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Minutes from the Bailville Planning Council Meeting, Oct 22nd, 2024



Per the council's directions from the last meeting, I okayed purchase of the eastern plot of land.



If I'm being honest here, I no longer know which way is north. So I've arbitrarily decided that the northern end of the map is the bay to the top of the image. That keeps it consistent with the end of the last update.



And for the next step I need to go into the GameAnarchy options and enable "unlock all roads" because I need the highway ramps now instead of at 2600 population. The end result of this, after I save the game, quit to desktop, and re-launch it, is that we now have every type of road in the game unlocked.

The reason I had to quit out and re-launch the game was because of an all-caps warning from the Compatibility Report mod. I figure they know what they're talking about with regards to not exiting to the main menu.



Gonna be honest, I have over 2 hours of footage, and most of it is me fiddling with stuff. I think the majority of the first hour is just creating an interchange.



With the new land acquired, we started by laying down a direct highway link. The very last thing anybody wants is to route industrial traffic straight through the middle of town.



(Caption: The view from the tail of the new road.)

It's difficult to see in this shot, but this was taken near what would eventually become the farm, looking down at the highway in the distance.



What nobody tells you is making an interchange is difficult. It never even occurred to me to just use the vanilla interchange that's available somewhere.



We quickly had a highway interchange stamped out. But then someone pointed out that it looked pretty amateur. The traffic engineer in charge got sulky, grabbed the plans, and stormed back into his office for the better part of a week.



I legitimately could not have done this without the Network Multitool mod. I can't overstate how powerful this sucker is. Using it and some fiddling, I managed to turn my shitty, angular construction into something much nicer.



This was the start. It doesn't look great, right?



The 'arrange at line' function gave the highway a nice gradual bend.







I can't remember the name of the tool right next to it, but it evens out my uneven slopes. A 10% incline is still a lot, but it's a hell of a lot better than 26%.



Eventually the engineer returned with a less amateurish plan.



The next challenge awaiting this development plan was the hill. The whole eastern lot is rather hilly all over, but the worst of it was right underneath the fertile soil.





The whole southern side of the hill was claimed by the city. The farmer in charge of the project, Farmer Fran, wanted to call it Bail Acres. I think. That's what he eventually wrote on the paper, at any rate.



(Caption: Early December 2023, Elisabeth Street and Moore Street Junction)



Finally, the farm was connected up to Bailville proper, by way of a road linking to Smokestack City.



Sterling Hunter Street offers some of the prettiest views in the city.



(Caption: Sterling Hunter Street, facing Bail Acres.)



Bail Acres' boundaries were also redrawn once again, now encompassing everything north of Sterling Hunter Street.



Control of the Bail Acres project was officially handed over to Farmer Fran early in December. He quickly got to work leveling off the land.



Thank god there's an undo button with one of the mods. The huge carved out spot over on the right is the same elevation as the farmhouse. That looks like trash and completely destroys the hill. So that's not gonna work...



So instead let's grade off a spot midway up the hill to create a nice, flat location.



Then we'll grab the Soften Terrain tool...



And now the integrity hill is largely preserved, but we also have a nice flat spot upon which to plant crops and stuff.

Soften Terrain is really strong. It turns harsh cliffs into more gentle hills. The more you do it, the more it spreads out the height differences.



And just because we'll need some more in the future, let's grade off a spot at the bottom of the hill. This is less fertile than the spot up top, so it's a good place for ranching instead of outright farming.



Farmer Fran's efforts were not in vain. Before too long, he had created something nice.



It doesn't crop up often, but occasionally it's a good idea to build roads with the height map on. This way we can see just where our fertile plateau ends.



The Advanced Outside Connections mod lets me go and turn off importing specific types of goods. Here, I'm going to every inbound road connection and turning off agricultural imports. This ensures that our industry area will only use locally-produced goods in the production chains.

If we don't, then Farmer Fran's silos and barns are going to mass order goods, on the city's dime, that he's already producing in his fields. It actually creates a nasty feedback loop where the roads leading into the industry area are completely choked with freight trucks importing goods to a silo that's 49% full, because it spammed BUY BUY BUY. Why? Because all of its own freight vehicles were busy exporting the goods that it had already imported, because it was 51% full at the time. You see, the default setting on storage buildings is "maintain 50%" and the simulation holds to that religiously.

It sucks that I have to download a mod to tell the industry area "no importing" but here we are.



Bail Acres is a municipally-owned farm, but I feel it's important for the farm to not have direct oversight unless necessary. Here, the choice to have two small corn fields was all his decision. The greenhouses, I'm told, are for crops less well-suited to the summer-like December weather. (83.9F/28.8C)





These are the silos I mentioned. Each one holds up to 300 tons of crops. The default operating mode, like I mentioned, is "Balanced" or "maintain 50% at all costs." The other two operating modes are "Fill" and "Empty" which should be self-explanatory. If you're setting up a production chain, a small warehouse set to fill on a specific good will keep the nearby factories well-stocked. Empty, likewise, is great if you're interested in exporting stuff as quickly as possible.

Here I have two silos on Fill and two on Balanced. That gives us storage room for 900 tons of crops.



Down at the bottom of the hill, in the second area I flattened out, we've got a couple cow pens. We could also raise pigs, but I'd rather not have to write RP text explaining away the lagoons of pig shit. Across the street from them, with the green icons, are the smallest actual warehouses. These only hold 100 tons of goods each. The green icon, by the way, means "not set up to accept goods."

Cow pens are our first production chain. They take in crops and produce animal products. We can make fairly decent money just exporting animal products by themselves, but they are also used in some other production recipes much later.



(Caption: Bail Acres aerial view, early December 2023)

Industry areas take a long time to level up. The higher their level, up to five, the more buildings you unlock to expand operations. So we'll just leave this running in the background while we go off to do other things.



(Caption: Drone-eye view of Bail Acres, above Farmer Fran's house)



(Caption: Bail Acres corn fields)





Public reception to Bail Acres was both positive and strong.



Some were a little confused, but their hearts were in the right place.



While Farmer Fran was busy with his project, a second major public works project was also started.



Initial plans were to break ground immediately south of Old Town and Bail Heights.



It was pointed out that if we placed the project on the river side, we could take advantage of the scenic views.



At the same time, a third major public works project was greenlit. The first phase of this one is already visible in this photo - a large playground was installed next to both schools.



The idea was one I've been discussing in every meeting thus far - a small campus area, an education park, if you will. Dolores suggested putting in a botanical garden next to the playground, and we all thought the idea was wonderful.

Now the high school students can visit the garden and get some first-hand experience with agriculture. As a bonus, the campus serves both Old Town's and Bail Heights's needs for recreation.



We all agreed that the campus kind of stuck out in a bad way. It felt empty.



Here's where the fun part comes. I'm going to start placing trees and I'm going to detail the fuck out of the area. Although I do like getting trees that appear elsewhere on the map.



Beech trees grow wild around Bailville, so we thought it would be a good idea to use those. Importing pretty, non-native flora into dry, hot areas is a recipe for disaster after all!





A couple layers of trees around the outside of the campus did so much to spruce up an otherwise empty area. Now the education campus has character.



(Caption: Bail Heights Childcare Campus, Early December 2023)



When I shared the aerial photos with the rest of my staff, we all agreed that the rest of the city looked pretty stark compared to the campus area.

The little bushes, in my opinion, go such a long way to making a manually-detailed area look nice.



Young Lindens, which are not native, but are a very popular street tree, were imported to line the gravel pedestrian paths.



I think the council will agree it was a good choice.



This extensive tree planting project took most of the rest of the year. But it marked the beginning of my Keep Bailville Green initiative. Because we're working with the capital, they're allowing us to import the trees we need from their nurseries at cost.



Nowhere to really put this, but I also bulldozed several houses to put a dog park in Old Town.





The finishing touches on the childcare campus were a series of basketball courts nestled in the trees. I'm pretty proud of how the campus turned out.



As a bonus, the Keep Bailville Green initiative has really boosted land values in the heart of the city.



With the campus completed, work could finally begin in earnest on Spring Gardens.



Unlike the smaller parks dotted around the city, Spring Gardens is a large park area.



The layout is entirely up to us.



Got a nice plaza in the middle...



Restrooms at three of the five entrances...



And a cafe by the river side. Not pictured is also an info booth by the main gate.



It's in desperate need of detailing.



Finally, just before the new year, we took heed of the council's suggestions and nestled the new town hall between Old Town and Spring Gardens. It's just a short walk from the river-front, centrally located in the heart of the town.



Dolores had another great idea around this time. She thought that a bird and bee sanctuary nestled between the park and the town hall would be fun and appropriate.



I can't deny, she's got a point! Linden pollen, I'm told, makes for some especially sweet honey.



One day, we started getting complaints from residents about intermittent brownouts.



Come to find out, the coal plant is already being stressed to its limits.



With nothing better available yet, we placed down a couple of windmills up on an otherwise unusable hilltop near Bail Acres.



...and another coal plant near the first one. If the city keeps expanding at its current pace, that will buy us months at best. But that might be all we need. The Tesla Cube is still an option as well, but that's almost $200,000. It would be hard to justify that to our benefactors.



The city also contacted some local ad agencies to buy air time advertising Spring Gardens.



It was effective almost immediately!

I'm not gonna screenshot what each of the policies do. Some of them are specific to a single type of park only.




You may be wondering about entertainment and visitors. That's the metrics by which parks level up. Level 1 needs 500 visitors and 220 entertainment between all the buildings. Entertainment is going to be a major pinch point.



Also at some point, I lined the outside of the park with generic deciduous trees. No really, they don't even have a species. They're just "tree with leaves 2".



(Caption: Drone-eye view above Spring Gardens, mid January 2024)



(Caption: Bail Heights, aerial view, mid January 2024)

The lines of lindens look particularly nice here!



(Caption: Old Town, aerial view, mid January 2024)



I mentioned time of day above. So let's go into the Play It! menu and unpause the day/night cycle. You can't build well at night, but it sure makes for pretty screenshots.



...wut.



This map is weird. I unpaused and let the simulation run, trying to level up both the park and industry area, and I found this when I looked at the park again. It's traveling down the river too.



(Caption: Bailville at Dusk, late February 2024)



(Caption: Spring Gardens fireworks, from the roof of the town hall, late February 2024)



Around mid March, an audacious plan was presented to my office. Smokestack City was to be decommissioned and rezoned altogether. The decommissioning process took some time, but eventually the old shame of the city was going to turn into a bedroom community for Bail Acres.



I noticed the industry area just wasn't growing at all. I also noticed that I forgot to include orchards. Whoops! There's no mechanical difference between crop fields and orchards. They both produce the nebulous Crops good.

To take advantage of the newly arrived springtime, Farmer Fran planted several acres of apple trees.



Something is weird with this industry area. It's not leveling up. It's not producing enough resources. 26 tons of crops is also hilariously low for how many fields we have. It's something to keep an eye on I guess.



By the end of Bailville's first year, Old Town was the upscale neighborhood in the city.



Although Bail Heights was not far behind at all.



Indeed, the Keep Bailville Green initiative has been a massive success!



Come June, there was no more ground pollution left. And the last of the factories had been bulldozed. All the streets and paths were already in place, so it was no matter to paint in the new zoning.



My biggest surprise of all came in the middle of June when I got a call from the Capital, congratulating Bailville for winning the state's "Most Attractive City" award!



Not everything was sunshine and rainbows, however. Farmer Fran called to complain that nobody wanted to buy his fruit. ...I think. It's hard to understand that man at times. Anyway, I had Dolores start looking into why the farm was struggling.



While she was working on that, I okayed plans for several more windmills to be installed up on that ridge. They make an attractive eye catch for the city if nothing else!



Dolores, meanwhile, drove out to the farm and found that none of the silos could stay full. So almost 100% of the crops being produced were being used for the cattle. That didn't make any sense.



Dolores spent weeks poring over Farmer Fran's finances and production. Finally, in the middle of July, she got a break.



A mod fucked up.

It turns out a bureaucrat in a black suit and tie visited Farmer Fran and threatened him into destroying fully half of his crops. He only owned up to it when she found evidence that he had produced more than the 26 tons he reported to the city. We still don't know who the bureaucrat was, because nobody in my government wears a black suit and tie.



With no evidence that there even was a man in a black suit, Farmer Fran unfortunately had to take responsibility for the destruction of dozens of tons of usable food. He was formally fired from his position on July 18th and a new administrator, Farmer Jack, was put into place to oversee the farm.



(Newspaper Clipping: Bail Acres Scandal, Fran Fired, Jack Joins)

I no sooner set the production amount back to vanilla and the "no buyers" problem went away.



With over 2500 souls living in Bailville, we determined it was time to start paving roads.



Four lane roads (2 units wide) down from each of the spurs off Triumph Avenue. These are meant to act as local collectors, so speeds will be higher on them. They're the three "main" roads of the city.



I ran a collector straight down to the front gate of Spring Gardens.



Although it ate some of my trees for the campus area. I've got a feeling I'm going to be fighting this a lot.



Thank god for Tree Anarchy!



All the neighborhood streets were given bike lanes. Once the city has aged some more, we'll be able to implement a policy to encourage biking. But it doesn't hurt to have the infrastructure now.



(Newspaper Clipping: Asphalt and pavement comes to Bailville)

I'm sure the speed limits and parking are a total mess. I'll need to go over them sometime later.



(Caption: Drone-eye view from Spring Gardens, looking down across the city.)



I've already received several petitioners asking to rename this road from Annabel Street to Park Street.



It took about nine in-game months to get the park to level 2. Jesus.



In late September, a developer expressed interest in putting in a couple of piers over the Desire Path River. Everyone in the office thought they would go splendidly in the park.



The local chess enthusiasts club also petitioned to install a life-sized chessboard. All three attractions were really well-received.



Under Farmer Jack's hand, Bail Acres quickly expanded.

Cattle sheds are more efficient than cow pastures.



He put in a couple mills to produce both corn flour and cornstarch.



Just to be safe, Dolores looked over his production reports. Without changing a single thing about the crop fields, he was producing 40 tons more than Fran ever did.

Nobody's buying the goods, which is Also Odd. It's probably another mod issue. Not sure which it could be, though.



In fact, things were going well enough that he hired a bunch of workers to help him with the farm.

Each farming barracks increases the farm efficiency by 5%. So these eight houses have us 40% more efficient!



And, finally, in late October, Bailville hit 2600 population and the Capital called with our new goal.



No big deal, just need to completely double our population.



But to get there, we were given some nice new toys. Not the least of which is actual mass transit options. My engineers are already drawing up bus routes.

It will be a hilariously long time before we even start working on an airport zone. Bailville is not big enough to need one.



We can zone ore-related industries, legalize pot, and encourage recycling...



We also, unfortunately, have earned the responsibility of citizen deathcare.

I have a cheat building for it. I'm going to use it shamelessly because deathcare in this game fucking sucks. It's either that or go into GameAnarchy and turn off deathcare altogether. You need a bunch of cemeteries because you don't unlock crematoriums until much later.

Even worse, the city experiences death waves, where cims will all die at the same time because they moved in at the same time. So you can easily get into a downward spiral where rotting corpses from a massive death wave aren't being picked up because the hearses are stuck in traffic. So the living cims will get pissed off and move out, further reducing the efficiency of your city's deathcare. At that point it's just an inescapable death spiral.

So yeah, I'm cheating deathcare away because Fuck That.



I remember hearing talk about ferries in a previous council meeting. With this population milestone, we can now set up ferry lines. Disaster response stuff is also available if we need it. We won't. I have natural disasters turned off in the game options.



Finally, we can build a power plant that operates on the water. One or two of those on the Desire Path may not be a bad idea. I don't know about their efficiency, but it's green energy and every little bit helps.

And... that's all I've got for this meeting. Both Bail Acres and Spring Gardens are taking the majority of mine and my office's focus. Although I am always willing to listen if anyone has any ideas. So I'd now like to open the floor for questions and comments.

What I really want, if anything, are names. Spring Gardens is the game's default name for the park and it's not great. Bail Acres is also not my best name, although it has had me humming the Green Acres theme song for days. On top of that, I'm going to be doing some expanding in the next several updates, and names for new districts and major roads are always appreciated.

Also a major worry of mine is the farm and why it's not exporting anything. Something is definitely wrong somewhere.