Thanks @GrumpyBedlam for sharing that history! It was fun to read and I share your philosophy! I guess I’m also the geek that tries to find out how to optimize layout to boost population.
I see a lot of people cramming their land with housing buildings, yet never reaching high population because they simply forget to include the basic needs like parks and other specialization buildings. They leave a lot of bonus points on the table and waste their space!
For the 1st island on Sunny Isles, I experimented with a ‘core-shell’ structure: housing on the outside, specializations on the inside. I managed to cover all housing with all specializations except Landscape, which was introduced when I finished the design. this design yields approx. 500k population just for the 1st island, with room to grow thanks to upgradable, regional specializations like the Volcano Casino and Luau Party.
I’m now applying a similar philosophy (core-shell) to my other regions as well. I level up slowly (at Lvl 74 yet playing since 2014), as I’m mostly doing assignments for gathering fancy specializations.
I was a little frustrated when trains were introduced, as I agree with you that Sunny Isles is ideally suited for a long track across all islands. As I didn’t want to change my first island design, I decided to ignore the railroad bridges on Sunny Isles and instead created artificial islands in Limestone Cliffs (see earlier post) to run my trains there. So, I hope one day a railroad bridges will be available in Landscape, so that I can upgrade the current land bridges in Limestone Cliffs.
@GrumpyBedlam Here you see the artificial island in daylight.
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