A bit of background; After having been a quiet observer for some time and felt I had no Thing to contribute really, nor the space or specs for video editing software, image hosting, etc, I began feeling the urge to start a journal because it is what I liked best to read on this forum, people's adventures in nurturing little cities, establishing a premises, and overcoming - or being overcome by - the challenges of traffic and waves of death. Unfortunately I speculated that I was too far along in my own adventure, and penultimately I wouldn't have the time to dedicate in regularly updating it.
Full disclosure, I have owned the game for approx. a year and I am no stranger to this map. I played a few others, did some scenarios, but none captivate my interest insomuch as this one does, the Icy Islands map which came with the Snowfall content. But about a five months ago I reached what I thought was a landmark achievement, that of a population exceeding 140k and came to the sudden realization; I wasn't winning. I previously thought that growing steadily and as rapidly as possible was the objective. But I was no longer having fun, I was pulling my hair out, and my perspective was changing. Once I even started yelling, "stupid Dev's! I wish I could ban the words Slope and Steep and Invalid Shape and Space is Already Occupied." but I quickly realized I was just yelling at a cute little innocent laptop. Then came the fatal blow, that day I went to plant a tree or many on Ragamoffyn Island so that I might build more sorely needed timber industry there and lo, would you know it, I discovered there are only a million trees allowed, and all the time I'd played I never once bothered to bulldoze them already there which were then hiding under my streets and zones, neither had I ever prepared the land with some of the terraforming tools before I expanded... my interest right then entirely dissolved.
Until lately. With the cold months coming on and perhaps some more time to, I decided to begin again and to rejoice in my mistakes, yet not make the same ones all over again. If I do, that's okay too. It's fixable probably. This time to grow more slowly, at a more leisurely pace, and to have fun rather than stress myself as I was, to not get peeved at (mostly myself) drawing roads. And to keep a journal. For my pleasure, not anyone else's, but perhaps I might give back to this comm. something which I've taken in doing so. I swear, while some relish planning and drawing and naming stuff, I think I take the most pleasure from imagining my city from the first person point of view. I ask myself, "why did that truck just ram the other?" and "how did that seemingly random fire start?" My imagination starts pounding. Perhaps John was fooling around on Jane with Jack, and Jane found out and set Jack's flat on fire, then she chased John down in his much cherished brand-spanking-new toy of a super duty four wheel drive and totaled the sucker while under the influence of seaweed and brownies.
So this may not be regularly updated, I'm not going to commit myself to something I may well not have the time to next week, next month, or even tomorrow. Just me having fun and maybe you might have fun at reading, and we all win!
Some info you might probably definitely maybe want to know: Vanilla, yeah. No mods, it's not that I don't think I will like them, I think I'd love TM;PE but I'm just faithful to how I think the game was meant to be played and I do like lofty challenges. And whatever I do, I will take comfort in knowing others can duplicate the results of without the use of them.
As I said, Icy Islands map. Available with the Snowfall content or downloadable at Steam (for free I think?).
Goals, as I said, play casually, no victory conditions, grow slowly. I'm setup and ready to rock, we're 10 years in now. And I feel I actually grew too fast we've 17.8k cims - about twice as many as I anticipated. Initially I thought I'd just get my budget in the black, lay down the foundation, and form something like a few arcs for story's sake. But oh well, it is what it is.
I'm looking forward to this weekend's play session. I've spent the last several days cleaning up the north side of Ogremark but mostly getting ready to prompt a couple events and establish how the Truce Ferry came about. I hope it goes smoothly, I'd like to get at least 8 hours in. I may have a little time to get a village going on Hell Home Island proper and perhaps Burning Witch Island too but I want to exercise extreme care if I am to ambulate right on into the ferry-building phase as I do intend to build/rebuild the highway network on the water surfaces, also. If you read some of the journal I posted you may well surmise some of the fun I've got planned for myself, may even guess as to what is coming up in the next installment.
Anyway, hey, yes I'll answer questions, explain some of the decisions I made if you wonder about them. Please bear with me, it's my first time and I've never done anything like this. Will accept criticism even if it's negative, but may not reply to it. Will definitely not reply to comments about how I've too many grids (I'm from the USA and I like grids even if they don't work well in life nor C:S) I will be using grids, and like to lay down the lovely curvaceous good stuff on top of them.
So. Hi. And welcome to Hell Home.
