My City Diary - From 0 to 500k people

[RippieFlippie]

I really like the game and just finished my first 450k city, which turned out a mess because I was a newbie when I started. Now for the real thing! I will be playing without mods, without monuments and without unlimited oil/ore. So no cheating at all and pure base game!
I also will not use any DLCs (mass transit -> 4 lane highway,...) until I really hit the limits of the base game. Let's see how I do and maybe some of it helps others along the way.

[RippieFlippie]

The Expensive Start

Map is Green Plains. The water machinery goes in to the river to the right. I learned that industry draws the most traffic to town and therefore should hug the highway. Industry deliveries go the commercial areas, and therefore commericial needs to hug industry for quick access. Residential needs to stay away from industry (pollution) and best also from commercial (noise), therefore it comes last. I anticipate that the entire square will be filled from left to right, layering Industry, Commercial and Residential starting from the highway. Therefore I build at long distances that later on will fill with zoning. The start money of 70k is almost spend up when it all is finished and zoned. I built roads like trees grow, that is one strong branch, then weaker ones. It keeps the number of junctions limited for traffic flow. I also zone only the inner part for now, because later on I will replace the narrow outer roads, the strong branches, by 4 lane roads and with only the inner parts zoned I do not have to destroy precious leveled up buldings in the process. All set up, now for the people to arrive and hoping I did not do stupid stuff...

http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1207357092
http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1207357477

[shanky]

Good Luck :)

[Zippo]

I am a newbie at this game, but still that I love to see how my mistakes lead the city to the chaos. And fixing those issues is way more fun! I don't wan't a perfect city...

Let us know how your new citie goes...

[soldyne]

sounds fun! have you decided on the mass transit solution for your city yet? I find that the city goes smoother when I design around a mass transit concept in the beginning.

[grapplehoeker]

Originally posted by The Little Mayor:

I will be playing without mods, without monuments and without unlimited oil/ore. So no cheating at all and pure base game! Let's see how I do and maybe some of it helps others along the way.

Monuments are part of the base game.
Why do you think that building monuments is cheating?
Also, what is it with this fixation you have with a large population?
You do realise don't you that you are shooting yourself in the foot. Why care about cheating at all if you are going to deliberately exceed the game limits for agents and units?

[RippieFlippie]

A City On The Jump

The city has reached the 11000 population milestone! The first dry stretch where I was always short on money because of my wide spread start design is over and now things start to ignite. My layer cake of Industrial, commercial and residential is forming, though I intentionally leave space for commercial even though there is no demand yet because I know in the endgame there will be. I use a densily packed unit cell design for everything. Inside of each residential unit cell is one school and one medical center for residental. Scattered inbetween are the remaining services and the DOGPARKS, which are the most effective and space saving leisures. I use the water wind turbines for electricity to save as much space as possible. All main roads are now four lane roads and all traffic lights and stop signs are off with average traffic flow nearly perfect. I will be going to the left of the map with industry and commercial to hug as much highway as I can. I will be using the metro for everthing that is public transport, because it is unmatched in the game. I already started emptying the cementaries and invested big money in incinerators. The sooner the better. The same will happen with graveyards and crematories. From here on the road to 100k begins,,,

http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1207503192
http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1207503610
http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1207502330
http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1207501779

The savegame
http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1207524098

(PS: other games open a console and you punch in code for unlimited health, here you build a monument. It is silly. #noMonuments)

[RippieFlippie]

Originally posted by ❋Sparrow❋:

Look forward to watching your city grow! Are you going to eventually zone office in the commercial area? Or will you tear down your industrial zone to make an office park?

Not sure yet. Right now my education is (25%,39%,20%,16%) (uneducated...highly ed.) and my population is >32k. So it is too early to think about highly qualifed office jobs. I think I try to keep it balanced this time (25%,25%,25%,25%) by adjusting education services and see what happens. Highly educated will also work on a pig farm if there are no jobs, and my first city had 50% of them in the end with commerical everywhere, but I want to try (25%,25%,25%,25%) this time. Rocket scientiest on pig farms can not be good for you city...

[Pseudonymous]

I have a city with over a population over 1 million, Only mod used was the mod to unlock all tiles.

Pro Tip: Build as many main roads underground as you can, even highways. Keeps noise pollution down and keeps people happy and property value skyrockets, in turn attracting more people to your city to pay taxes and keeping money in the bank to invest in your city further.

Good Luck!

[RippieFlippie]

Originally posted by Pseudonymous:

I have a city with over a population over 1 million, Only mod used was the mod to unlock all tiles.

Pro Tip: Build as many main roads underground as you can, even highways. Keeps noise pollution down and keeps people happy and property value skyrockets, in turn attracting more people to your city to pay taxes and keeping money in the bank to invest in your city further.

Good Luck!

Thanks! That was actually something that I discovered pretty late in my first 450k town. I will see how I built that into my layer cake. Maybe I can use it for connecting the ends of industrial and commerical.

[Zippo]

Little Mayor, why not streamming your gameplay?

[RippieFlippie]

A Difficult Decision

The city is now >63000 people strong and my layer cake on the main island starts to see its limits. There was a dry stretch in people influx at ~20k...30k people when all the uneducated industry was saturated and the people did not have high enough education yet to work in better jobs. Now it is back to full swing. I try to keep the education levels as balanced as possible to serve commerical and industry equally with educated and uneducated people. At least I try to have fully educated and uneducated at the same level, but best all education levels are the same. I aggresively use the education budget and switch the university on/off in case the balance tips over. I hope in this way the commerical zones and industry zones will grow at the same rate. which will give me a balanced economic system in the end with no little icons indicating trouble. At least that is my hope and understanding.
Space-wise I decided to go without the tile that offers the harbor. There is too much water on it. I will be doing all imports/exports by rail and road. I also laid out a match plan that only uses tiles with highway access, first because my industry/commercial/residential will layer off of the highways, but also because I go without harbor and feel uncomfortable cutting highway access as well. I also decided to go without tourism because attractions/airports cost space and income is not that high compared to usual RCI income. I will also use some of the elevation and fill up part of the lake by terraforming to gain more space. Also one of the rivers will be sucked dry by water pumps to gain space. I hope all this does not backfire and my matchplan was the right decision. Off we go to 100k...

http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1208393028
http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1208379253
http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1208378871
http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1208377593

[RippieFlippie]

Clusterf*ck to 100k

So close! And it drops stagnates again. The game is such a clusterf*ck of a simulation. No idea what is going on. I get somehow how education levels and jobs play together. At least how it would make sense. But all of the rest, it makes no sense. Between year 23.5 and 25.5 I gained 40k people out of completely nowhere. I look up influx, birthrate and death rate for this time and it simply does not make any sense. Did they clone themselves? Whatever. F*cking Flappy Birds with simulation paint on it. No idea what's going on. Also the "not enough buyers" message for industry. I mean what? There is zero demand for commercial, and for export I have the highway right at the doorstep plus three cargo train station. Go f*ck yourself. This is no simulation. This is an arcade game that they bias depending on situation to make it "challenging" with nothing that you do actually entering any simulation. Then you look up Colossal Order and they are only 17 people. The game designer looks like stolen from some punk concert with pink hair and such, which also does help to strengthen my belief in a real simulation here. Now off to 200k!

Actually some math for year 2026:
Rate = death + birth + influx = -200 + 330 + 100 = +230 people
The population charts goes downwards however...?

http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1209243399
http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1209243763

[Danoir_]

How nice of you to compliment them like that.

[RippieFlippie]

The City of Death

Dear Diary, my city has finally hit the 100k population. The game is getting to me. My days blur together and my nights I spend half awake. I do not dare to sleep. This is no game anymore. Yesterday night I insulted the developers like an animal becaue I lost it. I do not get what's going on anymore. From about 85k people on, I suffered a huge dry spell in population growth. I dezoned some industry and built offices in a vague hope that maybe I have too many highly educated people working as pig farmers. No success. Population saturated to a point where I thought all is over and the game just caps me after reaching the Metropolis milestone. Then, with "abandoned" icons all over the place, a huge death wave kicked in to top it. I thought my city is done for. But wait! Suddently I get a giant influx kick! Why? No idea! It seems new people favor the smell of corpses while wandering between abondoned industry buldings. The City of Death seems like a good place to live in! I can not correlate to this. My dream of living does not revolve around dead people and rotten buildings. This fine, ahem, "simulation" however teaches me how wrong I was.
Traffic is also a nightmare. The dense unit cell design that I require for my 500k goal results in everyone going nearly in the same direction, be it residential or industry, because ROI is very located. Here the "simulation" shows its meat again: Everyone exclusively prefers the shortest path when travelling. They do not mind if there is a 3h traffic jam and will absolutely not take the road right next to it that is completely empty. I do not mind for now, because I think when all is done and wider, traffic will scatter more. I will be riddled forever what produced that sudden kick in people influx. I think this "simulation" is just three lines of code really and all they do is to correct occasionally be injecting some parameters and good. Flappy Birds with simulation paint on it. Long live the City of Death!


http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1210047240
http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1210048675

[kristofburger]

I'll probably end up doing changes to that 63k population save because this is a great example. I'll prove how preventing citizens from getting a high education is a canard and how "demand" isn't actually demand.