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Expansion continues, and I decided to go with this version of BigRedFish's tunnel and slope mod. It has made navigating through the more hilly terrain very challenging, but the roads are much smoother. A new road built from Soyuk City to the northern coast required a creative use of switchbacks to navigate over the mountain range: Here are some before and after improvements, along with some expansion timelapse: Stay tuned! In coming updates I'm going to start focusing individually on some of the towns.

Another quick update (had a busy week). Spent a little bit of time expanding the farmland between towns. I haven't decided yet on what slope mod I want to go with. So far the different options I've tried have either had minimal effect or drastically altered the hilly terrain. Then again I haven't had much time yet to play around with it. I'll get the bumpy roads figured out. Remember I still consider all this part of the preparatory stage of the project. My method involves starting very fast, slapping down some streets and neighborhoods across the region, and later coming back to develop on top of everything and start to focus on details and city expansion. I'm basically blocking out shapes so that I'm not working with a "blank canvas." One of the most beautiful cities I ever built was on top of a cluster of hideous starter towns that I devastated with a series of tornadoes. Not that I plan on destroying anything here, but ever since that project this has been the method that works for me.

Thanks for the suggestions. I removed my slope mod because I was having issues with the game crashing, and after having tried everything else it was suggested to me that that might be the culprit. However that hasn't been confirmed so I may give it another go. One way or another I agree the roads need a lot of work.

Just a short update today -- I may have another for tomorrow. I've decided on the locations of the five starter towns, and begun the slow expansion of them. I want to develop each to a decent size and fully surround them with farmland before I start to get into the intricate details of managing neighborhoods. I would like to cover the majority of the island quickly with a lot of farmland and then expand later by redeveloping older zones. These images are a few days out of date (I've done a good deal of expansion since then), but like I said I've got another update planned this weekend. I didn't remember to capture an image of the city boundaries and names until yesterday, so that will have to wait until the next update. The largest, in the upper center of the island, is Soyuk City, which will eventually become my metropolis, expanding out to Storveda on the far eastern coast. A little further down the road is the bay town of Cinatahasso, and in the hill country to the west are Tepekutugun and Gezenek. Nothing too impressive to show yet, as again these are just the starter areas and all of this will eventually be redeveloped anyway. But here's a sneak preview of a few of the towns: Cinatahasso Tepekutugun Gezenek

David, The region is approximately 6 large city tiles wide (from the west coast to the northeastern point). I decided on the relatively small region size because I want to be able to cover it in a reasonable amount of time while still being able to focus intently on the details. I'll try to remember to post a region view with the city boundaries layer on when I post my next update on Friday. Scott

Welcome to my first city journal. In this series I'll be sharing my progress as I colonize and develop from scratch a small island based off the real world terrain of Cyprus. I'm a huge SC4 fan. I've played the game relatively regularly since its release, but I've never shared any of my cities with anyone. I'm hoping to gain a lot of interest with this project. I follow a very specific procedure and style when building. I like realism, not only in the "finished" look and feel of a developed area (of course, no city is ever "finished"), but also in the method of development itself. I never zone medium or high density zones on open land, for instance, but rather always over top of old developments that are well surrounded by newer suburbs. I also keep my cheat usage to an absolute minimum (I do use God Mode to plant a lot of trees), and I take enough time getting personally involved in neighborhoods to actually name all my streets. Because of the amount of time I like to spend perfecting my neighborhoods, I figured an island would make a good project. I can easily make use of the entirety of the region, every town will have a neighbor, and I'll still have plenty of land to play with. So, meet the fictional island of Cyprikuyucak: Sticking with the general Cyprus theme, I'm also using Turkish and Greek names for the cities (though for road names I'll stick to my native English for ease). One thing that's always irritated me about SC4 (it irks my itch for realism) is how cities can develop in isolation. You can get a pretty decent sized city going relatively quickly, with no signs of surrounding civilization for miles. How do the sims colonize an isolated area with no road leading to it? Thus I always begin a new region with a basic road network connecting the region to the "outside world." In this case, building on an island, I can't do that. So one of my first priorities will be getting a sea port and/or airport as soon as possible, even if it's just a single landing strip or ferry route. What I have done, however, is cover the island in a basic road network to lay out some of the areas where I would like to start building, and to have all my starter towns connected to each other. The network completes a full circuit around the island, with the exception of the peninsula to the northeast, which will be a more isolated area. If you look up Cyprus on Google Maps, you'll notice that I've roughly followed the major highway system that actually exists there (I've used two-lane roads, not highways). This is just a guide to get me started. Beyond this point everything will be my own creation. I want to begin with roughly half a dozen small towns scattered around the island, and develop the interior with loads of farmland. Much of the mountainous area will be a national park/wildlife reserve. My plan is then to develop the 5 or 6 starter towns into large cities, while scattering the suburbs and farmland with smaller towns over time. Last but not least, if anyone has any ideas or suggestions for this project, I would love to hear them! I'd really like to gather a bit of a following for this region, and if collaboration will achieve that I look forward to reading your suggestions. I'll be doing my best to post updates every weekend, as time allows (my work schedule is currently kind of all over the place, not to mention I'm a newly wed!). So stay tuned!