very enjoyable, will be blast to return to this someday in the future.
2022-08-25T23:40:00Z Saved game and shutdown Cities Skylines, we are done here.