CITY TIPS: Reviewing a No-DLC Build That Pushes the Games Limits!

[Music] uh [Music] hello welcome back to city planner plays city tips where i review your cities and give you tips on how to improve them it's an opportunity for the community to share ideas rather than just look at my builds and it's a chance for you to get a city planner city score what this isn't is an opportunity for negativity or roasting remember i'm here to help not poke fun or make anyone feel uncomfortable this should be a relaxing experience where you get constructive feedback on how to improve your city so today we are uh reviewing demovorts uh city of santa luna and devaport is a patron so thank you so much for your support it means the world to me they've identified their skill level as intermediate and uh they've created a really neat little city here that i'm excited to share with you so they have provided a a really detailed story for their build santa luna is a region that's been inhabited since the neolithic some the modern city of santa luna was first settled by uh by spanish speakers who were drawn to the shelter deep water ports and mineral resources particularly the sulfide minerals and gemstone peridot associated with the numeric volcanic areas english-speaking migrants arrived in the late 19th century and the city is currently demographically split between those of anglo and hispanic descent with many bilingual speakers and blended families a few regions of the original spanish architecture remain particularly uh in old tias and several residences in old mill and key town so they go on to explain a little bit more about what makes this uh community interesting and i'm dropping the full description of the city down in the comments as the pin comment take a look it's really neat they've done a great job developing a backstory that has helped guide their build before we dive into reviewing the build let's talk a little bit about how i score these cities so i take a look at the map and i give a score based on your map selection i'd look at the city layout and runway configuration the land use planning the transit planning your city services the aesthetics of the city and the unique features and then i give you a city planner city score so i'm really excited to dive into this one let's get right to it so to start let's take a look at the map so this map might look familiar to you and that's because it's one of the maps that comes with the base city skylines game this is lagoon shores it's it's it's been out since the very beginning so it's it's a neat map uh there this map has all resources available so if we take a look we can see that uh we have areas of oil fertile lands numerous forests or deposits we also have a significant fishing opportunity in this area and all methods of transportation are available here this this map is relatively flat though that's one of my critiques if you're looking at just the normal building area you know there's not much terrain to look at there's a hill here a hill there volcano here not not much beyond that there is a river here and interestingly so there's this crater lake here this is supposed to drain over here but the builder decided to change the orientation and use this right here as an opportunity to create a dam so kind of neat uh so i i like what they've done here they've they've taken a map that is you know pretty standard and done something special with it but the map does have its limitations i was gonna give this a score um you know a little a little bit higher than uh castella which was what we first saw in episode one uh however you know this is one of the kind of the starter maps so i am going to give this a score of 2.5 out of 5. next we're going to take a look at the roadway configuration and city layout so one of the things that i appreciate in this build is that for the most part roadway hierarchy has been preserved there are a couple of caveats that we'll get to but when we take a look at our traffic flow it's it's very good so part of that is that respecting of the roadway hierarchy although i think that the roadway network is overbuilt in many areas so if we look here we see that there's this roundabout that has six lanes going through here which is just kind of a lot you're not at these inner lanes are never going to be utilized and uh then we're going into an arterial here uh this is six lane and interestingly you can get back in the highway so this is probably one of the wonkier spots i feel like they might have been trying to solve a traffic issue that they had in the past and that's the way that they did it but not not a huge deal i can overlook a couple of things like that and uh the for the most part when you look at this there is a logical progression some of the distances here this is problematic in in my estimation if you were to have a backup here it's backing up all over the place thankfully they're not experiencing that even with these massive roundabouts but if we just overlook that arterial collector local road so we have that hierarchy followed and even in places where they have deviated and have these arterial roads or at least what the game kind of approximates to be an arterial they're they're almost functioning as collectors because of the amount of traffic through here so i like for this for instance i'm not 100 sure why this was up to upgraded to a six lane road it's not really necessary and with the roundabouts it's not going to work as a six lane run so this in my mind should be downgraded to a four lane road so then we come to some interesting things so let's go to our underground view and i want to show you something that immediately jumped out to me so first of all there's an underground highway and that's very expensive so that's not something i would ever expect to see in a city of this size there's a hundred thousand sims but that's that's expensive seattle's under undergrowing something like this right now it's it's been super expensive super controversial and it's it's not for areas that have land available to to build highways so and this is a place that has land available to build highways so and we've got it here so i this is interesting though so over here we have a we have a clover leaf it's it's made of arterioles which is just the regular six-lane artillery and it's functioning okay it's underground too which makes it all the more interesting to me so that that said i i don't know that this kind of solution would would ever work or ever occur in a million years but they have it working it's hard for me to to get too cranky about it so uh that said i am going to dock a point for that the kind of the underground roadway network uh one thing i do like you know the through the story you could tell that this has been developed in neighborhoods and there are a number of neighborhoods all custom named lots of thought given to all of them and the development patterns are unique to each of these neighborhoods which is just outstanding so you can see these neighborhoods being developed by individual developers like right here you have a crescent park and it has these lollipops coming off from these local collectors now there are some things happening here like this this road right here this is a collector or it would function as one at the very least as with this we don't really have the ability to to create that kind of road at least not unless you have dlcs you can kind of approximate it with that two-lane uh wide collector which i do have available here so i can show you that this right here i think of as a local collector so you know in a city you would have these the road characteristics wouldn't necessarily change so i guess i'm okay with what they're doing but but that said the development pattern pattern's the thing i'm more interested in and you can see development patterns occurring by neighborhoods which creates a sense of history and that's just outstanding that's something i haven't really seen in any of the other builds and it's something that that i really i really appreciate um to me that breathes life into a build so uh it's it's very very neat uh so one of the other things i noticed is that junction control in the city is pretty hit or miss so let's take a look at this so in many places there's just no junction control at all so i'm i'm honestly pretty imp impressed that they're not seeing a bunch of backups from this because i would anticipate them right here there's junctions that aren't necessary you could get rid of these and add some stop signs but to have some of these junctions right here with no control at all just free flow peds cars whatever anything goes that's that's that's a problem i would expect that it would create more backups if it weren't for something else then i'll point out in the build in a little bit so that's between the the some of the cheesing of the of the the roadway infrastructure and the underground uh highways and uh the the stop control that's the signalization it's a little off i'm going to give this builder a score of 3.5 out of 5 for roadway configuration and city layout next we're going to review the land use planning of this city and this builder did an outstanding job with their land use planning so one thing i noticed right off the bat is that the mix of uses is is very generous so you'll see that they've gone one one parcel at a time to develop some of these uses create activity nodes some streets of of commercial activity varying densities along those streets mixing in residential densities and trying to form uh you know kind of corridors of activity which is really excellent for transit and you see that they've even created transit opportunities in these denser areas and it's high quality uh high capacity transit so that's that is excellent there are a couple of places where i think the transitions are a little bit rough but it's really even it's not even that bad because they're mixing in some of these higher density buildings with lower density buildings it kind of all blends together and then they've done some other things they mentioned the tiny house community uh this is neat just you know trying to tell a story with the vanilla assets in this way it's just really outstanding and i've never seen anyone checkerboard like this but what the effect is is you have high low density high density low density high density all of these kind of taller buildings alternating going down here it's really neat it's a way to to make the game feel more varied when using vanilla assets so excellent job with that but i think one of the more impressive things is the way that they have managed to keep uh more noxious industrial uses away from residential uses and then still have some less noxiousness this right here is farmland uh near the residential uses so they've given that a lot of thought and i think that that is absolutely excellent even if the roadway network is overbuilt and cheesed a bit it's still wonderful the way that they have mixed in these uses now i would be completely remiss to do not acknowledge something that is in this build that fundamentally changes the build and that is the eden project let me see if i can find that real quick right here so we have the eden project right in the middle of the city and it's a beautiful asset and it fundamentally changes your city and the way that it does that is number one it boosts your land value to a hundred uh which or or higher which is great if you want to level up every building in your city but it it certainly changes your land use planning so you you sometimes get a development pattern that that maybe looks better than it would if the eden project weren't present the other thing it does is it eliminates pollution for all buildings that are built after the eaton project so if we take a look why don't we just take a look at our pollution levels very low so there's a couple polluting uses not many if i were to delete these uses let's just say i come through here oh these are all historical that is interesting that one is so if i were to come through here and delete some of these when these redevelop they should redevelop without any pollution and for me that's that's a problem so that's the eden project is one of those assets that for me personally takes the fun out of the game a little bit so uh like in verde beach for instance i it's probably the very last thing i'll place in the city because the moment i place that my city is basically done i'm just doing that to see what it would look like with maxed out buildings as a kind of a utopian society so that's a personal preference but i do think it takes away from the realism the other consideration here is noise so they're mixing in the uses for the most part it's it's pretty good but we do because of the eden project get a little bit of forgiveness right here we have residential properties right next to this opera house and they're totally fine maxed out level not complaining and this comes down to the eden project so we're able to get get away with some of these some of these issues that we wouldn't normally be able to because of the eaton project so for me that's that's that's a bit of a problem interestingly i thought that it removed the pollution it looks like these are still polluting or maybe not maybe it's just polluted land i don't know if there's a good way for me to test this short of creating a new industrial area i i really want to because this is a this is a something i thought was the case and there's just not a lot of demand right now for industrial we're going to leave this and just we'll come back to it before the end of the build uh so that said with the eden project and some of the issues that it creates uh i'm going to give this a 4 out of 5 for land use planning you know generally the mix of uses is outstanding but again that little bit of cheesing of the game uh kind of breaks from the immersion for me a little bit so i'm i'm gonna dock a point there next up is transit planning and we've talked about how great the traffic flow is in this city but it's not just look it's even gone up a little bit since we started so it's not just that the roadway network has proper roadway hierarchy for the most part this is really a story of transit so i think if the transit network weren't what it is the traffic in the city could be an absolute disaster but let's take a look wow 9 500 trips per week from residents on transit and nearly 3 000 for tourists that is outstanding absolutely outstanding so you might wonder how they do this this is wild we've got bus routes here and granted they've used custom assets i have no problem with that this one right here is one of the vanilla assets so we only have 30 passengers that fit in this bus then we have this bus right here you can get 110 that's fine and then there's another bus this one i believe allows is it six oh 110 for this one they have one that allows 60 as well maybe it's this one yes so they have a variety of assets they've right-sized their buses to their lines which is absolutely brilliant but it's not just that let's zoom out and see why their lines work so i think first and foremost we we just spoke about the land use planning and their transit system is not trying to solve land use problems their transits their transit system is trying to hit as many origins and destinations as it can and that's easy because the land uses are mixed so this is a real problem in the real world is that you'll get a bus system and they are trying to serve way too many people that are way too far apart and take them to places that are way too far away but if you have a nice uh mix of uses you can pick someone up somewhere drop them off at their destination and at that destination have people getting on because it's their origin and that's what's happening everywhere in this city and it just it makes me so excited but but it's not just that you see that these are logical routes that have opportunities to transfer so right here this bus route can transfer to this metro line that's awesome and there's two lines here you can go in either direction this there are stops on either side of the road so you could take this in either direction and even here where it turns around it's another transfer opportunity between two metro lines so it's like this throughout their entire system across all modes of transit they've really heavily optimized all of their modes and it it shows me that the amount of utilization here is just outstanding all of the lines are logical the entire city is blanketed with transit i'm curious i didn't look at this before our policies support it so we've got the free public transit policy so if your trip is easier by transit more convenient by transit faster by transit why wouldn't you take transit particularly if it's free so that's what's happening here and that is it's an easy thing to follow and i'm just very impressed with the transit planning in this city there's there's you might notice there aren't trams here i think that's because this is just the theory i'm not 100 sure of this i don't think that this builder had any dlcs at all and the work that they've done without any dlcs is top notch they're just using assets from this from the from the steam workshop when you look at this you know you'll see that they've worked in a couple of assets here there there are just little things but with transit i mean they don't have trams they're not working with some of the modes that that people traditionally use they've still created an excellent network so i guess i would advise that everyone keeps that in mind you don't need every method of transit and some methods maybe aren't as effective as you might believe that they are you could do really well with what comes with the base game so for transit how can i give anything less than a 5 out of 5. this is outstanding this is one of the more effective transit networks i've seen in the game it's certainly the most effective of all of the cities that i've reviewed so again five out of five excellent excellent excellent work so next we're going to take a look at city services so this is everything from power and water to education police coverage and everything so uh let's start out looking at power and what you can see is we're kind of on the edge here uh this is this is a bit scary in my in my opinion uh this is way too close for comfort and part of this is that the game has been running for a little bit uh but but part of this is just that this there's not a buffer here so we would need more of a buffer to feel comfortable the city's not going to grow anymore because of the electricity coverage so it's a bit of a problem that said when we take a look at our electricity coverage they've done some interesting things first they have spread apart their network so if they were to pick up natural disasters dlc it's very unlikely that their entire power network could be knocked offline at once now that said because they're not over producing uh we see the longer we sit here the closer this gets to being a problem but because their their network is spread out it's very unlikely that things break i'm seeing this this is interesting to me i'm curious about this better underground power lines it's interesting so they're using those underground power lines to to make some key connections which is which is also very nice um looking at the water network this chef's kiss i love this do you notice where all their water pipes are they're in the right spot and the network is beautiful so this is one of the things that i don't understand about not putting water pipes into the roads is the networks are so beautiful when you look at them maybe i have a different criteria for beauty but i think this is absolutely outstanding this is a work of art in and of itself and i absolutely adore it they've done an excellent job here and i i i want to give my hats off to them for that let's take a look at some of our other city services so again our garbage processing status here i appreciate that it is well spread out it is kind of teetering on the brink there so there are two ways to look at that with both the garbage and the power they're not over building they're building what they need when they need it the other way to look at it is they have lots of money so why not overproduce a little bit to give yourself some overhead that this all comes back to the eden project again i'm going to talk about that a couple of different times the eden project levels everything up so the needs on your infrastructure are going to be greater so you have to have that buffer if you're going to have the eden project healthcare we're doing very good with healthcare with death care with child care uh which wow 94 uh elder care very very good still now where things get dicey take a look at our fire safety this is not so good and this is something where we have these dense areas that don't have fire coverage that's that's that's that's problematic it's it seems like it's mostly the dense areas there's some of these areas that just lack all fire coverage altogether police coverage though is one of the worst that i've seen in a build that i've reviewed so far and granted small sample size but eight percent is pretty high and we're teetering on the edge and for a city this size that would be pretty scary it'd make this kind of a a scary place to live from from a crime perspective so uh that's certainly something that that i i take a bit of issue with and i notice that we have these over here let's test my theory real quick i was wrong [Laughter] this is still producing pollution so skip that theory of mine uh but back to this the last thing uh last couple things we've got our education pipeline same story we're teetering here we're below on high school we're doing great with our university coverage i want to key in on this because this to me is one of the more unique things about this build so look at this so this builder has gone out of their way to create a unique college campus so they've taken some mods and some assets from the workshop and created this building so these are dorm buildings that work is college buildings and then when we take a look so that's that's really what's providing the coverage there i have no problem with that it looks very neat and then we have this telescope dish doing the same thing probably not the greatest location for the telescope i know that from experience and all the comments i saw on vernee beach but i love they've picked up targeted assets to create their own little campus here very neat very nice so for city services i do think that i've got to dock a few points here they're not responding to the eden project so if you're going to place the eden project you've got to respond to it and provide that extra overhead in your coverage and the police coverage like i mentioned is very very uh very poor in this in this city so that's that's that's a bit of a problem the one shining place that i really think they did a good job with is parks we're going to dive into that there's a lot of custom parks here but the coverage it blankets the entire city which is outstanding uh so for city services i am going to give them a 3.5 out of 5. this is primarily due to not responding to the eden project in terms of providing that school overhead uh and docking a point for both they're half a point for the fire and police coverage which are are lacking in some of the more important parts of the city so next we're going to review unique features and this city is so filled with unique features it is mind-blowing like i mentioned there are no dlc's in this build that i could that i could figure figure out or find yet here we have this amazing airport we've got this lovely uh train station right here this is outstanding uh there's there's no other way to put this this is this is some top-notch work right here so we've got what basically is the metropolitan airport that you get in the dlc pack but like times a thousand and they've gone through they've used airport roads to create all of these airport roads it's a logical functional airport in a part of the city that makes sense the density around it is appropriate they've gone ahead they've done everything from create concourses to uh airport hangars uh to do you know air traffic control so much detail into this i don't know if they work in an airline or if they're just very familiar with the way airlines work fuel tanks just wow the amount of detail here uh just every corner of this airport it's it's all there but this is just one part of the build that's like this it's like this all over the place so another part of the build that i am just in love with they do not have park life but they didn't that's not an excuse in their mind to not build parks so check this out they've got this custom entryway into their park they built a parking lot to to accommodate all of the tourists and they've got water slides and a stadium and a kiddie pool and a roller coaster and uh they've got a ferris wheel they've got the cinema here go-karts this is just it's this is notch a skate park amphitheater this actually that is the same amphitheater i used in clearwater county and they've used it very very well this is i know that this is a challenging asset to use so uh just incredible work uh one of my favorite parts of this build they built this this this this golf course and it just feels so good they've got little pools of water uh they've got these really nice greens sand traps that look excellent it's even got a fountain here look at that look at oh look at this look at this build just wow every part of this has detail from the trees that they're using to the the buildings that they're using they have this look at this i click on this and this to me looks like king leno's mansion that i actually used in clearwater county but they're using it as the bellwater golf club and they've got a little clubhouse here where you know people could lounge hang out by the pool a little putting green just wow wow wow wow wow this is awesome it's like so this this part of the build every there there are so many little details like this throughout the entire build it is outstanding so again the one place that i have a critique is the use of the eden project the eden project coupled with all of these unique assets means that we just have a lot of unique assets in this build so this is very utopian in nature so i i as you go through the downtown here you just start to see that many many many of the the buildings that actually come with the game we can just go through here and kind of identify there are many that are are actually present in this build some of them used really well some of them just kind of present so that's the one critique that i would say that i have is that they're just in my opinion far too many of these assets for a city of this size some of them are used really well some of them are just they're just kind of here i really like what they've done here with their government complex it kind of gives me salt lake city vibes you know where you got this church right in the center government buildings not too far away it's it's it's a really neat deep thing so i'm not going to dock very much for that i'm going to dock a half a point for the overusing of the unique buildings for a city this size and the kind of utopian nature of it but that's what they're what their dream is i i'm all for it so for unique features 4.5 out of 5. and then finally aesthetics and i think that if if if i went 4.5 for unique features you know where i'm going with aesthetics they've done such an excellent job here to not have park life dlc and detail parks so check this out this is one of their state parks they have created this park here there's a you know a path to get in you can walk around here they've done an excellent job with their landscaping uh they've provided opportunities like this all over you can see it when you look at their districts right here is a park here's another park this is the state park [Music] that they referenced in their story they didn't have to do this but they did they have a restroom here a little gazebo to take a look at the water and a trailhead so you could walk up and take a look at this even get across the road and get to these neighborhoods or get around here and there's a network of parks like this and they're all very attractive but for me it comes back to some of those unique features that they have in here and the amount of care that they've placed into all of their neighborhoods making sure that they're well landscaped nothing feels like it was just plopped there randomly everything has a purpose everything there's a there's an attention to detail here that even when the maybe maybe they're they're emulating a design pattern that's less than ideal there's a purpose for it they're they're telling a story and they're trying to improve those designs through their aesthetics and through some of the things that they're doing here like right here we're lacking some connectivity but they have a connection to a pedestrian path they've generously landscaped that worked in a vanilla park to bring it all together and just created a unique place these are the types of places that make urban areas interesting it's it's the fact that you have things that are different around every corner around every block is one of the reasons that i love living in los angeles for instance uh as much of a hard time as i give los angeles there was a while there about a year that every weekend i made it my mission to visit a different neighborhood and experience something inexpensive because i had no money so that was a goal of mine and that was something that was really easy to do there because every neighborhood was a little bit different and that's one of the experiences you get in an urban environment so they have done an excellent job of recreating that in their city here and because of that i'm gonna give them a score of five out of five incredible detail i i wish i was better at this i've said that before this is the sort of thing that i need to get better at uh but they are absolutely masters at it and uh what is this wow they've even managed to to make this like this seem like a an active volcano well that's the detail that i'm talking about five out of five for aesthetics so with that there's only one more thing to do and that is to award them a city planner city score and drum roll please they get a score 28 out of 35 making this the top rated city so far i think that this builder has really done a lot of excellent things uh the compensation for not having dlcs i the creativity and it's just it's just outstanding they've done a really great job here to improve this build the number one thing i would do is just eliminate all of the cheese you don't need it you're doing so well in some other areas that the cheesing of the roadway network it's not necessary you can get away with just making those connections it's going to function appropriately if i went through here and removed that entire underground network made the connections at grade i think that you're still going to see a 80 82 83 percent traffic flow especially if you downgrade some of those roads put put this whole city on a road diet and get rid of the six lane roads you don't need them this was a really fun build for me to take a look at and this was a really fun week to take a look at the three builds i took a look at i hope that you enjoyed this i'm going to leave you with a brief city tour but if you could like the video if you liked it and subscribe to the channel if you aren't and and have an interest in doing so let's see them out with a brief city tour take care bye-bye [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] so [Music] [Applause] 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Channel: City Planner Plays

Views: 142,679

Keywords: cities skylines, city builder, city planner plays cities skylines, city planner plays city builders, cities skylines tips, cities skylines city fix, cities skylines city tips, cities: skylines, cities skylines traffic, cities skylines transit tips, cities skylines zoning tips, city tips, tips city skylines, city skylines tips, cities skylines modded gameplay, cities skylines modded build, cities skylines modded maps, cities skylines downtown modded

Id: WGkwsIp0pos

Length: 38min 5sec (2285 seconds)

Published: Sat Nov 13 2021