Hiland River

Uploaded · May 4, 2021

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Author: AngryMob

Last revision: 15 Jan, 2021 at 06:02 UTC

File size: 171.92 MB

On Steam Workshop

Description:

Hiland River

is a fictional landscape made with the in-game generation tools but then hand-crafted for detail and balance. All industries and towns are hand placed, and much of the starting road network as well. You can find many simple starting locations with typical routes common to most maps. However, to really grow all the towns to their maximum sizes and conquer this map you will have to take on the unique scale. I chose a Huge map size, but the number of towns and industries does not reflect that. Density is overall sparse, with most factories being close to the towns, whereas the raw materials are scattered far and wide. It will take some planning to get every resource started, let alone running at high output. You can find other challenges in managing a set of twin towns on the river, a mountain village, and a couple towns only accessible through a mountain pass. Finally, the landscape itself also offers challenges due to narrow valleys, cliffs, extreme mountains, and large lakes all working to block your efforts. If you enjoy long trains and routes, designing a complex network, and a beautiful landscape, this map could be for you and take quite a long time to fill out.

How to play:

Experimental map sizes must be enabled:

Navigate to Steamuserdata<your-user-id>1066780local
Open settings.lua in notepad
change "experimentalMapSizes = false" to true

Load workshop maps:

Subscribe to the map on this page
Go to Freeplay from the main menu in game
Press the small Play Map button on the top right and load Hiland River

Note on Field Plopper mod:
I marked this as required because without it there are small gray boxes near the farms. You can safely play without the mod if you ignore the boxes or bulldoze the fields. The problem didn’t exist when the map was made, and I won’t be refactoring the map to work without the mod unfortunately.

Map Details

Start year: 1850
Start balance: $5,000,000 loan
Climate: Temperate
Vehicles: European
Map size: Huge, 1:2 experimental map sizes required!

Towns: 13

Nowich & Yeswich: Duo of towns on the river. Be prepared to manage lots of traffic as both these towns are the maximum starting size and are very close together!
Far Rapids: Flung down the river and blocked by cliffs and mountains, this town is only easy to access early on by boat.
Cliffton: Atop the cliffs along the river, this town is in a central location of the map. Tackling the challenging terrain can make this into a good hub location for some of the more remote towns.
Hawk Ridge: Extreme elevation mountain village! It may be small, but simply getting the materials all the way up to this town is a challenge in itself.
Talon: Lower down the slope to reach Hawk Ridge, this town will likely be your staging area for getting further up the mountain.
Boulder Pass & Stonewall: Windy mountain roads are the only way to reach this area of the map at the start, but the potential for more vast raw resources and a new duo of towns is enticing.
Arrowhead, Blue Valley, Cauldron, Mooville, Scots Grove: I don’t want to call them filler towns… But lets face it: every map has them! They each offer their own little challenges though, they aren’t simply tossed in without thought.

Industries: 95