Cattala (AIN)

[+Guest Member 193110]

Fantastic night shots.

[Benedict 3,119]

Great to see you back - and what an update! I love the station, as well as the photoediting on the rest of the images.

[ThomasSimpson 466]

Summer has returned, which means it's time to visit the breadbasket of Cattala once more. Last year we focused on Ontano island, in the south east of Cattala, quite a lot, but this time we're moving further north into the mainland.

Lessito is the biggest province in terms of area, covering all of the eastern lands of the mainland and stretching into the north as well. Despite this, it is the most sparsely population region, with no substantial cities and a rural heartland full of villages and hamlets communities.

Today we're stopping by the Darna comuni, which is straddled by the A5 road from San Pietro to the Ontano Bridge. Darna services is one of the larger ones along the road, which is popular with holidaymakers going from the city to the beaches of the east.

Recently the government has announced a large investment in the infrastructure of rural areas like Darna. This bridge is being rebuilt to cope better with flooding and more traffic, as it formed a bottleneck at peak times and was regularly closed in the winter, cutting off many hamlets from the a-road.

The village of Yewell is a small community outside of Darna, north of the busy carriageway. Here, a secondary road is the easiest way to travel from the village to the rest of the province. Farm life dominates this little place, with sprawling orchards and vineyards as far as the eye can see. In summer, the town is buzzing with workers picking fruit and taking it off to market and warehouses.

Yewell is fortunate enough to have its own industrial buildings to store fruit and vegetables in, before they get taken to the shops of the country and the shipyards for sale overseas. This year, the storage facilities will be overflowing with juicy grapes which will soon be taken to Jennai for brewing into some of the country's most delicious wines.

Besides its heritage for wine making, Yewell's other claim to fame is the Saint Martin's Retreat Centre, where young people from the cities come on pilgrimage to rest, relax and develop spiritually and emotionally. It's a very popular venue for school retreats and a way for urban children to get away from the hustle and bustle of city life.

But not everything is rosy and perfect in Lessito...

As you'll find out in the next update.

  Edited July 16, 2012 by ThomasSimpson  

[+Guest Member 193110]

Nice roads and farm fields.

[Benedict 3,119]

I love the mood of your images - makes me feel like I am in a different era.

[ThomasSimpson 466]

Welcome back to Lessito, where we're making our second visit to Darna comuni. The province is typically synonymous with fruits, rolling hills and bountiful harvests, but Yewell village has a darker secret that is hidden behind the traditional Lessitan setting.

Under British rule, the village of Yewell was founded and prospered as a small farming community, like dozens of others in the southern plains of Cattala. During the Second World War, the kingdom was occupied by Italian and German forces fighting in North Africa and, in 1943, fighting to prevent the British and Americans from getting a hold on southern Italy. Sonnenshein was created after the fall of Celeste and the execution of the King of Cattala. Loyalists and monarchists alike continued to support the King and were bitterly opposed to Italian occupation, as well as the presence of German troops heading to the North African Campaign.

Throughout the three years of occupation, thousands of dissidents were detained at Sonnenshein and hundreds never returned. The area became a symbol of the harsh treatment the anti-fascist population endured as those that survived told their tales of torture, prolonged imprisonment and starvation.

Those that died during internment at Sonnenschein were buried near to the camp's headquarters in Yewell. The farm that was used as a burial site was abandoned after its owner committed suicide during questioning after spying for the resistance movement on the camp, and is now partially a memorial for those that died in the area during the war.

Yewell is still overshadowed by the infamous prison, which was the most high profile in all of Cattala. Due to the relatively short period of time that German officers and generals were based in Cattala, the country had few other internment camps when liberated in 1943 and the southern Italian troops who spent much of the war in Cattala were less inclined to the cruel torture methods of their anti-Comintern allies.

The buildings occupied by secret police and army officers during the war have all since returned to their residential or agricultural purposes, with many reflecting on their wartime use through name or small memorial plaques, which dot the roads of Yewell village. Only two buildings from the camp remain, the former headquarters of the officers in Lessito, with cellars and subcellars filled with concrete. After the war, the returning villagers decided to try and remove all trace of the fascist occupation from their community. But the shadow of shame still hangs over Yewell.

Next time, we'll be back to Lessito's old self, visiting a less harrowing area of the province.

[Schulmanator 5,787]

Awesome! the pix are great as always!

[ThomasSimpson 466]

Today we're continuing our trip through southern Lessito, weaving our way north and south of the A25. The comuni of Dallia is our next stop, centred around the market village of Dallia la Costa. As with much of the region, the area is dominated by agriculture but is also a place of outstanding natural beauty.

By the village centre is what led to its creation, the crossroads. This dirty road was once a thriving transport link between the cities of the west and the markets, ports and islands of the east. Nowadays its bypassed by the dual carriageway, but the road remains busy with local freight and villagers.

La Marcia farm is a defining estate in Dallia. Its golden fields spread over a vast area and sway gently in the summer breeze. The sight inspired a poem by Cattala's Poet Laureate in 1947, just after the decimation of World War Two. The golden bloom was said to have "lightened his soul and sparked hope".

Small hamlets and other villages dot the Dallia countryside, mainly alongside the trade road. Alareas was discovered to have had a literacy rate of just 24% in 1965 due to the lack of rural education provision. Since then, its risen to 100% in line with the rest of the country. Farmers just didn't need to read and write, and the nearest schools were dozens of miles away.

Dallia is a recognised area of beauty, and regularly features in Lessito tourist adverts. And with good reason, too. The rural life of long summer days, gentle streams, golden fields and green expanses attracts many visitors and city dwellers hungry for a piece of the good life.

The rolling hills and fields of the eastern kingdom provide this lifestyle for 359,000 residents of Lessito, with more than two thirds living in non-urban areas like Dallia. Here we see the orchards of the comuni's valley that eventually descends down to the coast.

But what this region is most famous for is its vineyards that cover the land in a sea of green in the months leading up to harvest season. Cattala is the world's fifth-biggest wine exporter, with Lessito leading the way in production of the white variant.

To end with tonight, a view of one of Dallia's vineyards at night. The traffic trundling by has changed over the years, but the casa and the crop remain the same.

  Edited July 24, 2012 by ThomasSimpson  

[Benedict 3,119]

Brilliant. You have a knack for creating rural landscapes.

[ThomasSimpson 466]

Thank you, Benedict. Much appreciated.

Welcome back to southern Lessito, where we're continuing to follow the A25 road eastwards towards the A45 bridge. Today we're in Callavre, as we move ever closer to the end of our journey.

Callavre is a small town, like so many others in Lessito, that has hugely benefited from the improved transport connection to the economic heartland of Cattala, in the south west. Callavre now has a fast A-road connection and the South Coast Main Line link to Jennai and the rest of Lessito, speeding the distribution of goods and improving access to Roumeli and the other islands of the Ionian.

The A25 broadens as it reaches Callavre, due to the later split into the much-busier A3 and A45 roads, spreading Jennaian traffic to the northern reaches of Cape Almae and our old Lessito haunt, Ontano Island. Due to the easy access to the road from the west of Callavre, lorries and other heavy vehicles often try to navigate the tight roads of the town centre to try and reach the triple carriageway, leading to calls for a bypass or eastern access road.

Callavre is served by a small station that also acts as a hotel, competing with many local farms that rent out rooms and converted barns to tourists. Commuter trains from and to Jennai speed through the station throughout the day, although most do now stop at the station since the town has grown substantially in the last 50 years.

Here we can see a number of those farms that have sought to ply the tourist industry with their converted barns and outbuildings, some more successfully than others. The busy railway has severely affected the volume of tourists to Callavre in recent years, especially with the higher speed and more frequent trains travelling to Ontano and central Lessito. Some have countered this fall in tourism by inducing businesses to use smaller buildings as offices, benefiting from the very same thing that hurt other income-boosting ventures.

Outside of the town and away from the busy roads and railway, Callavre is much more like the rest of Lessito. The commuter enclave is surrounded by sprawling olive trees, vineyards and fields of fruits of various colours and flavours. The streams of the hills weave and flow just the same as anywhere else in rural Cattala... just a tad more managed, mind.

Pendella lies to the east of Callavre, further along the A25's edge. It sits in a narrow spit of land between the lorry-lined carriageway and the passenger-laden railway that gets narrower the closer you get to the eastern coastline.

To end today, another overview of the village, but on a summers night instead of the day. The station is open, the road's lights are glaring, but the town tries to sleep. Once it could, easily, but now, the times are different. Progress.

[Schulmanator 5,787]

Delightful little town. I'll bet they have plenty of tourists.

[Benedict 3,119]

I don't really want the journey to end... if I were to sum up this update in one word: vibrant.

[ThomasSimpson 466]

Thank you both. And Benedict, there's a little more to go!

We'll be back in Lessito soon, but first, an interlude in the capital. This is the seventy-sixth update of Cattala, and the nineteenth of Celeste, so I thought it was about time I started showing some urban scenes. And here, is Aziens!

Aziens is the culmination of three decades of development and regeneration in the east of the city. Celeste was once the commanding, dominant city of Cattala but the rise of heavy industry and commerce in Jennai meant that Celeste fell into decline, and is now a third of the size of the economic powerhouse. By the 1970s, even Calora was developing and growing faster and bigger and better than the capital.

Celeste was the old face of Cattala - history, pomp, pagentry - with no place in the present. It's streets were clogged with tourists, not money-makers and businessmen. So a plan was created, to turn a former hunting ground and war-ravaged brownfield site south of the old city into a bustling modern district, a hub of sport and enterprise alike. By the mid-1980s, the Stadio di Lady Eliza was complete and the rest, is history.

Public broadcaster RMI was roped into the redevelopment, and built a brand new media park just off the main carriageway into Celeste. Light industrial warehouses hugged television studios and offices for the media elite.

RMI's brand new headquarters were finished by 1995, a mix of modern architecture and classic cubic design. The centrepiece of the multi-million lira project, RMI moved its news, television, production and radio services to the complex from their old homes spread across Calora, Jennai and Celeste.

The rest of the site was leased to international broadcasters, producers and media companies. The international media building is home to more than 20 different news channels from around the world, with many basing here due to easy road and rail access to the city centre, Calora, Jennai and all three of Cattala's major airports. There's also a good view of the modern skyline.

Aziens wouldn't have existed without the central station. Cattala's third-largest station is also a changeover point if you want to go to the north, the rest of Amosseri and is a key terminal between Jennai and Calora. The InterCity services between the three carries millions of passengers a year, more than all the other lines combined.

Next time, it's back to Lessito for the rest of our A25 journey. Here's a map of the province, showing you all the places we've been over the past 18 months. The five towns and villages in the southern island, along with San Pietro, were visited last summer and you can clearly see the route of the A25 from San Pietro to Callavre, where we left off. See you then!

[emperordaniel 1,281]

Celeste sure looks beautiful.

[Markus J 242]

Very nice, clearly spent a lot of time on this. It's a great blend of new and old.

[vivapanda 422]

Beautiful work! I really like how you handled the Yewell update, turned out really great.

[rewright 804]

Well done and presented! Looks like old postcards. Makes me relaxed just looking at them.

[simlink 1,098]

I really love your attention to detail and choice of buildings, and your cities really just seem to "glow" at night. Great work!

[ThomasSimpson 466]

emperordaniel: Thank you!

MarkusJ: Thanks very much for the comment, and yes it did take a fair while but the result is what I desired.

Vivapanda: Thanks, I'm glad you liked that one.

rewright: Thank you!

sim_link: Glowing at night is exactly what that was going for.

So this interlude seems to be taking a bit longer than I expected, as I've been on holiday and busy building motorways and Celeste. But don't despair, as our Lessito journey will be returning shortly.

Today we're visiting the north of Celeste, the opposite end of the city to Aziens. Vittoria is one of the three initial districts of the capital that I built in the previous incarnation of Celeste, and now it's been made bigger, better and 100% more functional than before. Here is its smaller station, Stazione di Alberto, pictured during the late evening. It's a busy little station, with many commuter trains from Vittoria, Celeste and Calora thundering past throughout the night.

Vittoria is the northernmost district of Celeste's metropolitan area, and was one of few parts of the city not to be adversely affected by the colonisation of Cattala in the 19th century. The British governor relocated the capital to Calora Harbour, then the main port of trade with the Empire. Much of Celeste fell into disrepair as the monarchy was pushed aside and wealth moved to Jennai and Calora.

It benefited from becoming a major station on the new railway line between the two main economic cities and saw substantial development as wealthy Caloran merchants and businessmen left the crowded city and wanted a quieter life in the country or the comforts of home in the Shires. Vittoria, named after the reigning Queen, boomed.

As more and more people moved in to the new town, it drew in the Celestinian, British and Caloran middle classes and caused a further depopulation of the derelict royal city and became a sprawling settlement around the railway line. In its own right, Vittoria rapidly became independent from Celeste.

In recent times, Vittoria has continued to serve as a commuter town for both Calora and the reinvigorated Celeste. As the old city expanded northwards, it was swallowed back into the capital and benefits from the faster and more frequent railway services to all three of the country's main cities. Since the 1980s, many offices have been created in Alberto Business Park, named after Victoria's consort. With easy access to the economic centres and cheaper rent Vittoria has appealed to many companies, including DHL's Cattala offices.

Corona-Sesta was developed in the post-war years, as part of a new residential boom as Cattala adjusted to life after occupation and the emergency government tried to encourage economic growth. Located in the east of the town, it benefited from the construction of the M2 motorway a few minutes drive away and its expansion in 1990.

Vittoria continues to grow even today. Suburban development and the large number of affluent city-dwellers that move to a quieter life ensures a steady stream of new residents to the town and one of the recent waves led to the creation of Meandrati, an estate that resembles more Americanised desires of modern buyers.

One of the older areas of the town is the Borough of Hannover, named after the royal house that Victoria heralded from, with a minor change in the spelling. Hannover is the wealthiest district in Vittoria and is home to Hannover Park, a controversial regeneration project that led to the demolition of a number of old buildings and replacing them with what locals described as "blue boxes". A wider redevelopment of Hannover was stopped in the Supreme Court when the local elite joined with the province's millionaires in demanding an end to the Park plan and forced developers to back down in a landmark ruling.

I hope you enjoyed learning about Vittoria's past and present and I leave you with a Hall-to-Market mosaic stretching across the town. Thank you for visiting Cattala.

  Edited August 29, 2012 by ThomasSimpson  

[Benedict 3,119]

Another stunning update - wow, love the attention to detail.

[emperordaniel 1,281]

The first image reminds me of something that I see all too often here in Sochi - and the rest of the update is no less brilliant in layout and appearance.

[ThomasSimpson 466]

Benedict. emperordaniel: Thank you both! And yes Daniel - the modern development around railway stations is quite common here too. In my town, there's been a lot of construction around the main station in recent years with 20+ storey towers being built in a town of less than 100,000 people.

Welcome back to Cattala, where today we're on a whistle-stop tour of two of the main areas we've been visiting recently. The last seven updates have been focused on Celeste and Lessito, two regions that are very, very different. Celeste is the capital of the nation and has been the power base of the monarchy for 1000 years. Once again it is emerging as a grand city with not only an illustrious past, but with a highly promising future too.

Whilst Lessito is the breadbasket of Cattala, and has sustained agriculture since the time of the Aristotle. The sleepy, rural lifestyle is a far cry from the hustle and bustle of the western cities but the region still contributes a large amount to the economy - Cattala is a major global wine exporter and the high levels of food security in the country is achieved mostly thanks to Lessito's farmers.

Celeste is a major transport hub between the two biggest cities in Cattala and its terminal station is served by both InterCity and national railway services. The city also has a major domestic and international airport and remains the home of the country's political, social and class elite. Rumours of a bid to host a major international sporting event have been circulating for many years.

Thanks for visiting Cattala, and seeing how diverse and unique this Mediterranean island really is.

  Edited August 31, 2012 by ThomasSimpson  

[emperordaniel 1,281]

Those images are absolutely STUNNING. The mosaics - especially the first one - are almost photorealistic in their appearance.

Also, I see you caught an eagle in the upper right part of your second mosaic. Those are pretty rare for built-up areas of SC4, aren't they?

[Benedict 3,119]

Excellent update as always. Nice to see the urban area contrasted with your trademark agriculture. Great rail lines leading to everywhere - nice to see the two highspeed trains captured in the picture.

[vivapanda 422]

Stunning detail, diversity and guiding story: the last two updates were absolutely amazing!

[ThomasSimpson 466]

emperordaniel: I've certainly not seen an eagle for a long time in my game, so it was great to capture it on camera too.

Benedict: Thank you. Agriculture is something I specialise in, and it's nice to see the contrast with something I'm relatively inexperienced with, which is entirely grown and functioning residential and urban areas. I have wanted to do an oxymoron update for a while now and I thought this was a great opportunity as the Aziens and Lessito storylines are rolled up.

vivapanda: Thanks!

Welcome back, for the last time this year, to Lessito! Our journey around the south east of Cattala is coming to a close today. I go back to school on Wednesday to start my A-Levels, so updates will probably become more infrequent again unfortunately.

So here we are. After many weeks spent travelling along the A6 road from just past San Pietro, we've arrived at the end of our road trip. Marcolla is a small village that once served as the final stopover before truckers and travellers reached Ontano Bridge, after traversing the winding lanes of the old a-road, which you can see below.

Marcolla is surrounded by sprawling fields that in late August give up their bountiful harvests. For days on end, the village is surrounded by combine harvesters and grape harvesters reaping their produce from the land and plowing it back to dirt again. Local children enjoy rides with the farmer, since Lessito's schools having longer summer holidays than other regions to allow for the harvest season.

But Marcolla has been transformed by the construction of the A6 nearby, which was upgraded to a motorway after it was widened in the 1980s for two junctions. The village has two one-way roads linking to both carriageways of the main road, as well as the motorway spur to Ontano Bridge. Now the traffic never stops and the residents are trapped between the busiest stretch of Lessito's main road, the South Coast main line and the old A-road.

As evening descends on the village, it's time to say farewell to our Lessito journey. From here, the A6 splits into two - the motorway, leading south to the island we visited last summer, and the dual carriageway continuing east and then north, to Cape Almae.

Goodnight from Marcolla, goodnight from Lessito and I hope you all had a wonderful summer.

[Benedict 3,119]

Another superb entry in your collection of updates. Good luck with you A-levels.

[ThomasSimpson 466]

Thank you Benedict!

Welcome back to Celeste, the capital of Cattala and the centrepiece of this city journal. Today we're returning to the bustling city and visiting some more new areas that I've built over the past few weeks. For those who don't know or are new to this journal, Cattala is not supposed to be a perfect creation when I update. It's a constantly growing, evolving entity and Celeste is now entirely different to its original form from two years ago.

Back then, I had the idea and name for a university in the city but never got round to building it. Well, here's Celeste Imperial University, in the west of Aziens. Its urban campus is based in this building, next to the M1, but it continues to operate most of its traditional courses in the original campus outside the city. CIU is the leading higher education institution in Cattala, and the oldest as well.

Since the 1990s, the new campus has created a science and technology park on the edge of Aziens in what is known as Imperial Court. The Ministry of Health and leading science and pharmaceuticals are based here.

North of this is the Alder Court Park, the redeveloped home of Cattalian tennis. The ambitious reconstruction occurred during the boom of the 1990s, and is now the main courts of the Royal Celeste Tennis Club. The city of Celeste, the government and Sport Cattala are all supporters of the Atarashima Simlympic Games.

Behind the glossy exterior of modern Celeste, lies a dark secret. For those who didn't live or know about the city two decades ago, there's little sign of the harsh reality of the rapid and ambitious development of the glass-and-steel district of Aziens. But there remains one small hint of what happened in the past.

In the 1990s the grand regeneration of what is now Amosseri Province's financial and economic heartland forced hundreds of small businesses and low-wealth residents out of their homes and estates. The housing boom was clear for all to see, as street after street of older terraced housing was demolished and replaced by line after line of multi-storey apartments. But one group made a stand, and all that remains of old Aziens is the strip of land with small shops, bakeries and a pub penned in by the towers of the boom. The developers are still hungry to seize the land, even now.

Here we see the boundary between Aziens proper and the university campus-technology park. The M1 ends here as it splits off into various a-roads criss-crossing the capital, and you can get a clear glimpse of the entrapment of those who resisted the change in Aziens. It was only through obstructing the developers after they began bulldozing shops and homes behind the remaining buildings that they managed to save their own livelihoods and a High Court appeal protected them from forced eviction.

And now for another contrasting picture. In the last update we saw the differences between modern and rural Cattala, and now the difference within a single city. Celeste began as a castle town by the coast, and the Castello di Celestica was the grand centre of the first King of Cattala's plan to build a capital fit for a national monarch. Little of the original city remains, but medieval houses and the castle itself still stand as tourist attractions.

Next time, we should be looking at the palaces and cathedrals that the Celestine's built using their vast wealth over the 800 years of their rule. Although, we could end up somewhere completely different.

  Edited September 15, 2012 by ThomasSimpson  

[Benedict 3,119]

The tennis stadia are phenomenal - and a nice modern contrast to the Castello.

[ThomasSimpson 466]

It's time to take a pause and overview quite a lot of our journey through central Celeste so far. It's been a big and eventful trip, and we've not really visited the city in any particular order, so perhaps taking stock and reviewing the city from a far would be a good idea.

Aziens is an important crossroads in Cattala, and forms the main gateway to the capital. It's here where the east's railway lines converge before spreading out westwards, and here where the motorway from Jennai meets the city centre a-roads and the link to the motorway to Calora. As such, it's often full of traffic and always busy with travelling Cattalians.

We've already seen in the past how Cattala is a diverse and often conflicting country. The capital is no different, as this mosaic highlights. From the old to the new, the city is complete with it all.

However there's one key part of the city we haven't really explored. We've seen the old, and seen the modern, but we've only seen a glimpse of the ancient and the last time we visited the power base of the monarchy, Church and state was back in the original version of this city. So... guess where we're heading next?

Thank you for all your support this summer, and for all those of you who (I discovered recently) follow the journal, rate the updates and have helped me to develop and grow Cattala into what it is today.