Stories 2022-08-31 Honu Island Game-play
2022-08-31T23:48:00Z Started savegame on Honu Island, all outside connections and natural resources, suitable area for building 45%, base theme: tropical.
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
Name includes island same as preview image, buildable area 45% ... ookay, why do I get the feeling that I don't like this terrain?
But on other news the list of all official including DLC terrains list is now so short that it doesn't have a scroll bar anymore, end is near! Yeah! this gives me motivation 
Hmm as you can see half of the terrain is water and other half has some nasty elevations which may or may not prevent enjoyable building.
Hmm its got enough flat space where to build my 100k city area, no problemos.
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.
Here is my starting setup, the newborn city heh.
2022-09-01T00:00:00Z Unpaused the game, lets start this thing.
First save game for Honu_Island_1 file name.
Money is pretty much maxed out, hopefully this infastructure gets us to the first milestone. Now we wait...
While waiting mind wanders, was just thinking that in my next terrain savegame I'll try to create the whole first milestone road network, electric, water and zoning before unpausing the game, I mean whats the difference... kind of saves time to do everything at one go while paused and then just unleash the game. Well, kinda.
Problem with building stuff in 3x time acceleration speed is that you're in 2D top-down view (well, I am) and cant see if shit hits the fan somewhere else in the city. Unless the problem icons reach your 2D top-down location, you have no idea anything is going wrong.
2022-09-01T00:09:00Z Little Hamlet population 380.
Turned on taxes to 12% for industrial, low density residential and commercial. Purchased elementary school and landfill site.
Just realized I don't like the tropical theme, default palm trees look really cartoon alike, very lame. Not that spruce / pine trees look photorealistic either, not saying that, but at least they look believable.
Here I did the 22 units x 10 units road grid build again, its a bit more slower to do exactly 22 instead of dragging road to the next guideline, but I like how it creates was it five 4 x 4 unit building zoning.
2022-09-01T00:16:00Z Worthy Village population 700.
Created my first districts for PMC Residential 1 and PMC Industrial 1. Placed fire station, police station and health clinic.
Saved game for Honu_Island_2 file name.
2022-09-01T00:23:00Z Tiny Town population 1.1k.
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 Honu_Island_3 file name.
2022-09-01T00:25:00Z And now its time to eat days first meal, just got up and did morning chores before starting this savegame. Game will run 3x time acceleration speed while I eat...
2022-09-01T00:33:00Z Boom Town population 1.7k.
Cemetery and bus depot became available in this milestone, cemetery is essential for life heh.
2022-09-01T00:52:00Z Feeding time is over, back at city building. And one milestone kicked in while I was away, had to place cemetery with one hand while eating.
New residential zone expansion, did this while paused, now I get to relax for hopefully couple of milestones heh.
2022-09-01T01:17:00Z Restored budget to normal 100% status.
2022-09-01T01:19:00Z Busy Town population 3k.
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 Honu_Island_4 file name which is the last of the four rotating file names.
Created tiny PMC Ore 1 district and painted ore natural resource using extra landscaping tools. Then did the same for PMC Oil 1 district right next to the ore one.
2022-09-01T01:35:00Z Big Town population 4.2k.
High density zones, metro, incineration plant, university and large warehouse are now available. This felt like it came really quickly as in other savegames I had to wait a really long time being bored out of my mind. Maybe I spent too long setting up ore and oil heh dunno. Nah actually ore and oil was real quick.
2022-09-01T01:44:00Z Small City population 5.5k.
This milestone gives us cargo train station and two good policies. Activated small business enthusiast and big business benefactor policies.
Then created PMC Forestry 1 district, did not have to paint much more trees for nice extractor buildings to build.
Finished zoned industries work by creating PMC Farming 1 district. Small as usual.
2022-09-01T02:11:00Z Big City population 8k.
Crematorium, large water tower and advanced inland water treatment plant are now available.
2022-09-01T02:36:00Z Grand City population 10k.
Slight forest fire, nothing to see here.
2022-09-01T02:44:00Z Now we are again in the phase where we zone high density residential and office but we have no highly educated workers.
Briefly checked out if I could zone small office buildings like 2 x 2 unit blocks that if they would require fewer highly educated workers, but no... when the buildings "level up" those highly educated worker job positions balloon to 30+ numbers, so yeah not an option, not to mention it was fishy cheaty crap anyways.
2022-09-01T02:46:00Z Capital City population 15k.
Cargo harbor is now available.
2022-09-01T03:11:00Z Colossal City population 20k.
This milestone gives nuclear power plant and cargo hub (ship + train terminal). This milestone again was funny left mouse button click on bus line and at the same fraction of a second milestone came up which got immediately closed heh.
2022-09-01T04:13:00Z Got another big forest fire, no need to screenshot it as its pretty much the same as above. Its clear to me that fires in Cities Skylines are random but there must be random CHANCE PERCENTAGE configured into the terrain because some terrains you have hardly any fires and others, like this one, its every 15min real time there is insane forest fire (well perhaps not quite, but close). Maybe its just bad luck combination with tropical terrain with plenty of palm trees that the fire can so easily spread from buildings, dunno. But there is no doubt in my mind that some terrains are bad others are not regarding forest fires.
There was another traffic jam gridlock, so I banned private cars from the industrial area, use public transport or walk you lazy fucks
2022-09-01T04:22:00Z Metropolis population 28k.
Fires. Don't believe me? I thought you wouldn't, ok check this our Mr Sceptic...
2022-09-01T05:50:00Z Megalopolis population 36k.
Hmm 36k for megalopolis which is the last milestone, wow.
2022-09-01T05:51:00Z Saved game and leave it running 3x time acceleration speed, its lunch time.
2022-09-01T06:15:00Z Feeding time is over, back to Cities Skylines.
While eating and game running, traffic cleared up, its now 87% pretty nice.
Burn motherfucker! BURN! 
2022-09-01T07:26:00Z Hmm my commercial zones were getting hit real bad about not enough goods to sell, I'm going to temporarily activate transfer manager ce allow imports for goods, maybe my generic industry is not able to supply enough goods, hmm I doubt it but lets see what happens.
Heh oh wow look at all those purple trucks rolling in! 
Outside connections imported goods increased from 0 to 4079, whoah!
This again brings up questions, is this 4079 peak goods import on top of what our industry is producing already, or is our industry by-passed completely by these imports now, hmm.
How do I check how much my industry is producing goods, hmm.
Another forest fire, unbelievable.
2022-09-01T07:47:00Z Build cargo harbor.
(forgot to actually take the screenshot here, sorry).
Yup, a slight traffic problem with that area, high density commercial and office zoning, uuh. I'm not sure if this is still the initial rush of goods, or is this every day activity now that the area is simply way too busy for those roads. Just too many buildings with vehicles trying to get access.
There are alarming number of private vehicles too, even though I tried to pepper the area with metro and bus lines, maybe my line making skillz suck dunno.
New residential districts foundations have been laid, decided for a change do these ones as low density residential, no particular reason just felt like doing it.
New community coming up, PMC Industrial 2 district, generic industry, gimme my goods
2022-09-01T10:04:00Z In my expansion excitement I zoned a bit too much, buildings did come up but even the basic industry buildings said not enough workers, no residential demand.
This means I have to just sit back and not zone anything, let things settle down, as the man said "life finds a way." heh.
2022-09-01T10:18:00Z Settle down? So is that what settling down means when you create two new foundations for residential districts, muhaha!
2022-09-01T11:03:00Z Its my lunch time, now its very nice to let game run in 3x time accelerations speed when I'm eating, hopefully things settle down properly.
2022-09-01T11:28:00Z Feeding time is over, last stretch of the day begins, yeah.
Whole game feels like lagged. There is not the old gaming style over zoning issue going on, I explained this weeks ago in some game-play story already, its like game is choking on the data it has to go through, there is just too much, kind of like traffic jam but for the zoning data so to speak, its difficult to explain properly.
Who knows what it actually might be in the game engine, but that kind of gut feeling I'm getting from it.
Currently all education levels are 98% or more employed, there are no more workers in the whole city. As for available jobs, for example uneducated has 14% workers vs jobs and educated is low as 7%. In practical numbers educated jobs availability is 8230 and we only have 650 educated workers.
So there is a huge surplus of available jobs, I think my gut feeling is about this that game is struggling with this huge imbalance issue. Sure it should say that hey residential demand 100% right now to get more workers, but yeah dunno why doesn't it.
Fact without any gut feelings is that game is laggy, I can feel (your angeeerr hehe) the laggyness and even the date progress bar is moving very slowly on 3x time acceleration.
So we wait, patiently wait without adding anything new especially zoning, just watch and observe for game to catch up with the situation.
Or something...
2022-09-01T11:49:00Z I think my over zoning generic industry might have caused game engine to choke, it is frantically getting more citizens to the city and immediately throwing them at these industry jobs, which there are like fucking 5,000 heh. Dunno?
Need to zone more low density residential and see how that goes, it would make sense... but hmm maybe I'll start to unwind this thing from the other end, maybe I DE-zone these generic industrial areas a bit, those abandoned buildings, so it would balance off jobs vs residential zones, err if you know what I mean.
2022-09-01T12:00:00Z Well got all the abandoned industrial buildings gutted, but no help, job availability dropped over a thousand jobs, but still there is such a gaping hole in the job market and no new citizens to take on the job. Hmm guess its back to zoning more residential then, dunno what else to do.
Okay two more residential districts done, foundations at least.
I'm doing smaller grids now, dunno why but somehow felt like small nice compact stuff would be a nice change.
2022-09-01T12:39:00Z Noticed that old industrial districts PMC Industrial 1, oil, ore, farming and forestry also has several buildings abandoned due lack of workers. This is very disheartening to see, Cities Skylines cannot differentiate large distances between areas, it just stupidly thinks that OK we have too many industrial zoning so lets nuke them evenly, EVEN THE ONES THAT HAVE BEEN WORKING FOR YEARS IN-GAME TIME! 
Oh well, its a console game so what do you expect
Well guess its my fault in the first place to zone so much at one time, you should always zone cautiously everything except residential, commercial, industrial and office has jobs, so if you zone too much of them Cities Skylines will choke. If you zone too much residential, well no big deal its simply not used before needed. Later Edit: no idea what I'm trying to say here as it now reads "everything except (and then lists all zoning)" heh, must have been some sort of brain fart while typing that and right now I cant figure out what I was about to say. I'm guessing; don't zone too much at one time, dunno.
I need to remember that golden rule; do not zone massive blobs except on residential and even there you have danger of getting too many people moving in with private cars all at once. So yeah don't zone too much, do it in small increments.
2022-09-01T12:52:00Z Hmm got another theory what might be going on, these new residential districts are really small, like really compact and I have placed services for all of them. Each new small residential district has fire, police, crematorium, health clinic, elementary school and high school, also in this general new area I placed one university as well but just one.
Looking at the jobs, healthcare 1128, police department 760, education 4134, fire department 896, public transport 941. Interesting how much education eats jobs, but maybe its because I literally spammed elementary / highschool in every small new district I created.
I should have made much larger districts, these definitely are too small. On larger districts the services would have spread out much better for residents.
Okay, no more small residential districts, copy that
Its interesting how gagging Cities Skylines is now, it shows RCI info bar for residential over 50% and once I zone something, I'm not even done fine tuning the zoning when its already 0% and buildings come up very slowly and sluggishly.
Wonder if I should leave Cities Skylines running overnight when I go to sleep tonight, might have fixed itself by the time I wake up heh. Hmm dunno if it would run with windows screensaver turned on, meaning monitor turned off to powersave sleep mode.
This just makes me so sad, our original long time industrial area, most buildings abandoned just because Cities Skylines cannot differentiate building coordinates
2022-09-01T13:26:00Z I still have just below three hours of day left, but starting to get tired and frustrated with this savegame, nothing is happening at least nothing I try works. I might have to call it an early night with Cities Skylines, chill and relax rest of the evening, dunno. I am simply getting tired of watching nothing happening.
Zoning some high density residential again. Why not, tried pretty much everything else so far. Game feels like its in slow motion, its sluggish and runs very slow, I am not sure someone said in forums that 3x time acceleration speed is not working if game is choking, that this might actually be only 2x speed or something like that.
Transfer manager ce gave error dialog like this:
Path Units used has hit 95% of available amount.
Current: 258738
Available: 262144
This is a game limit, not a mod limit, once you run out of path units vehicles will no longer be able to find paths.
You could try running the "More Path Units" mod by algernon to increase the available path units for the game.
Whoah?
Never seen that error before, might explain why game runs so slow.
In general all started when I moved into this new area, could there be some issues with game trying to path find from the "starter area" into here, but hmm why? I don't get it.
2022-09-01T14:20:00Z Too tired, cant think, game is laggy, saved game and shutdown Cities Skylines, nites.
2022-09-01T23:20:00Z New Cities Skylines day has started, this morning already steamCMD downloaded "More Path Units" addon and will activate it now in hopes that it would fix my laggy game performance issue.
Activated the addon and restarted Cities Skylines.
2022-09-01T23:25:00Z Savegame loaded, OK now it works as usual and CSL show limits addon also confirms I'm using like 115k or so path units things. Buildings are now coming up much faster when zoning high density residential.
So far it looks like working OK. This addon is one of those which you now need in this savegame, if you try to load this savegame (when I do save it the next time) without it, then it breaks.
Traffic was gridlocked with many kilometers lines forming to the highway outside connection, floating icons about bad things everywhere in the main city, things were looking grim.
2022-09-01T23:31:00Z I'm going to leave game running now on 3x time acceleration speed while I go cook and eat food, hopefully traffic jams and everything sort itself out eventually over time.
2022-09-02T00:28:00Z Feeding time is over, back to seeing if this savegame can be salvaged.
Well traffic was cleared in highway towards east, but it was still completely gridlocked due west with 48% flow.
Population is 82.5k now, I'm hoping that just spamming high density residential one row at the time would get me to our goal without need to worry about traffic and shit, I just have zero interest on that stuff now, dunno why, I just want to finish this well another terrains savegame.
2022-09-02T00:42:00Z Cities skylines is still lagging like last night, nothing has changed with that more pathunits addon, oh well.
2022-09-02T00:46:00Z I cannot express enough how uncomfortable this laggy game-play performance is now. I just cant wait to reach our goal and then be done with this terrain...
2022-09-02T01:20:00Z Boom! 100k population! Yeah it is done
And not a moment too soon, this laggy performance is killing my will to live, oh man what a relief that I can put this savegame to the rest.
Advice for the future: when you read this story text (meaning ME reading it) and think about getting back to this savegame, please don't, the lag is so bad that it just frustrates and angers you, don't do it, there are plenty of other terrains and savegames you can play, don't load this one up, please. Heh.
2022-09-02T01:23:00Z Saved game and shutdown Cities Skylines, we are so done here.