Serpeira Natural Growth

[kj3400]

Hello all. You might know me for my cj at ST, the Commonwealth of Paradise. After my flop trying to start it here, I decided to keep to ST, but now I think I'm ready to try again, this time with a project I've been working on recently. I've got about 5 updates ready and more on the way.
I made this island as an extension of the Commonwealth of Paradise but it lay empty for some time...



Well, now I've decided to start building on it....with natural growth. I've been looking over csgdesign's old cj (still the best, in my opinion, when it comes to natural growth cjs) on his site csgforums and I thought building a region naturally might be a good challenge for me and a distraction from working on the center province on the main island all the time. The story of Serpeira's growth will be told (at least, initially) from the viewpoint from one of the initial settlers. So here goes!

My name is Murray Terrence and I've started this diary as this island grows to document the progress we take on our way to greatness.
This first year was a bit rough as we were just trying to survive and not die here. The first bunch of houses was built and some land was cleared for farming.



Henderson's store is the one across from the market stalls.

Henderson opened up the first store, a general store of sorts. People went there to trade beans for bread and pigs for wood, stuff like that. Anything anyone needed, you'd prolly find it at Henderson's store.
The first ever town meeting was held in Henderson's store, in fact. The first item on the discussion was how this island was going to be run. It was decided that a council would run it, and it would decide most things for now, since the town was so small. There was a vote, and somehow I was one of the 8 that ended up on the council! I was very surprised. The second order of business was about the village that had settled on the south shore of the bay, which we hadn't given a name yet.








It was decided that we should extend a road out to them so that travelers wouldn't have to hack their way through a forest and get lost. I suppose there was no point in starting a fight with the other village.I mean, there was a lot of land to be had. There was also a discussion about exploring the rest of the island, and we sent a few people off with rations to the southern part of the island to survey. Industry was mentioned, but people felt it was a bit early for that, so it was tabled for a later meeting. The meeting ended on a high note, as we felt ready for anything in our new town called....oh crap.

Some more shots of the main town...

The small community south of the main town.


More farms.



And an overview of the town. The farm way out is old man Richards' farm.



Year 1:
Population: 827
Town 1: 390
Town 2: 437


Enjoy!
Comments and tips are appreciated!

Edit: reuploaded jpgs.

[noahclem]

Very nice start    The area has a pleasant rural look and I look forward to watching it develop 

[kj3400]

Apologies for all that. It's been a while since I've been here, I didn't know that rule was in effect. I put up the jpeg versions and I'll remember that in future.
Thanks for stopping by.

[kj3400]

I was hoping for a few more comments but it's fine. I guess I have to prove myself first .

Anyway on to the second update and year.

Well we finally sorted out the problem with the name of the town. It was decided by a town vote that the town would be called Snakehead. Prolly should have seen that coming, considering the entire island is shaped like a snake. Anyway, we were told that our neighbor on the peninsula was called Southmouth Bay. They were doing pretty well for themselves. They had more people than us the first year. But we came out on top this year, having more than doubled our population.





The council also approved the construction of an industrial estate a little ways to the north. After all, people couldn't keep making stuff in their homes. It could be a real health hazard making paint thinner. Lots of people walking around in a daze. Not to mention a fire hazard. Our volunteer firefighters claimed they could handle any blaze, but I doubted that. The biggest fire they've had to put out was in a fireplace at the Stanton's' place. The estate wanted water, but council told them to wait til it rains like the rest of town. I don't think they liked that.



We haven't heard from the folks who left for the south end of the island.  I hope they didn't die on the way, but if they did, oh well. That's just how things are in the wilderness.

Pics of the town that set up shop nearby.




Old man Richards is having the road by his farm extended. Said something about peace and quiet and freeway bypasses disturbing his cows. Old man Richards was always a little tetched in the head.


Year 2
Population: 1903
Snakehead: 1064
Southmouth Bay: 839

Town Overview:





I do hope you enjoyed this update.

[art128]

That looks great! A nice farming town you have there.

[kj3400]

Repliesy:

art128: Thanks! And thanks for dropping by.

I would have updated sooner, but Hurricane/Superstorm or whatever they're calling it Sandy sorta got in the way. So I'm updating now. When update 5 is done, I want to possibly get some input from everyone on where the island should go from here.



Nothing much to report this year. A scout from that party we sent south came back. He told us they had set up settlements all along the west coast, and to send people down to help with farms and other stuff like work (what do they think we are, mules?). The farms have producing more than enough for the town.



We've built a market so folks can set up shop and sell their goods without having to do it on the street since the old market stalls are full now.


Snakehead Town Market.

Council has been tossing around the idea of a port, but I think it's a bit early for that, although they did point out the town pantry and the back room of Henderson's store is getting full, and the town coffers could use a bit more lining... I personally think we need some type of pier for arriving boats. Currently they just aim for the shore and hope they don't crash to bits in the shallow water. Not to mention most of our arrivals tend to look like drowned rats. Speaking of shore,  council had some houses constructed near the shore. This place is getting crowded. I mean, I was in Henderson's yesterday and the line was 6 people long. Next thing you know, there'll be people clamoring for indoor plumbing. They already insisted on us building a school for the children. I suppose there was merit in that.


Town Elementary School.

The next generation needs to take up the reins when we're all old and gray. Speaking of gray, old man Richards has moved his farm further east. It's almost like he knows something we don't...



Year 3
Population: 3368
Snakehead: 2009
Southmouth Bay: 839
South Snakehead: 421
Forthton: 99
:

Town view.



I hope you enjoy this update. It's not much, but I have some plans for this island.

[sim_link]

Looking good already, neat to watch the growth and watch the region expand naturally. Natural growth has definitely had me intrigued recently.

[wallasey]

I like your agricultural feel, this is an aspect of the simulation which I never quite grasp, but you have made a great start!

Keep up the good work!

[sunv123]

Snakehead looks alot like what my town looked like in the 1950/60s.

I'm not that into natural growths, but this one, is actually pretty good and is starting to make me like these natural growth MDs.

Keep up the great work!

[kj3400]

Replies:

sim_link: Thanks!
wallasey: Thank you.
sunv123: Thanks.


This year was rather lively. We've built a small pontoon to help more folks arrive here.



This had the bonus effect of reducing that mildew smell that seemed to be downtown a lot and the number of folks that came in town looking like wet rats.
We added a school in the little community to the south of the main conurbation. I believe they call it Gondon Corner.
The residents have been coming to council complaining about power outages. It turns out the generators we've been installing aren't enough. For now, though, we're just going to build one more generator until we can come to a decision on how to proceed. The general consensus seems to be to build either a natural gas plant or a solar farm. Of course if we built a natural gas plant, we'd need to find some way to import natural gas, since we don't know if there are any natural resources here beyond lumber, which is in short supply itself. It's as if God handed the terraforming tools to a 22 year old guy who thinks islands are delivered by the island stork.
We were considering a clinic in the main town area, but it turns out the southern market (if you'll recall, we built a bigger market last year to house all the stalls that couldn't fit in the original market) has a very good medicine man that the entire town area dotes on (he makes the best cold remedy with barley and hot peppers—it doesn't get rid of the cold, but it'll definitely get rid of your stuffy nose, and distract you from the fact you have one...til you wake up the next morning with a hangover and a cold) so we just built one in Gondon Corner along with the school.



A new road was completed, an extension of the road to Southmouth Bay. It now connects to the road leading east out of the town. The farms along the eastern road seemed to appreciate it as freight trucks immediately started using it.



People have been moving north from here, calling their town Northead. I just call it North Snakehead. This place is really taking off. There's about [insert number here] people here now. Industries like Grand Palm are asking us for rights to prospect for minerals and such. It's pretty exciting.



A windmill being used for power in North Snakehead. We might consider that for our town.

Year 4:
Population: 5909
Snakehead: 2939
Southmouth Bay: 1086
North Snakehead: 1190
South Snakehead: 421
Forthton: 99
? ? ?:? ? ?
(This ? ? ? entry is for towns that exist, but are unknown to the original settlers.)

Overview:





Enjoy!

[kj3400]

Replies: None

Well, I was expecting a little more response, but maybe this update will get a chuckle, at the very least.



Trees.

I wake up this morning and I see trees. Not the random small clumps we've been seeing near the coast and on hills, I'm talking forest trees. The kind you can't see around. Climbing trees. The town went to sleep in a snake shaped clearing, and woke up in a forest Johnny Appleseed would be proud of. Needless to say, the lumber industry is bound to take off.





You know what else might take off? The oil industry. Canola, Olive and Motor Enterprises did some prospecting on our behalf and found a small deposit of oil. They immediately offered to drill and extract it for us, which we accepted. We had a plant constructed with taxpayer money and started the utility, Snakehead EEL (Energy, Electric and Light). This plant could very well power the entire region at this point, and we've began drawing up plans for possible customers among the surrounding towns and power distribution plans.



The council was approached by a local farmer recently. He said he wanted to move his farm.



We asked how that would work. He said, "Burn it, mow it, torch it, I don't care, just get rid of it. I'm moving." We secured a spot for him just outside town, after clearing some trees. We'd never had to do that before, but the trees went to good use. Now there was the small issue of what to do with this land. The council agreed it should be converted to residential and commercial use.




We were quite proud of ourselves. We had successfully rezoned a plot of land. Now we wouldn't have to keep zoning for houses in oddball places. Farms are starting to pop up everywhere, so a few lost to move folks into town won't be missed.
We got some complaints from residents about traffic on Market Street at 1st Street.

Market Street and 1st Street.


Market Street is named after, rather appropriately, the market that is on it, and is the only street through town going north-south. Council took a walk over there and we couldn't see too much wrong with it. We decided to wait until our next session to go over the figures. We might have our first widening on our hands. Very exciting.
The folks in Gondon Corner got their own farmer's market. It's not as big as ours, but it's still got a lot going for it.



Now I didn't want to tell anyone about this, but I had to put it somewhere. I was invited to a nondescript house in North Snakehead where I was informed an up and coming new company, the Island Rail Corporation, was planning on investing in infrastructure here. They asked me if council would consider their offer. I told them in no uncertain terms that this island doesn't need any railroads right now. Where would it go? Who would ride it? I told them to get back to council in about 5 more years. I'll be surprised if they do.

I took a trip (voluntarily, I swear) to see how South Snakehead was doing. The town is doing pretty well. They actually plan their residential sectors a little better than we do, which was partially why I came down here. The other reason is that the local council here had been approached by a lumber company about beginning logging to help clear land for farms and houses and they wanted to clear it with our council. I felt proud at that moment. Other hamlets and towns were looking to us for approval! And here I was, thinking they had all died on me.





South Snakehead overview.


Snakehead overview.




Year 5
Population: 8682
Snakehead: 4081
North Snakehead: 1190
South Snakehead: 1339
Southmouth Bay: 1973
Forthton: 99
? ? ?: ? ? ?

Enjoy!

[Swordmaster]

Looks like the town will be booming with that oil. . .

Replies: None

Well, I was expecting a little more response, but maybe this update will get a chuckle, at the very least.

Don't be disheartened by a lack of comments, the boards can go a little quiet from time to time.

Cheers
Willy

[art128]

Interesting update. Nice work with the overviews. So there's oil now. Nice, let's see if this will develop into an heavy industry city.

[kj3400]

Replies:

Willy(Swordmaster): Ok. Thanks for coming by, I guess I'm just a little impatient sometimes.
art128: Thanks. As for industry coming, you'll see soon enough.

Let us leave the island of Serpeira for a moment and go back to the mainland. By mainland I mean the main island. A rather large island compared to Serpeira, but an island nevertheless. We're going to the southeastern part where the region is developing just like the snake shaped island our protagonist is on. The southeastern region recently had an influx of people rushing to settle in all the empty land. Take, for example, the town of Livore. This town has about half the population of Snakehead, around 2100 people. But the town, in its 6th year just like Snakehead, is the recipient of a brand new rail line.
You see, the association of industries along the coast (lumber, food processing and canneries, to name a few) is slightly miffed at the quality of roads connecting the region thus far, as almost all of them are gravel at best. Industries petitioned the towns to improve the roads, but after meeting with a consultant company who did estimates on large projects like this, the five towns unanimously agreed that that was out of the question for now. The association wasn't having this, so the towns decided to connect to each other via rail.



The rail line was to be built by the South Shore Rail Company, the same company that built the rail line along the southern coast of the central province. When they got bought out by the national government looking to nationalize the nation's rail lines up to this point, the company stuck around, providing maintenance and building spurs to industrial parks, but nothing along the lines of their former glory. When word got out that the burgeoning south and southeastern provinces were considering a rail link, they raced to Ceessgee Bay (the temporary province capital) to discuss the line and woo the council before any other rail companies got word. By the time other rail companies did get word, the contract had been signed and the planned route was being surveyed. But we didn't come here to discuss all that boring stuff. We just came here to visit Cameron Hewitt. He lives in Livore and has seen the new rail line at work. It's doing its job at hauling freight from these 5 towns through Livore to Jackson City in the central province, where it's then processed or simply transferred to another train to be shipped to the rest of the nation, or the national port to be shipped to the rest of the world.







I'm digressing again. Cam Hewitt has a friend whose (let me get this straight) sister's husband's friend's boss' cousin's babysitter's father's friend's associate is the head of Island Rail Company. Somehow word got through the grapevine and Island Rail Company is apparently trying again to recommend the construction of a rail line on the island, this time going straight to council.
Coincidentally enough Cam's got a 3rd cousin that moved to Serpeira quite some time ago. But no one knows what happened to them. It was rumored that they might have died.  Turns out this might not have been the case. Rumors of smoke coming from a direction that was thought to be all forest have been flying around, though no one's ever confirmed if it was real or not, because the one person who had decided to investigate got lost in the forest when it suddenly appeared and disappeared. So, until a road is paved, that's going to have to wait...On to the story!


This year was quite busy. We had a fire in Gondon Corner and the volunteer firemen did their best with buckets of salt water and spit, but it very nearly cost them the southern part of town. We decided to build the first fire station on the island.



Canola, Olive and Motor Ind. (or COM) set up shop, drilling oil wells to pump up the black gold beneath our feet, to supply to the power plant. Our Industrial estate has tripled in size, and other companies have expressed interest in settling elsewhere on the island. Unfortunately, they have stated that until we have a proper port constructed, they would not be investing their money in a location without any shipping access. So now the council has to consider where to build it.



Our first elementary/middle school has been inundated with so many new kids of new arrivals we had to tear down the old one room schoolhouse and build something more accommodating. As a result, the school covers more of the town than before and much more children are getting a basic education. Some parents feel we should consider higher education, as in a high school. We took it into consideration. The problem is finding a location to build it.


The townspeople were getting sick of collecting rainwater, digging wells and desalinating sea water, so they petitioned us for a water utility. So we had a water tower built and water pipes put in the ground. Now anyone in the main town area can get fresh tap water, and not have to bathe in vinegar or beer, like some people seem to have been doing. Looking at you Mr. Rothman.




Island Rail Co. came to council recently with some pictures from the mainland island showing pictures of a rail link constructed in the southeastern region. They pointed out that the collection of towns the line connected were around as small as ours were, and that an investment in rail now could save a lot of hassle and problems later. I wasn't going for it, but the rest of council seemed intrigued by it. It appears that with the rail line, we can cater to more industry looking to set up shop, without them all setting up shop close to town.

Woodtree is the latest of the new towns to have popped up. It's currently the second largest settlement besides Snakehead. Besides that, more and more small villages seem to be popping up along the coast.







I'm starting to wonder what's going to become of this island. Industry, rail lines, new towns, ports. It's just like what I was trying to get away from. But I suppose you can never truly run away from progress.

Population: 15132
Snakehead: 5495
Southmouth Bay: 2902
North Snakehead: 2893
South Snakehead: 1339
Forthton: 412
Woodtree: 1810

Overview:







North Snakehead.



Enjoy! And happy Thanksgiving to those who celebrate it!

[Swordmaster]

Quite a region shot there.

Cheers
Willy

[kj3400]

Replies:

Willy(Swordmaster): Thank you! That's from my other region that I play when I'm not playing Serpeira or my original Paradise region. You'll see a lot more of that region.

I forgot to show the current region shot of Serpeira. I wanted to know where you all think a good location for the port would be.

I provided the link below since it's a very large pic.

http://www.majhost.com/gallery/kj3400/Paradise/region/serpeira_2012-11-19.jpg

[benedict]

Your region view makes me smile every time I see it - love the outline.

I do like the fact that you are working slowly and steadily on this natural-growth MD - enjoying watching it develop.

[eldaldo]

Natural Growth Journals are my favorite.  Keep up the great development, and keep showing region views.  They are my favorite part of natural growth journals.

[kj3400]

Replies:

benedict: Thanks! I thought this might be something fun to do
eldaldo: Thanks for stopping by.

I apologize for not being active recently. I've been surprisingly busy the last few days. I promise that I will work tonight and have an update tomorrow. Until then, why not have a regional view of the south/southeastern provinces?

http://upload.majhost.com/gallery/kj3400/Paradise/region/south_and_east_paradise_2012-11-26.jpg

[kj3400]

I apologize for the lack of updates. I've been working a lot on the southeast portion of my country and it's been taking up my attention. I do have an update ready, but I'm not sure if I'll get it out before Christmas. So if I don't, I just want to wish you all a merry Christmas from Paradise....