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Grand Rapids, Michigan

Grand Rapids, Michigan

This is a 1:1 replica of the area around Grand Rapids as best I could do using terrain.party.
This is my first map, so feedback is greatly appreciated! Especially if I made a mistake, I would like to correct it.


GENERAL NOTES

Grand Rapids grew as a logging, gypsum mining, and farming community. I've included major arterial roads from the current day, which were probably the first roads laid down when the land was originally divided up into square-mile blocks like much of the Midwest. It's a very flat map compared to most Cities Skylines maps, although there are enough hills to vary the terrain.

Some changes I made:
- I declined to include Interstate 196 and US 131 because I wish they had never gutted the city anyway. :) If you want to add those in yourself, it's pretty easy to lay out where they go based on Google Maps.
- I modified the M21 - Interstate 96 junction since it is just a partial junction in real life.
- The Grand River is to scale as best I could manage. There are a couple streams feeding into it that are in real-life locations but much bigger than real life.
- The river itself has a number of islands and kinks to create rapids in the downtown area. This is loosely based on the Restore the Rapids project where they plan to bring back rapids to downtown in the next several years.


GAMEPLAY

I attempted to make it playable for 9, 25, or 81 tiles. I prefer playing with 81 tiles.


OUTSIDE CONNECTIONS
--- 3 Highway
--- 4 Rail
--- 2 Plane


WATER AND SEWAGE

Water flow was very finicky getting the river to flow right. It is also quite small compared to many Cities Skylines rivers. I recommend using water towers for water supply. For sewage, I included a drain-lake on the start tile where you can dump without messing up the river.
[ if this is a strange solution, let me know what could work better ]


THEME AND LUT:

I found the SCT-Homecoming theme amazing. However there were a couple textures that I elected to swap using the Theme Mixer mod.
--- Water Foam > Cedar Valley 4k - this makes the rapids more pronounced
--- Ruined > Caledonia (pavement) v1 - this makes the river bed look more Midwest I think

Recommended LUT: any of the Relight2. I think I like Relight2 Average best.
I also use the Daylight Classic mod.

TREES
I used about 150,000 so you have another 100,000 to place. When you fill in farmland I think it is best to fill in your city with trees.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

- Mr Miyagi has a great map making guide for first-timers
- BonBonB's youtube channel has an unbelievable amount of advice and content for making maps