Retro's Building My First Region: Limistéar

[That Retro Guy 321]

When I returned to SimTropolis, @Cyclone Boom welcomed me back with this:

Quote

I remember your Prepping my First Region thread well, which you're most welcome to continue posting inside if you'd like. Or open new topics if wanting to ask anything specifically. You might even be ready to open a "Building my First Region" thread, which precludes the "Playing my First Region" one later on.

Well, now that I (finally) have a map, I figured now is as good as time as any to start the "Building my First Region" thread. 

Firstly, here's the Region map:

Secondly, for those of you that haven't been following my journey to start my first Region, allow me to explain the Region name:  Limistéar

According to Google Translate, Limistéar is the Irish word for Region (or Area).

As you can see, there are only 3 cities in my first Region.  I was a bit intimidated looking at the size of the Regions included with the game so I created a (much) smaller Region.

The cities of Limerick and Killarney will be Farming Communities whilst Dublin will (hopefully) be a Metropolis with an Airport, Seaport, etc. with some farms on the outskirts.

Limerick and Killarney might have a Landing Strip each . . . I haven't decided yet.

So with the help of my beloved Paint Shop Pro 5 (PSP5), I started planning my Region:

The purple trapezium is the planned route for the Passenger Train with the small rectangles with the P in it will be the Station.

The red triangle is the planned route for the Freight Train with the small rectangles with the F in it will be the Station.

The yellow circles are the proposed City Centers (or is it City Centres) with the Commercial Business District (CBD).

It's getting really late here (about 2AM), so I'll finish up by showing you the plan for Limerick (Killarney will be the same but I haven't made the image yet).

Anyways, here's the proposed Limerick:

The green circles with the Vs are the Farming Villages that (obviously) will be connected by streets.  I'm going for a good old-fashioned quaint Farming Community feel here.

There might be too many green circles.  It all depends on how big I make the Villages.

Any and all comments and suggestions are (as always) greatly appreciated. 

 

[CorinaMarie 29,852]

12 hours ago, That Retro Guy said:

I'm going for a good old-fashioned quaint Farming Community feel here.

/me approves of this plan.

[That Retro Guy 321]

I'll post the pic again so no one has to keep scrolling up and down to look at it.

I'm thinking of starting near the river inside the circle near the Freight Station.  I'm also thinking that all Industry (not counting the farms, of course) will be placed along the Rail. 

I also realized earlier today that the Passenger Train isn't what I think it is.  In-game, all Passenger Trains do is help the SIms commute to their jobs while in Real Life, they also let people travel from city to city.  Think AmTrak.  (I thought AmTrak went out of business a while ago but evidently, they're still in business).

So Limerick and Killarney will not have a Passenger Train set-up.  Dublin will, of course, with multiple Stations around the City for commuting goodness.

In regards to the size of the circle representing the CBD, is that about the right size for a Medium-sized city or is it too big?

[CorinaMarie 29,852]

21 hours ago, That Retro Guy said:

In-game, all Passenger Trains do is help the SIms commute to their jobs while in Real Life, they also let people travel from city to city.

I use passenger trains to move Sims from one city tile to the other. Recently, I've even been making that the only option for a lot of mine. (Think 1876 rural midwest.)

 

21 hours ago, That Retro Guy said:

In regards to the size of the circle representing the CBD, is that about the right size for a Medium-sized city or is it too big?

Looks good to me. You can start small while reserving the amount of space you believe it'll need and then expand into the surrounding farm land just like happens in the real world.

[RobertLM78 1,598]

Hehehe - ainmnecha go deas...!   Ba cheart dhuit mo réigiún a fheiceáil agus is Luimneach ainm amháin acu freisin.

[RobertLM78 1,598]

On 4/8/2021 at 3:26 PM, That Retro Guy said:

In-game, all Passenger Trains do is help the SIms commute to their jobs while in Real Life, they also let people travel from city to city.

Somehow I missed this... actually sims will commute from city to city with passenger rail - see the screenshot below:

All commuting to the city next door - of course, this is just an extension of that city, but that's a game  limitation. 

[That Retro Guy 321]

7 hours ago, RobertLM78 said:

Hehehe - ainmnecha go deas...!   Ba cheart dhuit mo réigiún a fheiceáil agus is Luimneach ainm amháin acu freisin.

Which means . . . ?

[RobertLM78 1,598]

28 minutes ago, That Retro Guy said:

Which means . . . ?

Google translate is always a click away --- while it isn't the best with Irish, i strive to word sentences in such a way that it should be able to handle it .... (even with the grammatical errors - intentional or not )

So, cutting to the chase, it translates to "Nice names!  You should see my region, and Limerick is one of their names too."
(there was an accidental disagreement of plurality there in the adjective in the first part- like if i said "las casas buena" in Spanish (instead of "buenas") and the auxiliary verb (should) could probably be regarded as correct, albeit strange way of constructing it -- again, i sometimes form my sentences in Irish carefully like that if there is a good chance readers will need to refer to it -- technically it should be "Ba cheart dhuit feiceáil mo réigiún." but google translate seemed to have trouble with it as i always check it in these cases)

Anyways... your preliminaries are looking interesting.  I hope you keep us informed of it's growth.

 

[That Retro Guy 321]

Sorry that I haven't posted in a bit, but (once again) real life has gotten a bit hectic.

Let's recap:

Here is my Region, Limistéar:

 

Here's the proposed layout for Limerick.  Killarney will be somewhat similar.

Here's the legend:

• 1.  The Farming Villages are represented by the green circles with the V in them.
• 2.  The Commercial Business District is represented by the big yellow circle with the CBD in it.
• 3.  The Landing Strip is easily identifiable by the gray rectangle with the words Landing Strip in it.
• 4.  The Freight Train Line is in red.  The Station is the square with the F in it; the Tracks are indicated by the red lines.
• 5.  The Passenger Train Line is in purple.  The Station is the square with the P in it (Eww!); the Tracks are indicated by the purple lines.

Each Farming Village will consist of 3 - 4 Farms (known as a Co-op) and be self-sufficient in terms of power and water.

I haven't decided yet on whether or not Limerick and Killarney will have Landing Strips.

The Freight Station may have to be moved a bit south to allow the track to curve (safely) easterly towards Dublin before crossing the river.

After much consideration, I have decided to keep the Passenger Line.

I'll be starting near where the red 'F' box (currently) is.

Question:

How much of the land should I zone to start with?

 

[RobertLM78 1,598]

11 minutes ago, That Retro Guy said:

Question:

How much of the land should I zone to start with?

Depends on your initial goals.  You should probably start with a somewhat generous IA (Industrial Agricultural).

[CorinaMarie 29,852]

4 hours ago, That Retro Guy said:

How much of the land should I zone to start with?

I would grow each of your individual farm villages one by one first. This'll let you build up population and increase demand for your later CBD. I'd even go so far as to say create all the villages in all three city tiles so that the demand info can be propagated thru the neighborhood connections (road or rail) so that all three tiles will share the same overall demand.

Another thing to consider is how do you plan to get the high customer count (traffic noise) for the centralized commercial? And are you happy with three to five story buildings as the tallest in the CBD? As a rough guess, I believe stage 4 or 5 might be the most you'll have grow for this size region considering the overall low population you'll get from the total of your farming villages.

 

Now, one thing I noticed is your villages (if all made the same size as your original, final design) will be a bit too wide to fit seven of them from east to west in that medium sized tile. Here's your pic from the other thread which I've annotated with dimensions:

 

A medium city tile is 128 x 128 cells. For north to south you've got about 4 of them in your overview layout. That will work as 4 x 25 = 100 and 128 - 100 = 28. Then dividing the remainder of 28 by 3 means you can have roughly 9 cells gap between the 4 villages.

However, for the east to west axis I believe you will run out of room. ~7 x 19 = 133 which is more than 128 and then leaves no room at all for any gaps between the villages. (Actually, it's a slightly negative count for said gaps.)

Ofc, the villages can be made of varying sizes to accommodate this or you could go six villages wide with alternating 2 and 3 cells gap between them.