I decided to follow a random car from the airport to where their destination inside Neo South Auckland. Where did they end up? The other side of the City, well nearly as they headed to the Aviation Club.
The scenic trip was nice though I will give them that!
Time to go riding the new bus lines in what was at the time the latest suburb to be added to Neo South Auckland, the suburb of Papakura.
Wheels on the bus go round and round
In an upcoming video I we would tour the Papakura-Riccarton Bus Way. One of only two Bus Rapid Transit systems I have ever built in the six years I have owned Cities Skylines!
As the title and heading says; why get stuck in traffic when you can take a helicopter from A to B to C and back again. Let’s go travelling like the elite do across Neo South Auckland!
GET TO DA CHOPPA!
With the new Airport DLC coming out at the end of the month I will have to see how helicopters are dealt with at the new modular airport as currently it is only the Metropolitan Airport that handles them (apart from the stand alone helicopter stops).
After a break I am slowing getting back into streaming and creating Cities Skylines content using Neo South Auckland as my current example.
I usually upload both the RAW version for those wanting the entire run through of a city building session, as well as snippets highlighting specific elements like a piece of Urban Design or a Scene.
My latest raw run through from last week can be seen below. The focus was on building the supporting infrastructure for the Riccarton Centre I was also building alongside. This is my second ever attempt in 6 years to build Bus Rapid Transit (it is not my normal play style as I use the rail types more) given I have actual dedicated BRT assets available to do so.
So how did it map out and where will this lead next run through?
I will fetch highlights of the completion of Riccarton Centre, the set up of Riccarton South as a residential support node, further establishment of more residential for the City, and the full operation of one if not two of the Rapid Bus Transit Lines.
The photos below give a preview of this:
More soon.
Once you have settled into the basic mechanics of Cities Skylines with a functioning transport system, the zones nicely laid out and the civic infrastructure all working does the fun really begin.
Fun what fun?
As the city gets larger it gets more complex as an organism especially if playing modded as I do. This means regular check ups across the City to make sure the transport and transit systems are working as optimally as they should. The good news is that most fixes you come upon are not major and can be done very quickly and cheaply. That said from time to time a major overhaul might be needed but that is for another day. The point being that six lane roads and motorways are not and should not be the go to fix – PUBLIC AUTHORITIES TAKE NOTE.
In this post I go through some medium and advanced play throughs in using some extended tools to help fine tune your City as well as giving it more realism. Note: I use Real Time Mod which simulates the full day/night cycle and includes the rush hours, shopping, events, and shift work effects upon a City. More HERE.
Of course as the City continues to grow and evolve more checks and tweaks are done, especially as more transit lines are added and old ones might need replacing.
I can be found on Twitch doing Cities Skylines play throughs: https://www.twitch.tv/palpatine001
Apologies for lack of content lately. It is all sitting there in Youtube and in pictures but not assembled into a blog post.
That said in the blog’s absence fellow Cities Skylines follow DoctorWhy rose to the community challenge and this is what happened:
We are on a Winter Map, our first ever in playing this game for five years so pictures and videos coming once I have built more than just four roads and a roundabout 😉
More soon
In Cities Skylines your city can fail in one of two ways; population abandons it because your City Management was less than desirable, or the City has become too successful and both housing and infrastructure have not kept up.
Well for Valhalla City we had a case of the latter. After the ore and farming industries opened up we had a massive influx of residents which meant an influx of traffic to boot. Queue the City’s housing and infrastructure in a bit of a pickle. So over the space of several streams (or strims) I attempt to fix one crisis after another. But unlike the real life New Zealand Finance Minister we do not engage in tinkering, we engage in full blown Public Works – NO HOLDS BAR!
So did I fix both sets of crisis that had hit Valhalla City? Find out in the full video streams of the week’s play below. For live streams see: https://www.twitch.tv/palpatine001
What does the future hold for Valhalla? Tune in and find out!
Apologies for lack of blog material recently with things being busy at home. What I will do is write a post at least once a week summing up what I have been doing on my City with highlights from Twitch.
In the meantime some highlights from Valhalla City:
We do zoning, we do traffic, we ride trams into rendered tunnels, we do sign writing and we do detailing.
For a schedule on when and where I stream: https://www.twitch.tv/palpatine001
If you are up for highlights of me detailing or riding a tram:
First full update tomorrow!
Another day and more work to do in the Grand City of Solaria. Recently I did a podcast on Micro Districts and the Soviet Union (see: Micro Districts, the Soviet Union and Modern City Planning). In the most recent streams of Cities Skylines I put the Micro District theory to the test as well as finally building the new Metro system to serve the City.
The following three videos look at where the Grand City of Solaria is or was at as of the 17th June before I started the Harbour District, followed by the Metro being built, and two Micro Districts being laid out.
I did manage to get one of the three Metro Lines working as well. The other two will be done once the Harbour District, and Palpatine Shores are both built up. You might also see the Northern/Southern Lights are enabled when it is night time giving some absolute stunning shots.
Once I have the Harbour District set up I will get some night shots of the Monorail working as it goes through the entire City. The night shots are just stunning.
Next post will cover the Harbour District and Palpatine Shores!
Time for a new city in Cities Skylines however, Palpatine City won’t be going anywhere as I will come back to it for more detailing and tutorial content.
This time I decided to run the City known as Grand City of Solaria to a theme and what a mess of a theme it is (deliberate). The city will follow a Soviet post 1945 theme but I am mixing a bit of Albert Speer design, British/Soviet Nuclear Steampunk into the mix as well. By nuclear steampunk it builds on an original idea in the 50 and 60’s that everything would be nuclear powered (including ships, planes, ovens (microwaves are actually nukers) and power too cheap to metre (not sure if it was nuclear cars or battery cars recharged by the grid powered by reactors)) with design blending brutal-ism and late Victorian/Modernism. I believe the Fallout game series might represent this best before the missiles flew.
The map chosen was Elena Fall 1 which allows two cities to be built at two very different heights.
You can see where I am starting the City as well
So we started with the nuclear power station, the Central Soviet Hall and its Spires, and the Tribune area. From there the rest of this part of the City will be moulded around them with a second City on the lower Plains to the right.
As you can see I have added 1930’s Zeppelins as sky buses and because they were equally the rage as well as atomic power – the MONORAIL!
I am using the European Theme to control the buildings so 21st Century design buildings do not pop up.
Now I can hear everyone saying ZEPPELIN rides so one Zeppelin and one Monorail ride coming right up:
As for someone wanting to take their dog for a walk? Well this happened – we rode the bus:
The full strim can be seen here:
I strim at least four times a week at https://www.twitch.tv/palpatine001
More on Grand City of Solaria soon as I set out the industry and next metropolitan area in the main City!
Ben's Cities 