Blogger City Anddul — Part 4

by Naithin · July 25, 2020

My gaming goal this month was to grow Anddul to a milestone that explicitly labels it a ‘City’. With my holiday and rate of posting in general, I’m not certain I’ll make that. Anddul currently sits as a ‘Tiny Town’, albeit one well on its way to ‘Boom Town’ (2,000 pop). But past Boom Town there is still ‘Busy Town’ (3,800 pop) and ‘Big Town’ (5,500 pop) before finally hitting Small City (7,000 pop).

We’ll see how we go, but I figure there is at least one more post following this one to get there! I might try making slightly bigger strides in building layouts and zoning though… Maybe. Hmm. In any case, last time I provided Anddul’s residents the Later Levels High School and Tessa’s Grand Public Library.

I also dropped a whole bunch of other references to bloggers in the community via residences, shops and even the odd industrial complex. No doubt more of those will surface (and get placed!) this time around too. :)

Alright — Goals for this post?

Hit the Boom Town (2,000 pop) milestone
Hit the Busy Town (3,800 pop) milestone

Beyond that — going to keep it fairly free-form. And I’m not going to be worried if I end up zoning enough to blow us past these two milestones into Big Town. :)

Bringing the Boom

Well, the biggest and most immediate demand is for places to live. The access road providing more direct access to the high school provides a natural place to start expanding the residential zoning out and around the back, like so:

With the demand we have, it doesn’t take long at all for it to start filling up with citizens chomping at the bit to live in Anddul.

Of course — hot on the heels of homes comes places to work and the demand for Industrial (and to a lesser degree, Commercial) starts to rise. I’ve zoned a little Commercial in amongst what you see above there (in particular along the edge roads, and within the little corner/curved sections) so I think that will take care of itself.

As for Industry, you may recall our initial zoning for this was only half-done. We still had dirt roads on the lower half and no zoning. Now that the demand is present, I fill this in.

You might also notice, I had to place a second power plant in — The Shards of Imagination #2. With the increased number of residences and industrial buildings — #1 couldn’t quite do it alone any more.

Between the efforts in these two areas — and given how close we already were — it doesn’t take long for Boom Town status to arrive at all.

With this milestone, I may now select two tiles to expand across since I still haven’t used the first expansion. This gives me a few options, but I’m still pretty comfortable within the first tile for now — so that’s a thing for later.

Of the things unlocked otherwise though — I’m pretty interested in setting up a local bus set-up for the schools, and separately for adults to get to work without driving.

I’ll also look to get the postal service working.

Oooh! Also, I realised I… erm… forgot to provide a place for the dead. To bury loved ones, one must travel to the next city over. This is a fairly easy fix, I just need to decide where to put it.

I decided to create a bit of a sweeping, unmarked back-road for the cemetery. I might ultimately zone a city park around it, but for now it can occupy a place of honour at the back here all on its own.

As for the placement of the Anddul’s first Post Office and (Biofuel!) Bus Depot — I place them here, in the central area between both communities. When/if this road is upgraded to highway — they’ll have to move. But for now it’s a perfect spot, as their noise pollution won’t bother any residences. The buildings you see behind them within range of the noise are commercial buildings which don’t mind the noise at all.

Post Office on the left, the Biofuel Bus Depot on the right.

Setting Up the Local Bus Routes

The blue lines you see are local community loops, going between residences and commercial within the neighbourhood they belong to.

The yellow line is the school bus, and for now, services both primary schools (I added a new one for the larger community on the left, after noting capacity issues at the first) and the high school.

Then, finally, the purple line acts as a link between the two residential communities and the industrial area. It’s a longer line but something of an express with far fewer stops along the way. The blue local community lines can carry travellers from the express drop-off points to other areas of their community without issue.

Time to Get Busy!

The people are ready — ready to get busy! Oh no, not like that. … Although maybe a little like that. I guess it is one way to increase the population after all.

Ahem.

Anyway. Whatever the method, all these young families are demanding new places to live again. And rather than expanding any further on the areas already built, for now at least, I think it’s time to map a new area for growth out. I’ve been eyeing up the natural resources in the starting tile and while there isn’t much in the way of Ore that isn’t already covered in people it does have quite a nice area ready for some forestry.

As it turns out though, what I etched out in dirt-roads below in the ‘before’ picture wasn’t quite enough. I ended up expanding further North toward our second community as well.

You might also notice I upgrade some of the major roads. National Highway now stretches from to the North and East, connecting our residential and industrial areas respectively. I didn’t go all the way into the areas, as you cannot zone or otherwise place anything beside highways — but even so, much faster travel is now possible.

I also added shoulder roads for getting on and off to/from the new areas to keep traffic flow going.

Also?

While building this all out — no further demand eventuated for Industry. As it turned out, expanding the industry to double what it was before by filling in the bottom half of the initial area for it was too much. There were complaints about not enough workers for a while there — although this new residential district more than fixed that. Phewph.

So all that is to say — I wasn’t able to start the Forestry area yet. To do so would’ve made the worker shortage situation even worse.

But!

So with the second goal hit, I’ll wrap things up for today.

Next time, I’m going to want to check service coverage for each area. I’ve added some additional Police, Fire and Educational facilities as I built out the new area but it could likely be better still.

Also, I’m beginning to realise that I might want a Fire Helicopter Depot sooner rather than later too. The trees on this map appear to be made out of something actually flammable. Who would have thought? :P

Of course, will be aiming toward getting the demand up high enough to support the Forestry industry and in the process hit the next population milestone(s).

Here’s the before and after shot for this part!