Baro

Cool! Looks like I wasn't the only one who ran out of room before building an airport and had to make a little island. I'm not so good with the mayor mode terrain tools as oposed to the god mode ones, so my island isn't exactly as square as it'd like.... So many highways and avenues, am I the only one without them?? Are you all building them for looks, or are you road capacities just not up to snuff for your traffic?

I was feeling a little bit bad about the size of my city, but some of you guys have a TON of money laying around, and expensive highways. If you turned that money into zones, could easilly have 200,000+. Good, so I didn't do anything wrong.

Hmmm, most money wins eh? Sounds like a bit more of a complex system, and not exactly condusive to teamwork. I would not be against having a set cost for expansion, but I really am not sure I like the idea of the bidding. I guess it's realistic in a way, but would make money far too important. Who ever had the biggest most money-making city could by the most land, at the moment that's ME and I'm against it. What about the poor farming community who wants more land to build farms? it just seems too competitive, too much about money. Maybe use bidding to settle deadlocked community votes? It seems with all the things TJD is doing, having to add in and take out money from our cities, even using a cool bank mod, would just add some unnessisary work and add too much power to the rich. {edit} Ah, posted before reading the above. That sounds a bit better. We're just tossing out ideas we could better discuss at the meeting.

I've been speaking to my neighbours, but still need to get in contact with who ever nealos is (still active in ucs?) on a few subjects directly related to our northern area of this great region. The first item is the issue of players expanding their borders. In a region of this size I seriously doubt we'll ever have enough active players to fill every single tile in the map, nor would I think a game with that many players run anywhere close to 'smooth'. Talking to the facilitator of this region sharing project on this subject I was told to bring it up to the community. How should players expanding onto new maps be handled? Obviously we need some rules in regard to this. Simply saying 'never' or 'grab what ever you can' just won't work. One option would be to have a huge cumbersom vote where every player must approve anyone's expansion with a majority of the votes. This of course would need a lot of organisation with players constantly bugging eachother 'vote yes for my new land!!' and it would also put a lot of power over very specific local issues in the hands of pretty much unrelated people. For example, I want to expand north and build a farming city. At the end of the turn I would present my case and the players would vote on the subject. This allows everyone's voice to be heard, but it would have a downside if my neighbour, Cjah, was very much against it and wanted the land him self. Really, the issue is between him and me since we are the only adjacent people, but he could be put at a disadvantage and have the land taken because totally unrelated people on the other side of the region voted yes. Another option, one I favour and it seems so do the neighbours in my region I've brainstormed with would be to direct this matter to regional authorities. Meaning if you wanted to expand, the people affected by the expansion (ie the people adjancent to it) would discuss and come to a desision on the matter. This would also help set up little mini-regions of clustered players that better work together towards a goal of their local portion of the region. We could even make up little names for our states or what not, fun! For example, I wanted to expand north and build a farming community to better feed my neighbouring cities. So, I speak to my neighbours, the people adjancent to the issue, and they all support it except one. We make an agreement to reserve another section of land for the detractors future expansion and he agrees to allow mine. Local government and teamwork in action! And of course there's the last option, and the less fun or democratic, would be to just have no formal rules for this matter and leave it up to the whim of our hardworking host. Obviously in any solution, TJD would have a sort of veto or the last say, as this is his game after all. But I just feel that this game is such an opportunity for teamwork, dialoge, flexibility and that this particular issue of land expansion would be best handled in a local and democratic fashon. So, what do you think, Mayors of Neptune Bay?

Here's the latest shot of Neus Baronia on year 46. We're ALMOST at 200,000 people but I want to keep the number of towers under control, don't want a forest, going for something more realisitc I supose. And of course the higher the pop, the slower it all runs. Approaching year 50, other than cosmetic detail, the overall city is 'done' in the eyes of the mayor.

As a life long plopper, skyscrapers were always something I simply and easilly 'bought' with my demand bar. Demand high enough? Just plop down a couple towers exactly where I want. Playing this has given me a new appreciation for natural growth, and how damn hard it is to get a decent skyline. So, I release to you, the first skyscrapers, the first true 'downtown' commercial skyline in neptune bay. 160,000 people 85,000 commerical jobs 35,000 industrial jobs

My word, how can your governments afford these massive expensive highways and bridges when there are people in your cities not at maximum education or health! Surely the needs of the people come before such useless things as a highway in this stage of development. Neus Baronia has built only basic roads and buses and at 150,000 citizens, we have no transportation problems at all. Highways.. such ugly things, I seriously doubt we will ever build such wastes of taxpayer's energy in Neus Baronia. I would also enjoy speaking with ambasadors to the city states that border Neus Baronia (cities 13 and 15). We have made a single road conection to each of our neighbours, we hope this small construction does not violate any treaties or your sovreignty. We are hoping to perhaps construct a tri city monorail so that our two small but proud neighbouring cities may better travel. We have perhaps the largest population and economy in the region with ridiculous demand for industry and commerical services and would enjoy access to your markets, as I'm sure you both would enjoy access to ours. Thank you, President Baro, Neus Baronia Socialist Party

Thanks to the new 20% industry tax which has not caused a single industry to leave our paradise, the government has gone on a spending spree! The 4 new hospitals have been built and the total health and education budget has more than trippled! Thanks to all this new infrastructure, the population of Neus Baronia has swelled to over 150,000 citizens. More and more towers are going up, over 2/3 of them comfortable middle class housing unlike the massive slums of other cities in the region. The city's economy is growing so quickly and taxes outstripping costs by such an amount the government is actually begining to panic and many government workers have begun to complain that it is hard working as much space previously used as office or storrage is now filled with loose money, dumped by the bucketload by confused civil servants. Perhaps a new giant landmark to celebrate the city's wealth shall be built .

Fernsehturm built in Neus Baronia! To celebrate the city reaching 100,000 population the Socialist Party of the city-state of Neus Baronia has constructed a huge spire near the new stadium as a symbol of the city's vertical progress. Although the Fernsehturm is an impressive tower, the true stars of the area are the Talin Tower sweets and Brock funishings, perhaps some of the only commerical buildings of this size built in the entire region. Huge housing developments such as Zubeckers Highrise now dominate the skyline and have views of the sprawling high-tech industrial parks that surround the city much like the wastefull suburbia built by the short sighted and destructive governments of the other city-states of the region.

What difficulty level do you guys all start on?? I picked a tile, but the GM didn't tell me what difficulty to start on. I assume hard since that's the default, but Idon't want to cripple my self for no reason.

Welcome to my first real CJ. I've never built just cities, I always build little countries (usually on an island). After reading some inspiring ones and seeing that I'm not alone, I decided to give it a shot and start a CJ of my current project, Baronia. Baronia is an island somewhere in East Asia that was settled by various europeans in the late 1800's. With flat fertile land and almost no native population, the site was ideal for a Dutch colony. After the Great War, the Dutch sold the island to Great Britain as the island was much closer to other English colonies rather than the Dutch colonies in the south, and they needed the money. Unhappy with being sold the island attempted to gain independance but all attemps ended in rejection. Durring WWII Japan agreed to help the island become independant, but ended up oppressing the island and using it as an airbase and farming colony. Durring WWII many Europeans around asia attempted to flee to the island to escape the Japanese, but found them selves working as farmers to literally feed the Japanese war machine. After the war Baronia opted to stay independant much to anger of England, but they quickly re-established good relations. Baronia enjoyed much trade with Communist China, and for that suffered negative relations from the US durring this period. Durring the Korean war the island stayed neutral, upsetting many in the west. Making matters worse, Baronia seemed to be swinging to a heavily state controled market socialism and was even accused of allowing arms to be sent to North Viatnamese forces by Chinese smugglers. The US and Japan adoped sanctions against the nation which quickly resulted in many coincedental market and political reforms in Baronia which appeased the west enough to drop sanctions. Durring the 60's through 80's the island became a popular vacation site for Japanese and western tourists and many hotels were built providing an economic boom. The island began to also manufacture cheap electronics and other high-tech products for sale primarily in China, adding to its economic boom. Many 'sky scrapers' upwards of 15 stories were built durring this time, upsetting many residents who cried that the apartments and office blocks destroyed much of the island's european charm. Although a country with a slightly troubled and colourful past, the island of Baronia is emerging as an important manufacturing, argricultural, and tourist location in East asia and has been an important trade partner with China as it modernises its infrastructure and economy. An extremely educated high-tech island-state that exports as much technical expertise as it does actual products to Asia.

WOOD SHOE MOUNTAIN Lush farmland bordering Baronia's only mountains and just a few k east of Bote Bay is the oddly named Wood Shoe mountain region. Home to about 7,000 people, mainly farmers and miners living in the main village in the region, Wooden. Farms as far as the eye can see, which is pretty far given the excelent views. If it wasn't for the resource gathering and dirty processing economic focus of the region it would probably be a popular tourist village and site of expensive development. The people of this area are sadly known for their racist attitudes and protectionist economic policies, an attitude common amongst the rural low wealth citizens of Baronia due to their dependance on subsidies and perceived threat of cheap Chinese labour in their economic zone. Here is the center of Wooden. The only things worth seeing are the farmers market, odd local shops, and 60's The Miner statue by the local school. Say what you will about the village, but there's no denying the scenery or view.

And now for our first pictures, the tourist town of Bote Bay. Located on the Northern shore of Baronia, the town was founded mainly by English farmers and fishermen, but has grown into the main economic and population center on this side of the islands. Here an an overview of the town showing the industrial areas in the west, small homes in the north, the dense european downtown with lovely docks, and the surrounding farms. The tallest building outside of the capital, this hotel, built and partially owned by an American company went up with much protest in the 80's. The gray office block was built in the late 60's and saw an equal amount of protest and was the tallest building untill the hotel went up. A close up of Bote Plaza (gray office tower) and the surrounding commercial area. The pedestrian plaza behind the row of historical shops is a popular meeting place. Although much of the city depends on tourism, the city is also an important industrial center for semi-conductors and food processing. Well, there goes my first real attempt at a CJ! Hope you like it, there will be much more as Baronia controls a 24x24km area! Most of it is farming, but there are some interesting little villages as well as the main city.

Oh! I sent you an email about your CJ!

One of my favorite CJ's! The only problem is a problem I see in most CJ's, way too steep grades on every transport type. Cars don't drive up 45 degree angles, let alone freight trains. There's an excelent mod out there that sets realistic max grades for all the transport types and automatically levels out the terrain to give you gentle realistic slopes. No more 45 degree avenue ramps to a bridge that a car would simply bottom out on, no more 30% grades for trains.