Welcome to Anddul — Blogger City
I set myself the goal this month of kicking off a Blogger Community City in Cities: Skylines. With the month halfway gone already (holy cow!) I figured it might actually be time to get this ball rolling. Just… one problem.
I’m pretty bad when it comes to naming things.
Fortunately — random naming generators are a thing. So until we come up with a better name, we are building in…
Anddul
Anddul is a small city, known for its mining heritage.
Well that’s nice. The generator even gives a tiny bit of backstory! A nugget of an idea. Which is actually good — because I was still tossing up between a number of different maps, and this locked down an option for me.
Ribbon Lake indexes fairly heavily on forestry, but it has enough ore available to make a small mining town somewhere on the map. More I think it fits because of the aesthetic of the map. Unlike many of the vanilla game maps, this one features large mountains. Anddul just seems to fit. :)
What’s the Plan?
Come now. Plan? Me? No, no, no. We don’t do ‘plans’ around here.
The basic idea is fairly simple though.
Build a city — hopefully one that looks nice! — and paint districts over it, named after the people and blogs in our community. Possibly with some light thematic tie-ins to match! Tessa has asked for a University to be named after her for example. I figure a Liberal Arts university that focuses on literature to be a good tie-in. Of course… That university does take a fairly significant population to reach, so I’ll probably do something first.
A residence. A library, or other educational sector, perhaps? All of the above?
We’ll see!
Today I expect to just get a basic layout done. Maybe work through to the very first milestone. Next time, we can do a little more. :)
Oh — I’m also using quite a set of mods. I can create a collection if anyone is interested as we go along. I won’t be using the Unlimited Money mod though (i.e., I won’t be jumping into the equivalent of Cities’ Creative Mode) and will instead try to keep the city capable of earning its own keep.
Getting Started
I’m torn between creating waterfront property along the eastern shore of the lake, and saving that area for a forestry industry later on. If I do the latter… Then that clear area to the northwest looks like a likely spot for our first residential centre. Bit far away though, with our limited starting funds.
Perhaps a nice middle ground might be along the riverbank to the northeast? Then the industrial area can be somewhere to the south of that.
Yep.
Doing that. See you again in a few minutes with a shot of the layout!
Laying out the Roads
I’ve started with the relatively humble dirt road, and spent a little under $20,000 on setting this up. The main arterial roads from the roundabout will need to be upgraded to higher capacity roads in fairly short order though I reckon. I’ve also left my spacing between the zoneable sections than is strictly necessary to allow for wider roads in the future. I’ll also put in more roundabouts! Roundabouts are great for managing traffic flow in Cities: Skylines.
Where the roads enter the industrial on the east and the residential/commercial in the northeast being two prime candidates. :)
Next up though… Some decisions to make on power and water.
Power and Water
There are a few limited spots of high wind energy on the map, but not enough in the starting area. Only one in fact. And it’s small. So I think we’re going to be starting with a coal power plant. I don’t think this is too far off the feel of the map though. We can — and will! — move to higher-tech greener options when they become available.
Water on the other hand… I think we’ll be a little cleaner with that. Dumping our sewerage into pristine river seems wrong. So we’ll take some of the inland processing options provided as part of the latest expansion, Sunset Harbour. It does still pollute the ground around it a little, but we can at least reduce the impact by using the eco-friendly variant, until we get something better in the future.
We’ll pull our water fresh from the lake to use for drinking and whatnot for now. Likely shift that to the river in the future, but right now we’re using it for people. And apparently those pumps be loud. In any case, let’s see now if I left enough money in the coffers for all this, and connecting the necessary power lines and piping over such a distance!
2. Power line terminating up where I’ll zone the first residential areas.
3. Water intake to provide filtered, fresh water. Also connected to power!
Turns out, yes! A whopping $8.8k left of my initial $70k.
Not sure if that will be enough to stop my balance going negative before the tax revenues start, but with everything laid out — I’m confident there is enough space available to bring in people, give them jobs, and start the cogs of industry and commerce rolling before the budget situation gets too dire. :)
Next up…
Zoning
Going to start out with just a little zoned out for initial build. Looking at the screenshot now, I do wonder whether that might be too much industry actually — but it’s alright. I can start a second wave of residents moving in by giving them a little more space in fairly short order.
Alright… Enough procrastinating!
Time to unpause and see how it goes!
First wave of buildings underway… 
Ooh, first sign of traffic! A good thing right now. (We’ll grow to hate it later) 
Building continues, with more signs of life appearing, yay! (ALSO, our budget turns positive!) 
Oh… Hello. Uh. That’s quite a traffic wave already. But not to worry yet, just more people moving in. 
First milestone! No additional zoning was required, and it turns out the zone balance was about right after all. 
And here’s how we’re wrapping things up for the post. :)
Next Time…
A few projects are emerging already… Some larger than others.
Becoming a Little Hamlet provides the option of a few additional services. Namely rubbish collection, local medical aid and schooling. All of which I want to provide! Well- schooling we might hold off on a local highschool for a little bit. But primary education, definitely!
Roading… Might even give the citizens a little pavement. More than that, a local connecting road between people’s homes and their work is going to be necessary to stop people needing to travel all the way around. Good for them, and later, good for us as it will reduce congestion on the central round-about.
And of course — expanding the zoned area, potentially building onto our starting layout to hit the next milestone, after which Districts become available. :D
But before getting there even… I have become quite enamoured with the idea of giving each of us a named residence in this little starting area before even reaching the point of being able to paint down districts. Humbler beginnings to be sure. But a fun sense of progression, I think. :)
