Another Bad Creation (Cities Skylines)

[Young Drachma]

I never build "small towns", but I've been wanting to lately. One of my cities is called Vonnigan, with a metro area of about 100k across the cities, but none of the cities are especially large.

Above I've begun working on a map I'm imagining in Indiana along the Ohio River in Switzerland County. (even though it's actually supposed to be somewhere along the Chattahoochee) My map deviates because it actually has railroad lines -- the real life Switzerland County has declined because there are zero rail lines.

Unlike my normal cities, there won't be any subway lines at all here. Just bus lines and taxis as the city grows. While there is a core downtown, the city will grow from the suburban side (New Zurich) while the Downtown area and those adjacent to it are the city of Blue Field (spelled that way not Bluefield. Don't ask.)

I am wanting to create a few high schools and of course, track player progress in FBCB/PB over time. Since we're largely talking 1-2 with the occasional 3-star recruit coming out of here, but it's still the largest city in SE Indiana and the 2nd largest city in the state entirely, it'll be interesting to see these guys over time start to play overseas and see if maybe even a few can hack it in the NBA.

Mostly, I wanted to experiment with small/medium size cities rather than massive ones. Ameliaville/Helensburgh is still on my docket, just taking a brief break from it now to do these other ones.

Like usual of late, this will be a redevelopment project. I'm going to figure out where the traffic bottlenecks are, change roads and entirely remake downtown as well. Eventually, the city will grow and there will be other suburbs that crop up.

[Young Drachma]

New Zurich, IN is the largest town in the metropolitan area with over 377k. Blue Field, KY has 110k and is the third largest city in Kentucky after Louisville and Lexington. The MSA is about an hour between both Cincinnati and Louisville.

For the purposes of the story, I realized if I had two cities across the Ohio, they had to be in a different states, alas.

This dynasty is really just about 1) building a smaller footprint community with lots of smaller towns rather than one massive metropolis 2) giving me a place to populate with recruits for my college sim, so we eventually have players to follow through their college and beyond careers and 3) a chance to rebuild a mass transit system with mostly buses throughout a bi-state metro area without subways (I might eventually succumb to passenger rail.)


CITIES (SO FAR)
----
New Zurich, IN - 377,289
Packet, IN - 2,962
Silas, IN - 231
Winderminster, IN - 26,953
Nanciennes Park, IN - 11,781
Southmore, IN - 40,120
Bridgewall, IN - 21,871
Blue Field, KY - 110,294
Harpmouth, KY - 18,695
Hallenstadt, KY - 107

[Young Drachma]

HIGH SCHOOLS IN THE NEW ZURICH-BLUE FIELD MSA

New Zurich
----
New Zurich Christian
Pope Benedict XVI
NZHS West
NZHS East
NZHS South
NZHS North

Suburbs
----
Winderminster (IN)
Nanciennes Park Regional (IN)
Southmore-Bridgewall (IN)
Hallenstadt (KY)
Harpmouth (KY)

Blue Field
----
North End
East End
South End

[Young Drachma]

So like usual, I'll be doing some massive redevelopment. But before we get into that, you can at least see what I've done so far to the core cities. The original felt way too metropolitan for the space, which is a flaw of the game, but I limited height on the entire region, which will cause some population loss at first, but I'm okay with that.

I'd like growth, but I'm not entirely sure I want to see many tall buildings across the city, at least from the early outset.

What we've got so far, is a good canvas to start working from. I got rid of a ton of commercial and office spaces in the Blue Field part of the city, which is actually the commercial area of the city, whereas New Zurich is the larger, more suburban anchor city of the metro area.

Here are some pics as advertised:

South of Downtown Blue Field is the baseball stadium in Harpmouth, which is technically a separate city but the two share a common government.



Harpmouth is also home to the Ohio River Aquarium


View of New Zurich from the south


University located in Nanciennes Park. I have not yet named it.




Aerial view of the metro area from the Blue Field side of the border. In the distance, we see New Zurich and Switchyard Park, one of the most popular areas for families to hang out and junk.


Downtown Blue Field

[Young Drachma]

An aerial view of the metro area thus far:

[Brian Swartz]

'Bad creation'? Title chosen for the ABC acronymn, perhaps?

[Young Drachma]

Originally Posted by Brian Swartz

'Bad creation'? Title chosen for the ABC acronymn, perhaps?

[Brian Swartz]

There are times when I think I benefit from not being 'up on pop culture'. Anywho .... back to your regularly scheduled Skylines dynasty thing.

[Young Drachma]

Aerial view of my other small city, Vonnigan. The entire metro area has just over 100k people, but none of the cities themselves are especially big.


Another aerial view closer, this time of Vonnigan and the suburb of South Vonnigan. The in-game population is 19,506 which translates to about 160k in real life population.

Vonnigan has 109k people, the other cities don't get over 25k. South Vonnigan and Wesley both have 21k, the rural town of Alanville has 1584 and Lake Justin, another suburb of Vonnigan has 6300 people or so.

[Young Drachma]

Aerial view of the entire Vonnigan MSA



Gonna focus on Alansville and pick a few kids from a trailer and make them basketball players.



Here's where they live:

[Young Drachma]

I downloaded a scenario of a small town area, mostly for the small town nature of it and of course, I'm going to build on it and sharing more about it.

[Young Drachma]

Aaron County by Roni Somerkoski, on Flickr

My latest creation is a county area full of small cities near a coastline.

[Young Drachma]

I'm going to add another division to a FM16 league with a semi-pro league for this area, but the league won't have any promotion or relegation into the regular pyramid, so it'll only be Aaron County (soon to be renamed) teams playing in the league.

I think I'm going to use St. Pierre and Miquelon, which would make anybody generated from Aaron County eligible to play for France, but I'm sort of intrigued by this and it'd allow us to focus on domestic play/Cups, with the occasional "local boy gone good" story if I manage to pay attention long enough. Though, I'll make the eligible for the World Cup by replacing US Virgin Islands (which makes no sense to me) as a FIFA member with my renamed Saint Pierre and Miquelon.