Garton (a vanilla MD)

[11241036]

Again an interesting update. You might perhaps want to build a small hospital to improve health, but other than that, you've done a good job. I would BTW like to see your city budget in one of your next updates. Just out of personal interest.

[89James89]

Replies:

11241036: Thanks and don't worry, they have a small clinic, I'm sure they're all fine. As for the budget take a look at this entry.



Entry 8: Were on the road to somewhere!


Right lets see. Were back in Glennington today for some more growth starting right here in farmer Johns field.




Now, as you can probably tell farms aren't mean to look like this and farmer John had been struggling for a while to make money off of his farm. This is when he got wind of the state trying to fund a fair type area for recreational purposes (or some such jazz, he wasn't really sure, edumacation came to late for him unfortunately). Anyway with the state struggling to find suitable land to buy for the project Farmer John decided to re purpose his farm and beat the state to it.

So with dollar signs in his eyes he set about bulldozing his land, buying up attractions and generally preparing the site.

At which point he realised that he hadn't budgeted for the large amount of landscaping needed to make the area suitable for the fair. Unfortunately for him this realisation came a bit too late as he'd already bankrupted himself.

In stepped the state and offered to buy the land and everything on it for a reasonable amount of money (ok, they practically stole it off of him but John didn't realise this) . Anyway several months passed and the people of Garton now have a lovely fair to spend their weekends at (even if the balloon rides mean  passing through a large cloud of smog)




Right what's next. Well Glenningtons growth stalled by the surrounding farm lands its time to look at some of the other sett.....

What do you mean we have a problem?

What sort of problem?

Oh for the love of god can't they just walk to work, stupid traffic issues!

Right change of plan, apparently Glennington is gridlocked in most places. I'm pretty sure their just being picky lets take a look at the data vie....




Ok maybe we don have a problem. Right I have a plan. Were going to turn that road from Hayley to Nielton-on-Sand (grit) into a ring road. Fast forward a few months and we have a finished ring road. Now lets take a look at it shall we, seeing as I've already forgotten what this entry was meant to be about anyway.

Starting in Nielton makes sense, so here you can see the new road branching off towards Schulman Bay.




Moving into Schulmans Bay you can see the upgraded hairpin road leading from the cliffs down into the town. Makes a pretty nice road to drive on as well which fits in well with the holiday town that Schulmans Bay is.




Next we move into Cape Glen and take a look at Hayley's Gap, the only place where the ridge was suitable enough to cross, connecting Glennington to Schulman Bay and Nielton-on-Sand.




Now with some of the new roads looked at we can see what affect these changes and the many intersection improvements had on the traffic issues in Glennington.




Ahhhh much better, now they'll hopefully stop moaning. Anyway while were talking about traffic networks lets take a Ariel look at the whole ring-road that snakes its way around the island. Here you can  see our data view of it with the roads in white. I'm not going to lie though, I'm not sure what some of the traffic planners were doing with some of the route that they took but hell it seems to work so lets not complain.




Finally for this entry, despite warnings from my financial advisor, someone requested a look at my personal bank accoun.... I mean town budgets. Arranged from highest to lowest monthly income.

As you can see there all making a profit apart from Sepen Head but their not losing that much so they'll be fine.




Right that's all for today. Join me next time when I may have remembered what the hell this update was meant to be about in the first place.

Cheers

James

[vortext]

Nice updates! Amazing how much of a difference a stretch of road can make. The traffic region view is very neat, I've said it before but the farm fields are great. 

[benedict]

Always interesting to watch another vanilla region.

[89James89]

Replies:

vortext: Thanks and yes it definitely improved traffic flow that's for sure. Plus it looks a lot nicer with some of the diagonal roads in there. Glad you like the regional view and the spreading farmland, its always some of my favourite ways of watching a region grow.

benedict: Thanks and glad your enjoying this vanilla region. Not many of us around.




Entry 9: Ayreswarter Docks


Right well today we get back on track a bit with what we were trying to do last time before we got distracted.

To start with we'll head north of Glennington to the coastline on the opposite side of the spur of land  where you can fin several smaller settlement's. One of these is the small coastal fishing port of Bakeley Cove  where recently, thanks to the road upgrades has almost doubled in size.

Here you can see the settlement just after the road was upgraded.  That large plot of empty land beside the road used to be some farmers field that we pretty much st.... I mean bought for a reasonable price and had to bulldoze to make room for the road. (We'd also like to point out that in NO way at all did the farmers on the other side of the road bride us to not build the roads through their farms. Honest).




So, with this land sitting empty it didn't take us long to realise that we would get much more money if we turned it into housing rather than sold to another farmer, and after all Bakeley Cove was a lovely, quiet fishing village so who wouldn't want to live there?

Anyway as you can see in the photo below the village has pretty much doubled in size. Which has apparently led to it losing some of its charm but oh well, I'm sure they'll get over it.




Right with that taken care of we can move onto looking at the rest of the surrounds of Glennington.

Seen below are the two photos that make up the areas around Glennington. Going from left to right in each image you you can see the village of Lowridge, one of the few villages in the region with a small industrial estate alongside the farming. Then you have the small town of Crossrows which is probably set to grow at some point as its on the main road into Glennington from Nielton and also has the connections into Lowridge and the small settlements you'll see in the next photo and finally Bakeley Cove which we talked about above.




Moving onto the next photo you can see the even smaller fishing village of Rowton Bay, now the envy of Bakeley Coveas as its still what Bakeley used to be. Next you can see the most Westerly and the highest settlement in the form of Cape Glenn. A lovely popular place with its large park overlooking the Pacific Ocean. Then above of that on the other side of the ridge you can see West Glennington.




Now with our tour of Glenningtons surrounds done we can move onto a new area of Garton Island. As you can see from the overview below the area is on the north side of the island and has the river which separates the island from mainland Garton running through it.




Now with the fairly shelthered and wide river mouth (remembering I've doubled the scale of everything in this CJ, so that medium tile is actually 4kmx4km not 2kmx2km) and the flat riverbanks this place made a perfect site for a larger version of Nielton-on-Sand. Below will be a series of photos taken of the town as it developed as well as the year it was taken and the population.

2nd year. Population: 1101
As you can see its small at the moment but already has a large industrial presence.




6th year. Population:1926
Steady growth over the past years had promoted upgrades to the docklands in the form of a couple of piers and straightened docks.




10th year. Population: 3327
Further growth for the town has left prompted more improvements to the docks to cope with the increased traffic. Also you can see the wind-farm that has been struggling to keep up with the growth of the town and some unemployment issues. Also as ever in the region we can now see some encroaching farms.



18th year. Population 3997

And here's the town as it currently stands today. As you can see it has continued to grow and the farms have surrounded the town now. You can also see how the growing town outpaced the wind-farm by so much that we decided to replace it with another coal power plant (the regions third, I guess its safe to say were not all that environmentally concious lol) replacing the wind-farm with a lightouse to help make the area safer for ships. Also the docks have been redeveloped to make the port safer and easier to use therefore increasing traffic into and out of (it actually now rivals Glennington in terms of volume and has all but killed the shipping in Nielton-on-Sand).




Right, now as your all probably a bit bored with the text wall (provided you actually read it all and if you did then well done with sticking with my ramblings), we'll wrap it up with a couple of close ups of the town. Firstly with a view of the dockyards where you can see the new power-plant and its docks and the other commercial shipping piers.




The second close up is of the commercial strip on the upper level of the town. As you can see lots of shops here where you can buy anything provided its a car or a truck. God knows why their so popular here but I suppose its easier to ship them in here with the docks.




Right now I will actually shut up and stop talking.

Hope you enjoyed this entry.

James

[11241036]

Again an amazing update. The pier looks pretty good, given the possibilities the game gives you. Also nice adaption to the terrain and nice farming zones.

[89James89]

Replies:


11241036: Thanks I didn't think it turned out that badly so I'm glad you liked it!




Entry 10: Garton Island finished (well almost)


As the title above suggests today we mark the almost complete coverage of rural spread around the Garton Island area. As such this entry will concentrate on the area where the island is separated form the the mainland by a river that runs from Pacific Ocean on the north coast to the large bay area as seen below.




Now as with the last entry this will concentrate on growth with a view from above  but will also contain a  couple of treats for you all at the end.

Right anyway lets get on with it. As you can see below settlements in the area had a sort of two pronged way of growing, though the initial settlement was the town of Riverton on the coast of the river connected to Ayreswater by road and the rest of the island by boat. As you can see though, it has begun to grow outwards and connect to the other inland settlements with more spread coming in in the south.




As you can see growth sprung out from the areas above and many new settlements popped up. Unlike the latest entries we've seen the main income and industry in this area is definetly farming and agriculture. It also has the biggest diversity in whole island in terms of the size of the farms, from tiny smallholdings to the large fields you'd find around Hayley and Glennington.




With all the fast growth it wasn't long before the north and the south settlements became joined by road and lanes as can be seen in the image below. Also you can see several settlements that have sprung up along the riverbanks with both of the largest towns in the area situated there in the form of Riverton and Millbanks.




As you can see in the above photo the land was slowly becoming swallowed up by farms and small settlements. So much so that growth has begun to spring up across the river. Marbey, seen below was the first settlement not located on Gatorn Island. However its still not located on actual Mainland Garton but rather Harling island, another island seperated from the mainland by the river Harling (this will make more sense when you see the regional overview below).

As you can see the only link between the two at the moment is a chain driven ferry system that runs six times a day.

Interesting fact: Currently the various ferries that leave and arrive at the 4 ports in the area number around 500 daily. Income from these 500 amount to about $2 a day, meaning that by a long shot this is easily the cheapest public transport in the world (in fact it may even be free and that $2is just dropped change picked up by the operators.)




Now before we take a look at the whole area developed wel'll first take a look at a couple of mosaics that we took for you all seeing as its the 10th entry and all.

This first one is a sort of riverside mosiac from the the tiny inland village of Arton to the slightly bigger riverside villages of Sharbury and Tinshore. As you can see factories really don't play a big part here.




The second one takes a inland look from Tanworth to Arncombe at several of the small villages here a long with the smaller farms and copse's of trees the area is abundant with. Also you can see the village of Lynhurst that's always packed every Wednesday and Saturday due to the farmers market held here.




Now that's about it for this entry. I will leave you with these two overviews. One showing the area that we've been looking at today, the island side completely filled




and the next is a overlie of the region as it currently stands (OOC: I can't help fiddling with the terrain as some of you may have noticed. Just pretend it was like it all along lol).




Join us next time where we continue to move onto the mainland and maybe even attempt to connect with the rest of the US via land.

(Oh... and maybe we'll actually finish off that bit of land on the island we forgot about)

Cheers

James

[carlfatal]

Great stuff! I love the aerial views with all the farms and winding streets. 

Also I like the story (as much as it has one), this gives a good idea of how you develop the area. But I have one question: You are using a lot of 1x1 lots, but I can´t remember this size for stage 1 to 3. How do you grow them?

Keep it up, I am huge fan of this kind of MDs. 

[89James89]

Replies:

carlfatal: Thanks glad your enjoying the aerial's. I likes those too  . As for the story I'm glad its not too boring. As for the houses I have no idea why they grow. I can tell you though that they won't grow before you have a certain population as you need to develop some 2x1's first. I'm not sure they can be above stage 3 though as I haven't even given anywhere any water yet lol.




Entry 11: Another Rubbish Entry!


Just a small entry for you all today. Parts of this is what I wanted to show you and parts are events taking a hold of things again.

First of all we'll deal with the finishing off of the actual Garton Island area of the region (or at least the filling in). As the very astute of you may have noticed when I said that we'd almost filled up the island last time, we still had a tiny little spur of land at the harbour side of the river.

Well this is where the town of Tidland has been founded. As you can see in the below photo, its just a quiet little water side settlement with the usual stuff you'd find in a Gartonian settlement (yes ok, including illiterate citizens with interesting ideas on life like bathing in the backyard). It does have more of a basis on relaxation than industrialisation though what with having two beaches and all.




As you can see we even have a bit of commerce here to take advantage of the amount of visitors. Im pretty sure at some point though someone screwed up the whole concept of a commercial strip seeing as there factories here as well. Unless there just really really ugly shops, you never know.




Anyway leaving Tidland for now (because being honest there isn't actually all that much there) we move back onto the main focus of this entry. Now I don't know how many of you remember Tipton, the lovely place that recieves all the trash generated by the region but apparently the dump's manager has been going a bit mad lately raving about how the dump can't cope.

Now, with us all just assuming he was over reacting imagine our surprise when we saw this report handed to us.




What the? Where? How can a region of 35k citizens produce nearly 1 million tonnes of rubbish a month. I mean, do they just use their ovens once and then replace them or something? (actually thinking of the education levels out here this may be such a stupid statement.)

Either way it looks like we may actually have a problem arising here so we sat down to brainstorm.

Now before we go any further it would be a good idea to also point out that we'd been having some rolling blackouts in the River Crossing area due to the wind farms being a bit inefficient and all (also, not one to complain about enterprising enterprises and all but if these farmers keep building their own wind turbines were going to lose out on the government income for charging for the state produced electricity).

Anyway it was then that council member suggested we burn the rubbish (ovens and all) and generate a lot more electric than a wind turbine ever will from it. Well damn, I think he may just be onto something here.

So quickly having to come up with the plans on account of the fact that at this rate, the dump was going to be full in a couple of months we set about checking the budget in River Crossing (got to make sure we can afford it and all).




Well that's definitely all good (screw the proposed school who needs to be educated anyway). Now for a place to put it. Initially these three sites were proposed below.




Now understandably most of the, by this point already rather peeved, citizens of River Crossing has a majority vote in favour of site 3 being as it was the furthest away from anything. This was until they heard that it was to be designed and built by a Gartonian who's educational extent was a primary school and a local library to keep the costs down.

With this new information, the now more worried than peeved citizens quickly changed their vote to a landslide result in favour of site 1 pictured below. Mainly because if the whole thing went up in flames (probably fairly likely) at least it wouldn't spread off the island.




Anyway that's all for this stage of the development.

Now when you've all stopped cursing me for wasting several of your minutes reading all this for now actual results (or around 13 seconds if you just scrolled and looked at the images) join me next time when I promise we'll actually take a look at the new garbage burning thingy!

(trolling entry be trolling)

James

[benedict]

I like how you're creating the farms.

[89James89]

Replies:


benedict: Thanks I love making them!



Entry 12: Burn everything burnable!


Only if it's trash of course because burning houses and such is just silly (unless your house in in the landfill in which case it'll also be incinerated for energy). Anyway as you have probably guessed we have the whole incineration electric plant thingy up and running now.

Below is the continuation of the last entry which we didn't actually finish because you know, stuff. Anyway when we last left off we had just decided where to actually build the power plant thing and that was on as island in the middle of the river (for safety reasons mentioned above). Anyway, one of the problems with building something on a island is that you then need to actually get stuff to it and given that shipping all the garbage from Central Garton via water would be entirely impractical and stupid we needed a bridge.

Below you'll see the proposed spots for this bridge to the island




Now all of them had up and downsides (well ok one of them didn't really have any downsides and was chosen but screw it I'm going to talk about why the other two blue arrows were bad ideas). Also it might be a good time to point out that despite all our brilliant planning, somehow as the gridded topography readings show, we'd managed to completely overlook the fact that the island really isn't very flat.

Anyway this issue kind of killed the bottom choice as the island was too narrow to actually receive a bridge and traverse the terrain (OOC: I may be using only Maxis stuff but I'm still going to have realistic bridges without insane slopes) which was a pity really as the mainland side was perfect.

Moving up the next one was thrown out due to the fact that we'd have to bulldoze and relocate a load of people in Sharbury and given that they weren't too happy with us building the damn power plant in the first place, upsetting them even more might be a silly idea (plus it costs more to buy purchase the houses then rehouse the people).

This then left the top choice as the perfect option. Not only was there room on either side but it offered the closest link to the Tipton dump where the majority of the rubbish would probably come from.

Fast forward a few months and construction on the bridge has finished with minimal damage (a couple of farms were made smaller but that was it). You can also see here that the dockside where the garbage brought by water will be transferred to the dump ready to be burnt and a small ferry for links from the mainland side of the river. (OOC: Also you can see that you don't need a slope mod to get decent slopes lol).




Anyway with the initial traffic thingy's laid out (network, that's the word), we got to work building the actual power plants and the dump. Fast forward a year or two and here is the, by now named Gull Island (on account of all the Seagulls that the dump has brought in. We would also like to point out that we try to make sure as few Seagulls as possible also get incinerated) complete with dump, a large incineration plant some recycling (was told it was good for the environment, got to put all those cookers back into use) and some industrial (hell the island is going to be a dump anyway may as well fill it with dirty industrial).




In the above image you can also see the new power lines to power the island side of the river. This then allowed us to demolish all the state owned wind turbines and with a few tasty cash sums buy and demolish all of the private ones as well.

On with the island though, as you can probably guess, it hasn't really stopped growing and with spreading population on the mainland side of the river meaning an increased workforce pool, this is currently what the island looks like.




Also while were at it here's the current budget after building everything and running the dump and incineration plant. As you can see although were still making money the schools and other services may now have to wait for a while. We also had to start yelling at people to recycle as the dump was beginning to fill faster than the incinerator was burning it (OOC: Enact some ordianances).





And finally, to actually finish this entry unlike the last one, lets take a look at the island and the growing mainland side of the river complete with overly long and obtrusive island labels.




Right till next time where I'm sure I'll find some other things to waffle on about (text wall for the win and all that).

Till then

James

[benedict]

I always struggle to make the bridge approaches look nicely sloped in vanilla play. You've done an excellent job here.