The TRIcity Area

Consentrated around the southern part of the eastern mouth of the sound, lies the cities that forms the TRIcity area. This is the farming community of Rosource, the city of Neuburg and Chesterfield, a “suburb” of Neuburg. Neuburg is one of the oldest settlements in Fairmont; in the 1600’s, the German immigrants settled here, while the English had their city on the other side (with the same name, Newcastle). Today, the “burg” (castle) is gone, but Neuburg lives on as the administrative seat of the South-West district. It has one of the busiest passenger ports in North America with departuers for Newcastle every ten minuts; it’s the industrial port for the South-West; the terminus for the South Coastal train line (South Shore to Neuburg) and Highway 10 runs through it. On the more local side, the TRIrail connects Neuburg with Rosource and Chesterfield.

As mentioned is Rosource the farming community; it also has the regional hospital. Highway 10 continues down the coast towards the Southern US as a 4-lane motorway. The train depot for the TRIrail is located here, and the train leaves Rosource Centre for Neuburg and Chesterfield every 10 minutes (Departs from Rosource South and Rosurce Industrial every 20 minutes).

Chesterfield is largely counted as a suburb, although it’s always been an independent town. It holds much of the somewhat dirty industry to separate it from downtown Neuburg; it also has the power plant for the region.

Social housing project in Chesterfield

The more upscale apartments in Neuburge. The high-rise on the right is an apartment block run by the Veteran’s Office.

Here you can see a social housing projectm the TRIcity Secondary School as well as the western entrance to the Neuburg City Tunnell.

Farms everywhere in Rosource! Note the pollution along the GLR line.

Some industry, a landfill and the old power plant. And of course the train depot.

The commercial centre of Rosource.

Region shots

The region is finally ready to be developed, and while the Terraformer was fun, it felt a bit sluggish (due to a relatively large region for my computer) which resulted in a distorted region view (thus no fun pictures to post). However, I did manage to get to open and save all 64 quads. It took some time, and the result is not good treewise (but that’s to live with).

It’s also pretty boring height-wise, with only a couple of hills and a low mountain in south, but as I’ve modeled this after the Øresund area between Denmark and Sweden there can’t be too many of them either (Zealand is flatter than most areas); I will however see if not a few hills can be fitted in the southern areas of South County (the Scania part).

The city borders are clearly visible because of bad planting

However the features of the Terraformer had to be tested; while clearly visible marks after it on the Terraformer’s “radar map” was the size of the brush used for terraforming, the really interesting features that stood out were impossible to see from air (likewise, the nice beaches disappeared when openingthe tiles).

The “roughen” tool has been used on the coast, producing nice and small island to swim among.

The same tool used on an inland lake, with a somewhat different result

I’ve also decided on the road network to be used in the Fairmont region; more on this on a static page a bit later today (will be updated with link) .

Why, what, when?

The Fairmont Report takes a critical look on the development of the region of Fairmont, squeezed between the not-so-straight-border-after-all between North Carolina and Virginia (good thing you didn’t do that Mark Knopfler!). Forget everything you ever knew about Chesapeake, Virginia Beach and those warships in Norfolk. Since there aren’t anything of interest in the Fairmont area in North Carolina (to the south) you can know anything about, you’re lucky enough to not need to forget.

As I have offered to write on the SC4 Encyclopedia¹, this will be my way explore on the subjects I (hopefully) can turn into proper articles. This is a fresh install², with no plugins to blur the development (it’s to be added along the way), so join me in this project to create something new (and please critisise, so that we can sort things that are bad, out of place, just not feeling right, out—I’m talking to you Krio!)

Right, the region: I live in Copenhagen, so I’ll base the area of the Øresund region (that’s right—a giant (?) new sound right between North Carolina and Virginia), but it’ll of course be altered to suit both SimCity 4 and the US East Coast. So that I may do whatever I want (including making intriguing stories involving beautiful ambassador’s daughters and visiting heads of state, if I feel like), Fairmont will be a sovereign state.

View a preliminary handdrawn map of the region (PDF, 190 kB)

As you see, I believe I’ll go for a fairly large map, 8×8 large quads (which isn’t that large in real life, but huge in SC4-terms—I’m going for a realistic and playable region), and if you have noticed some numbers on the map, here’s an explanation (of what it’s real life counterparts would be):

1. Kronborg Castle—if you paid attention in English class, you recognise this as the castle from Hamlet in Elsinor
2. Copenhagen Inner City
3. Amager Island, with Copenhagen Airport—I guess it’s going to be bigger if I want to keep this island
4. City of Køge—not that important, but this is the border to the west
5. City of Malmö—the other large city in the Øresund region, linked with Copenhagen by bridge
6. City of Helsingborg—linked with Elsinor by numerous ferries all day and night long
7. City of Lund—the London of Denmark when founded (and Scania today)

That’s all for no folks (unless you’re reading the footnotes of course)! If you check the timestamp, you’ll see that I should have been to bed a long time ago. So, good tie! (and yes, I promise some real pictures next time. I’m really excited about the Terraformer³!)

NOTES

1. ^ And so should you! Especially if you have an article we need, or write English well. If you do both, it’s even better. See the thread.
2. ^ Apart from meaning that you might get to decide what I’ll be putting there, the SC4 Terraformer works for the very first time!
3. ^ Oh, well. The same as 2.