Stories 2022-08-16 Garden Rivers Game-play
2022-08-16T14:57:00Z Started savegame on Garden Rivers, all outside connections, suitable area for building 80%, base theme: tropical.
Goal is to reach population 100k today as quick as possible while still enjoying the game.
Addons used: CargoHoldFix, CitiesHarmony, CityVitalsWatch, ExtendedGameOptions, FirstPersonCamera_Updated, Harmony, LifecycleRebalanceRevisited, RealPopRevisited, RoundaboutBuilder, ShowIt, TMPE, TransferManagerCE.
This time the plan is to chill, build city more or less realistic, industrial area in one location and residential in another, no 2 x 2 unit square residentials in the beginning.
This is my starter setup, also using new addon City Vitals which is kind of nice especially as you can turn it on/off with ALT-V keyboard shortcut.
2022-08-16T15:01:00Z First save game for Garden_Rivers_1 file name, and unpaused the game, lets begin 
2022-08-16T15:06:00Z Little Hamlet population 480. Okay lets turn on the taxes and continue building
2022-08-16T15:11:00Z Worthy Village population 950.
Slowly growing, I'm just sitting here waiting, don't have gazillion of money so don't want to make huge road networks while waiting.
2022-08-16T15:20:00Z Tiny Town population 1.5k.
2022-08-16T15:31:00Z Boom Town population 2.6k.
Cemetery and bus depot became available in this milestone, cemetery is essential for life heh. Saved game for Garden_Rivers_2 file name.
Not sure what the issue was with police station, crime is high but these lazy bums only send 2 cars patrolling?
I am going to disable City Vitals addon, it was the latest that got added and this police problem started.
2022-08-16T15:50:00Z Unbelievable, it was Cities Vitals Watch addon! Removed it and, well see for yourself.
New intersection being done, expanding our city to the other side of the highway.
2022-08-16T16:29:00Z Hmm looks like I broke highway outside connections by creating that cloverleaf intersection, no vehicles were showing up from the highway. Once few came, they slowed to crawling speed in the exit ramp. Just makes no sense, I didn't even touch Traffic Manager President Edition (TMPE) so should not be a problem.
2022-08-16T16:48:00Z Busy Town population 5k.
2022-08-16T17:00:00Z Not sure what I did with the highways but I tried all kinds of TMPE settings, deleted and re-created the road two times, but now eventually some hideous spider alike "THiNG" road works. Got NO fucking idea what went wrong with Cities Skylines default cloverleaf intersection in the first place 
Uuh something, mind is still boggled about that highway road issue earlier.
Saved game for Garden_Rivers_3 file name.
2022-08-16T17:22:00Z Saved game for Garden_Rivers_3 file name and now I have to go cook some lunch.
2022-08-16T18:11:00Z Feeding time is over, back to this mess of a city.
Would be so cool to have random dynamic cinematic camera in Cities Skylines, the default one is fine on quick glance, but its way too much 2D top-down views which makes it really claustrophobic, I want to see horizon, cinematic movie alike.
2022-08-16T18:18:00Z Big Town population 7.5k.
High density zones, metro, incineration plant and university are now available. Placed them all but metro is not nearly finished yet.
2022-08-16T18:35:00Z Small City population 10k.
This milestone gives us cargo train station and two good policies. Activated small business enthusiast and big business benefactor policies.
2022-08-16T19:05:00Z Big City population 16k.
Crematorium, large water tower and advanced inland water treatment plant are now available. Got them all placed, we are good to go.
2022-08-16T19:45:00Z Grand City population 19k. I was in the restroom when this milestone hit on normal game speed.
2022-08-16T21:31:00Z Capital City population 32k.
Cargo harbor is now available. And we have just completely traffic gridlocked city while garbage starts to pile up, uuh... 
2022-08-16T22:05:00Z Saved game and shutdown Cities Skylines, something funky is going on with TMPE, it sets new roads to some snail crawl speed, people are walking faster by than cars drive, makes no sense. Also had to clear traffic once. Hopefully it was some clitch in running game, I would not want to think the whole savegame is this broken.
2022-08-16T22:25:00Z Colossal City population 42k.
This milestone gives nuclear power plant and cargo hub (ship + train terminal). However I have all the wind turbine power I need right now, so will be a while before needing to upgrade into nuclear power plant.
Assigned first office zones, lets see if we have any educated workers for them, demand for industrial is sky high.
Uuh my roads, they are not road to hell but roads FROM hell! 
2022-08-16T22:43:00Z Alarm just went off been awake 17hrs, hmm as this savegame is quite frustrating with those traffic issues maybe I'll call it an early night, continue fresh tomorrow, hmm.
Its amazing how far these people are willing to walk, see the residential area in the horizon, well bunch of buildings? Yup they are walking that long road all the way there.
Distance scale for that road. Good to see them walk instead of driving personal cars.
2022-08-16T23:18:00Z Okay time has come for me to get some sleep, tomorrow war against traffic congestion continues, nites.
2022-08-17T05:35:00Z New Cities Skylines building day has started, woke up about an hour ago, had to do some extra computer chores, then did the usual chores, now started Cities Skylines up and will let it run 3x speed time acceleration while I grab something to eat.
2022-08-17T05:53:00Z Metropolis population 60k.
2022-08-17T06:01:00Z Days first meal is in, during that time another milestone kicked in, not much to see in it. One more to go. OK so our traffic jams continue, dunno why that would change if I don't fix the roads but yeah. Currently traffic flow 29% with huge gridlock on the highway connection.
I am thinking that need to shutdown Cities Skylines, open a text note, then start googling and really learn how to do proper highway outside connection to a city, it cant be that hard even though there are so many guides and tutorials about how to fix traffic it doesn't appear I'm the only one suffering from traffic issues.
2022-08-17T07:02:00Z Replaced the mess of highway outside connection intersection with in-game cloverleaf intersection, once again, and once again, it was fucking broken. The highway connection DOES NOT FUCKING WORK. The vehicles that were on highway when I created cloverleaf using the preset, vanished into thin air at the spot where highway connects to the cloverleaf. And now there is no traffic coming from "east" of the terrain through highway, guess game recognizes that there is no path so it wont send any vehicles.
But how the fuck do I fix that as nothing looks wrong in-game? 
2022-08-17T07:09:00Z Megalopolis population 75k.
Was actually ALT-TABbed googling the cloverleaf intersection not working (with TMPE) when that milestone kicked in, now I get to puchase all remaining terrain grid tiles.
All terrain grid tiles bought.
2022-08-17T07:21:00Z Googled the vanishing disappearing vehicles on roads issue, someone posted that saving and reloading game would fix the issue, I'm going to try that now.
Unbelievable, it worked!
You can see vehicles coming from the "top center of the screenshot" meaning east direction in terrain, so yeah once you do a major road overhaul, save and reload save to "recalculate road connections". Fuck that man, how should I know there is some issue like this?
Yesterday when I first created this cloverleaf intersection I had the exact same issue, I thought something I did wrong or things were bugged and just deleted the whole thing and re-created using "single roads". Little did I know that indeed game is bugged and needs road recalculation by saving and restarting. Shieet, man
Not only roads but also my previously non working TRAIN railroad tracks connection started to work
Well I guess I should smile as fix was found, but it doesn't feel like smiling when there is such bugs in the game at this point 7 years after the release...
Immediately ALT-TABbed to document this info for our Cities Skylines website so I or anyone else has to suffer through this issue again.
2022-08-17T07:41:00Z Documentation done. Always feels good to learn something new and document it so mistakes wont be repeated
Later Edit: just to clarify, default game highway cloverleaf intersection preset works just fine, I have now placed many of them without problems, the issues in this page / story savegame were just a fluke, no idea what caused them but never had the vehicles vanishing into thin air problem again. Just in case someone (even me?) reads this page through and thinks there is a problem with the game itself.
Now if this traffic gridlock would sort itself out it would be great...
2022-08-17T08:35:00Z Okay off to the next problem, now many of my incineration plants say "garbage trucks in use: 0/27" and it flickers between 1/27 and 0/27 every few seconds like it attempts to create a garbage truck but fails. Also the plant shows "not operating" and is blacked out in info view garbage. Time to search what causes this.
Some post said dead end streets cause issues, so I deleted all dead ends I could find, no change, vehicles in use flickers and garbage info view is blacked out for the specific buildings. These buildings in question were working before btw, which makes no sense they suddenly decided not to work.
2022-08-17T09:01:00Z I managed to solve it by simply placing recycling center by one office zone which was garbage infested, it cleared it all out and after that remaining incineration plants turned ON and were working fine, eh?
2022-08-17T10:01:00Z Uuaah! Goal has been met, 100k population, nice!
As usual in the end it was done with high density residential and office zones, offices provided the jobs and obviously people moved in as there were job openings to high density residential got filled up real quick.
That cycle is almost boring at the end from somewhere around 80k to 100k or so. Usually I'm doing something else and the count just suddenly sneaks up on you as there is no milestone / achievement for it.
2022-08-17T10:04:00Z Saved game and shutdown Cities Skylines, another terrain savegame in the bag.