The Principality of Gabtoria (Entry 27: Complex Roads are Complex!)

[89James89 1,169]

Replies:

 

 

michea95l: Thanks, I'm glad you like it and the map is one I made for myself (it's not released though sorry. You can check out my mapping workshop though where there maybe maps that you also like the look of. Or you can just request one yourself)

 

 

Carnivorous: Thanks glad your enjoying the entry and my writing. Got to try and keep you guys entertained somehow!

 

 

Ultimate727: Yer I know. Silly fire worshipping Pagans (must have been a fairly intense fire to set alight to a stone building mind you).

 

 

 

 

 Entry 22: Hard to Port!

 

 

Right Crown Prince James here and as you can all probably tell this entry has a rather singular focus (or at least it's meant too) and that is on our brand new port!

 

Yup, you read that right, were moving up in the trading world!

 

So anyway lets get right into it shall?

 

Firstly we need to choose a place to actually build the port. Luckily there is a rather nice cove just next tot he Gabtoria Sands Industrial Estate (handy huh, almost like we may have planned it). Initially we did have a bit of resentment form the locals in regard to removing the beach but hey, money and some gentle persuasion saw to that.

 

 

Right with the area chosen it was time to do some serious digging (on account of the fact that the beach itself was fairly steep and therefore useless for a actual port as it was).

 

Several months and a huge amount of later and we have this huge hole cut out of the landscape (OOC: Seriously this cost me like £1million in terraforming lol). Luckily, environmentalists make up a rather small amount of the Gabtorian population.

 

 

Next up we have the actual ports installed and the railway track brought down to the area. Some serious progress is being made at this point and eventually the area looked like this.

 

 

Success!

 

Now with the actual port made it was time to add some more industrial in Gabtoria Sands to actually make use of the new port.

 

----------------------------------------------------------------------------

 

 

-Breaking News!-

 

Half of Gabtoria today was struck with a random flu that seemed to kill off a large part of the population and cause widespread panic!

 

Seen below is a statistical overview of what areas were affected by the virus!

 

 

In light of this tragedy we have a fun game for all you viewers!

See if you can find anywhere not affected by the virus!

 

(OOC: Remember kids, when doing large projects keep a eye on your actual city or things like this happen!)

 

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This however caused some traffic issues. What with the new industrial traffic trying to use the port from around the city rather than travelling to the Prenston Freight Station this interchange (which was a bit of a bodge job in the first place) was getting a bit overwhelmed.

 

So a upgrade here was in order and pretty quickly if we wanted the port to not grind to a halt and be a complete waste of money. So, let me introduce you to this (probably even more bodged) interchange. I'm not really sure what Henry was thinking with this but it works pretty well so we'll just roll with it.

 

Also speaking of traffic issues. With the new port and its rail transfer being used to ship stuff tot Prenston Freight Station from the new port we also had issues with traffic in Prenston. (dammit knock-on effects!) As such the traffic flow has been improved with the implementation of a skybridge thing.

 

Right well that's all the improvements out of the way le.....

 

What do you mean we need to change the actual ports layout due to crippling tailbacks?

 

For the love of ports!

 

Fine, whatever, give me what I need to sign to fix it.

 

-Several months later-

 

Right, as you can see we've had to expand the port and add a rather dubious highway connection to relieve the traffic congestion. Oh well at least everything is working now!

 

Finally to end this rather large entry of port shenanigans and the problems it caused here's our latest low cost housing estate, this time in Nielton Heights where as you can see in the picture after the low cost housing, it seems they've built a new Orthodox church there for people to worship in!

 

 

 

 

Anyway that's all for today. Join me next time where we'll take a look at the next brilliant scheme here in Gabtoria!

 

Till then

 

Crown Prince James

 

(OOC: There we go, hope you all like my overly expensive and rather problematic port! Lets hope it'll be worth it in the long run.

 

Cheers

 

James)

 

=http://info.flagcounter.com/QTSG]

[Dazzyls 576]

Harbour is looking great. Overpasses are looking cool. Little town is looking awesome!

Great update, as always!

[NielsC007 499]

Looking good James!

[wallacet 336]

I really like that industrial sector. Keep up the good work my friend!

[Sanshy6544 42]

Great stuff man. As usual I had a lot of pleasure to watch your update.

Your cities remind me Hanoi, growing a bit randomly :-)

[mutton noir 170]

Nice narrative driving your city. The port area is kinda cool. Enjoying your series

[BLANKBLANK 4,414]

Great industrial areas and that small port was well designed. The park area in the last picture is really cool to- I see you have downloaded the new ploppable brick walls!

[Carnivorus 19]

Awesome update again

I like how you built that port and how you described the following problems with traffic. I always fall into similar problems when I develop a new area just because I don't think of traffic stacking up unless it's too late

Looking forward to hear about how it develops in Gabtoria.

[89James89 1,169]

Replies:

 

 

In spoilers!

 

Ultimate727: Thanks glad you liked all parts of the entry! I had fun building the low wealth housing areas and the port!

 

 

NiellsC007: Thanks, glad your enjoying it!

 

 

wallacet: Thanks, glad you liked the industrial sector, screw the environment we've got to make money some how!

 

 

Sansha: Thanks! I'm a great believer in random being the best way to design anything. Just let your mind wander and see what comes out of it!

 

 

mutton noir: Thanks, though I would say it was the other way around in that the city growth narrates the narrative as I don't really plan anything I just go with the flow and fix issues as they arise!

 

 

Ln X: Thanks though the port wasn't as well designed as I thought it was as you can see in this entry, it needed a slight tweak. As for the walls, I have no idea, It just came with the church as far as I'm aware.

 

 

Carnivorus: Thanks and yes traffic issues are always fun to figure out how to deal with, Can be a pain in the ass at times but is rewarding in the end when it all finally comes together!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Entry 23: And we thought death waves were bad!

 

 

Well as you can probably tell from the title this entry isn't exactly going to be a bed of roses for us. Apparently death waves have a much meaner cousin!

 

Read on to find out more!

 

Collapsing infrastructure: A happy bedtime story!

 

Well it all started off well enough. Our engineers had recently decided that being able to build tunnels was a useful feature and had wasted no time in improving the roads with them. Below you can see some lovely images of these new tunnels in use firstly by the new port (which allows people to leave the industrial area without having to actually go through the port.) and the second on the entrance into the centre of Gabtoria to help relieve traffic that was building up.

 

 

 

Anyway, this was all lovely and the Gabtorian's all rejoiced.

 

…..........

….

..

 

Well ok, it would be safe to say that the Gabtorians that were left rejoiced.

 

Unfortunately, this is what the latest reports were showing us.

 

Well....... ummmmm. ….....Yer I don't even know......

 

Apparently taking a closer look at the situation reveals that the culprit is everyone suddenly realising that there land value apparently isn't high enough to actually warrant the upkeep of their homes.

 

Apparently this also recently become a big deal (and by recently I mean overnight) as about a third of our population has abandoned us.

 

Also as you can see in the above image this has led to a rather large drop in our income. As it was I'd rather luckily been a bit frugal with the treasury and we still had quite a stash of cash to fall back on as our city and economy basically collapsed in on itself.

 

Several months later and we were beginning to look like a certain city in the US.

 

 

Also I have no idea what happened to it but apparently at some point my house disappeared along with a lot of the parks that were outside it.

 

 

Luckily though, we still had the money to replace my house and its grounds/city park (screw the whole money loss thing, I have to live somewhere).

 

 

Anyway, safe and sound in my rebuilt palace it was time to actually try and sort this thing out. Apparently though although the mass abandonment had slowed down it had created even less desirable places to live as everywhere was abandoned.

 

As such we had to take drastic action and demolish every abandoned building in the city.

 

 

As you can see, we weren't kidding when we said we were gutting everything. Ln'xham (seen above) was one of the better preserved areas too. On the plus side though this has provided tonnes of reclaimable resources to continue our low cost housing projects (which amazingly enough lived perfectly happily in the city through this whole crisis. In fact there were even some new ones built, some which had some rather familiar looking red bricks used in them!)

 

Please note: At this point I would also like to apologise for the several hundred citizens that arrived home from work to find out that we may have accidentally signed a demolition permit on their perfectly good dwelling. My bad!

 

Anyway with the city gutted, our population started to head back up as cheap land became available. This apparently also encouraged companies to to move back into the area as shown by the tallest building in the city (and nation) being built in the recent boom after the collapse.

 

 

This boom came just at the right time as well as we were beginning to look a little light on cash as you can see in the next image which, also shows some obviously warranted and expensive changes to the port that were carried out in this cash tight times (why the hell do I not read planning propositions?). You can also see our attempt at drawing people back to the city in the background but more on that in the future.

 

 

Anyway with this all done and the city recovering again it was time to take a look at the cost of it all.

 

Taking into account the stupid amount spent on the port changes (someone's getting fired for even subjecting the planning proposal for that!) and the fixes we had to do in some places.

The total cost of the whole city wide collapse was around 3.5million.

 

Ouch.

 

Anyway with it recovering again I think I need to take another holiday to relax.

 

Till next time

 

Crown Prince James

 

 

(OOC: Ok so I have no idea what the hell happened here to be honest. Basically I updated the game with the official patch, opened up the city and the land value on most residential buildings went through the floor and took ages to recover.

 

I seriously did think at one point that the city was finished and we'd have to start again or something, but luckily it seems to have recovered. The only thing I could think of that might have caused it is that it seems that when the game updates, it deletes a number of custom parks that I had built around the city.

 

All in all though I think that it's the only issue that I'm having with the update. All of the mods seem to be working fine (including traffic++ that I know some people were having issues with) and there didn't seem to be any menu lag at all.

 

As such (and added to the fact that now Gabtoria is filled with low level residents again which was the idea all along), with the tunnels added it seems to have been worth the hassle to have the update features.

 

Anyway with you all probably knackered form having to read this text wall I'll leave you to have a look at the pictures.

 

Hope you all enjoyed the crisis!

 

Cheers

 

James)

 

 

[Carnivorus 19]

Interesting update. Nice to read as usual

I find it interesting because I did run into similar problems with low land value. Even in my newest european themed city I run into that issue after a while. It feels like my cims are arguing very early about land value, pushing me to plop parks or play around with taxes and policies.

The other interesting part is, that right after doing something against those arguments (plop a tenniscourt or something) my RCI meters go through the roof and suddenly I don't know where to start plopping new zones for the new demand.

 

Nonetheless glad to see that you managed through that crisis (again)

Looking forward to your next developments.

[Paulobergonci 673]

that region view is stunning!!

[Benedict 3,119]

Congratulations, your CJ was number one on Ben's Top Ten for the week ending May 21.

[Mr. Bones 14]

How do people like you make these amazing cities?

[lew1984 231]

Aerial shot of your city shows an amazing layout. I really like it :-)

[89James89 1,169]

Replies:

 

First off a big thanks to everyone who's commented and viewed this CJ. We managed to make it to number one on the BTT so yay!

Anyway replies:

 

 

Carnivorus: Glad your enjoying it and yes it seems I have that exact issue at the moment with it having plummeted and now the demand is sky high. Still as your about to see I took advantage of it!

 

 

Paulobergonci: Thanks, glad your enjoying the overview growth as we progress!

 

 

Benedict: Yay, thanks for the good news!

 

 

CloudyDaTroll: I have no idea, just time and patience. I literally planned very little while building this so that proves that planning doesn't have to be meticulous. Just have fun playing and eventually it'll mould into a lovely city.

 

 

lew1984: Thanks, glad your like the layout. It has its flaws but seems to work good enough!

 

--------------------------------------------------

 

 

 

 

 

 Entry 24: Top floor please!

 

Right then, Prince James back again this time with a much more positive entry for you all! This time without any imminent social, financial and (probably somehow) environmental collapse!

 

Instead today, we'll focus on how the newest part of the city has quickly risen (literally) to be the place to be in Gabtoria.

 

Anyway lets actually start showing you what I'm on about rather than continue to randomly sprout phrases. First off you may (or may not, it was a couple of days ago) remember that I had shown a picture that had what looked like the beginning of a CBD in the background in the last entry (the one with the port in it in case anyone is confused right now). Well this is the how the area looked at that point in time.

 

 

As you can probably tell this area was a rather desperate attempt to bring some people back into the area while we had our massive land value disaster. Well rather luckily, it would seem that either the businesses situated here bought the land just before the crash happened and decided to stay on in the hope that it would recover, or that they were just stupid and oblivious to the fact that the country and city may well have been about to go the way of the Dodo.

 

Either way we ended up with this nice area of shops and offices on the cliffs and coastline of the Gabtorian Bay (you can see the port in the background and a ship taking lumber goods out of the country).

 

Now when the land value disaster suddenly recovered and people actually wanted to move to the city again, it was safe to say that this area became rather sought after in terms of location and as such many of the businesses took advantage of this and either sold up at a very nice profit, or rebuilt with larger premises.

 

As you can see in the above image, higher density buildings started to pop up for both residential and commercial use, beginning to give Gabtoria an actual downtown area. Meanwhile, I decided that we needed some recreational areas in all this urban environment so bulldozed some commercial buildings (I'm sure they were going out of business anyway) and built this park.

 

As you can see this wasn't a half bad idea (unless of course you owned one the buildings that I demolished, in which case you might be a bit annoyed at this point.

 

Did we even give them some sort of financial compensation?

 

No, and we conveniently forgot to retain their contact details?

 

Oppps.

 

Oh well I'm the Crown Prince, I'm sure they'll forgive me at some point!)

 

Also of note is that people started seeing the benefit of some greenery around them and apparently pine trees in the middle of the blocks became a thing. Ah well as long as their all happy and paying taxes who really cares.

 

 

Now, as exciting as all this upwards growth is, it would be unfair to ignore what is happening in the rest of the city. We also apparently found the people who's businesses we may have ruined so we can pop in and see how their doing!

 

 

 

See told you they would be enjoying their lives in the ever growing affordable housing projects!

 

Nothing like a good old mobile home and it even looks like they've begun to invest in some neighbourhood tree planting. Bonus!

 

Also of note is increased traffic issues that still keep emerging, this time on the Prenston Industrial State highway and the Prenston Interchange, where as you can see from the following photo's, The ever growing, widening and convoluted Prenston Interchange still has nothing on the the confusion and general screw up that is the entrance to the actual industrial estate.

 

 

 

Oh well at some point I'm sure we'll probably have to sort this thing out properly but for now the tailbacks have cleared so its all good.

 

And with that lovely news and wanting to leave this entry on a actual high rather than pushing my luck until we nose dive again, here are a couple of random images of our growing city showing both the narrow, hemmed in streets that are becoming the norm in our downtown and a sweeping panoramic of it.

 

 

 

Anyway, that's all for this happy, positive entry so join us next time where hopefully it'll continue!

 

Till then

 

Crown Prince James

 

(OOC: So yer, I've decided to add some height to the city rather and give it a actual centre. Not sure if it's actually got the height to achieve that goal yet but were getting there.

 

Cheers

 

James)

 

 

=http://info.flagcounter.com/QTSG]

 

[Benedict 3,119]

Great continuation.

[wallacet 336]

That's a serious interchange. Looks fantastic though.

[Sanshy6544 42]

The interchange is impressive and nice looking man.... I love this chaotic feeling of your city growing a bit randomly on those dirty roads haha.

[89James89 1,169]

Replies:

 

 

Benedict: Thanks, glad your enjoying the city growth!

 

 

wallacet: Thanks, it's getting a bit complicated but hey, I'm sure there's roadsigns and all that, well their might be, actually I'm not sure. Oh well.

 

 

Sansha: Thanks, glad your enjoying the city and it's chaotic growth. Dirty roads ftw!

 

 

 

 

 

 Entry 25: Of course you can use the National Treasury!

 

 

Right lets see.

 

Remember Nomyton?

 

Well neither does anyone's else (unless you live there though even that's not the case sometimes).

 

Well anyway, the thing is my wife is the Mayor and, while she's always been happy to have the title hasn't exactly done much in the way of mayoring over the years. As such we'd pretty much forgotten about the small town on the outskirts of the city, shown here to jog everyone's memory.

 

 

 

Anyway with all the growth that's going on around the city it's only fair I suppose that some of the more whiny people in Nomyton were a bit put out that while the rest of the city is receiving high rises and monuments they hadn't received anything in, well, ever besides it's initial settlement.

 

Now this complaining soon begun to give the mayor of the town a bad name which, as you can imagine my wife wasn't best pleased with. So, rather stupidly on my behalf granted, I gave her access to the national treasury to try and improve the town a bit (or at least shut them up) and let her get on with it.

 

This is how things went

 

First up was the rail network that used to have a rather speed denying bend in it and was generally slowing down the trains a bit too much (OOC: Basically this used was the track following the edge of a tile). Needless to say this was changed first, with the track now following a more direct route.

 

Below you can see the towns first attempt at creating some local landmarks in the form of the old railway bridge, now left to ummm, be observed by rail enthusiasts.

 

Anyway, with the only chnegs I wanted to make out of the way I left Emilia to it and did some political visits to various countries (all were much needed I assure you).

 

Upon returning however it would seem that Nomyton has changed somewhat.

 

First up is this whole freight and passenger station thing. Yup folks, apparently a small town of a few thousand people needs a rail and a freight station. Not at all a waste of money, not to mention the large bridge that was needed to reroute the freight trains.

 

Anyway after some words with my wife where I kindly suggested she didn't build huge infrastructure projects that her town didn't really need I was surprised to return a few months later to find out that she'd built a rather large church and a shopping precinct that contained a rather large amount of high end women's clothes shops (which she obviously swear she had nothing to do with).

 

Ah well at least it's bringing more people into the area so tax income is going up.

 

Anyway this is as far as my wife's project has got so far.

 

 

 

Now with promises that she won't continue to build extravagant things with the tax payers money, we'll return to Nomyton next time to have a look at any further changes (plus I'm feeling lazy so happy to let her do some of the work and it keeps her quiet).

 

 

Also in completely, but not entirely unrelated news we have replaced the nations trains with our own Gabtoria owned ones (the old ones were either coming into the city from Norway or loaned from them so you'll still probably see a few of them around). These are old underground rolling stock that we've managed to acquire from various cities and re-purpose for our use.

 

In the following photo, you can see both of the passenger rolling stock you can now find Gabtoria.

 

We've alos replaced the bus stock with our own owned ones but I forgot to take a photo of them. I do however have these completely random photos that I've no idea why I've taken it to make up for it!

 

 

 

 

And finally a overview of the growing city, you can see the new downtown area and the growing Nomyton as well as the various areas that have grown since the last overview was shown.

 

Anyway that's it for today's entry.

 

Hope you all enjoyed!

 

Crown Prince James

 

(OOC: Just to let you know I didn't actually let my wife play the game. Basically I wanted a back story to explain why I may have done some things that didn't really make much sense like the stations (hey there's a track running through the town, may as well have a station, though it did get a bit out of hand) and also the fact that due to the way the town has the industry in the middle of it, it was never going to be the most conventional part of the city.

 

Cheers

 

James)

 

 

 

[_marsh_ 1,118]

Love your shots. Your city has a very natural feel to it, good job.

[Mr_Maison 2,426]

Great looking city! It have a very industrial and progressive feel to it. Kinda like the old Detroit but with more exports.

[charlesnew 262]

Wow! What a great city!

[Carnivorus 19]

One week vacation and so much to see Awesome work there!
You did exactly the same I experienced with that extreme demand issue after land value handling. Seems to be a 'feature' that came with the last major update

 

Looking forward to your next developments.

[Benedict 3,119]

Congratulations, your CJ is number one on BTT this week.

[89James89 1,169]

Replies:

_marsh_: Thanks, glad you like it and think it looks natural. 

Mr_Maison: Thanks and yay, a successful Detroit (I'm still not entirely sure this is a compliment lol ).

charlesnew: Thanks, glad you like it!

Carnivorous: Welcome back and I hope you enjoyed your holiday! Yer, it does seem to be linked to the update, still it made for some interesting journal entries and given that that was the only bug I seemed to experience from the new update, I'm not going to moan too much.

Benedict: Yay thanks everyone for your continued interest in the Journal!

 

 Entry 26: Mayor in training!

 

Right lets see, last time we left off Nomyton was quickly becoming its own centre of trade and commerce (albeit in a small form) as my wife decided to pretty much try and give her citizens everything they wanted.

 

Well this entry isn't any different. Basically while my treasurer looks on in slight horror, my wife has continued to try and provide her little piece of Gabtoria with everything it could possibly want.

New from last time is this marvellous (though slightly smaller) hospital, annoying the mayor of Nielton as his area has almost four times the people and has to rely on local clinics, still at least they now have a choice when they do need a hospital between this one and the Central Gabtoria one.

 

The next new addition is, surprisingly enough, the largest single shopping structure in the whole city. Yet my shopoholic wife has given her town the largest shopping centre in the entire city. Figures.

 

Oh well at least that should keep her happy, or it would have, if she'd actually realised before hand that she was building her favourite place in the entire city on the other side of the city to our actual home.

 

And no were not moving it.

 

Silly woman.

 

Still, despite her lack of any sort of organisational and management skill the centre of the town does look pretty nice with its church and shops.

 

Hell even the freight yard makes for some nice photos (if you like trains or infrastructure anyway).

 

However despite this there were some rather major flaws in her plans this below being one of them, what with the industry so close to everything else in the town (and it's not like its the not so polluting forestry industry either).

 

Anyway the other major issue will have to wait for next entry as my wife has just informed me that she's bored of being the mayor and has swapped the national treasury credit card for my personnal one and is going shopping...

 

great.....

 

Anyway here's a overview of the growing town (where you may be able to figure out what the next big issue might be) for you to all look at while I go and find Harry.

 

I may need his help.

 

Till then
 

Crown Prince James

 

=http://info.flagcounter.com/QTSG][/URL]

[megasander 1]

I enjoyed reading your journey. Thank you for sharing your experiences, I look forward to the future of your region!

[Titanicbuff 1,262]

Man- game is impressive. Very,very impressive

 

[89James89 1,169]

Replies:

megasander: Glad you enjoyed it and no problem for sharing the experiences. I'm just glad people enjoy me sharing them!

Titanicbuff: Yup, I like this game a lot too!

 

 

 Entry 27: Comples roads are complex

 

Hey guys and welcome back to Gabtoria. Today were going to try and fix the screw up that is my wives attempts at mayoring.

 

Namely in the way that she seemed to completely ignore any part of the job that she didn't have a major interest in which happened to include traffic which, as you can imagine led to a few issues like this.

 

Yup, turns out that having a single road into a rapidly expanding town isn't such a good idea. Still, traffic issues aren't exactly uncommon in Gabtoria so I'll just let them deal with it for a bit while I go and find Harry and pester him till he comes up with a solution!

 

 

Fast forward several weeks and Harry has a plan (or at least he says he has, he may just be bluffing it to try and stop me pestering him).

 

N ow luckily we had this bit of land that we hadn't filled in at the top of the town, rather handily next to Prenston Junction. Apologising to the people who were expecting houses to built here for them we quickly got to work laying some roads in preparation for our solution.

Fast forward some more time and we've made a start on the solution, namely turni

ng the top T-junction on the Prenston Interchange into a stack junction via some questionable additional roads.

 

Another couple of months on we have this. A functional and effective traffic relief for the bottom Nomyton junction!

 

Also, as a side note. Remember we mentioned that people complained about us building a huge road on the land they'd expected us to build them a house on?

 

Well we still managed to come up with some housing solutions for them! Not sure how fond of them they are though but were not that bothered, it's a home isn't it?

 

Anyway with the new expansions to the interchange done lets take a look at how it currently looks from above.

 

Well it's definitely not getting any less confusing, so many roads going everywhere. Still it works so let's not mess it up trying to tinker with it. As you might also notice, we gave them some trees to hopefully mask some of the noise of the road. No idea if its worked I've had any mail from that neighbourhood redirect to a shipping container in Gabtoria Harbour.

 

Anyway finally for today, here we have a overview of Nomyton as it stands pretty much completed as of now with much less traffic issues than several months ago.

 

No idea what we'll be looking at next time but hope this suffices for now.

 

Till then.

 

Crown Prince James

 

=http://info.flagcounter.com/QTSG][/URL]

[Carnivorus 19]

Very nice handled That intersection is really huge, but well planned.

Nice work there!

[wallacet 336]

I'd be interested in seeing an underground view as to where all those tunnels go...if you're anything like me, topside looks good, but once you dive down...it's a road nightmare