With New Zealand going into lock down as of tonight due to Convid-19 I have decided to up my Cities Skylines and Stellaris Federations streams to 6-nights a week at 7pm. The purpose of the Streams is to give people an outlet to talk, maybe meet others (online) and watch me Derp Cities Skylines as I did earlier this week with the Forestry Industry.
I will continue with Valhalla City even with Sunset Harbour coming out this Friday although given how the Mods always break with a new DLC I might start a new City and run it concurrently with Valhalla.
DERPS
If you are thinking it is 90 minutes of me building a City you might be in for a surprise when the Derps do roll and they do roll in. Such as I spend 90 minutes building a Forestry Industry and wonder why the Furniture Factory was not working. The answer will have you going DERP!
Traffic Jank
If I am not building then I am trying to un-jank my traffic as seen below:
It was fixed in the following stream which I will post next blog post.
So come join me at 7 for the Derps, the Janks, the massive battles and all things traffic in Cities Skylines and Stellaris Federations!
Urban Development in full flight in Grand Manukau/Layton Cities
After some path finding issues with the transit system and realising you can not start a Metro Line at a “deactivated” station (a station that has been built but not online to receive passengers) I got some good old fashioned urban development underway in Grand Manukau/Layton Cities.
The objective this week was two-fold:
Establishment of the Ore Industry
Continued residential expansion to support a City Centre and the new Industry
So the Ore Industry has been established and is functioning well while Parnell and Franklin District have both come on-stream.
At the moment I am in Expansion Mode – that is pretty much cookie-cutter standardised urban development through the Twin Cities and Urban Islands Urban Geography concepts. This is because the major infrastructure is already laid down from the earlier Planning and Building Mode thus all that is happening is existing infrastructure is simply being extended rather than adding entirely new Lines and so on. The other mode is Consolidation/Mature Mode where I have stopped expanding the City and am going through the existing urban area either upzoning or optimising the infrastructure for efficient operations.
Let’s Ride the Metro
So to start the videos off today we get to ride the newly expanded Metro Line 1:
Let’s ride Metro Line 1Transport Line Manager in use
Checking Out the Ore Industry
I built some Ore Industry – this is how it went:
Ore Industry – after a quick ride on the Metro
And finally a look at the new urban areas of Parnell and Franklin District. Also a final drop down to First Person mode to see the Downtown and LOTS OF TREES!
Bus lane woes, logistics and a new urban area
Next week we are traffic problem finding and bringing online another heavy rail line to help remove some of the road congestion. Also more urban expansion and the placement of the Lemonade Factory in time for Christmas!
So how does the Campus DLC for Cities Skylines rate?
TL:DR version: I give it a B+
Right now that those with extremely short attention spans are satisfied I’ll move to the long version of what I think of the Campus DLC for Cities Skylines.
Cities Skylines Campus DLC and the Campus Content Pack by King Leno came out around 36 hours ago as of this post (so overnight in New Zealand time). This time around I did not have the usual two week wait for Mod’s to catch up as the main two Mod’s that would be impacted by Campus DLC (Real Time and Transport Lines Manager) were either updated very quickly or only had User Interface glitches and are to be updated very soon. So yesterday I fired up the game and load the City of Manukau which earlier in the month I had prepared for the new DLC. See #CitiesSkylines Introduces the big Campus for more there.
Straight away the first bugbear would come up: RAM. This DLC and the new Content Pack are chewing even my 20GB of RAM (so I’ll have to take it to 30GB now) which is very unusual when a new DLC has come out for the game. In the past with previous DLC’s and even Content Packs the usage of memory will increase that is a given but not the large jump seen with the Campus DLC. Paradox and CO have been told to optimise the game and make it able to utilise 64bit systems better, if they want to release more DLC’s then they will need to do this sooner rather than later.
Once Manukau loaded it was straight in to building the University campus (you have three to choose from: University, Trade School and Liberal Arts (simply Arts in the Commonwealth). I would also build an Aquatics Centre for my University sports team as well.
Manukau pre Campus DLC
The above picture shows the land between the Airport, Papakura and Manukau Technology Park in which the University of Manukau will sit. At this point in time there is only one road in and out until I connect up Manukau University Town to the new bypass at the left of the map. Transit-wise there is:
One bus station connected to a Monorail Station
One heavy rail station connected to another Monorail Station
One Metro Station (trains run underground)
A Manukau University Town circuit bus
Cycle lanes and cycleways
Before I could start building the University I had an 800KV and a 400KV transmission line running through the proposed campus.
Transmission Lines from Nuclear City
Time to bury the 800KV line and reroute slightly the 400KV line:
With the lines either buried or diverted the building of the Campus can now continue (both Lines came from Nuclear City and deliver power to: the Airport, University, Papakura and City Centre, and the Papatoetoe-Tamaki urban area).
Laying down the University
Time to build the University of Manukau starting with the Administration Building then working from there with support buildings, Faculties (Science, Medicine and Law), dormitories and various other structures:
Arts and Engineering Faculties are in separate institutions such as Trade School and the Liberal Arts.
Next up the University Aquatic Centre:
University of Manukau Aquatic Centre
Now for some University policies:
FEE FREE!
Yep the University of Manukau is entirely FEES FREE with the City of Manukau adopting Universal Education (being paid for with Residential and Commercial Taxes increased 1% each respectively). However, no Free Lunches folks – that one is on you. The University also provides Student Healthcare, will have Visiting Scholars and of course fund Academic Works.
With a bit of tinkering the Aquatic Centre and team is all set up and yes I have not activated the Free Transit on event day. Go pay your flat fare of $2 to catch the train, Metro or Monorail the Centre
Oh did I mention FEES FREE!
Getting the University going:
Once I had completed the University and some surrounding residential and commercial using the Always University City Districts (to best enable the King Leno University Content Pack) time to let it rip:
As Manukau has the previous vanilla universities and the Hadron Collider (which negates the need for schools) operating it will take a while for the new UoManukau to come to full power (as we wait on the new generation of residents to come through).
Once the University has settled in I will look at the Trade School and Liberal Arts Campuses given Manukau is deemed a large mature City game wise.
Thoughts?
Apart from the RAM issue and with the addition of the University District mod mentioned earlier the Campus DLC and Content Pack definitely give a bit of spice to your City no matter size or stage of game play.
No doubt debate will rage on Universal Education or Education for Profit (I use Universal Education) and should be plenty of YouTube videos on that one.
I will take Manukau some time to readjust as the effects from the Hadron wear off as Citizens die, new ones are born or move into the City. However, even with Universal Education I can still keep the City running in the Black – with Residential and Commercial Taxes at 10%.
To get best bang for buck from the DLC a new City will be needed and with the beautiful maps that came with the DLC I am sure my Urban Geography skills will be tested again.
Should you go out right away and purchase the DLC and Content pack? If you have nudged over 1,000 game hours as I have then yes? Otherwise wait for the Steam sales.
NOTE: DO NOT OPEN WITH MOBILE DEVICE OR ON MOBILE DATA. DESKTOP RECOMMENDED
Part Two covers the Trans-Manukau Link in the day time, it also covers some of the urban geometries I am using in Manukau via Cities Skylines
The map I am playing to build Manukau on (this my first city with the Industries DLC) has a major transport weakness where there is no east-west connection between two sets of inter-city motorways along the coastal area. As a result and also how Manukau has developed a new east-west link was built and called the Trans-Manukau Link
The Link can be seen and annotated by the black arrows I quickly scribbled on:
Manukau with Trans-Manukau Link annotated
The link is either a 4 or 6-lane toll road that links one of two inter-city motorways and forms an expressway for freight and people to move across the coastal part of the city away from urban roads. It is not a motorway however there is no urban development flanking the Link. The Trans-Manukau links up several urban roads although it does not link with a separate 2-lane expressway that runs north-south from Manukau Shores through Wiri and Wiri East on its way to an inter-city motorway.
Free from urban clutter and an average speed limit of 70km/h going through multiple urban forms the Link has become a bit of a tourist trap for travellers either passing through or stopping Manukau for a holiday.
I have two sets of albums of the Trans-Manukau Link, one at night and the other in the day with a few aerial shots of the surrounding urban geography. This is done using the free camera mode that allows the camera to come down to first person level inside a City which is great for checking out all the nooks and hot spots a city has.
Manukau with 69,000 people in it
Trans-Manukau Link – Daytime
City Geometries
I had a comment on the geometry of the City so I am going to post a few pictures that help capture that:
Given Manurewa is under development at the moment I will have to get more Geometry pictures soon.
NOTE: DO NOT OPEN WITH MOBILE DEVICE OR ON MOBILE DATA. DESKTOP RECOMMENDED
The map I am playing to build Manukau on (this my first city with the Industries DLC) has a major transport weakness where there is no east-west connection between two sets of inter-city motorways along the coastal area. As a result and also how Manukau has developed a new east-west link was built and called the Trans-Manukau Link
The Link can be seen and annotated by the black arrows I quickly scribbled on:
Manukau with Trans-Manukau Link annotated
The link is either a 4 or 6-lane toll road that links one of two inter-city motorways and forms an expressway for freight and people to move across the coastal part of the city away from urban roads. It is not a motorway however there is no urban development flanking the Link. The Trans-Manukau links up several urban roads although it does not link with a separate 2-lane expressway that runs north-south from Manukau Shores through Wiri and Wiri East on its way to an inter-city motorway.
Free from urban clutter and an average speed limit of 70km/h going through multiple urban forms the Link has become a bit of a tourist trap for travellers either passing through or stopping Manukau for a holiday.
I have two sets of albums of the Trans-Manukau Link, one at night and the other in the day with a few aerial shots of the surrounding urban geography. This is done using the free camera mode that allows the camera to come down to first person level inside a City which is great for checking out all the nooks and hot spots a city has.
