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[R^2]

Oops, I forgot to build hospitals.


With residents and commerce, we get garbage. And as I found out in Bob-omb Battlefield, Waste to Energy plants are worth the pollution they put out -- especially if they're built early enough that they don't have to burn through a backlog of garbage and can keep their overall output low.


Lookin' good, unemployment isn't a problem, and not an Industrial lot in si--


..........


Okay, fine.




Roads, fire station, police station to cover the whole map... and Industry. Commuters can avenue up here from C-Island for a job. Apparently people don't travel more than one region over, and Norfair doesn't connect to Bob-omb Battlefield directly, so I may have to do this again in a different direction to cover Bob-omb Battlefield and Hyrule.


................................................................................seriously?

[R^2]

I had to maul the coastline to get a seaport in there, but overall the city actually... does pretty well. I mean, I had to carefully keep my water pumps away from most of the factories or they'd be shut down for serving overpolluted water even through the water treatment plant. Air pollution is a major issue, but doesn't cross regional borders and nobody actually lives here. And that ferry I built also doesn't cross regional borders, so C-Islanders can't commute over that way. But despite being entirely zoned for one type, and the MASSIVE demands Industry puts on your water and power resources, the city turns a funding profit and nobody in C-Island should complain about not having a job.




C-Island is doing well enough that they get a new private school, and I put a little educational row in with a college, library, and museum while I'm at it.


While they don't cross regional borders, ferries do get people around the island faster than roads. I'm building ferries that can carry cars too, so people can leave home, drive onto a ferry, drive off, and get to work.


Dude I seriously straight up do not have anyplace I can put this.


C-Island, lookin' pretty good. There's demand for everything, but I've filled the island more or less curve to curve, and the lots are developing into giant towers of apartments and offices. Education's good, health is good, and there's not an Industrial lot in sight. Experiment is a success!

What's next? Any ideas?

[Zaratustra]

University city?

[A²]

A forest area, with a huge tree in the middle of it.

That provides magic to everyone.

And a castle nearby.

[Brentai]

Cosmo Canyon.

[A²]

Battletoads - Turbo Tunnel

[R^2]

A forest area, with a huge tree in the middle of it. That provides magic to everyone. And a castle nearby.

Would you believe there isn't a "giant tree" or "castle" terraforming/development item?

Probably a mod for it though.

Cosmo Canyon.

Elevated rail has trouble with even gentle slopes, but those straight-edged plateaus are gonna be tough to connect to anything. Maybe a no-roads city with subways as the main mode of transit?

Battletoads - Turbo Tunnel

Since there's no arbitrary walls or speeder bikes, it'd just be strips of flat land with the occasional water inlet separating them. And all the maps are square, so it'd switchback on itself a few dozen times.

...actually that sounds pretty interesting to try.

[Zaratustra]

A forest area, with a huge tree in the middle of it. That provides magic to everyone. And a castle nearby.

Would you believe there isn't a "giant tree" or "castle" terraforming/development item?

Closest is the St. Basil's landmark (http://i668.photobucket.com/albums/vv44/earwax_man/Kremlin-4.jpg?t=1288297679)

[Niku]

[R^2]

It's about as good an approximation as I can do. I can't make one island a desolate purple rocky face, another frozen-over, and another made of gold. And there's still no "Big damn tree" option.




I had to go back to God mode for a bit and smooth out all those coastlines. They were too steep to build ferries onto, and the purpose of this experiment is to see if a viable city can be built that uses ferries as its main method of commuting.


The nice thing about small islands like this and C-Island is that if I keep my residential clusters close together, they can all be served within the radius of one medical clinic and police station.


Like C-Island, I put in a bunch of beaches to make people want to live and work nearby.


I can't put a Mana Tree here, but the island is a source of mysterious power. (Would you say converting wind to electricity is sufficiently advanced technology?)




Unlike C-Island, the people here have a shot at working Industrial jobs without heading over the county line.


But after the city takes off, those farms end up abandoned before you know it. Only uneducated people will work Agriculture (the game ignores the numerable skilled and technical jobs on any modern farm), and I've had elementary and high schools running for the whole game. Beaches really are a convenient jump-start to a city's economy, hey.


Soon I flatten all of the elementary schools, high schools, medical clinics, and police stations scattered around the main continent, replacing them with large central facilities. Then I install a college, a museum, and a library.


Feel better, Lyrai?



...those cross-channel power lines are damned ugly.

[A²]

eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee

[Classic]

If you're really desperate, you could just make the Kanto and Hoenn regions from Pokemon.

[R^2]

It occurs to me that I've been playing most of these cities to the point where they become reasonably stable, but not really to "completion". Not that you can complete a Sim City, but I should at least play through until stasis, right?


Haven't checked in on Hyrule in a whiOH CRAP LOOK AT THOSE FINANCES


Ah, there's the problem. At some point Bob-omb Battlefield called off the sale of power from those wind farms, so now they're costing upkeep and doing a whole lotta nuthin'. Bulldozing most of them puts my power consumption back in line...


...and balances my budget, too.


Next people complain about the crime rate. Apparently the vegetable-pickers get a bit unruly out there in the fields.


It's odd to need to plant police kiosks on rural street corners to keep the locals in line, but they're the ones complaining.


Balanced budget and crime rate on the decline. Hyrule's a town you'd want to come to.

(But not stay very long, unless you really like looking at corn.)

[R^2]

Downtown Mana is kind of a mess, given that the game's algorithm for guessing where streets should go isn't very good at its job.


I put up some better-organized lanes, and am rewarded for my efforts with... housing projects. Great.


This island isn't doing so great as a secondary residential/commercial hub, so I'm flattening it in hopes of luring some high-tech industry to the area. Of course, I hike the tax rates to make sure it's high-tech I get, rather than more dirty or manufacturing. (Doing that also balances the budget, because Mana is deep deep deep in the red.)


There we go.


Analyzing my ferry routes, I find people are taking the ships out of town. Where are they going? There's nothing but prairie over there.


It's starting to look like the presence of high-tech industry lowers the land value enough to drive away high-tech industry. (Apparently high-tech industry and apartment buildings do not get along.)


Removing the houses from the area helps.


But apparently the easiest shortcut to developing your zones is trees. I skip back into God mode and put some forests down around the fringes of my settled areas. (You can do this in Mayor mode, but why spend all that money? Because I don't have any, that's why.)


The budget isn't as balanced as I'd like -- two islands have high-tech industries on them now (planting trees on what was up to this point the Ice Country prompted high-tech industry to move in there too), but only one island has a seaport to ship goods away. But the area's budget and population are stable as they are, so I'm calling it a success before I screw up again.

I'd like to say that it was unintentional that downtown City of Mana ended up where the most heavily-settled and developed earlygame of Secret of Mana was set. Those housing projects are right where Pandora would be!

[R^2]

On to the next. Hopefully Startropics isn't as abusive as Secret of Mana.




Looks like I still had some developing to do.


It's an objectively terrible area to put the cruise line dock, but as usual all the other coastlines weren't just absolutely perfect and so I put it the only place it'd fit.


The airport doesn't fit anywhere either, but I make some room on not-quite-C-Island for it. It's an airport and this is a tourist vacation spot!


Then I build some commercial zones around the airport because airports are what commercial zones like.


You can actually build a bunch of these after you unlock them, so long as you can pay their upkeep cost.


Not even Bob-omb Battlefield's hospitals are this crowded! I build another one beside a private school on the far side of the island, and that stabilizes the budget and population here too.

[R^2]

Norfair: still a shithole. I don't intend to do anything about it.

But uh... if that avenue into town isn't getting any use... who's working all of these factories? C-Island is the only neighbor Norfair has.

[R^2]

Bob-Omb Battlefield - Mario & Sonic at the London 2012 Olympic Games


As soon as I get back to Bob-omb Battlefield, I get a notices that:
- People living here are commuting out of town to get to work, so I should build more commercial/industrial zones.
- People from out of town are commuting in to work here, so I should build more residential zones to keep workers local.

awhuuuuaaaat


I ignore both notices and plant trees. Turns out this is what my ailing high-tech industrial lot needed: some foliage to increase the land value.


Neato. (Offices grow like weeds around a stock exchange.)


I keep having to crank up the amount of water I purchase in Hyrule, and Bob-omb Battlefield keeps growing too. Eventually I just bulldoze the six (!!!) water pumps I've had to build and put in a single Large Pump. A Large Pump has the capacity of ten smaller ones, so that oughta get everybody off my back for a while.


The city's ability to create garbage has exceeded the Waste to Power plant's ability to burn it all off. But I want to pollute this corner less, not more -- high-tech industries have started to move in here, too. There's a snowball effect as I bulldoze more dirty/manufacturing lots to give the high-techs enough unpolluted room to grow, as the high-techs move into the spots I just vacated. Eventually they're up against the existing Waste to Power plant, and abandon from the pollution.


So I build a couple Waste to Power plants on the far side of the mountain, out of everybody's way, and demolish the original one. Now the Industrial lot in the southwest corner is all high-tech...


...and I get messages about having nearly solved the city's pollution issues.


Getting a bird's-eye view of the city, there's one spot right in the middle where nobody wants to go. Desirability is in the red for every kind of lot. (Turns out this is the Disease Control Center, where nobody wants to live or work.)


Better bird's-eye view. All my industry is nonpolluting High-Tech.


Enough to save myself the cash on the upkeep for a water treatment plant... or so I think. The advisors will complain and bitch and moan as long as you don't have one, regardless of what the actual pollution level of the water is.


Next time: Another new city!

[Nickasummers]

I can never manage to build a full sized city in that game. Traffic becomes an unresolveable problem before I even get above low-density zoning. You seem to have Midas's touch when it comes to this game, any suggestions on what to do about that? I've tried mass transit but either I suck at that or it doesn't work (probably the former)

[R^2]

Apparently the original game is staggeringly buggy, especially when it comes to traffic and pathfinding. People will drive into your city on a highway, get off the highway, and take backroads to get to work -- even when the highway would have taken them directly there. Do you have the Rush Hour expansion, or at least mods to help alleviate that?

I know rail lines are particularly picky -- they don't turn at 90 degrees like roads do; they need at least one tile of space going diagonally to connect to perpendicular lines. And even then, you need joints for every direction you want the trains to go -- a T-connection will need two joints.

Other than that, I dunno. I'm still learning myself.

[Nickasummers]

I do have rush hour expansion. I read that buses are great and I've tried and it helps some but not a lot. IDK.