Bishopdale – Vanilla Challenge Map
Challenge Map
Hello Cities Skyliners! It’s been a while since my last map, but I’m back. I won’t say this is a super stunningly awesome map, in fact it’s a simple affair and the reality is I’ve used it to remember how to play the game again, as I have been working on it off and on for over a year. And just as I was really getting into the swing of things again, the March CS major update came along and caused me all sort of headaches, including replanting all the trees**.
So this is Bishopdale, with Bishop being a chess reference, more specifically a chess board. The idea being, players will need to pick their tile purchases carefully. Only alternate tiles are buildable, meaning you need to unlock and purchase two of them each time you want to expand. Each tile generally only comes with a single advantage. Oil and Ore lay on different sides of the map, different tile again for rail line, and again for shipping.
Theme and LUTs
I’ve made this map using Captain Soap Realistic European Theme v1.4.5, please remember to give the theme a thumbs up on the workshop. I haven’t installed a specific LUT for this map, it should have loaded with the default.
Networks
A single 3-lane highway traverses across the map. Each buildable tile has its own default intersection, which is a basic junction with traffic lights. As the population grows, you will likely need to upgrade these to handle the traffic. It doesn’t have any cross-map traffic on it, I suspect this is a bug due to constructing it during the CS major update. I have tested it, and city traffic does still spawn and arrive in your new city from both directions, long with road/rail freight imports and exports.
There are two separate shipping routes, only accessible from two separate tiles, rail lines also only enter two tiles, near the ore and oil respectively, all of which you will need to purchase. An air route meanders around the map.
Infrastructure
The start square has a very small access to the main river, more than enough to get you going. There are obviously plenty of hill tops for wind farms, while a hydro dam can be placed on the downstream side of the suspension bridge.
Resources
There is a lot of accessible forestry across the map. Farming features in several tiles and will be one of the earlier industries you will be able to access. Ore and oil are on opposite sides of the map, so you will need decide early which one to work towards. The oil is mostly off-shore, with a small amount on-land. Ore is all in-ground at higher elevation.
Bugs/Troubleshooting
12/04/2023 Map updated to remove section of 4 lane mass transit.
**it appears map is not compatible with tree anarchy mod, when the mod is active, no trees load in.
As mentioned, the highway does not spawn cross map traffic. Originally, I had a buried section of highway connecting the two spawn points so cross map traffic would bypass anyway, traffic would spawn and use the bypass, I don’t know why it doesn’t use the highway, maybe it’s too long? Nor can I place a bus route across the entire map from edge to edge, but within the 25 tiles is no problem at all. But for city traffic, it does work!
