Fueling the Fire - Story Driven City Journal

[BurnedBacon]

Cities Skylines AAR: Fueling the Fires. A story driven Cities Skylines playthrough.

Background and Info:

Today I proudly announce the beginning of my first Cities Skylines AAR. I've been lurking for years, but decided to make an account and get to work on one. It will be an in character run from the perspective of the mayor. He has been commissioned to create a large center of manufacturing and transport hub to prop up an ongoing arms race.

Various ‘crises’ will befall the city as the result of blockades, strikes, resource shortages, sabotage, and so on once simply growing the city is no longer a challenge. These will be brought about by turning off various services for the duration of the crisis. The government shall issue various unreasonable demands which will further complicate things along the way and keep it interesting.

Anything in parentheses is out of character comments. These will be used to explain construction of certain creations, point out a mod, or general commentary.

Additional mods may be added through the course of the game or mods replaced for better versions. This post will maintain the currently used mods, not just mods at the start.

Map:
Black Forest

Starting Mod List:

• All Spaces Unlockable – With Right Price by S. Klyte
• Crossings by Spectra
• Extender Public Transit UI by AcidF!re
• No More Purple Pollution [Brown Ground/Water] by Ganja Gremlin for Weed President
• No Pillars by some danny
• Toggle Traffic Light by Craxy
• Traffic++ by jayfarias
• TrafficManager Plus by seiggy
• Traffic Report Tool LisaLionheart
• Tree Brush by Destroyer
• Unlock All Roads by Zexel
• +Various building and prop mods

Current Mod List:

• Advanced Vehicle Options by SamsamTS
• All Spaces Unlockable – With Right Price by S. Klyte
• Automatic Emptying by Sadler
• Crossings by Spectra
• Network Extension Project by [Multiple]
• No More Purple Pollution [Brown Ground/Water] by Ganja Gremlin for Weed President
• No Pillars v1.1 Compatable by Bloody Pengiun
• Precision Engineering by Simie
• Traffic++ V2 by Katalyst6 and Lazarus*Man
• Traffic Manager: President Edition by LinuxFan
• Traffic Report Tool by LisaLionheart
• Various building, props, and vehicle skins

Chapter Selection:
Chapter 1: Laying the Foundation
Chapter 2: Settling In
Chapter 3: Demanding Days
Chapter 4: Loans, Loans, Baby
Chapter 5: Status Report
Chapter 6: Tight Budget and Texas Tea
Chapter 7: Power Issues and Trash Problems
Chapter 8: Disaster in the Oil Fields
Chapter 9: Improving Security
Chapter 10: Beginnings of a Railroad
Chapter 11: All Aboard
Chapter 12: Almost a Bridge Too Far
Chapter 13: Beginnings of Urbanization
Chapter 14: Riots and Refugees
Chapter 15: Buses, Bikes, and Walkways

 

[BurnedBacon]

--- Chapter 1, Laying the Foundation ---

(Apologies for the UI still being there. I didn't realize I still had it on when taking the pictures. Next post will be 99.9% UI free. *Results may vary.)

This is a grim time for this nation. An arms race has consumed both my home nation of Republic of Frankland and the nearby Federated States of Modva. There are a number of buffer states between the two, sadly they haven’t fared the best as a result. To avoid this potential conflict between the superowers, I have made my home in the far off colonies of Gallia Nova. However, the riches and relative sparseness of the colonies is coming to an end. The constant demand for resources and industrial development has begun to taint this once beautiful land.

Thanks to my past urban planning skills, I have been ‘invited’ to take charge of a large scale development project. The government wants me to lead up the creation of a port city at the end navigable portion of the Colbert River which snakes throughout the continent. The idea is for it to both act as an industrial and transport center for the area to help fuel a massive war machine in the event that diplomacy fails.

This is the land I’ve been given to begin this project. A small peninsula with direct access to several nearby highways as well as a major rail line. This should make it easy to get the center up and running. Regardless this will be quite a project.

We began by constructing the main entrance into the city, for the time being anyway. It’s a rather simple interchange but I fear we will quickly run into growing pains. But I guess we’ll cross that bridge when we get to it. The frontage roads should help keep the traffic flow from clogging up.

(First place the avenue to make sure it’s all on the right angle.)

(Then we delete part of the highway and create the overpass)

(After that we add in some frontage roads and place the on and off ramps. This style of exit is quite prevalent in my hometown. They aren’t the most efficient design but I did want to attempt using frontage roads for a more realistic feel of the highways.)

We decided to place the residential and shopping area towards the small lake. The industry can be placed on the main river for easy shipping access. We are just putting in one subdivision of houses initially but we are planning a second to be built soon. Luckily, there seems to be a lot of eager applicants to start a new life here.

On the other side of the highway, the primary reason for this project. The industrial sector will expand rapidly over the coming months but for now our funding is limited. Some brainless bureaucrat decided our city will have to self-funded despite the fact they will be levying absurd production quotas we don’t have a chance to meeting. We had better get some capital coming in quick.

Lastly we put in some utilities, should be pretty simple pumping the water out of the lake. The sewage is across the peninsula downstream on the main river. The central government has a thing where they are promoting ‘renewable energy’ all the while preparing to burn down a few continents with their war machine. But up goes the windmill.

But now that that’s all out of the way, I’ve got a nice little trailer to move into the size of my old kitchen while my new home is built here. Hopefully the government hired construction crews won’t take 4 years to do a month long job, but that’s like wishing a pig could fly.

(Not the worst start. The first time I actually ran out of money and couldn’t recover so had to reload from the beginning and redo all of it. I’ll be saving much more often to avoid redoing that interchange yet again.)

 

[BurnedBacon]

--- Chapter 2, Settling In ---

(I'll try to maintain a weekly posting schedule at around 7PM Sunday. I might make extra ones throughout the week though. It all depends on free time and inspiration.)

Mods added:
Advanced Vehicle Options by SamsamTS
Automatic Emptying by Sadler
Several vehicle skins

Well it’s a miracle, government construction workers are doing things in a timely manner. What a time to be alive. I am doing my best to settle. The first neighborhood of houses has sprung up and I got shoved into one of them real quick. The houses are in the quaint style of the colonials, though its not to my taste its still fairly cozy. I’m sure the central government representative, which will arrive in January, won’t be too pleased with this. They have been pushing a more unified, European culture for months saying anything but the Frankish way was is unpatriotic. But the colonials are stubborn in their ways just as much as we are.

The industrial center is beginning to take shape. Though I’m not entirely sure how an Ice Cube factory and Fish Sticks are going to help in the arms race. But its best not to criticize their plans. Countless loads of materials and construction equipment stream in from the highway all day long but things seem to quiet down at night.

The first night sleeping in a proper bed instead of a cot in a trailer was more relaxing than I ever expected. Most of the buildings in town are still empty as the permanent residents aren’t slated to begin arriving until closer to the New Year. As a result the nights feel so still and peaceful. Sadly I believe this will be the last extended period of good sleep I’ll have for a long while.

As a side note, the colonial government now has us recognized as a ‘Little Hamlet’ meaning we can operate our own landfill and medical clinic. We can also put in a school but for now we’ll have to push that down the road.

--Several Months Later--​

Its chilly November now, but we have finished pouring the new streets for the second planned neighborhood. It’s a bit bigger than the first but we plan to expand the first one relatively soon. We’ve also zoned some additional commercial. We will need it when everyone gets moved in. Happy workers are productive workers. And an overpriced gym membership keeps the mayor from being lazy.

The residents have began to flood the town in preparation for the start of production next week. People from all over Gallia Nova have come to begin anew here. Many are families who are in desperate need of work. Even as factory construction skyrockets across Gallia Nova, Afrique, and in the Homeland, unemployment has become quite a problem and the Modvan government enjoys bringing that fact up as often as they can.

As the sun rises on the first day of factory work, the city has come alive. The new clinic and various shops have also opened for the first time today. Many have decided to walk to work though how long that will last is anyone’s guess. We also managed to finish the landfill and fire station yesterday so I believe everything is set. Plans for a police station and elementary school have already begun to be drafted. This city is turning out quite nicely as we enter the New Year. 2016 will be quite a hair pulling time I’m sure.

(As a side, I ended up having to temporarily change the settings for one of the intersections to stop the blockage from all the citizens moving in. Thank you Traffic Manager.)

 

[BurnedBacon]

--- Chapter 3, Demanding Days ---

The bureaucrats have finally descended now that the air conditioner is mostly reliable. The official Central Government liaison is a man who goes by the name of Joffrey. He walked right into my office slamming down a massive stack of papers, filled with rules and regulation this city will now be required to follow. I like to say I am decently versed in legal speak but honestly I have no idea what any of this actually says. He also brought down a list of demands from the Central Government explaining what goals I will be required to meet this year.

By the first of June, I must more than double my population to 2200 people as well as increase my industrial output by 50%. The demands also include the creation of a police force. And by the end of the year, we must complete a bridge across the channel to a nearby oil field and facilitate the required education system to begin extracting these resources. We don’t have to start pumping, just get the infrastructure there.

So off to the planning meeting I went. I ended up spending the rest of the night trying to figure out how to get this done in such a short time. Unfortunately, I tend to make a bunch of terrible ideas at 3AM but the demands must be completed. It’s best not to fail these sorts of things, especially from the Central Government.

By February, construction crews had completed the concrete pouring of the new neighborhood as well as expanding the first one in order to fill in the residential demands. This is probably going to tax our infrastructure a lot more than we had wanted at this stage. But for now we will have to deal with it. With any luck, the houses will fill up quick so we can move onto the other tasks.

These expansions has qualified us as a ‘Tiny Town’ though we can’t afford any of the new privileges and structures now opened up to the city. We can now build a high school but we don’t even have the elementary school set up yet. But we are moving in the right direction.

The power has been a bit touchy over the past few weeks due to a decrease in overall wind speed. Today the lights went out in some of the neighborhoods for an hour. Yesterday the sewer pump went offline for the entire day much to the horror of those who went to spicy taco night at a local restaurant. As such I have commissions the construction of a more reliable source of power, coal power.

Sadly this ate up the entire budget for the rest of the expansions to complete before June. It may only be February but cash isn’t our most abundant resource and it will take a long time to accumulate more. In order to alleviate this set back, the city has approved a $20,000 loan in order to speed things up which only means eventually even more money leaving the city’s pockets. But now we have the money to bring the police force from an idea to a reality.

The city has honestly had a bit of a lawlessness streak from the youth. Many are unhappy about being torn from their hometowns and friends to live in a city with so many starting up issues. A lot of residents have reported broken windows, stolen candy bars, and even graffiti in the industrial area. So this demand actually came at a fairly convenient time. There has also been a fairly troubling recurring theme among a few of the graffiti arts. They are fairly anarchist in nature which has gotten many of the parents in a bit of a scare. They have been demanding a school be opened up to keep the kids mind’s occupied and learned, but not much can be done until the start of the coming school year. Hopefully the proper school will be up by then.

We used the rest of the funds to add a new avenue along the shoreline. It’s not of much use now but we desperately need to plan ahead for the rapid growth of this city. It’s anyone’s guess how much we’ll need it in 5 years’ time but I guess it’s nice to have. I would have preferred we dumped it into the aforementioned school.

The final point of note is the cemetery was completed. Nobody has died yet but it would probably be best to get this set up BEFORE we have a rotting body in someone’s living room. It was barely squeezed in at the end of the month before June ended. To be honest it’s mostly a foot note.

But as the new month dawns, I can take inventory of my goals. Though not shown here, we managed to increase industrial output (I look at it through tax since there isn’t a way to judge output in numbers as far as I can tell) by more than 50%. The police department was also set up but we did fall behind in population. The goal was 2200 but we only managed to squeeze in 2158. Joffrey was disgusted by this saying it was an ‘unacceptable setback’ despite the fact that these last few people were driving past my office to move in as he was saying that. It’s best to not fail again, even if it’s by such a slim margin. But next few months are going to be a lot of road planning and development. I had better get to working on that before Joffrey has me removed.

(I’ve been experiencing a lot of crashes this go around. I’ll have to try to sort it out and find the problem causer.)

 

[BurnedBacon]

Due to frequent crashes, there won't be a post tomorrow. I have managed to clean out and reinstall the entire game and it seems to be working just fine now. But I simply lack the time to make a quality post by tomorrow.

Everything should continue as planned next weekend.

 

[BurnedBacon]

--- Chapter 4, Loans, Loans, Baby ---

I am in way over my head. The first pylons for the bridges were supposed to be started today but the man in charge of that project says it may be delayed as much as two weeks. It has something to do with the land permits but I managed to send a few bribes to get that taken care of in a quick manner. Was actually quite surprised how little took to grease the wheels but I know this will bit me in the rear later. Just hoping that is a long, long time from now.

Until the bridge starts to get built, we managed to complete the school building just weeks before school was set to start. We had to get a pile of volunteers from the community to stuff it with chairs, desks, and whatever else they ordered. The kids may miss their first few days of school due to actually organizing the mess we made in that but I’m sure they won’t mind.

The strangest traffic jam occurred in one of the neighborhoods. The traffic seemed to be stuck on, well, nothing. It managed to trap several emergency vehicles, garbage trucks, and citizens trying to get to work. After some significant unclogging and direct involvement from the woefully overstretched police force, we managed to get it unstuck. Sadly this caused a decent pile of lawsuits from those stuck in the ambulances but the lawyers are managing to shield us from most of it. I delivered a speech about how I will never let this happen again and fired a few people we wanted to get rid of anyway to make it look like we’re actually doing something about it.

(This series is being played with the ‘no despawn’ option with traffic manager which I assumed would add challenge. But after this… I’m not sure. After about 15 minutes of forcing road movements, I bit the bullet and deleted and replaced the road. I am considering disabling the no despawn option if this problem resurfaces. Until then I got my fingers crossed and my lucky copy of Sim City 4 to bless this particular city.)

It’s now early October and we managed to finish the first bridge. I have to say it looks pretty stunning. The good news is we are back on schedule to get it completed before the New Year’s mandate. The bad news is we don’t have the money to do it. Those lawsuits really drained our already pitiful bank account so I had to take out an additional $60k loan in addition to retaking out the $20k loan if we want to make the deadline. With massive influx of both cash and debt in hand, we have got the engineers working at installing on-off ramps to the current standing bridge and starting the pylons for the second bridge.

The interchange system they have designed is quite interesting. Not very space efficient but certainly intersection number efficient. It should be less congested than the other interchange in the city, as well as service quite a good few vehicles in a short span of time. I’m just hoping they get on from congratulating themselves on a great job well done and get the other half of it complete in the ever encroaching deadline. Times a-wasting. Apparently the committee whose job it is to name the bridge has been caught taking bribes. Though calling it the McRonald’s Burgers Bridge may have given it away just a little bit. These people should try and learn subtlety.

(Traffic manager is a beautiful creature. This particular interchange could only be done properly with it. I used it to force certain lanes to only go certain places. It SHOULD prevent any traffic issues but who knows. Sometimes this game just really doesn’t like me.)

By the middle of December, we have finally finished the bridge. The interchange is fully finished and now we can work on paying off the loans. At least I would have if I hadn’t got even more demands coming down from the central government. But overall, things are going mostly smoothly. We expanded our industrial, commercial, and residential base in the background of all this bridge construction. We are zoning ground for second police and fire station as well as a high school. Traffic has yet to be as issue besides that strange congestion earlier this year. And we had to put up a new wind tower for some extra electricity. Hopefully next year will be easier than this one.

(Sorry for the delay, bad storms here mean no power and no power means no computer. But here it is, as quick as I could up it up.)

 

[BurnedBacon]

--- Chapter 5, Status Report ---

(Cities Skylines had gotten a bit boring for myself, but this AAR and goal driven city have really helped keep the pressure on. Sadly for the city, the rush and cash problems has caused me to neglect a few things. So let’s see the state of my little town so far.)

Everyone was getting ready for the New Year’s party which had to be held at the local pizza place due to the complete lack of funds for the city. With massive loans piled up and a completely useless bridge completed, it was not a happy moment to see Joffrey stroll into the office. He was apparently appalled by the ‘current state of the city,’ completely ignoring the fact his demands are the reason we are where we are. He slammed his briefcase on the table and pulled out a number of statistics and graphs specifically to show me everything he felt was wrong with the city. And wow did he have them. Out pour pie charts, flow charts, analytical papers, polls, and a complete breakdown of our budget. He even included a complaint that we use too many ‘valueble resources,’ aka coffee, which could be going to our troops. He doesn’t seem to realize we aren’t quite at war just yet.

His first major complaint was the state of traffic flow within the city. While the residential areas and most of the main road were completely clear most of the day, we have major slowdowns in the industrial area. From what I can tell, mass transit isn’t the solution to this particular problem, but an easier way to get the goods in and out of the city. Whether this takes the form of rail or road I don’t know yet. I’ll have to see what my city planners recommend. Everyone is expecting the highway to begin to clog up without some serious improvements later one but it’s the best we can do right now.

Our fire protection situation is best described as abysmal. We may get the industrial areas factories saved in quick order, but many of the residential homes tend to be unsalvageable by the time the fire trucks manage to get there. It seems like it is high time for a second fire station. However, funding will continue to be a difficult issue. With any luck, a single additional fire station should tide us over for the next few years.

We’ve had a few recent major health problems. Some parts of the city are not well protected due to their travel time though we have more than enough capacity for them. We would dump more money into it but another issue that may begin to present itself is a lack of supplies. More and more are being allocated to soldiers and less and less to the general population. It is my fear that an epidemic may eventually strike and leave the Frankish Empire vulnerable. However, I have to preoccupy myself with more immediate problems than some far off worry.

There’s no simple way to put this, but I live in a village of idiots apparently. Only a handful of our population has an elementary grade education, none anything above that. Normally I would make a joke about the public school system here in the colonies. But when there isn’t a place to get an education in the city besides an elementary school, it’s hard to complain. It’s on next year’s list to get a proper high school up to start getting these people educated enough to start drilling for oil. So far a single elementary school is working quite well at educating our youth. But also we have a number of older citizens managing to work their way through it. A second elementary school will have to be built eventually, but that is a much lower priority than getting a high school. After that we can consider building one in a future expansion or if the funds manage to appear.

The police are doing a pretty good job in the city over all. There are a few areas that crime is starting to increase but nothing too big to handle just yet. Joffrey, however, seems incredibly bothered by this. He has mentioned that a growing anti-central government and anti-old world movement is starting to grow massively in recent months. He recommends that we maintain a massive and proactive police force in the city. There has been much debate on this as tensions continue to rise along the borders of Europe. I have rebutted that such a situation of strong, proactive police force may result in more anti-government sentiment, he claimed I was being ‘unpatriotic.’

We are quickly running out of land for residential zone due to poor pre-planning. The current plans is to use the area near where the city spins off the main highway as a large residential area and commercial zone. We want to use peninsula on the other side of the bridge primarily for industry with the area behind it for more residential. We also need to find ways to get a rail system set up within the city. After all, our goal here is to make an industrial and transportation hub, not a sparking metropolis.

The things that are going well are pollution, including ground, sewage, and noise. Doing my best to ignore all the noise complaints around the wind turbines for now but soon I’ll have to fix that. Happiness is mostly in the green. And Garbage collection is on time and we are nowhere near capacity. Pollution is primarily in the ground, directly centered on the industrial zone with no spilling over. The water quality is expected to decline rapidly as the city expands. We shouldn’t have to deal with backflow problems. But if we do we are royally screwed.

 

[BurnedBacon]

--- Chapter 6, Tight Budgets and Texas Tea ---

(For those not in the southern portion of the USA, Texas Tea is sometimes used to refer to oil.)

Despite our various other problems, the two most important things are to get traffic sorted and finish the infrastructure on the opposite peninsula for the planned oil drilling and refining complex. Our deadline is fast approaching to get drilling facilities up and going. Funds are tight and a lot of infrastructure has to be built. We have taken out all the loans we can but it simply isn’t enough cash. I sat at my desk running the numbers over and over and no matter what I tried, it didn’t add up. There wasn’t enough money for the education, infrastructure, or utilities for such a project before the end of the year. Then a miracle hit.

We were upgraded to the rank of Busy Town by the Colonial Authority. This not only gave us access to the needed infrastructure but we were given a noticeable pile of cash. This was enough to not only get some minor things done, but also really get to work starting to clean up some of the neglected parts of the town’s infrastructure. The first of these is moving the three windmills out of the now center of town as well as put down two new ones to prevent the small brown-outs that were beginning to become the norm rather than the exception.

By February we have completed the high school building though we won’t be able to use it until August. The biggest problem is hiring teachers because virtually nobody in this town has a high school education in the first place, much less the ability to teach high school. As such we are at the embarrassing point of having to import qualified teachers in order to allow people to learn such basic things. And if the city gets to the point where we have a university, I’m sure we will have to do that again. But I really don’t have time to plan that far. I have a major traffic problem to sort out.

The first, and hopefully temporary, fix is to add a small road connecting directly to the onramp for the highway. This should greatly reduce the stress on the avenue and sort out the outgoing traffic problems. It was instantly effective, clearing out most of the internal traffic in the industrial sector almost immediately. But what ended up happening is instead of sorting out the problems, the traffic began piling up in horrifying amounts on the road into the city. And wow did it begin to pile up fast. My engineers panicked to find a response, but the solution ended up being quite simple.

The problem was quickly identified as the stoplight on the avenue. So the solution seems to be to bypass the stoplight altogether and dump the truck traffic directly into the industrial zone. This will also allow non-industrial traffic to not be stuck in such a massive mess and be able to get right into the city without problems.

(This may look a bit wonky but my real world precedent is literally 10 minutes down the road from my house and I feel it rather fits. I removed the stoplight where the off ramp meets the avenue and used the traffic manager tool to force the ramp to not let cars cross the avenue.)

Speaking of ramps, my engineers suggested to mirror the interchange on the other side of the bridge for both simplicity and easy access for the soon-to-be oil drilling and refining facilities. Funds continue to be tight so the fact it is one of the cheapest options also helps. We also had to lay water pipes and powerlines across the channel which cost a massive amount of cash. But at the end of the day it was much cheaper than giving this area its own water and power systems. We extended the avenue and had barely begun placing the roads as the end of June had hit. The industry had been zoned and the area marked for oil production. Hopefully this new industry will give us some much needed funds.

(Things going well with little to no crashes still. But it does happen on occasion. Sadly that is preventing me from getting some of the mods I would like to add.)

 

[Gamnäven]

Please tell me this journal isn't abandoned...

 

[BurnedBacon]

Don't worry it lives. Been a bit busy with real life thanks to Thanksgiving. I hope to get another post out this weekend.

 

[BurnedBacon]

--- Chapter 7, Power Issues and Trash Piles ---

Some trigger happy maniac fired a torpedo at one of our destroyers off the Oregon Coast. This put Joffrey into a bit of a patriotic mood. He went on and on about how much of a travesty it is despite the fact the torpedo didn’t actually work and just bumped into the hull. That is Modvan quality assurance for you. Modvan Amerika and the Oregon Territory has never had the clearest border but this is starting to get out of hand. For me this means a motivating speech about increasing our efforts to strengthen the Republic. But the world continues its ballet of diplomacy and warheads, I have much more local and immediate problems to deal with. All of them thanks to Joffrey’s demand for oil.

The city rushed the opening of some of the oil wells in response to this incident. While the first oil drills spool up, the city council had a meeting discussing the city’s absolute slew of problems. As a surprise to no one, these new operations are eating up resources like crazy. The coal plant has been pushed to its absolute limit and nature has done its part ensuring the windmill are worth a damn for once. With the city barely surviving the current demands, I can’t wait to see what insanity Joffrey cooked up next after we clean up this mess.

To provide enough water and sewage resources, we have had to double up on our water and sewage pumps. This should supply as much water utilities as we could possibly need for a considerable period of time. However, the increased power demand for the pumps is putting even more strain on our heavily taxed electric grid. As such as can only run the second one at about 20% capacity for the time being. Even with tuning down its energy consumption, we are at the breaking point for electricity. But before we can solve that we have another issue to sort out, a lack of workforce.

To solve issue this we crammed in a new neighborhood along the current town border which was thankfully expanded soon after by the Colonial Authority. It should be enough to stave off the worker problem in the short term. With any luck we can squeeze out just barely enough power to keep everything going. But without these people we won’t have the manpower to do the oil drilling which is the reason we are having the power and water problems in the first place. But we do have a plan for rotating brownouts to prevent any major blackouts.

Sadly it appears I bet wrong. Following a two day long blackout, we were forced to build a new power plant. Since we have a considerably supply of oil around we won’t have to go very far for fuel. Joffrey is demanding to know why we didn’t ‘prepare for such an event.’ We even had to take back out the $20K loan we had just finished paying back in order to build the plant. If resources continue to be so scarce there will be a riot I’m sure.

(I forgot to take a picture of the city covered in garbage icons. But be assured there were many.)

While everyone was distracted with electricity, water, sewage, and workforce shortage, we forgot to notice the landfill had gone and filled up. The public is finally able to use their TV and immediately they go complaining about the fact we missed trash pick-up day I swear the demands of Joffrey are going to be the death of me, the city, or probably both. I swore I saw someone sharpening a pitchfork in their garage on my walk home.

But now it is time to get some sleep. Christmas is just around the corner and the office is empty and I can finally reflect for a bit. We are lobbying for an additional land expansion to build a new interchange into the city. Traffic issues aren’t too bad yet but this will start to get worse the larger the city gets. And we are about to go through a pretty good sized expansion phase. All the utilities are finally in check and things seem to have stabilized. This means all the funds can go directly to city improvement. Or at least it was until Joffrey piled another stack of papers on the table. I need a vacation.

 

[grasblazer]

Nice CJ! I like to read along to how the story develops. I hope the hunger for oil won't cause a war

 

[BurnedBacon]

Thanks! Don't worry war isn't coming in the immediate future. But the poor mayor will have plenty of issues, unrest, and impossible to fund projects up ahead.

 

[BurnedBacon]

--- Chapter 8, Disaster in the Oil Fields ---

Mods Added:
Precision Engineering by Simie
More vehicle skins

I looked through the stacks of papers Joffrey placed on the desk, reading carefully as I went. I looked up to him with an inquisitive face wondering if what I was reading was true. He only gave a reluctant nod. It had been long believed that Modva had a significant spy network built up in the Frankish territories, especially in the colonies. Ever since the failures of the Washginton Rebellion and the Haitian Revolution, the colonies under Frankish rule have mostly stayed in line. But it appears the quickly growing subversive elements throughout the Colonial States of the Republic are the result of Modvan interference.

The rapid development of Port Kerman has certainty drawn attention. This city, as well as several others in the region, have begun significantly increasing the amount of oil supplies for the Frankish military forces. Fears that saboteurs will attempt to, well, sabotage the drilling facilities have become rather justified. As a result three new fire stations have been planned to be built. There goes all that loan repayment money again. The first to be completed was in the suburbs. Another is being built in the actual oil fields and yet another on the other side of town. The official story is we are just increasing fire coverage which has, honestly, been rather terrible up ‘til now.

The professional monkeys at the Bureau of Public Welfare has been pushing a lot of strange initiatives to keep up public happiness and moral. They have been monitoring this growing movement of separatism closely. According to them the obvious course of action is to place some parks down. Because nothing stops angry citizens from trying to take down a nation like a swing set. But there’s no point in arguing about it so we placed two new parks in the center of the city. There seems to have been some sort of improvement but not too noticeable.

While this happens, city development must go on. There has been significant debate in the city council as to whether or not to develop the waterfront with shops, restaurants, and the like. Opponents claim that we would ruin the natural beauty of the lake and block the view of current waterfront shops. Those who support it point to the fact we are in desperate need for more shops and commercial zones. Its amazing people can bicker about tiny things like this while actual proper threats loom. The debate went on well into the night.

After hours of debate, we eventually compromised and decided to only put up shops on part of the waterfront leaving nobody happy. I had a dinner consisting of questionably fresh leftover chicken, took a long shower, and laid down into bed hoping to for once have a quiet, stress free night. After several hours later my house nearly shook itself apart. The sound of thunder filled the sky and I panicky dove under my desk. The clock said 3am but the sky was a terrible red. I rushed out the door to see a fountain of fire erupting from the oil fields. Could the saboteurs really have acted so quickly?

The investigation is still ongoing. Fire crews worked all night battling the flames. Sadly there was no salvaging the drilling rig. The official story is it appears to have been a faulty valve and no foul play is suspected but behind closed doors panic that this may be sabotage is prevalent. We have managed to keep a lid on the rumor mill for now but no telling how soon it will get out. If it does everyone will be accusing their neighbor of being a traitor. Every minor set-back will result in a witch hunt that hasn’t been seen since the days of the Crusades against the Cathars.

Other works continue as planned. Thanks to growing congestion on the main road, a secondary avenue to the main industrial area was put in as well as expanding the riverside avenue. Though all the roads have been put in place for the new neighboring on the other end of the peninsula, it is planned to be removed after the recent oil field disaster. But given how progress happy Joffrey is that is going to be an interesting fight. Is the risk of letting the neighborhood be built really worth it? Sadly I don’t think the decision in the end will be mine to make. I hope nothing bad happens to the new arrivals.

(That was a random fire but it worked so perfectly for the narrative. Not much overall growth but the addition of the fire stations and a few parks caused a lot of upgraded houses which has almost doubled the income I’m getting from residential. I had a weird saving bug so I had to do the gameplay twice but I managed to get it all sorted.)

 

[BurnedBacon]

Now that the crazy Christmas family time is coming to an end, I can finally resume work on the City Journal. Expect the next installment next week!

 

[Gamnäven]

Great news! I'm really looking forward to an update of this great CJ.

 

[BurnedBacon]

--- Chapter 9, Improving Security ---

It’s been several weeks since the oil field disaster and the final report has come in. It appears the whole thing was started when a pressure valve was bent and subsequently ruptured. Whether this was an object falling onto the valve or a deliberate sabotage was impossible to determine. But the popular opinion is the Modvans sabotaged it, and probably would regardless of the evidence. It was immediately decided we needed to increase security and build up our police force further. We were worried that we would have to push ourselves further into debt to frantically build new police stations but then a bit of reprieve finally hit.

In the interest of ensuring our financial and national security, the Colonial Authority has paid off our loans in full as well as granted us an additional land expansion. This means all of the money from our oil industry can be directly applied to city and road improvements. Plans were quickly drawn and the city council approved a short but important list of objective. Firstly we would build two additional police stations, expand the residential area in both the peninsula and along the main highway, and finally build a new interchange to get people off the highway and into the core of the city.

The first course of action was to place a police station in the oil fields to act as a quick response force in case any saboteurs are caught in the act. We planned to take some glamor shots for propaganda reasons but the smog was so thick it was virtually impossible to get a decent picture. It’s also a major health risk but we won’t be able to deal with it until later unfortunately. The workers there seem in high spirits, especially after such a disaster. They made some off comments about the smog but the opinion of most seems to be that they can handle it for now. Others seemed very concerned about it but were not openly critical. I understand why, such comments could be taken completely the wrong way right now. With everyone in a revanchist mood to any perceived threat its best in their minds to keep their concerns to themselves. As a side note, Joffrey vetoed the plan to relocate the new houses next to the oil fields so they are there to stay.

Next up was to improve the traffic flow into the city. While most of the heavy traffic will continue to use the current interchange, this will move some of the commercial traffic away. We extended the avenue down and began its turn so it can continue moving down the edge of the water. Then we connected it to a new overpass. It would be more space efficiency if we could have the highway be elevated but the main highway is too important to slow down with construction, so instead we went with elevating the avenue.

Next we put in the ramps. Some of the city planners are worried there isn’t enough buffer and we will soon have cars parked on the highway trying to get into the city. The contractors have assured me this won’t happen for quite some time, but we will definitely have to upgrade them at some point. At the moment, it isn’t getting much use. But as the city expands, more and more people will have to use it as part of their daily commute.

As this was going on we completed construction of our third police station, this one in the center of the city. We may be going overboard with this but honestly if the public support is there, why not expand the police force? It will keep the city streets much safer. Crime rates have been slowly ticking up as more people move in. With plans to start putting in apartments and provide more opportunities for lower incoming families, some worry crime will spike quite rapidly. I don’t think it will, but only time will tell. On unrelated news we also put in a new cemetery a few blocks down.

As the year coms to a close, the final improvements of the year are made. A new avenue was put in on the peninsula as well as on and off ramps onto the highway. This will be there to support further residential, commercial, and industrial growth. But there have been proposals to install some offices nearby. Our mission is to produce a notable amount of industrial goods, oil, and eventually act as a river port for the surrounding cities. However, allowing the companies to manage the production here with at least a small number of offices isn’t the worst idea in the world. I’ll draw up a petition to the Colonial Authority over New Years.

(If anyone has any ideas on how to improve the city journal, please let me know. I'm always open to suggestions. Also any cool or helpful mods that you can point out to me would be of great help.)

 

[JPminer814]

This is really neat and I cant wait for an update. I would suggest posting this on the simtroplis forums. They have a lovely community and I am quite sure youll be pretty popular

 

[BurnedBacon]

Thanks! I haven't been on Simtropolis since I stopped playing modded Sim City 4. Didn't know they had Cities Skylines stuff on there. I'll definitely give it a look.

 

[JPminer814]

I was all about modded Sim City 4 and had a lot of fun. Then City Skylines came out and never looked back... Well maybe for a second