Stories 2022-08-29 Seven Lakes Game-play
2022-08-29T20:15:00Z Started savegame on Seven Lakes, all outside connections and natural resources, suitable area for building 81%, base theme: boreal.
Goal is to reach population 100k today as quick as possible while still enjoying the game.
Addons used: 81 tiles, camera position utility, cinematic camera extended v0.5.1, csl show more limits, enhanced outside connections view, extended game options, extra landscaping tools, first person camera, harmony v2.2, hide it, lifecycle rebalance revisited v1.6.4, optimize outside connections, precision engineering, random tree rotation, realistic population 2 v2.0.5, rebalanced industries, roundabout builder, TM:PE stable v11.6.6.3, transfermanager ce v1.8.10, transporttool v2.3.1, ultimate level of detail, unlimited oil and ore, unlimited soil. List updated: 2022-08-27T21:39:00Z
Seven Lakes eh, right off the bat I don't like the sound of that, lake or big body of water == bad news for city building.
First used 81 tiles addon to open up all terrain grid tiles for use. TM:PE enabled disable de-spawning, advanced vehicle AI enabled, 50% dynamic lane selection, parking AI enabled more realistic parking. Transfer manager ce, goods delivery options warehouse first, reserve trucks for local transfers 20%, improved inter-warehouse transfers, import/export disabled allow import goods, services prefer local district services, death care/garbage improved all three, general disable dummy traffic, vehicle AI enable garbage and police.
Hmm this terrain is all forest, very little ore and miniscule amount of farming natural resources, NO oil even though it was listed in terrain selection options.
This is how my starting setup looks like.
Turned roads, electric and water budget to 50%, we need to save money.
2022-08-29T20:30:00Z Unpaused the game, lets start this thing.
First save game for Seven_Lakes_1 file name.
This terrain has some elevations in the heightmap but nothing too crazy, I kind of like the european woodland look as its just one big forest, trees don't bother city building when you just buldoze them over when buildings are coming up. Its unusual for a Cities Skylines terrain, sure, but doesn't bother me so like water and rough elevations which are unusable as Cities Skylines terrain.
2022-08-29T20:38:00Z Little Hamlet population 380.
Turned on taxes to 12% for industrial, low density residential and commercial. Purchased elementary school and landfill site.
2022-08-29T20:49:00Z Worthy Village population 750.
Created my first districts for PMC Residential 1, PMC Industrial 1 and PMC Commercial 1. Placed fire station, police station and health clinic.
Saved game for Seven_Lakes_2 file name.
2022-08-29T20:57:00Z Tiny Town population 1.2k.
Replaced placeholder dirt road arterial and collectors with proper six and four lane asphalt roads. Replaced PMC Industrial 1 district roads with industry road type (small for local and medium for collector). Placed warehouse yard to PMC Industrial 1 district, set it to commercial goods and named it PMC Goods WH 1. Started to use two lane asphalt roads for residential areas from now on.
Saved game for Seven_Lakes_3 file name.
2022-08-29T21:12:00Z Increased budget for roads, electric and water to 100%.
2022-08-29T21:13:00Z Boom Town population 2.2k.
Cemetery and bus depot became available in this milestone, cemetery is essential for life heh.
Placed first high school using "institute of creative arts" with student capacity 2349.
2022-08-29T21:42:00Z Busy Town population 4.2k.
Fire helicopter depot became available in this milestone, this is must have to any large city, when you have traffic jams and fires, helicopters are a life savers.
Saved game for Seven_Lakes_4 file name which is the last of the four rotating file names.
2022-08-29T22:18:00Z Big Town population 6.5k.
High density zones, metro, incineration plant, university and large warehouse are now available. Ran out of budget when setting up that metro network 
2022-08-29T23:00:00Z Small City population 9k.
This milestone gives us cargo train station and two good policies. Activated small business enthusiast and big business benefactor policies.
2022-08-29T23:15:00Z Now I have a problem, traffic is flowing nicely and industrial zone is small while commercials are rather large, everything runs good... except people want more jobs, there is only 50% employment for uneducated citizens, so we would need a lot of industrial buildings to employ these folks. I think low density commercial also has uneducated jobs but its pretty much the same, generates traffic. Offices would be great because they wont generate any noise or traffic, however... they are almost solely for highly educated citizens. I do have small office zoning in place now just to see if they would be filled but that is not going to happen because city has literally single digit numbers of highly educated workers.
I really, REALLY don't want to increase my industrial footprint because the insane traffic it generates. I just ruined my last savegame with too much industrial and kind of swore to never do it again.
Yes of course I could add one 4 x 4 unit zone block at the time and watch traffic over several in-game days to see if anything happens, but that is very painful and time consuming way of doing it.
Transfer manager ce is specifically configured to NOT import goods, so industry would generate traffic for importing raw materials and exporting goods. Only traffic "to the city" would be delivery of goods into commercial zones.
But yeah, its always something, industry == traffic, there is no ways around that, none.
Right now RCI info bars are 0% residential, 0% commercial and 90% industrial. People want them jobs
2022-08-29T23:36:00Z Well dunno what to do so lets do something. I am going to SLOWLY, one 4 x 4 unit block at the time add more industry and carefully monitor traffic and then employment statistics etc. Once traffic seems to become too heavy, I'll stop adding more industrial zoning or even take it down a notch. Important thing here is to wait enough time, you cant just zone one block, it grows to a building and then 5min real time later you go "oh it works fine, lets add more!", that is not enough time to every effect sort through the system.
This is current PMC Industrial 1 district.
Before adding new industrial zoning traffic flow is 90% and everything is good...
2022-08-29T23:51:00Z Added one narrow 2x2 row and one full 4 x 4 unit block, monitored it until 0 jobs available, traffic was fine actually traffic flow increased heh. And with that its time to cook food and eat, will leave game running in 3x speed, there should not be anything drastic happening, everything would just nicely stabilize while I'm away, savegame is there if something goes wrong.
2022-08-29T23:56:00Z Big City population 15k.
Crematorium, large water tower and advanced inland water treatment plant are now available.
2022-08-30T00:23:00Z Grand City population 18k.
2022-08-30T00:43:00Z Cooking and feeding time is over, back to adding industrial zones.
Okay so industrial, two 4 x 4 unit blocks has now been added and traffic flow looks the same; good, its 90% so definitely very smooth.
2022-08-30T00:53:00Z Seems like my cooking and eating food break gave enough time for education system to graduate some highly educated people, our current workforce for them is 1844 people which is decent amount, we can put up few big office buildings 
Added bunch of office buildings and now our employment on all skill levels is above 94% which is pretty nice. I might be able to squeeze in maybe one big or few smaller office buildings as highly educated employment is 96% with 85% workers vs jobs.
2022-08-30T01:57:00Z Spent a little bit time in transfer manager ce monitoring newly created industrial buildings, this is really low amount of data so far, but looks like building sends out box truck or van to deliver goods to a commercial building once 8,000 units or 8 tons has been completed which is half of the capacity (16t). Building can order raw materials from outside connection if locals are not available, in specific building I was monitoring they were "Food" and "AnimalProducts", at one time two trucks were bringing in those raw materials. Also two of our own trucks / vans were delivering at the same time.
So far I don't know what controls the number of vehicles, is it just some random throughput the factory building gains that if one van is still delivering and another 8t goods is ready to go, it will send lets say box truck to deliver them.
If one industry building generates max 4 vehicles (2 out, 2 in) its not that bad number wise, but then again when you spam one road grid full of industrial zoning and who knows how many of these buildings will be there, if some of them are smaller than 4 x 4 units, maybe 2 x 4 or something, then yeah it will accumulate eventually to a nice traffic jam.
Single industry buildings traffic seems innocent, harmless, enough to me.
2 x 2 unit size industry building has the same capacity as 4 x 4 size one, its 16,000 units / 16 tons.
Hmm so while this is not some game changing info, all the confusion and mystery has been removed from the issue, a single industry building only gets 1 vehicle bringing raw materials right in the beginning.
"If we think that you create", well when I ALT-TABbed back to editpadpro I had written that, but have zero clue what I was about to say before I ALT-TABbed back to re-check something... and "oh! look shiny!" got distracted haha!
Anyways
Here is another base line comparison and example for small industrial district size which is absolutely not a traffic problem.
Was following an ore truck, it was delivering 8t load into our 2 x 4 building (or some very small narrow) and it did the delivery, but then went to do another TWO deliveries for nearby buildings, that was odd and cool at the same time.
2022-08-30T03:09:00Z Capital City population 30k.
Cargo harbor is now available.
2022-08-30T04:19:00Z Traffic flow is 90-92% when I can see slight reddish shade on PMC Industrial 1 intersection, everything is smooth but, I can sense that it wont take much more buildings / zoning before we start to have an issue.
2022-08-30T04:32:00Z Colossal City population 40k.
This milestone gives nuclear power plant and cargo hub (ship + train terminal).
2022-08-30T04:56:00Z So increased one full row of industrial buildings zoning, still runs over ninety percent traffic flow.
2022-08-30T05:33:00Z Its my lunch time, will let game run 3x time acceleration speed while I'm away from keyboard.
2022-08-30T05:57:00Z Feeding time is over, lets zone something.
Too many people are moving into the city all at once, private cars convoy is clogging up even six lane arterial road. Made a mistake to zone huge blob of high density residential and then job markets opened with offices, so yeah there you go, private car convoy hehe.
Ah finally the big convoy is done, roads are free again.
2022-08-30T06:41:00Z Metropolis population 60k.
Heh PMC Commercial 2 district to sell some goods
Had some traffic issues in one arterial and collector T-intersection, so decided to try roundabout builder, haven't done that in a long while, dunno why. Its not exactly perfect solution but guess its better than standard intersection.
2022-08-30T08:30:00Z Megalopolis population 75k.
All milestones reached, nice. Now we hunt for the one hundred thousand folks badge
New PMC Residential 6 district is founded.
Industrial and commercial stuff runs pretty stable, I am terrified of adding any more commercial or industrial on that particular collector road, I'm sure it would break traffic again heh.
So now just trying to add offices and high density residentials to reach our final goal.
Tested new road grid, 22u * 10u, meaning twenty two units times ten units road creation. Lemme show you.
Colors are just for reference. One of those road grids allows nice fit for five 4 x 4 unit zone blocks. Hmm I might start to use it, even though its much harded to create in the first place, but dunno never even realized that now I'm done two 4 x 4 PLUS two units heh.
Hey, I hate garbage, any questions?
Unfortunately doesn't look like PMC Residential 6 district expansion will get us to our goal, still so much to go and the district is already full. Need to make another collector and do another district I guess heh.
Actually I would like to make second industrial area somewhere else to keep traffic in check. But raw materials still have to be brought in somehow, was thinking of either ship or train, or maybe both. But dunno, my focus need to be in population growth not playing some industry pimp
Seven, coming up!
City has 100% demand for commercial, uuh I scare commercial, so much traffic, so much problems, uuh!
2022-08-30T10:17:00Z Okay now we are just waiting for counter to hit the magic number. I would love to add some commercial zoning to this district, but too scared it will break everything and set me back for hours, so I'll just wait.
This office building might be my highscore number now, 508 workers 
Sure is a lot of people for a single building heh.
2022-08-30T10:44:00Z Aayeah! 100k population reached! Whohoo!
This was the first time I was just sitting here watching population number growing, every other time it just happens naturally.
2022-08-30T10:45:00Z Saved game and shutdown Cities Skylines, I'm done playing for today, time to relax by watching new episodes of Beavis and Butt-Head