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Antario (CSL)

Started by 89James89, February 16, 2016, 04:44:16 PM

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89James89

Antario

Welcome all to our fast growing town of Antario. Located in Norway this small coastal port has been struggling in the last few years, with the town funds dwindling as it tried to keep itself alive. Recently however, the town has been the subject of a large of investment by a group of rich investor who used to live in the town itself eager to not see their childhood disappear.
The idea was simple. To retain the old wall to wall feel that the town already had but to grow it to become a bustling centre of commerce with the sustainability to survive by itself.
As such we'll follow the development of the town as they strive to achieve the aforementioned goal starting with several years into the investment process and what the work currently looks like in Old Town.

Entry 1: Old Town

Starting with the view that greets most of the visitors and new residents of the growing town we have Old Town Main Row. A large street full of shops, both new and traditional with room to live above them. These buildings form the staple of what the town will continue to look like for the most part, with influences from a lot of old European cities.




As for the residents, as well as living above the shops in the many shopping arcades you will probably find most of the inhabitants in the blocks like this one. The layouts are a bit all over the place due to the multiple developers that are investing in the town and lack of any real town planning officials but they work. Plus it stops it being a completely square blocks all over the place.




Along with the new developments occurring all over the existing town we have several buildings that have always been here, one being the old town hall and the public parks in front of it forming this oddly shaped green space. In the background though this can see the beginning of what will hopefully be a modern and bustling financial sector, currently in its infancy at the moment though.




Unfortunately not all of the old structures are that nice. Below you can see several photos of the existing small docklands with its Coal Power Plant, the cities current source of power. As for the docks its obvious that they just built whatever was cheapest and easiest at the time with a lot of the same building being used to store goods ready fro shipping.




You can also see the rather low capacity docks, concrete ones are newer and still used whilst the wooden ones are much older and using them as actual shipping docks would probably be more dangerous than useful, something we definitely need to take a look at in the future.




Speaking of new things we've recently managed to get a national rail connection to the town so have had this new central station built. Not quite as fancy as other stations in European cities but it does the job and ferries people in and out of the town. You can also see a freight train heading towards the new freight train station in the harbour area, reducing the need to use the old and tired docks.




Finally for this first look at the town we have this overview of the growing settlement of Antario. From here you can see the continued developments that we are currently underway on with the empty roads branching off in various directions. You can also see another of the towns issues and that's pollution. Something we will probably have to take care of at some near point in the future before it gets too out of hand.




Anyway that's all for today, currently our little town sits at a population of 13,400 which is an increase of about 5k since the developers started investing, so something must be going right with things. Still lets wait and see before we get too confident.

(OOC: So I've decided to come back to my bellowed city building games with a new attempt at an European styled city. As with my other cities in the past this will no no Custom Content or unofficial mods and unlike my other cities (despite the impression this first entry may have given you) this will be more about natural city growing than a story or grand planned city. I mean it'll still have a loose back story but it wont take itself as seriously as they have in the past.
Anyway I hope you all enjoy the city as it grows and as usual comments and criticisms are always welcome.

Cheers

89James89)




compdude787

Great start, looks like a nice town so far.
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Last updated: March 5, 2017

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threestooges

Are those docks made from the roads in the game? If so, that's a great trick. I quite like the walking path down the middle of the avenue in the first picture. Around here, outside of walking trails in parks, the only significant pedestrian areas are sidewalks on either side of a road, so it's interesting to see a different approach. Looks like it's well-used too.

Jmouse

I especially like the w2w look in the first photo. It reminds me of the small town I moved away from a few years ago, and sometimes I wish I could move back there. Overall, the town looks very promising and the last photo showing the surrounding terrain is very impressive.

89James89

Replies:

compdude787: Thanks glad you like it and hope you pop back in from time to time to watch the growth!

threestooges: Yes, there mostly roads with some After Dark ploppables thrown in for good measure. The custom avenue was more for the lack of traffic lights that this method produces over using the avenue but its also had the fun side effect of giving me the median to play around it so I'm glad you like it. Still have to finish beautifying it though.

Jmouse: Thanks, the wall to wall cities are definitely my favourite type of city and now, witht he new update allowing me to use the vanilla buildings on a Europe map I can get some variety in to break it up. As for the terrain I'm glad you like it, I really need to get around to releasing this map at some point lol.


Entry 2: A bit of everything

So yes, as the title suggests this entry is about looking at various issues and items that have sprung up around the growing town as the investors have continued to do what they do best, invest.

Unfortunately as your about to see what they don't do best is plan ahead and we've had several traffic issues throughout the growing town, the worst being these back ups in the centre.




So yes, this caused a slight issue as they didn't want to have to redesign and destroy large swathes of buildings to widen the road. The solution, however came with making the majority of side street splits into one ways heading away from the road and creating this rather elongated round about thing.




Right problem 1 solved (for now anyway), what's next?

Turns out it was power outages. You see while the city had been steadily growing the coal power plant had been steadily struggling. However no one actually bothered to keep track of this until we started getting some black out complaints.

Now we also apparently needed some sort of rail facilities now that the city had bought itself a rail fleet, so why not use the smallest amount of space possible to build a new Oil (because who likes dirty old coal?) power plant and a railyard. (OOC: Please note I have no idea what a oil power plant is meant to look like and google was useless so there you go, I winged it).




So, moving onto the next issue that were having is a bit of a case of expanding to fast, you see up until now, this Primary and Secondary schooling facility and another Primary school are the only educational facilities in the entire town.




Which was fine when the town was small and no one paid it any attention, However, when you have people investing in expensive offices all over the place, the limited pool of educated people quickly cause a slight issue and lead to investors pulling out and situations like this dilapidated building popping up over town.




Now space in the town at the moment is at a bit of a premium so we'll have to look at building a university outside of the current city limits. Now, however for this rather random entry of mish mashed problems and solutions, we'll take a look at some random images showing various things like the newish local hospital (health is more important than education).




A look at the growing financial district (or at least our attempt at one).




Some new housing, trying to use up all the space in front one of the many mountains in the area.




A panorama of the wall to wall architecture that makes up the majority of the city with the Hospital and some fire breaking the skyline (don't worry I'm sure they were fine).




Finally for today we have an up to date overview showing the city as it currently stands, population 21,404.




As you can see there's still a lot of growth going on with roads leading nowhere at the moment. Hopefully you can also begin to see the slight attempt at a mainstreet sort of thing emerging. We definitely need to start spreading out a bit more though as things are beginning to get a bit cramped (OOC: I need to buy more than 1 2x2 square basically)
Anyway that's all for today's entry, join us next time when hopefully we'll have some sort of approved educational facility to show you all!

(OOC: As you lot have probably noticed, I've started messing around with the theme editor in the new DLC, hence why the roads, ruined ground, mountains and water have all changed a bit from what were used to. I'm not sure they're going to stay this way in the long run but for now they'll do (though the mountains do look rather weird in the rain though I'm not sure if this is due to the rain or the colour adjustments I've made).

Cheers

James)







compdude787

Looking even better! I like seeing all the progress you're making so far!!
Check out my MD, United States of Simerica!
Last updated: March 5, 2017

My YouTube Channel

Jmouse

First of all, I suggest that you number your photos so we can comment on them individually. It looks like your city is coming along nicely. There's a lot of w2w which I've never really worked with, but intend to try soon. The overview of the city looks really good. I like the diagonals – it could easily be a RL metropolis. I wonder about the CBD being off in a corner, though. It would be a very long commute for some folks. That said, is your traffic moving along the way you want it to?

art128

Your city has a really nice shape, I like it. The location is also nice, between rivers and mountains, makes for some nice scenery. :)
Nice use of wall to walls even with the delicate angles.
I'll take a quiet life... A handshake of carbon monoxide.

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threestooges

As you build, are you planning ahead for what the future will be, or will we be seeing renovation as needed?

Also, I love the power plant complex. How long did that take to put together? How much of it was plopped, how much was allowed to grow? The mixture of buildings really adds that extra level of realism to the scene. The angular nature of that road overpass though is a bit odd in context with everything else though.

I quite like the parking lots you're using. Even in a game like this, where street parking is a visual thing, it's easy to overlook lots like this, and they do a wonderful job of making things seem more realistic. Which lots are you using?
-Matt

89James89

#9
Replies

compdude787: Thanks, I'm glad your enjoying the progress and growth, its my favourite part of city games, watching things grow on a large scale.

Jmouse: Thanks for the suggestion, there now numbered as from this entry. Thanks, the city is growing nicely. The CDB is off to the side because that was the limit of the existing town when the investment started flowing in. As such, rather than destroying large swathes of the Old Town and replacing it with tall glass buildings, the decision was made to build the financial district off to the south of the actual town. As for the traffic flow its fine at the moment. The only issue's we've had crop up was the one in the previous entry and one that came up in this following entry.

art128: Thanks glad you like the city and the map. I should really upload it to the workshop.

threestooges: Thanks and while were planning immediately ahead, were trying to get to detailed with future projects and expansions, preferring to just build up naturally. I have started to add a list at the bottom of each entry to highlight potential future projects or issues that are arising in the city as it grows. Not all of these will be addressed but it should give a small idea of the heading of the city for the next entries.

As for the powerplant it didn't take all that long once I'd figured out what buildings I wanted to use. The most annoying part was trying to get the place fenced off and the tanks to all grow as the same model rather than different ones. I've also taken into account your advice on the bridge and turned it into a tunnel as you'll see in this entry.

As for the parking lots, there my creation. I spend a fair amount of time in with this city creating my own lots to use, such as the fences surrounding the powerplant and rail and the harbour edge lots. These are probably the closest thing to custom content in the city, although I'm allowing it as its only using props produced by CO in their editor. I might start uploading them to a steam workshop collection if anyone is interested. They're fully thumbnailed and labelled so shouldn't be too hard to use.



Entry 3: Religiously Educational Industrialisation!

So, were back with this confusing title that just about covers everything that's been going on in Antario since the last time we visited starting with this shot of the end of the Old Town highstreet, showing the new Cathedral dominating end of the road, which , along with the new University were about to see has cemented Antarios status as a city rather than a town (OOC: Being a bit British here with settlement classification, I have no idea how they classify settlements in Norway but oh well, a Cathedral and University is good enough for me).

1.



Speaking of which here is the new seat of learning and education for the city of Antario, the Antario Academical Institute. You can also see some of the dorms that make up the University campus, built in keeping with the style of Old Town Antario, mainly to tie them in with the actual main university building.

2.



As you can see from the following picture the actual campus is located directly next tot he new cathedral and is made up of the main university building, four dorms, a large glass botanical and related studies building and several recreational facilities. In stark contrast to the cathedral and the university you can see the low income housing projects built in response to a spike in residential demand. These also mark the end of Old Town and are the beginnings of the spread of the city eastwards.

3.



Next up we have some large scale industrial expansion, mainly based around new university graduates wanting to try their hands at running a business of their own. Unfortunately as you can probably imagine this spread has come quite quickly and isn't all that organised meaning that the limited dock space in the harbour has become a bit crowded, you can see that they have tried to help alleviate the problem with some additional piers and wharves but eventually we may have to look at a more organised solution.

Anyway, the actual pictures are below with the first showing the expansion of the existing industrial waterfront to fully encompass the natural harbour and the second showing a new industrial waterfront to the south of the city entrance., where a much more restricted access harbour has been built to handle small scale shipping.

4.


5.



Other than this we have the normal for any growing city and that's this shot of the Old Town Hospital, with the growth of the financial district in the background.

6.



And the inevitable traffic issues that come with a growing city, this time with the main entrance roundabout. A lack of a dedicated entrance into the growing industrial waterfront meant that trucks and lorries were causing huge backups trying to navigate the narrow streets into the waterfront.

7.



Some quick brainstorming later and we came up with this solution before the issue ground the city to a halt. Firstly, unless your delivering to a shop in Old Town you now can't drive a truck or a lorry through. To provide a working traffic solution we dug out several tunnels, the first leading as a exit from the highway into the city to a tunnel exit to the left of the railyard. The second was replacing the awkward bridge over the oil power plant railway with a underpass and a connecting tunnel to the new industrial sector allowing for a much improved flow of traffic.

8.



And finally, after you've suffered this wall of text we get to the end of the entry with the obligatory overview image, this time with the population of the growing city standing at 31,940 people.

9.



Future plans/citizen requests on the table:
-Improve the lacking public transport network?
-Provide housing for the increasing number of people wanting to move to the city?
-Take a look at streamlining the harbour area?
-Look into new avenues of industry, maybe forestry?
-Financial district substantial expansion?
-Get the city beautification projects finished instead of half done?

(OOC: Here we are for another entry. As you can see I tried to create some sort of university campus and built the cathedral to cement the place as a city. Pretty damn hard gettignt he cathedral though without using and cheats. Took my bank balance from 5.4million down to just above 1million before it started improving.

The trees also look a bit funky at the moment but apparently its a bug that CO are aware of and are planning on fixing. The harbour is also an area that's a bit odd. Having just finished developing it I unlocked the harbours, however not wanting to have to redo everything before the entry I just built some eye candy piers and will have a look a real harbour as a future project.

The other thing I've added is the further plan list to give you an idea of where we might be heading in future entries. We definitely won't be covering all of these in the next couple of entries there just some sort of vague plan or idea of where I'm heading.

Cheers

James)



threestooges

I like it. The harbor development, in particular, is lovely to look at. Pictures 7 and 8, however, I'm not sure I see what's different between them. Looking forward to the next update.
-Matt

c.p.

I love the first pic with the mountains in the background :thumbsup:

Jmouse

Quote from: 89James89 on February 29, 2016, 03:48:27 PMI spend a fair amount of time in with this city creating my own lots to use, such as the fences surrounding the powerplant and rail and the harbour edge lots.

I was not aware that custom content creation was possible in this game, but I've never really played it before. I'm not used to seeing such bright colors in city photos, but you have certainly arranged your city very well. Like threestooges, I'm not sure about the change(s) from #7 to #8, but there's a remarkable change in your overviews from the first one to this most recent one. When you started out, did you have an idea like #9 in mind, or did you just experience a phenomenal run of luck? :D I'm eager to watch Antario continue to develop.

catty

Quote from: Jmouse on March 01, 2016, 03:26:38 PM
Quote from: 89James89 on February 29, 2016, 03:48:27 PMI spend a fair amount of time in with this city creating my own lots to use, such as the fences surrounding the powerplant and rail and the harbour edge lots.

I was not aware that custom content creation was possible in this game, but I've never really played it before...

If you ever have a few hours to spare then you should have a wander thru the Steam Workshop for Cities Skylines

http://steamcommunity.com/app/255710/workshop/

Even Dedgren has uploaded a map to it   :)

Hi 89James89

RL isn't something I can't get away from at the moment, but be assured when I can I'll be back for a proper look and more than a brief post as your MD pictures are looking great   &apls
I meant," said Ipslore bitterly, "what is there in this world that truly makes living worthwhile?" DEATH thought about it. "CATS," he said eventually, "CATS ARE NICE.

89James89

#14
Replies:

threestoges: Thanks, I'm glad you like my attempts at the harbour and thanks for pointing out the duplicate images.

c.p.: Thanks, hopefully it'll look even nicer now that they've fixed the super shiny mountains!

Jmouse: Yep, there's a load of custom content on the steam workshop and you can use the asset editor in game to make your own with the in game props. Yer, unfortunately I accidentally duplicated them two images so sorry about that. As for the growth of the city I kind of part planned it part just built it up as I went along. For example I always knew that I wanted a large harbour area where the current one is but I had no plan for the university, cathedral or the growing financial district being where they currently are, they kind of just slotted in there as I expanded.

catty: Yup, I would definitely check it out if you like custom content.

No worries about real life, I know how that is at the moment. Looking forward to your views when you do pop back in though!



Entry 4: Well that's a slight issue!

Welcome back to Antario all, where currently it seems that we are having a bit of a wet and windy day (OOC: So glad they fixed the super shiny cliffs when it rains. I've also changed things up in the theme editor again, let me know what you think)

1.



However this isn't the only issue that has cropped up since the last entry with the latter being slightly more pressing than bad weather in the form of rolling blackouts caused by a rapidly growing city that may have forgotten to expand its power capabilities.

Rather luckily though we also found several oil fields while carrying out surveys on the islands surrounding the one that the actual city is built on located close to a spit if land that would make a perfect area for a larger oil power plant.

2.



Firstly however we needed to sort out a temporary solution for the rolling blackouts so had a small wind farm built on one of the ridges overlooking the city.

3.



Our next step was to then provide some sort a road connection to the oil fields and future power plant project. For this we had a single lane highway run out from a trumpet interchange temporarily terminating in a roundabout and diamond interchange for the time being. You can also see that we choose a small wind farm over here for the time being as well, what with needing to get the actual oil fields set up.

4.



Then we allowed industries to buy up each of the oil fields and set up shop like this smaller one belonging to Oil Be Damned Inc, nodding donkeys and all (OOC: Don't expect to see a lot of nodding donkeys. Apparently the damn resources run out really really fast in vanilla). We did think ahead though and made sure the largest oil field was reserved for a city funded drilling operation, with a view to powering the planned station.

5.



Anyway with the stage one of the new plan implemented and stage two about too get underway were still seeing developments in the city like these wall to wall buildings with new high rises in the background providing yet more cheap housing in a small space and more reasons to get on with the power plant construction.

6.



Anyway, here we'll leave you with the usual overview of the city currently, this time also showing the new oil fields as well as small pockets of growth throughout the city with a current population of 32,090. Not much growth, but then again we can't cope with it at the moment.

7.



So here's the updated list of things that were looking into, obviously with it all being superseded by the power issue.

Future plans/citizen requests on the table:
-Powerplant construction
-Improve the lacking public transport network?
-Provide housing for the increasing number of people wanting to move to the city?
-Take a look at streamlining the harbour area?
-Look into new avenues of industry, maybe forestry?
-Financial district substantial expansion?
-Get the city beautification projects finished instead of half done?




Jmouse

I've been away for a few days, so I'm trying to catch up on posting now. Since I'm unfamiliar with the inner workings of the game, what is the "theme editor?"

I rather like the stormy look of the first photo as opposed to the sometimes bright colors in some scenes. I was wondering how – and where - future expansion would go, but you seem to have answered the question several times in this update. I especially like the third shot. I've seen a few RL photos of roadways in mountainous areas which complement the natural surroundings rather than destroying them. I like that.

I noticed your list of future plans and wondered about suburbs, although your ideas along those lines may be quite different from mine.


carlfatal

Hey, that´s a nice town to live in. The picture with the oil power plant and the container train is my favorite - realistic track arangements are not that easy without a NAM-RRW.  &apls

Your way to build a realistic looking waterfront with (mostly) vanilla stuff is fascinating and reminds me to your SC4-CJ. This harbour area is pretty awesome, I´ve seen nothing comparable in C:SL until now!  :thumbsup:


threestooges

Digging that first rain picture. Have you come across any decent oil assets made by the community? I'd love to get some nodding donkeys in my cities, but with as quickly as it depletes in game, I figure it may have to be through something that doesn't actually require the oil to work. Lastly, the overview is looking good, but I might suggest widening the waterways, particularly taking into account how long the piers and wharves are. Doesn't look like there's much room for a ship to pass.
-Matt

vester

The game is getting better by the update that is for sure. Still think the game (and my computer) still need some upgrades before I taken on CSK.

kelis

Fantastic pictures !! I like the first picture  &apls
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