Covington - Update 61 "Chestnut Hills and South River Bend"

[ejc]

it's nice to see you've made good progress!!

most people quit finishing a region just because they don't get pleased by it anyomore

the way you keep it diverse for yourself by playing some farms, residential and railyards/industries is keeping this region playful for you, and aswell.. joyfull to watch for us!!

keep it up!!

E

[Pat]

LoL Jon I know but daaang gotta love them curds yum yum anyways loved your progress and for anyone who wants to know what a cheese curd is here ohh my favorite is the deep fried curd yummies!!!


NB:  Hey Jon guess what I found today while I was out doing a little hunting on the STEX???  here [linkie]

[Ennedi]

Your "progress report" is really great, the regional view is one of the most realistic ones I have ever seen 
As others said, one of the strongest points of this region is it's diversity and the balance between urbanized areas and farmlands. I'm very curious of the further development of Covington!

Adam

[nerdly_dood]

Nerdly_dood:  Thanks and welcome to Covington!  You're a bit further north than I had in mind... and I didn't realize there even was a Covington up there.  Most of the highways are found somewhere in or fairly near Greensboro, NC... which was my inspiration for this one.  Many of the numbers are off a bit though.  US 311 should really be further west as it connects High Point with Winston-Salem... US 220 is pretty accurate in the southern half of my region, but not in the north (US 29 is what really goes past Riedsville)... and the list could go on forever, really.  I'm glad you like the MD!

Thanks for the southerly nudge.  Greensboro isn't really all that far from where I live, but I don't have any family there, so I've only gone there once when I was about 6 years old.

[JBSimio]

Matt:  Thank you!  Many times I'll name towns after something nearby.  I also tend to use a lot of trees for names... (Walnut Grove, Cypress Creek, Pine Ridge) but that's about all the naming "tips" I've got!     There actually is no airport in Covington at this point, so I guess most of those planes must be coming from Charlotte... or maybe even Atlanta.

Dustin:  Thanks!  I'm afraid the country drive is still on hold for a bit... I'm having trouble finishing that area the way I really want to.

Joan:  Thank you!  I'm glad you enjoyed the miniture history look!

Paul:  Thanks!  To be perfectly honest, I didn't really remember to do this ahead of time... which explains why some of the pictures are way off center!     I was just looking through region shots and realized that I had enough of them that I could still throw something together.

Leo:  Thank you!  I know what you mean... but they're not both towns.  Walnut Creek is a creek... Walnut Grove is a town.  No giant Italy here... but I have been tinkering with a Paris map off and on...

Derry:  Thank you!  I think the natural look will be explained a little further in this update... so I'm glad you mentioned it!

Sebes:  Thanks!

Bat:  Thank you also!

Simpson:  Thank you for stopping by again!

Ejc:  Thank you!  I prefer building this way just so there is always something to come back to.  At this rate, even having the region "full" is only the beginning.  Then it's time for things to grow and expand... so the fun never ends!   

Pat:  Haha!  I've noticed that if I have to explain cheese curds, people don't want to try them.  Much better to force feed them first and then explain what they just ate!     But you're right... fried curd is amazing.  I'm glad you were able to find those... they certainly have become indispensible for me.

Adam:  Thank you!  We'll come back to Covington soon.  I read a couple threads recently that told me finishing off the farms first might be best in the long run.  Apparantly, if I get too urban, I'll kill off the farm demand... which is obviously not what I want.

Nerdly_dood:  I really miss Greensboro actually.  I haven't actually visited in quite a while though either... sounds like it's time to plan a trip!

Update Time!!!

First of all, I apologize for the lack of updates here recently.  I had every intention of ending the month with a bang, but alas (good word... should get used more often) that didn't happen as you probably noticed already.  Secondly, this is not even the update I had intended to make next!  My original plan was to finish our drive in country over on the eastern side of the region with a visit to the State Park.  That isn't going to happen just yet either.  We'll get back there eventually, but just not right now.  Thirdly, there really is no thirdly... I'm just a huge fan of lists and wanted to pretend I was making one!

So, what the heck are we going to do today?  Well, I'm glad you asked.  Since many people have commented on my region shots and road networks so often, I thought I would put together a little step by step of how I go about making these things happen.  I hesitate to call this a tutorial of any kind... mostly because my ego won't allow me to believe that I'd actually be teaching anyone anything!  This is just going to be more of an inside look at how I plan and build the more rural areas for Covington.  Today we'll prep the area and get all the main roads laid out.  Next time we'll finish off with the farms and whatever else comes along.

15.01


This is the final undeveloped corner of my region.  I've shown parts of this here and there on the edges of other pictures in the past.  Some of the city tiles are already set up, but there are some that I haven't even touched yet... which is the perfect place to start for the way I do things.  Let's focus in on the tiles I haven't done anything with yet...

15.02


Here is it... the northwest corner of Covington.  At this point, I haven't even opened any of these city tiles yet.  My normal way of laying things out is to do it in larger chunks like this rather than one city tile at a time.  There are a couple reasons for this.  First it helps me keep a more continuous look to what I'm doing.  The second reason is for the power grid.  For power (and garbage actually) I usually select a small city tile and make it my regional power station.  I then make neighbor deals from one city to the next that will carry the power into all the tiles I want to cover.  In this case, I'll cover all 12 city tiles with from within one small tile.

I've found that there is a trick to setting this up in advance or it won't actually work as planned.  That trick is to make all the neighbor deals before any game time elapses.  So... step one in prepping this area is to open each tile... pause the game while still in God mode... and then "start" the city by giving it a name.  I then save and exit to the region without doing anything else.  Nothing at all.  I'll do this for all 12 tiles I need to finish.  Once I have them all paused and named, then (and only then) will I start actually doing something with these tiles.

The next step is to pick a "Board of Water and Light" for my power plants.  (I don't actually do regional water distibution... but the name just sounded better that way to me!)  Here is the one I picked along with my plan to distribute the power to each city.

15.03


I actually needed two power plants to cover this much area.  I usually use the oil power plant which provides 7000Mwh of power.  I have 12 city tiles to cover.  I figure 1000Mwh of power for each city tile, so I'll need a total of 12,000Mwh for this... which for all you math geniuses out there means two oil power plants.  After building the power plants, I just run the power lines and make the necessary neighbor connections.  I make the neighbor deals as I go, buying and selling as needed... always making sure that I buy 1000MWh more than what I'm going to sell to keep power in the city as well.  As long as the game stays paused, I can buy as much as I need in each city.  I've found that once the clock starts, the game won't allow me to buy more power just to sell it later.  The city trying to buy apparently has to need the power before the game will let you make a deal.  If the game stays paused, I can still do it.  (I hope that made sense the way I described it!)  The only other real tip I would have for this part is trying to keep the neighbor connections in areas where I will develop later.  For this reason, I don't want to make a connection at the top of a ridge... I'll opt for valley areas where ever possible.

OK... so now I have all my cities named and powered up.  The next step for me is to finish off the freeways.  I actually have three to finish this time.  I-40 which is my major east-west interstate, US 29 which is the spur that runs down to High Point, and the Joseph Bryan Parkway which converts into a freeway northwest of Covington.  I usually do these and any railroads first because they seem to have the least flexibility.  I find it much easier to work my roads around the freeways instead of the other way around.

15.04


I'll spend more time describing the methods when we get to the roads.  The theories are all basically the same anyway.  Now that the freeways are done, I will basically just sit back and stare at everything for a while to figure out where my major roads are going to go.

There are a number of things I consider when working out my roads.  I try to look at the whole region and pick out some state and US highways that will cross the entire region.  This includes paying attention to any existing neighbor connections already built from other areas.  I also try to visualize any areas that make sense for a small town to prepare for.  Sometimes the towns show themselves in advance, other times they become obvious as I lay the roads out.  In this particular case, I don't actually have any advance plans for towns, so I can ignore that part.  The major thing I'm looking at now is just the topography of the land.  I don't do a lot of terraforming and I like to keep the land fairly close to its virgin state, especially in rural areas like this.  Most modern paved roads were built over dirt roads which were built over stage coach routes which were built over foot paths.  In other words... I like to follow the paths of least resistance.  I'm not saying this is right or wrong... it might not even be historically accurate!... but it's the justification I use for what I'm doing.  With that in mind, I'll mentally draw roads along the valleys in various directions.  Then I'll look for places that would seem like logical ways to get over the hills and ridges to connect the valley paths.  One other thing I'll keep in mind is the number of entry points for each city tile.  For medium tiles, I like to have 4-8 neighbor connections (in rural areas), preferably with one on each side.  For small tiles, I'll have at least 2, with 4 in flatter areas.

15.05


If I were to put all this on paper (which to be honest, I usually don't), my first draft might look something like this.  This is just a rough idea... and you'll see that I didn't stick too it 100% by any means.  The main thing worth pointing out is the way I followed the terrain as much as possible.  Now, let's talk about actually laying the roads out.  At this point, I just look for a good place to start... usually with one of the longest roads.  I'll start in the lower right hand tile for this one.

15.06


So this is Sharon Mills.  You can see the freeway portion in the corner of the traffic map.  My major route through this tile will be a northwest-southeast road that follows the valley.  One thing I definitely want to do with this road is have it exit very close to the northwest corner of the tile.  Because of the way my tiles are arranged, I also want it to exit on the western edge of the map and not on the northern edge.  If it exits to the north, I will just need to cut across a tiny corner of the next tile before it exits again anyway.  I have a little more room to play on the southern exit, so I'll start with the northern exit point at the yellow arrow and build out from there.

You'll notice I have the traffic map opened in the picture.  The congestion option won't show up until you've unpaused the game for a short time, but the volume option will register as soon as you lay a road or rail.  I refer to this map often as I build to make sure I'm keeping to my route (it's easy to see if I start veering too close to the hill or off course in this view) and also to get an idea of how smooth my curves will look.

15.07


Here is the very beginning of my road.  I really like how I can exit on a diagonal with roads and rails.  (Unfortunately this doesn't work with highways or avenues)  All that needs to be done is to draw the road towards the map edge.  This does require special treatment on the neighboring tile, but we'll get to that in a few minutes.

15.08


Now I just start dragging road in small sections to get around the hill before I can begin to staighten out a little more.  These offsets are what keeps the region view looking more realistic than if I went on a standard diagonal for a while and then turned east for a 6 tile "route correction."

15.09


At this point, I just continue the road across the entire tile, keeping along the valley.  I don't want the road to be completely straight, so I threw a small s-curve in just because.  Notice how the length of my sections gets shorter and and slides over more often the closer I get to a curve.  This is what helps create that smoother appearance in the region view.  But, Jon... why don't you just use the NAM curves for that?  Sometimes I do... sometimes I don't.  The NAM curves look great for close ups (much better than this method) but not so great on the region transportataion view.  The direction changes are still very pronounced.  I also have touble with them in more sloped areas... but I'm still practicing that part.

15.10


Speaking of region views... this is what our new road looks like on the transportation map.

15.11


Remember that angled road connection?  Let's go into the next tile and match things up for the continuation of the road.  When we first open the city, I'm given a three tile long connection "stub."  I want to continue the diagonal progress of the road, so I bulldoze all but the one tile on the edge of the map.  Then I can build my angle from there.  In this case, I accidentally came too close to my power connection and will have to fix that.

15.12


After extending thins a little bit and fixing the power connection, it looks like this.  (Don't forget to go back into Sharon Mills and adjust the power lines on that side as well.

15.13


At this point, I would actually save and exit to the region to make sure things line up and look smooth across the two cities.  The arrow shows exactly where the neighbor connection is.  It's not perfect here, but it's close enough for me to continue on.  (I actually did go back later and smooth things out a touch more... but that's because I'm ridiculous like that!)

I basically follow this same process for every city tile.  I tend to move in and out of cities several times each before arriving at the results I want.  I rarely lay out one tile, call it finished, and move to the next.  Many times, things change as I'm going along, so I prefer to build one road at a time... tile by tile... and then go back and start the next one.

15.14


Eventually, I came up with something that looks like this.  You'll notice that there were several changes from my original "plan" but the main ideas hold true.  I can also now see where several small farm towns will be located.  There are one or two more roads I think I might still add to connect some areas a little better, but this is just about ready to be zoned.  We'll do that next time.  Until then, feel free to ask anything you might be curious about and as always...

Thanks for reading!
JB

[rhythmandjays]

Wow, this is a beautiful region and a great tutorial  I do have a question though. Does all of those small curves badly affect commute time?

Excellent update!

[TopCliff]

I have an excellent idea for that northwest corner. What if you made a lake with plop water, then added a bunch of resorts and posh estates around, like a lake retreat area? Maybe even throw in a golf course? I think it would be a big tourist benefit for Covington.

[paroch]

Hi Jon,

I think you should change your user name to Mr. Meticulous!!!

Seriously, I am impressed immensely with your approach and attention to detail.  I looked back to the early days of West End to remind myself of my approach.  At the time I thought my arrow straight motorways (freeways) and railways were really clever, but your approach is certainly more detailed and one that I will try to adopt to some degree when I start moving into un-charted areas. 

The benefits it gives on region view are certainly worth it.  In my opinion, the only other region views in the same league are ejc's over at Ruhrgebeit - and that is some company to be in.

You started your post by saying you wouldn't call this a tutorial as you were not sure you'd teach us anything. Well, you have one student here whose brain has been enhanced 

It's going to be interesting to see this new part of Covington develop here Jon - I look forward to it.

Paul

[penguin007]

This is an excellent region you have here JBsimio the fields look awesome and convington looks to be going on well. Cant wait to see more and your tutorial was useful.

Will

[Pat]

  Fantastic work Jon as per normal from you and your maps too!!!  I couldn't believe I found that on the STEX and now at least heaven forbid any thing happen you now can at least get those back without a problem...  you speaking of which I saw your old avatar on ST, the one saying "this icon got distracted by a shinny object" well that is how I feel when I see your projects I get distracted lol, I cant wait to see more distractions!!!!

[Jmouse]

Jon, that was one of the most informative "non-tutorials" I've ever read! I'm terraforming a new region that's a bit like yours in that it has a fair share of elevation to play with. I've no doubt your ideas and theories will fit in quite well when I start laying out a transport network. And I think I will start out that way this time although it will be a first for me.

I often wonder how much of a major network is planned, how much is dictated by necessity and how much is just plain guess work. It's most interesting to get a greater understanding of the thought processes that go into a logical approach to transportation. From this, is it fair to assume you have a pretty clear mental image of how you want to develop this 12-tile area? You can bet I'll be watching to see how this turns out!

And have I told you at least a dozen times how much I like your overviews?

Later...
Joan

[Simpson]

Very good update there Jon 

[TheTeaCat]

SO if this is a non tutorial then how come i learned a few new things??

(makes me wonder why I have to pay for all the courses i take and then feel like I learned nothing I didn't already know )

It's not perfect here, but it's close enough for me to continue on.  (I actually did go back later and smooth things out a touch more... but that's because I'm ridiculous like that!)

I wouldn't say that - a perfectionist   maybe, but whats wrong with that 

This is always one of my favourite MD's and it just gets better as it unfolds


TTC

[bat]

Wonderful new update there! Looks very nice...

Looking forward to more...

[thundercrack83]

...mostly because my ego won't allow me to believe that I'd actually be teaching anyone anything!

Well, I've learned a lot from this update, my friend! Your ego would be proud! Wonderful work!

Dustin

[JBSimio]

Sorry for the distinctive lack of updates everyone.  The summer has become much busier than I originally expected and I haven't had much time to prepare the second half of this at all.  I guess that happens when you expect to be unemployed for a month and instead end up cooking in the wilds of northern Michigan!     I'll certainly be back as soon as I can be... I'm just not sure exactly when that might be.  In the meantime, I just wanted to say hi and let y'all know that things are going well on my end.

JB

[threestooges]

He's alive! Just kidding, but good to hear you're keeping busy (and all the other good things that come with employment) We'll be here when you get back. Also, it seems I haven't commented on the non-tutorial yet. I like your attention to detail in planning out even the power grid. I usually use the "conveniently disguised" power structures and have a few big ones elsewhere for the look... perhaps something to try with my next region. Your method of following the path of least resistance in road laying really does yield a good result, and I like that trick about the diagonal neighbor connections. Great work as always, and I'll keep an eye out to see what other tricks you have up your sleeve. Take it easy.
-Matt

[thundercrack83]

Good to hear from you, my friend! And I'm glad to hear that you're keeping yourself busy!

I'll be looking forward to your return!

Dustin

[Jmouse]

Hope you have a good time this weekend, Jon, but hurry back! I'll soon be needing some help with that transport design.

Later...
Joan

[JBSimio]

Rhythmandjays:  Thank you!  Good question... which to be honest, I had never really looked into until you asked.  I set up a very small and simple test city and ran a few different road configurations.  There wasn't any noticable change in the commute time graph, so I'm leaning towards "no" on this one.  Of course, that was with my NAM settings of higher speeds and distance... so the vanilla version could possibly see some impact, but it would be hard to say for sure without running a whole bunch of different scenarios.

Leo:  I actually have a spot picked out for some ploppable water down the road... but who knows how long it will be before I get to that point.  For now, this will just be more farm land. 

Paul:  Thank you for all you kind thoughts!  I guess that I can be pretty meticulous about things from time to time... who knew?    As you saw in England, my styles have evolved quite a bit since the first take on this region... it's always kind of funny to look back and see just how much though.

Penguin:  Thanks!  I'm glad you found a thing or two that might have helped.

Pat:  Thank you!  More distractions are on the way...

Joan:  Thanks as always!  To be honest, I have a general idea of how this corner will look in the end, but there are a lot of things that are still open to "evolution" really.  With the roads in place, I can now see a town or village that I didn't see before... and as I fill the area in, I'm sure other things will show themselves as well.  I try not to plan the rural areas too much... whereas the city of Covington itself is very premeditated.  So it's a combination of both for me, I guess.

Simpson:  Thank you!

Derry:  Thanks!  I guess I am a bit of a perfectionist... but I enjoy a good bit of self-depricating humor as well. 

Bat:  Thanks!

Dustin:  Thank you!

Matt:  Yes... I'm still here.  I will use an occasional power lot now and then, but I try to avoid them.  I don't really have a good reason for this, I suppose, but it's just how I play.

Dustin:  My return has arrived... at least for a moment or two!

Joan:  There isn't much else in this update about transport, but you know where to find me if need be! 

Update Time!!!

Alright... so we left off with most of the roads finished.  I've added a couple more near Covington and the area we'll start with now looks like this.

15.15


I'm going to start with Ryan Pass, which is the tile I've shaded in.  This will be almost entirely farm land wrapping around the hills.  There isn't much surrounding this tile yet, so my options are still pretty open here.  The one thing I will pay attention to are the neighboring farms that I've circled.  To keep the continuity of the region, I want to try and match up these borders up as closely as possible.

15.16


Here is Ryan Pass.  I've shaded the "important" border just so we can get our bearings a little bit.  Much like the roads, I tend to fill the valleys in with farms and leave my hills and ridges bare.  I don't really have a real life basis for this, but it helps me define areas to develop and areas to leave alone.  I like a more random look, but personally have trouble making things random for the sake of randomness.  So I use the lines of the terrain as my guide.

15.17


Zooming in a little closer...

15.18


At this point, I basically just start zoning farm land.  There are a couple things I try to do, although they're personal preferences more than anything else.  First off, when I'm near a tile border, I like to stagger the edges somewhat rather than have the farms all up against the edge.  I'll vary the sizes and avoid straight lines from one farm to the next.  For the size, I usually drag until the game tries to put a street down the middle.  This just gives me a good size to avoid "No Road Connection" zots later.  (This seems to be a little more common with irregular shaped zones for some reason.)

15.19


And there they are!  The first four farms in Ryan Pass.  Kind of a mess at the moment, isn't it?  We'll get to that.  Notice the single tile left along the right edge of the bottom farm?  This left my power connection in place, but also avoids having a lot of those ugly red poles to look at later.  Also notice the space between farms.   Again, this is a personal preference, but I prefer to leave at least 2 or 3 tiles of space between each farm.

Before we get too involved and carried away, let's go back to the region view... just to make sure things line up properly.

15.20


Works for me!  Now, I'll clean this up a bit.

15.21


I like to use the "Zone Data" map as an aid for this.  Much like the roads, it gives me a nicer view of how smooth things will look in the region view.  It also helps me to see the elevation changes when I'm tucking farms against the hillsides.  For this bottom farm, I want to sort of cut around the base of that ridge on the bottom left side.  Basically, I'll just use the "Unzone" tool for this and pick away tile by tile to create a rather smooth curve to the zone.

15.22


And there we have it.  You'll see that I also cut just a bit out of the upper corner as well to make a smoother transition to the farm next door.  I'll smooth out the left edge of that farm and then we'll move up to those two along the roads.

15.23


Working along side of the major roads brings me to my next personal "rule" for farms.  I try to leave two blank tiles between the farm zone and any through road.  This isn't essential of course, but I find it helps to avoid the problem of traffic pollution... especially on busier city tiles.  So, I've basically cut away that space along the road as well as any overspill across the street.  For the farm on the left, I cut a little further along the top right corner as well.  I would have had a 3 tile edge there, which I've found just doesn't look very good to me.  So I took that out and left myself with 6 tiles instead.

Now that I've shown the basics of how I do this, let's finish out this part of the valley.  I'll just keep zoning farms, staggering and filling in the low spots.
15.24


I left a pretty good chunk of space there at the intersection.  I'll put a small cluster of buildings there later... not even enough to call it a town, really.  Just one of those rural crossroads.  The L-shaped looking farm zone is actually "two farms" that I laid over each other.  This will be more of a diagonal farm and I needed the extra area so that there will be something left when I get done shaping it.

15.25


And that's what I'm left with after going a bit crazy with the "Dezone" button again.  A bit more zoning and shaping, and this is what I ended up with.    I did zone one farm right against the southern edge in this case.  I will actually count off squares and match this farm up on the neighboring tile.  I don't do this often, but the way the road runs here makes it necessary to avoid any obvious borders.

15.26


I'm pretty happy with that.  The valleys are basically filled in, although not packed too tight.  The hills are left blank which, as more cities get finished, will give me a nice flowing appearance without looking too structured.  Right about here is where I would save the city and double check the region view, just to make sure it  also flows well there.

15.27


I'm looking mainly for future problems with the borders here.  I don't really see anything... so we can move on to the next step.  What's the next step?  Why, street access for the farms!

Because I don't allow my farm zones to border the major roads, I will have to lay streets to get to all of them.  Because of the irregular zone shapes, I tend to overdo the streets a little bit.  With a square zone, one edge bordered by a street would be more than enough to ensure access.  My experience has been that this doesn't always work for the odd shapes that I create, so I tend to wrap the streets around a little bit more.  I also make these streets dead ends to avoid through traffic... and I try not to put more than three farms on any one access point.

15.28


These are the three farms in the north east corner of the tile.  To the left, I put both farms on the same street.  To the right, I just wrapped the street around the back to ensure the whole farm would have access.

15.29


Just another example of making access points.  In more difficult terrain areas, I'll use two streets on the same farm rather than making one long one that wraps around.  This may not always be necessary, but streets are fairly cheap so I don't worry about it too much.

Once I've gotten access to all the farms, it's time to start thinking about the other zones.  At this point, I also begin to think about the power grid.  I personally don't like to have power lines crossing all over the place if I can help it.  Some people make them look very good and they fit in perfectly... I'm not usually one of those people, so I just avoid them.  Instead, I use my filler zones to carry the power in rural areas.  So before I start zoning for houses and shops, I'll take a look at the power grid.

15.30


In this case, it doesn't look so good at all.  The only place I have power right now is right where it enters the city from the neighbor connection.  But... with a couple well placed residential zones...

15.31


I'm able to move things along a little further.

15.32


Now, this isn't to say that I let the power grid dictate my zones.  It's just something I keep in mind as I'm going along.  If it helps the power grid, that's great... but I still zone 1x2 residential lots where I feel they fit best.  The power grid is secondary in my mind at this stage.  This is beginning to get a little bit long, so I'll fast forward to the end of this bit on housing and whatnot.

15.33


That's basically all the zoning I'll do for this tile.  Notice the little "village cluster" where that intersection is?  Outside of that, I just scatter some single family home lots along the major roads and farm roads.  That's really about it.

15.34


Unfortunately, I still have some power issues to deal with.  That giant hill is separating one side of the tile from the other, and I naturally don't have any zones going across it.  So what to do?

15.35


Seasonal Trees to the rescue!  I love using these (in moderation of course... wouldn't want to have too many and get bloated or something) because not only do they carry power, but they blend in and add color.  I'll just plop a line of them along the lower areas from my powered area to my unpowered area.

15.36



Problem solved!  I'll also scatter some of these lots around my other developed areas just to add random splashes of color in the fall.  And here's the tile all zoned out and ready to go.

15.37


We're almost done... once again, I'm going to save and take a look at the region view.

15.38


This time, I'm looking at the satelite view to see where I should plant my trees.  I circled the areas that I need to leave bare if my borders are going to match up.

15.39


Then I'll go back into Ryan Pass and use the god mode cheat to plant my trees.  Again, I kind of stick to the valleys and maybe halfway up the higher hills.  I know trees would grow higher than this, but that's just my style again.  I'm a huge fan of the people that spend more time than I can imagine placing their trees and sorting the different species... but I'm not one of those people.  I just use the brush and fill them all in which gives me something like this.

One more look at the region view to see if any adjustments are necessary...

15.40


Finally!  I can go back into the tile and actually grow some stuff.  I'll unpause the game for the first time in Ryan Pass and just let the farms do their thing.  I generally don't do much else at this point but sit and wait for every farm to develop.  After they all have, I'll usually go back into god mode and replace the trees around the edges of the farms.  Other than that, I'm just trying to fill in the space for now.  I'll fine tune later as I get more tiles finished.

Here are the final results:

15.41


15.42


There it is.  This got quite a bit longer than I intended, so if you're still reading along I appreciate it even more than usual.  I just hope it was worth your while! 

Thanks for stopping in...
JB