zero7

Thanks for the suggestion, but I think it's thoroughly broken. I'm looking at it as an opportunity and have 'Wilbured' the map I was using - the river system is looking pretty cool now.

Unfortunately, Elizabeth Falls has been lost due to too much experimenting with mods. Beginner's mistake! I will be back at some point in the future when I have established a stable set of mods and know how many assets my system can really handle.

I've only really been playing C:S for a little while, but some things come to mind already Memory efficiency - anything that allows use of more assets would be welcome. It's hard for an old SC4 player like me to come to terms with not being able to grab virtually everything that looks useful. The huge array of transport mods needs to be targeted by CO for systematic replacement by built in options. As do the detailing tools Make city and transit maps a feature - or build OSM import/export in so that patches don't keep breaking the mods that do the job. Farms and parks - these have always been a problem for city builders, but C:S already has the district feature that allows a large irregular area to be defined and policies applied. In both cases a move away from the idea of lots would benefit implementation. City parks, national parks, farms and fisheries could all be defined in this way. Low-impact industry - most cities have 'backstreet' industry that can co-exist with commercial or residential without being too much of a noise and pollution problem - maybe an 'Urban Industrial' category could be added. Also industrial parks often have a mix of commercial and manufacturing in the same shed style industrial units - maybe 'Suburban industrial' separate from the dirty industry that grows in normal industrial lots. An old suggestion from SC4 days - a wider economic context. It doesn't need to be complex, but a drip feed of money from national government could be varied to represent changing government priorities (even time limited budgets available for specific spending like education or health), and a couple of long-term sine wave functions could be applied to number of cims available to move to your city and their wealth level (the tax system may already incorporate elements of this) to suggest a varying economic climate. Scale-wise keep it real - some buildings are genuinely huge. Lot sizes and buildings need to reflect this. Again on the realism front - vehicle/pedestrian speed - lets have it looking realistic. No more ultra-speed pedestrians. Seasons and weather in all maps - incorporate Snowfall and natural disasters into the main game. Better handling of non-vehicle traffic. Pedestrian/cycle access should be enough for access to buildings. The idea of service access for larger commercial buildings - so you could have a shop fronting onto a pedestrianised road/plaza and deliveries would need to be routed to the back. Locks for canals A proper photo mode - like you see in car games like Gran Turismo. That list got quite long, quite quickly - I guess it's a reflection of my enthusiasm for the game and a desire to see it offer even more progression beyond the old king of city builders, SC4.

No Town is an Island Elizabeth Falls is not just a town, it is a region covering 100km2 around the falls themselves, and the mayor is responsible for overseeing the work of the Elizabeth Falls Regional Authority which covers all towns (existing and proposed) within that area. Also under control of the EFRA is transport for the region, managed by the newly established Elizabeth Falls Transit Authority. They haven't been slow to make their presence felt and bus and train services are starting to come online. So while the mayor was busy in endless rounds of meetings actually running the region, I thought I'd make use of the new transport facilities and have a look at some of the other towns, after first taking in the recent growth of the town of Elizabeth Falls itself. As you might expect, growth in Elizabeth Falls has mainly been by sprawling along the river bank above the falls, though a seemingly insatiable appetite for residential has meant some higher density buildings are starting to appear. The mayor fought long and hard against developers to keep some green space within the town and, thanks to the historic significance of its standing stones, Dolmen Park looks set to remain a feature of the town, at least until political winds change. The Elizabeth Falls Transport Authority seems to have done a good job of persuading people to leave the car at home and the buses are well used. And so are the trains ... And with that it was off to the other towns. Low Lockhill The town of Low Lockhill was populated by the first wave of people looking for housing within the region, but outside of Elizabeth Falls itself. The people involved in the town's steering committee wanted to make a feature of their first school, so built a plaza that also hosts a small market. And overview at night. There is a worry amongst some in Low Lockhill that as Elizabeth Falls expands along the river, it will get swallowed. Others hope that the regional authority will grant the Summer Fields agricultural area green belt status and ensure separation is maintained. Muygrove While Low Lockhill shoots for a more upmarket reputation in the region, Muygrove grew up as a town for the workers of Oresome Industrial - it's a functional town that will always be constrained by its location between the motorway and industrial areas. At least it has a train station so you can get elsewhere easily.

Love the sunset shot and that aerial shot of the island makes it look like a cool holiday destination. Hope there's some good beach bars, because cims aren't going to want to leave it!

No proper journal entry today. Just wanted to mention a new (to me) mod I'm using. Back when I was playing SC4 I always wanted buildings to grow with 'historical' on as default. That way something new could only grow when I demolished the previous building - I always thought that would better represent proper planning control and the fact that getting permission to demolish a building and re-develop the lot is actually quite difficult. Now in City Skylines I've discovered a mod called "Resilient Owners" by CoarzFlovv - http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=820547325 - this allows you to set a district to historical and nothing that grows can be levelled up until you tell it to (can also be applied/removed at the individual building level). As my playing style is best described as gardener (I like to let things grow and then weed out what's not wanted) this was a very nice discovery - hopefully there's no bugs or incompatibilities lurking. Just as a bonus, it also keeps track of who has lived in the property during its lifetime. A proper update from Elizabeth Falls is likely to appear at the weekend.

Really like that shot with sky, palm trees and the building in the background - really gives the right vibe for the place.

People and Parks Overlook Park at dawn "See", said the mayor, "waterfalls" The mayor had invited me to the new overlook park for an early morning look at the falls. It was starting to seem as if the way the water was draining in to the lower river system we were going to have waterfalls after all - and not have to change the name of the town. She explained the problems of the current phase of expansion. "Too much residential demand and not enough business - I just can't get enough houses built at the moment, but growth is growth and I guess things will balance out in time. Residential demand has meant building along the main roads, some infill building and a new area of housing towards the ore industrial area. A circular bus service has been put in to link sections of the town together Current OSM map Night light aerial view Once the business talk was concluded and on the drive back from Overlook Park, the mayor confessed that she'd be happy to freeze growth right now. "I like the town this size, it's very human scale still. A thousand people; education; health; nothing taller than the church. Maybe I'll hold elections now and go start again somewhere else ... I'm joking, of course. I want to be in office when we have riverside cafés and hotels; museums and galleries. There's a long way to go yet". I nodded my agreement, mentally noting that the Zero 7 Foundation also wanted a return on its investment at some point. Church Street and surrounds Main thoroughfare, Rayleigh Street, and general town view.

Elizabeth Falls "When is the level going to settle?" - Every conversation in town gets there at some point as it's what everyone wants to know. The contractors are waiting on the architects, the architects are waiting on the town planners, the town planners are waiting on the mayor and the mayor is waiting on his advisers. But no-one knows when the water level is going to settle. The assumption is that much of the flood water will clear, the place was named based on that assumption - Elizabeth Falls - but unless this water goes somewhere, there won't be anything worthy of the name. So here we are, 500 people living alongside an unpredictable torrent of water - waiting for it to settle. We have a number of things in abundance: water (obviously), ore, timber and hope. We also have sizeable financial backing from the Zero7 Foundation, which has allowed us to put in services for a city much larger than our present little town. So we wait a lot, and build a little. And hope, always ... Welcome to my first Cities Skylines journal. I'm going to try to keep it in the style of the old traditional SC4 storyline journals, with the direction set mainly by the organic growth dictated by game dynamics. I'm new to Cities Skylines (but and old SC4 campaigner) and will be learning about what's achievable in the game as I go along. So far we have power, water, a little industry and a growing population. Google has mapped us, so that makes things feel more real. The highway into town needs some attention with Move-It once I open up those tiles. Rail branch to the ore district is a possibility. The 'road to nowhere' currently heading into the water will become a riverside road once I get the water position finalised. The mayors advisers are out in the chopper every day surveying the waters, seeing if we've got a final position, but it's still draining away - good in some ways as we'll end up with more land to work with. One thing that makes predicting the river bank's final position so hard is that it keeps raining, so just when we think things have settled, the parameters change. It rains a lot ... But, on the rare occasions that it does stop raining, we've got quite a nice little town - let's hope we can keep it that way as we grow.

Spring cottage looks so at home there ... nice rural shot.

It seems that a city builder has finally arrived to tempt this particular SC4 dinosaur back into the world of Simtropolis. Just getting started with Cities: Skylines and it looks as though we might finally have a worthy successor. Hello to anyone who remembers me (especially those who still make use of my BATs - in my rp200x or zero7 incarnations).

And mntoes said let there be light ... and lo. there was light! That's looking much better. Glad to of been able to help; even if you're not totally happy with the version you've shown it should only be a matter of tweaking the values now.