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Centennial Ridges

TL;DR
A Colorado inspired map suited for both vanilla and detail styled players, with an optional collection to make the most out of this map.

Another American themed map?
Yes, you’re right. This map was originally built to suit my American themed build. A theme in which I never built in before and one I’ve always wanted to try. It’s also something that is a bigger stretch from real life, since I’m European. Decided to share it will all you guys, to push my quality standards as well. I’ve been making maps for five years now, but have never uploaded them apart from my first.

Inspiration
This map is inspired by the beautiful landscape and terrain of Colorado – the Centennial State - with its lush trees and eyewatering mountains. And, to be completely honest, also by the map Dakota Falls by Maver1ck. However, that map is not meant for the low and mid-tier gaming PCs. This map is, with significantly less trees and tris for your GPU to render (see the section ‘Features for more details), is more suited for people with average gaming gear. The heightmap is based on real life Colorado, although heavily modified to suit Cities Skylines needs.

Develop a region rather than just a city
In all my years of playing Cities Skylines, I’ve always built one large city, not utilizing the complete map and getting burned out because there was so much empty space that still needed to be filled in. In this map, you’ve got plenty of places where you can potentially start a big city or plenty of small towns with their own characteristics. The already provided roads cover all the main areas of the map, enabling you to start wherever you please!

Features

• Even terrain for city builders that don’t like to build on slopes, and of course plenty of sloped areas if you want to build a nice mountain village
  
• Approximately 330k trees, with more detailed trees around the start square and less detailed trees to fill up the rest of the map. There are no super dense tree areas since most of it is either around the start square and will be erased right away, or it is at the edge of the map where you’re not going to build anyway
  
• The trees provided are or represent trees that are native to the Colorado region
  
• Enhanced roads with Intersection Marking tool, to give a more detailed and realistic look to the roads (and, because the default lights wouldn’t show for some reason)
  
• Intersections enhanced by Node Controller, Intersection Marking Tool and TMPE to ensure both realistic and well performing intersections
  
• A few oil, fertile and loads of ore areas to accommodate the more vanilla style builders (who doesn’t like a big bucks money earning city)
  
• I haven’t put any effort in nice props (such as rocks and abandoned factories) and nice looking bridges as usually those are the first things I delete or replace when I start a city
  
• An optional collection to provide everything you need to play the map as intended by the creator, since the required items only cover the bare minimum to be able to run and enjoy the map. Note that this does included props to enhance the look of the map in a performance friendly way

Required collection
You can find all the required items linked to the map. Bare in mind that this is the bear minimum to be able to play the map. I doubt whether this will make for a playable map since the intersections will look wonkey and probably will also cause quite the traffic jams. But, for the players that enjoy a more vanilla style build, subscribing to the required collection will make sure you can play this map. Please also read the ‘Optional collection’ section to make sure you know what you’re missing out on by only choosing the required collection. The required collection includes:

• The roads that are used in the map
  
• The trees that are used in this map
  
• The railway that is used in this map
  
• Tree Control as the number of trees do exceed the vanilla tree limit

Optional collection
If you want the map to look like the images provided and play the map as intended, you should subscribe to the entire optional collection linked above. Admittedly, the amount of themes involved does make your PC crave for more memory, but the choice is up to you.

• A dedicated theme mix and the included map themes, to provide the authentic (and hopefully somewhat realistic) look for your build. This mix is carefully selected to provide a variety of textures to give your city or region a realistic look, without the need for extensive tree, prop and decal plopping. See one of the images for the specific settings I use in Theme Mixer
  
• Theme Mixer to ensure you can use the theme mix
  
• Intersection Marking Tool for the detailing of the roads and intersections, including the lighting that somehow doesn’t show on the roads
  
• Node Controller to provide realistic and well performing intersections and slopes
  
• TMPE for making sure the intersections run smoothly
  
• Railway Replacer since that is a necessity for Railway 2 networks (in which you define which props you want to use on the railways)
  
• Props and networks for the roads and railways to automatically detail those networks without affecting your prop limit and performance
  
• 81 tiles mod to ensure that you can build all over the map

Recommended mods
I have purposely not included any visual and lighting mods (like Lumina) because the exact lighting is really a personal thing. I have included my settings for Lumina and Theme Mixer if you want to copy my settings. These would be the mods I would recommend if you want have a proper experience with this map:

• Lumina for better lighting
  
• Hide it! to hide unwanted visual effects
  
• Loading Screen Mod to reduce the loads on RAM
  
• Forest Brush to create a brush with the trees used in this map, so you can plop a bunch of trees in a quick manner
  
• RON if you don’t like the networks that come with the map

Closing notes
Oh yeah, I’m not done yet. Some closing remarks:

• There might be some trees clashing with networks. I’ve removed most of them, but I recommend using the Tree Control mod to hide trees that are placed on networks
  
• Some pillars of the highways stick out above the surface. This is not something I can fix but rather a perk of Node Controller and specifically the bend functionality in it. Use Move It! to correct if wanted
  
• If you have any questions or remarks, please let me know by commenting and I’ll try my best to respond as quickly as possible
  
• Have a lot of fun playing this map!