Wow! 2 days since I shipped this and >200 subs already! Seems to me like this map stype pleases a lot..! Ok, better tell a bit about the geographic context of Kings Valley.

When I was drawing Kings Valley, I've been blocked by a very annoying downside of C:S, which is to only have 18km2 to work within. In my imagination, it was a coastal region and had a more complex design. The first draft was to cramped and the shapes seamed very steep where I needed to see a vast area and large elements further down in the same view. I had to rethink this all. I then had to chose what to leave behind and draw what I liked the most (and I still love how it looks).

Since the first brush click, I couln't help but think about what was over the west side of Kings Valley 1. I was seeing another city downstream, still in the valley shaped topography, but leading to an ocean.


If you look west of the Kings Valley map, notice that the river gets much wider. This slow flowing water body leads to a prehistory-formed delta, right by the Atlantic ocean. The very exact location of Queens Bay. By the way, this delta is the second hardest to navigate seeway, after the St Lawrence Seaway. There are very few areas where a boat can be safe, even at ancor in this sea...

Aside from the water, this location along holds a very rough and rather high coastline, with cliffs and gravel dunes all around the delta. 6 km inside the river, you enter a oasis shaped bay with gentle hills on every sides. At this point, the river is still 3 km wide! It slowly narrows to 1.5 km as you approach the Queens Bridge, a 1200m long steel structure with 8 lanes and 2 tracks in total. This one and only link between the north and south shores will be on many postcards! However it's the exact infrastructure that will force your Cims to make a 20 km trip to the Kings Valley to save the traffic jams that this bottleneck can create.


Making a Part 2 map meant that I needed to make the east side of my new map correspond with the Part 1 west side the best I could! With patience and still patience, I got to continue a pretty ressembling landscape.

Now that I've decently welded the 2 map sides, I'm drawing a map on which you will build 2 cities of about 6x4 km each separated by a 1 to 3 km wide bay with a few tiny islands and harbour friendly shores. Ferries will be more than welcome and mass transit systems of every kind. Will a metro tunnel across the Queens Bay be your solution?

https://steamhost.cn/steamcommunity_com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=900185675

Please consider clicking LIKE on this page even if you don't, do, please. It'll help me get satisfaction from this... enough to put more time on making this quicker!

Meanwhile, enjoy!

Kings Valley's western neighbour: Queens Bay

When I was drawing Kings Valley, I've been blocked by a very annoying downside of C:S, which is to only have 18km2 to work within. In my imagination, it was a coastal region and had a more complex design. The first draft was to cramped and the shapes seamed very steep where I needed to see a vast area and large elements further down in the same view. I had to rethink this all. I had to chose what to leave behind and draw what I liked the most. Finally realized that it was really missing, and decided to ajust my imaginary scale upward a notch.


Figured it's a matter of time before an update or a mod lets you mix savegames parts. A single function to extract every item by coordinates and discard the rest, or name it. Imagine you just integrate CSL MAP VIEW mod in a floating map with a mosaic of sister-maps around itself.

Even possible, make the mod extract "sideviews" of your city (once in a while as you play, or when you saved) to be accessed live, or later, by other savegames. That one idea is just called multi-player, but one that boosts single-playing by letting you play next to your map and then next to it again! Hello SC4 regions! :) Anyways, it's all about the server program that would all manage that and use the files written by the mod.

That's all you need to get C:S multi-player! Do that and you'll still be poor... but happ... . well you will be my friend on Steam!


Starting the base landscape. I use very much all the time Topo lines mod overlay in the map edition. This combined with a low rising sun light that makes every tiny hole jump to your eyes. Then it's about putting roads in and there that look cool and would have waterfall, large cliff, high hill, riverside or any sightseeing attraction. Once you have 2 or more of these, you just look close each one and think what you would want to see from this point of view. This is how you turn an empty area into a place worth that name.


https://steamhost.cn/steamcommunity_com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=902529197

Just like Kings Valley, every single tile on this map will be thoroughly thought through with regards to rainfall, land usage, first Cims kingdoms and villages.
You're not the first mayor on this land. Just like Kings Valley, there will be roads all over the place.

This project will mark C:S community history forever.

Crown River Region is a mosaic of many Cities Skylines maps (how many?) with concording edges.
18x18km is great, but 36x18 is better!
This isn't twice hard on your PC, but sure is twice as much space!

https://steamhost.cn/steamcommunity_com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=903297487

https://steamhost.cn/steamcommunity_com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=903296772

Queens Bay and Kings Valley maps next to each other..


Mr. Miyagi, that post is dedicated to you :D

Wait, I almost missed that - it caught my eye. Aww thanks! I really find your work here and the help you gave me re: the Find It mod inspiring. I've found myself looking at the 3 current maps in progress with a thousand ideas but no idea where to start lol.

https://steamhost.cn/steamcommunity_com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=904385633

One of the reasons why I don't want to take roads out in a new version.

I'ld like this Region to feel challenging to a player. I really put a lot of time and efforts in making this (not to the point where it's a duty but ... close).

Thing is that the challenge here is one deeper than deleting default roads as you build, rather a realistic one. Where on heart would you find such a beautiful propice, temperate and juicy landscape with no human. Building from scratch in fun but it's unrealistic. A real challenge is building through existing. Can't move it in real life. Can't undo either.

I work on excavators and I can tell you that. you (1).. am I alone in here! lol

What? I made users a very big gift in editing the whole project with anarchy on.

Yes, Anarchy was ON the full time I built this map. Making sure I won't get trees appearing over your roads when you'll edit close to highways and tracks with anarchy on. Also forcing me to go through every road carefully and fixing and detailling as I go. This is my receip..

By the way, could anyone who started building a New Kings Valley city please share a screenie with me?

Cheers

<3 This is just made of win! :) I hope you don't mind me stalking your progress. I'm sure you won't, but I just say stuff for the lolz sometimes :)

As I go my way closer zoomed in Queens Bay detailing, I pay very close attention to comments from Kings valley subscribers who were concerned with the amount of extra roads already in the map. I tend to over do things and it's part of my style so that won't swing 180 degrees around, but I'm paying attention.


There's so much to tell about this map, it's not even funny to be typing this. I'm very excited that Mass Transit is comming May 18th (and I know you all are)! When drawing this map on paper at first, I imagined ferries in Queens Bay would be a very neat thing to have, if only it was possible. This map contains a very large delta in its center and the only bridge is very likely to overflow approaching 100k pop, although the highway planning is ideal. The big challenge will be to take cims and cargo across the river. Will you be building another bridge? A tunnel? Rails are not crossing the river other than (presumably) east towards Kings Valley. Queens Bay will be the ideal Mass Transit map.



Looking back at Kings Valley this morning to fix glitches BonBonB showed us in his review. Also needed to address some issues with frame rate. I decided to roll back to trees-only forests. Got rid of every single Forest Fillers that I had put in. Although they were doing a very good job at diversifying and densifying my forests, their impact on frame rates were too important. I've replaced them mostly with low polygon trees. The Leafy Tree for instance. Doesn't look the best and the color can seem too saturated when only those are plopped. So I tried to balance the colors in my mix. Of course, I quickly went from 277k to 285k trees. Eh what do you want!


After 5 seconds looking at Kings Valley map, I quickly realized my techniques were improved since then and many things needed to be upgraded to par with the sister map... So yeah, I went through every dense districts taking unnecessary roads out. I did. I needed to be consistent with Queens Bay, where only connectors, highways and country roads are in (although there's a big surprise!)

Still, I left the unique looking portions like parliment hill and the circular city center, minus a bunch of pedestrian roads that gave the map its "save game look and feel". Now that it's more of a map, I'm very excited for the update.


Give CO/Paradox the time to get the Mass Transit DLC sealed up, bunch of modders to do their nightmare duties, and I still have a few details and tweaks to put in both maps.

It looks like I would release both Kings Valley update and Queens Bay all at once, end of May. Meanwhile, talk about the Crown River Region to your C:S groups and friends!

If you like, let the LIKE button know about it! Cheers

https://steamhost.cn/steamcommunity_com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=910278288

This is great -I love reading your thought process in map editing, too! "Of course, I quickly went from 277k to 285k trees. Eh want do you want!" made me lol - I recognize that completely. The struggle is real :D I'll have to go check out the review by BonBonB, his reviews are like map maker gold -lots of great ideas and feedback from him!