Venice

[mr-tom 2]

I've been giving some thought to a good project to demonstrate the versatility of CXL.

The idea of "doing" Venice is rather appealling.

From a geographic perspective, with some heavy terraforming, any of the coastal or archipelago maps could be turned to the shape.

Canals could either be terraformed in too, or simulated with the water plaza mod on citiesxs.

Economy - farms on the surrounding land.  No substitute for fishing.  Tourism is an obvious one.  Lace and glass would have to be done via low density high tech (yes I know, but manufacturing pollution would kill off tourism)...

So there's no water transport, which is a bit of a problem.  I'd want to model the the key islands, so I think I'd create tunnels and daisy chain the islands together along the route that the water-bus takes.

Naturally on the main island, bridges across the canals would allow normal use of roads.

Venice is almost totally pedestrianised, but I see no way to achieve this as I just don't think CXL would allow transport without cars / busses.

Likewise, there's a problem in that much of Venice is historic, so the building models wouldn't be ideal, and many of the attractions, e.g. churches, museums simply have no in-game equivalent, and if you built enough shops, they'd go bankrupt.

Is this a really bad idea?

[Mars250 0]

hmmm.. i think it's a great idea but cities xl does not have the correct tools or buildings to do this maybe you should wait until custom content is released (but that may be some time..) but i'm not stopping you.

but a very good idea!

[mr-tom 2]

I've given this some more thought.

If / when the old English pack is re-released, I can use some of that. It's still the wrong style of building, but will be closer.

In the meantime, I can terraform a map and then work on getting the road grid right. The farms around the map edge should allow enough income to achieve that bit of it.

[Tysons4 68]

i dont know... from when i played the terrain tools were finicky and had no where near the amount of customization that sc4 has... hope you like keeping up with contracts

ps maybe take a screen shot and draw what you hope to do instead of keeping everyone waiting

[mr-tom 2]

You're right that the terrain tools are a weakness, but then consider - Venice is very low and flat, which works in my favour.

The image below shows the general area.

The islands would be for execs and elites, Mestre is for "normal people".

Murano and Burano - high tech industry

Lido - beach and hotels.  If a beach gem ever emerged, this would be the place for it.

Mainland (Mestre) - primarily living space, some shops, utilities etc. 

Rest of mainland - farms and an airport (Marco Polo)

From the ferry routes, you can see that there is a terminal on the south side of the island.

The main island will be a blend of exec / elite, shops, offices and leisure.

Because Venice is not high rise, I may have trouble employing my execs and elites - I'm anticipating having to trade them away to Omnicorp.

Not sure whether this will ever be economically viable, but worst case I'll use the sandbox mode to make Omnicorp prices somewhat fairer.

I want to perfectly re-create each waterway, so will need to get up close and personal with the canal structure.

One disappointment is that I'll never be able to do anything about the Rialto bridge (very pretty and with buildings on it).

The scale may (will) not be perfect!

[mentarman 14]

It looks like there is a map editing tool coming that will allow importation of DEM data... It's all in German right now but a translation should be coming soon. Check out Citiesxs.net for details....

[mr-tom 2]

Yeah. I've had an eye on that...