TabascoJack

Great journal! I'm enjoying reading of your whack-a-mole traffic as I'm beating my own moles about their heads with a large hammer...

Absolutely gorgeous.....

Benedict: Thanks!

Update 2.5: Traffic Engineering? "Live from Channel 5's Traffic Eye in the Sky, once again our major problem spots on the freeway are the exit into Matar. Traffic's backed up all the way on the exit ramp, it's even spilling over onto the freeway itself. This is becoming a regular occurrence - we suggest commuters take alternate routes this morning. And actually, it wouldn't be a bad idea to do that every morning. Back to the studio, this is Captain Jack Cutter, Channel 5 Eye in the Sky" Well, that wasn't the kind of publicity the city was looking for. Again, they sent a request for propsals out, and again, they went with the low bidder. Jebediah Kerman's Civil and Aerospace Engineering, Inc. submitted the idea that this could all be solved with a simple flyover off of the exit ramp. So construction started on one ramp..... And then the other And finally the girders were laid on the sections crossing the street below.... The residents at the north end of Main Street don't seem to happy about the aerial encroachment, but they're not protesting too much, Yet. (OOC - Is there a way to update the title of the topic to reflect the updates? If so, I haven't been able to figure out how)

Update #2: Go West, young man....well, actually North. And a little bit East too. Matar has grown rapidly, and as with any city, the first thing the politicians looked to do is.........expand the tax base. Gotta get more money in. So they cast their avaricious, little beady eyes around to see what was nearby. An enterprising young intern (no, not that kind, no blue dresses here....) did some research and found a old geologic survey from years past. They overlaid the current city plan on it and discovered potential oil deposits on the island to the East and the land across the bay to the West. Some quick political calculus, and they realized they'd get a lot of complaints from the voters concerned homeowners on the west shore so they decided to focus their efforts on the island to the East. Checking the city budget, they realized they could annex the existing agricultural land to the north to get some quick tax revenue and also the island in expectation of future oil profits. Meanwhile, the residents of Olive Heights slumbered along peacefully, not knowing that they were about to become part of a larger city. ...and down the road, the sleepy bedroom community of Meadow Square was likewise in the path of progress....

@godwin1020 - yeah, if I remember correctly he started with small trails and then built them up over time, with isolated developments that ended up connecting with each other. What I should have done here, and didn't, was buy additional regions sooner and start developing them. I started with low density housing (mostly by leaving a lot of unzoned space) and came back and filled it in as the city grew but still in the original region so it's more dense then it would otherwise have been. @Drengs - Thanks! The growth wasn't all that fast - there's a lot of time between the initial set of pictures, the set with the road upgrade, and the final set. I get too caught up in playing and forget to take screenshots to document what I'm doing. As for the industry, from what I could figure out, you can't specify agricultural industry until you get districts, so I started with basic industry. I tried to keep it as small industry by only zoning two squares deep which avoids a lot of the big factories. I wish C:S had the ability to do large blocks of farming like we could do with SC4 and SPAM. Maybe someday.

@89James89 and @Ln X, Thanks for the feedback! I'm not sure where it's going to go, but that's part of the fun.

The city coffers are relatively flush as more and more people have moved in. In fact, some of the original ROMEOs (Retired Old Men Eating Out) are getting a little miffed as they're having to wait in traffic to get to their favorite breakfast place....never mind that once there, they aren't going to move for a couple of hours anyway. But they convinced the town that they really didn't want all these trucks moving down Main Street, and that a bypass should be built from the highway exits towards the industrial side of town. Unfortunately, the town council went with the low bidder on the project. While the company understood paving, the concepts of traffic engineering were quite beyond their limited abilities. They were promptly sacked, which drew threats of dire legal action but at the end of the day they were promised a repaving contract in a few years and they went away, grumbling but mollified. Some other proposals came in from reputable engineering firms, but all were too expensive. In the end, the city simply added a ramp and widened the inbound connector a bit and everything worked ok. The reputation of a well run (or at least not completely corrupt) municipality has attracted many new residents and the city is growing like mad. Developers are looking for even the smallest available empty space on which they can build. One of the last remaining tracts from the original land grants was sold off to a developer who promptly tore down the existing structures and put in one of the smallest infill subdivisions the city has yet seen. Over on the shoreline, Mr. Gilmore is back, buying up the single family homes that he built only a few years ago and putting in the city's first high-rise (OK, medium rise) apartment buildings along the Coast Road. Reports have come back that the waiting list for apartments continues to grow, even as rents climb higher and higher.

Back in the mists of time, I came across a wonderful city journal describing the natural development of a city, entitled CSG Design's Natural Growth. It's still around at another site, albeit without any screenshots. However, I thought that it made for a much more entertaining and realistic looking city and I decided to try that style of design in the Cities:Skylines. The following series of posts will, I hope, provide an interesting story as I try to a) build a natural growth city and b) document it, neither of which I've done before. For those not familiar with the style, here are the rules I'm trying to follow (mostly stolen from the above referenced journal): 1) Plan generally, not specifically. For example, it's fine to think that, "Hey, that shoreline will be a really popular place for housing" or "That area might make a nice State park", but don't plan down to the the level "This area is going to be my central business district, and those two blocks will be where the train station goes, etc." 2) Have an in game reason for the things you do. It doesn't necessarily have to be good, but there ought to be one. For example, maybe the owner of a large piece of property has died and his heirs are selling off the property to be developed. Maybe a new natural resource has been discovered and the property owners want to make a lot of money by selling off their land. Maybe there's a holdout who isn't going to sell for any reason. Make something up, and have fun with it. 3) Act like a developer, not a planner. Planners make nice straight lines. Everything is neat and tidy. And boring. Developers and builders do the real work. And they do it as cheaply as they can. So don't bulldoze 4 highrises to put in a new highway interchange...bulldoze some lower density housing somewhere else. 4) Start small, and grow slowly. Your Central Business District? It's probably just a centrally located intersection to start. Your roads? Start them as gravel, upgrade as traffic demands. Housing? Starts with isolated housing and as the city grows, start introducing subdivisions, one at a time. 5) Work only small areas at a time. Like above, build out a couple of blocks, or a subdivision. Then move on somewhere else. Come back and check on it later. So, without further ado, here's my attempt: A New Dawn for Matar Transcript from the Paradox Nightly News broadcast: "....and in other news, after much delay, the town of Matar was officially founded today. Viewers may recall that former Governor Bedfellow arranged for a highway interchange to be constructed where the Interstate crossed over the ocelot farm owned by his second cousin's mother-in-law. Soon after the completion of the interchange, Governor Bedfellow was impeached, and the ocelot farm went under as people discovered they didn't make good pets. Ownership of the land has been contested for the past three years and all claimants to the estate recently perished in a freak steamroller accident. The land reverted back to the state and today, a new town has been born." Not much to look at - just a former free-range ocelot farm and a highway interchange. Guess it pays to know the people in charge. Enticed by the offer of cheap land, a few adventurous souls (and some that were just on the run from the law) set out to make a new start. They cleared away some brush and discovered Governor Bedfellow must have diverted more state money than anyone realized, as a dilapidated coal plant and some water pumping stations were discovered. They built their houses, moved in, and got to work. They soon realized that they were going to have to find a way to pay for all their plans, and figured the best way to do that is to go after someone who doesn't actually live in the city instead of having to pay taxes themselves. So they pitched in and built a new restaurant by the highway for the sole purpose of separating money from tourists passing through the area. Of course, all this couldn't last. Like flies to dog poop bees to honey, real estate developers were sniffing around. Arthur Gilmore, the savviest one of the bunch, quickly realized he had a potential goldmine on his hands. Pristine, undeveloped coastline? What's a developer to do? Why, cram it full of as many houses as humanly possible, that's what! He called his friends at the state legislature, bought a few dinners and found himself with title to a long stretch of coastline and stared building houses... By the time he got done, traffic had started getting worse and the town was forced to pave the shoreline road...of course that just made the rest of Gilmore's properties that much more valuable, and he was able to cash out for a tidy profit. It's great when a plan comes together like that.