The Region of Illyrium

[kzodwallop]

Entry 1.

This is my first attempt at a diary. I'm not even sure if I am in the right spot. For that matter, it is my first use of any add on packs, SC4 Terraformer and SC4 Devotion. I've been playing SC4 for 7 or 8 years on my Mac and finally decided it was time to download the PC version and run it in VM (which works surprisingly well on my 2009 iMac - even better than the native Mac version). I've mastered how to build giant cities according to Maxis rules and frankly had nothing challenging left. Until I started reading the forums and looking at all the plugins, mods, and more. Especially motivating was reading Battlecat's diary of Adara. I'm only 60 some pages into the 184 page diary! I've never been very good at developing rural areas and since it is a new challenge, I'm here posting about it.

So today I began Roger's Valley in Illyrium. Not much exciting has happened, I filled the city with the highways, railways, and some of the rivers that I envision as part of this valley. I'm trying to think ahead and arrange the road network that is going to connect the towns of Roger's Hamlet, Mountain View, Pickadilly, and Fredricksburg to the big cities by the ocean.
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The first town in this area is of course Roger's Hamlet. A little bigger than its name implies, there's a number of farms, a school, a clinic, and a water tower. The only rail station so far is here. There's also a freight station. As you can see, I'm still trying to figure out the mods and what the best method is to fill in details between homes. I'm not having much success with trees (at least not the way I want them). There's a fertilizer yard. Off in Mountain View is the Bureau of Farm Management.
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I still have plugin folder problems and I'm getting brown bags and black textures.
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That's all for now.

[rooker1]

Interesting start.
Hopefully you can figure out that black texture problem.  I first thought a terrain conflict....but it doesn't happen all the time?

Robin