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Caldera Shores

Finally finished this one after letting it sit for 6 months.

Caldera Shores is a tropical map set on a long-extinct volcano. Long ago, the magma chamber collapsed and seawater entered, causing a massive explosion. This explosion blew the top off of the volcano, and left a deep split in the island and seafloor. Today, much of the volcano is gone, having sunk into the earth and been partially eroded. The most prominent signs of the grand mountain that once stood are the largely-surviving west slope, and the very round bay. Some small islands also exist where debris settled or didn't collapse as far.

The terrain is rugged, but not without flat areas to build on. Much of the western island is buildable other than the mountain, and the southern portion of the eastern island is fairly flat as well. Anything from a sprawling metropolis to a small resort village should be possible!

This map, while not perfectly precedented in premise, still resides mostly within realism. So I have taken care to aim for natural-looking terrain. Inspiration and reference were taken from Krakatoa, Taal Volcano, parts of New Zealand, and other volcanoes around the world.

81 Tiles Mod is highly recommended. A lot of work went into the whole map. If not 81 tiles, 25 tiles is still recommended from a gameplay perspective. A large portion of the center of the map is occupied by the crater, and a lot of the good building area is a little bit to the side. There's absolutely still plenty of good building to be done in 9 tiles, but some nice tiles might wind up not purchased due to their build space being small.

Trees: ~249k. Technically it is below the tree limit, but with so little to work with I still recommend Unlimited Trees Mod. However, if you cannot use unlimited trees due to needing tree snapping, I recommend using Move It! to select and delete all of the vanilla Yew trees. That will get you an extra 35k trees to work with, which should be enough buffer to last you until you start removing some of the forest.

There is water flow through the start square, but beware that the edge-of-map flow causes it to null out in the crater. For this reason, I would recommend avoiding dumping sewage in a place that will wind up collecting in the crater.

Railway Replacer Mod is used for the rail lines. Don't be scared of it, it's really not intrusive. If you're new to it, just remember to press SHIFT + ALT + P the first time in-game to select your buffers etc. I've intentionally left the bridge in the start square leading to nowhere, so that you can choose how to have the rail enter your city.

All screenshots were taken with:
- Caldera Shores Theme Mix (textures from Switzerland and Natural Beauty themes).
- Bonita Vista Valley LUT (brings out the warm colors of the rocks nicely0
- Daylight Classic.


Thanks to all the wonderful mod and asset creators, and to some waffling British guy for showing me what makes a good map.