Early development of the City of Hanse. Created with CitiesXL 2012
Check out the Hanse Gallery in the links below for more images.

CitiesXL 2012

Review: Summary  |  Basics  |  Game Play  |  Tips and Thoughts  |  Quibles - Critique  |  Resources  
More Topics: Facebook Cover Art  |  Icarus City Journal  |  Icarus Gallery  |  Hanse City Journal  |  Hanse Gallery  |  Farcus City Journal  |  Farcus Gallery

Cities XL 2012 – Icarus City Journal

 
City Stats

Population: 6,002,824
Cash Reserves: 1,460,364,299
Income: + 869,485
Blueprints – Mega-Structures: 16
Cheats: None
Mods: Metro/Bus HQ Budget Fix

The City

Please check out the Icarus Gallery for dozens of screen captures from the city.

The City of Icarus at Night

Map

City of Icarus - Map with Legend

About the City

Icarus was my second attempt at a city while playing CitiesXL 2012 and my first serious attempt to build a massive city. Icarus grew in fits and stages with many missteps along the way. There were times when I had to cycle back to an earlier save and do things differently when I found out that something or several things were not working the way I had hoped.

Goals and Trade

My goal was to build a city that was as self-sufficient as possible with a population in excess of five million. Ultimately, the city had to have trade with both other cities and Omnicorp because it was simply producing way too much of everything that it could produce and running short on food, industry, manufacturing and holidays. Because it was built as a standalone, all of its trade was initially with Omnicorp. Fortunately, the trade balance was good allowing for the reduction of taxes while still increasing income.

City of Icarus - Trade with Omincorp

Later as trade relationships became available with the growth of partner cities Farcus and Hanse, the trade board changed.

City of Icarus - Trade with Omnicorp

City of Icarus - Trade with City of Farcus

City of Icarus - Trade with City of Hanse

Transportation

This city was built using a grid structure because it is fairly efficient. Expressways are the main roads in the city. There are no higher quality roads. The city does have both bus and metro service. Despite having both, the crunch of population has rendered the city’s streets and roads pretty well congested. Despite that, the city is thriving with a huge amount of income production and fairly happy citizens. The downside of the traffic is that the quality of life has dropped for some office areas so that they no longer produce tax income, although they still work fine for trading. Here’s a birds eye view of the traffic in the city.

City of Icarus - Transportation

Earlier Development

Right now the city is at save 124. Along the way, there were some false starts where I went back as many as a dozen saves to start fresh from a more stable point.

The city started along the right edge of the traffic map above and spread to the left. Along the way it has been sort of an experimental city for trying things out. As a result it may not appear to have been developed from a master plan. It wasn’t. Instead it was a lot of trial and error to see what worked in this game. In some ways I think the imperfections in the overall plan make the city look a little more realistic than my other cities.

CitiesXL 2012

Review: Summary  |  Basics  |  Game Play  |  Tips and Thoughts  |  Quibles - Critique  |  Resources  
More Topics: Facebook Cover Art  |  Icarus City Journal  |  Icarus Gallery  |  Hanse City Journal  |  Hanse Gallery  |  Farcus City Journal  |  Farcus Gallery