Stories 2022-08-30 The Dust Bowl Game-play
(forgot to time stamp this, heh) Started savegame on The Dust Bowl, all but train outside connections and natural resources, suitable area for building 82%, 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, 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, hide it, 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: 2022-08-27T21:39:00Z
This terrain according to file names is by same author "ND" as two other useless pieces of shit terrains prussian peaks and the archipelago, I am having a bad feeling about this as well, or could it be miracle that when you throw a lot of shit to the wall at least SOMETHING sticks and the author managed to actually create playable Cities Skylines terrain.
At first glance, yeah there is a lot of water but at least enough flat heightmap to build a city on, heh we have a miracle! 
Okay we can actually start a savegame on this terrain.
First used 81 tiles addon to open up all terrain grid tiles for use. TM:PE enabled disable de-spawning, advanced vehicle AI enabled, 50% dynamic lane selection, parking AI enabled more realistic parking. Transfer manager ce, goods delivery options warehouse first, reserve trucks for local transfers 20%, improved inter-warehouse transfers, import/export disabled allow import goods, services prefer local district services, death care/garbage improved all three, general disable dummy traffic, vehicle AI enable garbage and police.
Turned roads, electric and water budget to 50%, we need to save money.
This is my starter setup, should get us going.
2022-08-30T19:45:00Z Unpaused the game, lets start this thing.
First save game for The_Dust_Bowl_1 file name.
2022-08-30T19:57:00Z Little Hamlet population 440.
Turned on taxes to 12% for industrial, low density residential and commercial. Purchased elementary school and landfill site.
2022-08-30T20:05:00Z Worthy Village population 900.
Created my first districts for PMC Residential 1 and PMC Industrial 1. Placed fire station, police station and health clinic.
Saved game for The_Dust_Bowl_2 file name.
2022-08-30T20:14:00Z Tiny Town population 1.4k.
Was actually in the restroom when this milestone was reached 
Replaced placeholder dirt road arterial and collectors with proper six and four lane asphalt roads. 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. Started to use two lane asphalt roads for residential areas from now on.
Saved game for The_Dust_Bowl_3 file name.
2022-08-30T20:30:00Z Increased budget to 100% where its should be.
Checked this terrains natural resources, laughable. Everything is super weak, there is not a single resource that is normal level. Guess this is why people wrote extra landscaping tools addon, you can paint that stuff yourself. Heightmap while it looks normal low land type of thing, there is still plenty of elevations, its definitely not "flat" by any means. Its not that you could not build there, but when you create roads at some points you start to see the dark sandy type ground indicating rough elevation change in short distance.
2022-08-30T20:33:00Z Boom Town population 2.6k.
Cemetery and bus depot became available in this milestone, cemetery is essential for life heh.
Quick update so this page wont be screenshot-less
2022-08-30T21:10:00Z Busy Town population 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.
Saved game for The_Dust_Bowl_4 file name which is the last of the four rotating file names.
2022-08-30T21:19:00Z At this point savegame was in the waiting phase, a lot of low density residential zoning is available to build on, all I can do is sit and wait while game plays itself.
Buggy terrain, something fishy is going on in the river water.
This is also very laggy terrain, no idea why, I'm running the exact same addons and settings as in previous savegames which had no problems. This now just feels definitely more sluggish than normal.
2022-08-30T21:51:00Z Big Town population 8k.
High density zones, metro, incineration plant, university and large warehouse are now available.
High density residential district has been started. Lets grow that population.
2022-08-30T22:13:00Z Small City population 11k.
This milestone gives us cargo train station and two good policies. Activated small business enthusiast and big business benefactor policies.
Wait, what happened here? Yikes its the city growing too fast instant traffic jam
Good thing I didn't forget the lessons learned before, well almost forgot heh.
The next batch of high density residential zoning goes slowly with one 4 x 4 block at the time in row, what I mean is its 4 x gazillion in a row. Its still a lot and easy to zone, but its not nearly as much as zoning 8 x full row which definitely causes traffic jams. I could go even smaller blocks, but then it becomes hard to differentiate normal traffic and the convoys of private cars moving into the city.
2D top-down view of the "row" I'm talking about, dunno cant be bothered to count how many 4 x length of the row that is, its quite long.
So now slowly zone one row at the time, then monitor the traffic and once its sure all citizens have driven into the city, then zone the next row.
2022-08-30T22:55:00Z In this savegame I'm trying to focus on metros and bus routes as well because in previous savegame I had great problems with traffic to and from a huge office district, too many people were driving their own cars instead taking public transit.
Just need to be careful not to make too busy metro intersections or lines or rather station areas I think its the better description. Metros are not immune to traffic jams, trains can get blocked as well.
2022-08-30T22:57:00Z Big City population 18k.
Crematorium, large water tower and advanced inland water treatment plant are now available.
2022-08-30T23:31:00Z Grand City population 22k.
2022-08-31T00:16:00Z All of the sudden so tired I'm snoozing off while playing, gotta go take a nap...
2022-08-31T02:50:00Z Back, we continue city development.
New high score on largest office building workers wise! 
Total of 723 workers in a office building, ok I'll take that
This stupid terrain, the river or whatever body of water that is was flooding a bit 
Had to build this kind of natural heightmap elevation wall to this bank, sigh.
Speaking of stupid, built some "level up" stuff near PMC Industrial 1 district to see what effect does level two or even three buildings have for industrial area. Nevermind the temporary traffic, this is overview of current district.
Apparently these buildings reduce workers when they level up, I am not sure how that is "good" because the whole point of dirty nasty polluting generic industry is to provide jobs and goods, now they provide about half as many jobs, I don't get it.
Capacity of each building remains the same 16 tons, so there is no change on that regard just less workers.
What is stupid about this game-play is to have parks and schools in dirty nasty industrial area. How does it make sense to put elementary school in such area, just silly. I don't like it at all, I'm perfectly happy with my level 1 generic industry buildings, no problemo.
2022-08-31T03:48:00Z Used extra landscaping tools and painted a bit of oil natural resource to the corner of PMC Industrial 1 district, then created PMC Oil 1 district. In theory this should not increase traffic as it extracts oil... and delivers it to generic industry right next to us. Right? RIGHT?
Oil imports were 413 when this district went live. Used transfer manager ce to disable imports on all GenericProcessor buildings, so they wont generate any vehicle traffic from outside connection, they need to use just local products from our oil pumps right next to them. Hopefully the balance remains that there is enough oil extracted for the processors.
Here is PMC Oil 1 district as of now.
Then GenericProcessing building send out oil tanker truck to export oil. Hmm was thinking maybe I should disable all outside connections for this district hmm hmm. I'll let it breathe for now...
Created medium warehouse, named it PMC Oil WH 1 and disabled outside connection importing. Lets see if we can store some oil and hmm is it the raw material oil or just the processed oil, hmm.
Warehouse in "zoned industry - oil products" mode stores "Petrol" so its the processed variant of oil product which can be exported and I assume used by our generic industry. Medium warehouse stores 400 barrels, whatever that means, googled and 1 oil barrel is 159 liters in real life, no idea of Cities Skylines uses same formula.
So warehouse is not storing raw materials, if our extractor oil pump buildings are not able to provide enough raw materials to processor buildings, then we get into issue. This is where specialized zoned industry differs from Industries DLC main building stuff, the details, you cannot store zoned industry raw materials in warehouses, only the finished products to be either used by your generic industry or exported to outside connection.
2022-08-31T04:21:00Z PMC Oil WH 1 disabled outside connection exports because it had no stock but still had tanker truck exporting oil, no I don't want you to export, store that shit for our own use heh.
Lets see how it turns out as warehouse is now local only for oil products "Petrol" which generic industry uses.
Hmm outside connections oil imports are 150-160 at the time of writing this, exports are 36 hmm. Looks like our extractor buildings are exporting raw materials. So we need more processor buildings. Okay going to expand oil district one 4 x 4 unit zone block and hope we get processor building.
Heh nothing but extractor buildings coming up, even after buldozing them down few times hehe.
One further expansion and now finally we got some processor buildings, guess the natural resource oil ran out heh.
2022-08-31T04:41:00Z Capital City population 36k.
Cargo harbor is now available.
Just as I was about comfortable understanding how oil vs generic industry stuff works, I found one oil importing generic industry building. Its "Quality Appliances" which is GenericProcessing type building. It produces goods obviously, but it also lists material types in transfer manager ce as follows: "Petrol" and "Petroleum". Hmm whats the difference? I remember industries DLC processor buildings produce petroleum, but hmm.
So this quality appliances was importing two 8 tons semi-truck tanker loads of petrol from outside connection.
Hmm who knows maybe this was some old request or something, no idea. Just so confusing right when you think that hey now I get it... you actually DON'T
2022-08-31T04:58:00Z Saved game and let it run in 3x time acceleration speed as its my lunch time.
2022-08-31T05:25:00Z Feeding time is over, back to grow our city.
Was just thinking while eating that this oil industry info from this game-play story need to be read, deciphered, sorted and written into its own tutorial documentation web page
2022-08-31T06:56:00Z Colossal City population 50k.
This milestone gives nuclear power plant and cargo hub (ship + train terminal).
2022-08-31T07:26:00Z Spent some time googling mostly public transport info, metros and buses. Actually created one short metro line between university and PMC Residential 3 district.
2022-08-31T08:07:00Z Alright spent way too long just goofing around with public transport, it was fun. Now lets get back to the subject that matters, growing our population, eh?
Foundations for four new residential districts, dunno why four why not one big, no idea, just felt like doing it this way now.
In PMC Oil 1 district expanded it one row in hopes of getting more processor buildings. PMC Oil WH 1 is basically empty so we need more production, hopefully new processor buildings wont out balance the extractors now.
2022-08-31T08:50:00Z Ran out of raw materials, oil extractor buildings could not keep up with the new processors. De-zoned 4 x 4 and 2 x 4 units, lets see if that is the perfect balance.
2022-08-31T09:11:00Z Oh my, still oil processors are running out of raw materials. Hmm.
Created cargo train terminals for industrial area and current main commercial zone area, hopefully trains will haul GOODS cargo.
Choo choo! All aboard!
First cargo train haul went about evenly directly to shops and warehouses. Nice.
2022-08-31T11:05:00Z Metropolis population 75k.
2022-08-31T12:19:00Z Lunch break, much overdue actually heh.
2022-08-31T12:44:00Z Feeding time is over, lets push this city to our goal.
2022-08-31T12:55:00Z Megalopolis population 90k.
All milestones done, now we push one more 10k citizens and then all is done
2022-08-31T13:41:00Z Hooyah! We have reached 100k population! 
2022-08-31T13:41:00Z Saved game and shutdown Cities Skylines, time to relax.