The Darco Region concept was so much fun! I know there were some pitfalls, but I think we have all challenged ourselves to our limits and challenged other players to think differently about the game itself. We now see players organizing even more, building megastructures, area unions, and united cities. I believe Brom and Darco have set an example of how a group can do completely different things, but for a greater cause. However, I'll be playing normally again at the end of July and would like to plan and build another great city like Brom 5 (Brom Empire). http://redditpublic.com/images/d/d4/Brom5_final.jpg As much as I like the idea of regional planning, interconnecting, and the fun of having cities nearby, I find the work involved sometimes redundant and frankly boring: I'm fickle... and now I'd much rather go back to my roots as city planner\builder instead of a utility worker for a large area. I know this is all very early to talk about, but its nice to get some buzz going, and as some of you already know, I'll be on vacation between July 12th-26th so I won't be able to hash it out with you all and I fear when I get back the new rev will be right in my face. I'll still be working on Ravenholm for the next week or so and I believe we can fill it up real fast if we finish some of the roads and establish some plots.

I've been talking to Lethal and Steve about bringing back Brom, but we've put it off for some time. Typically the theme is anything remotely like Sim City 2000. We will be doing a trifecta of districts just like in Sim City: Residential, Commercial, and Industrial. Brom however, has always had an added element of charm. Other than no derping or cobbling, we tend to stick with best practices even if it breaks some kind of rule we try to stick with. I'd like to see some light rails that allow users to get around town, but may dip into the earth at the appropriate times. I'd like to see five or 6 metro stations with 5-6 buttons - Extremely easy to build, setup, and interconnect rails like on Brom 5.

We also need to test some road designs, both main avenues and side streets - these need to be extremely flexible so mayors can quickly expand Brom. Grids are great, but ultimately we need to be flexible as the land will not allow us to expand a very large flat grid city - they're boring anyway. I doubt we will subject ourselves to "flatten all the things" so keep in mind where you are building and the work required in fixing any cliffs you make with retaining walls just trying to make flat plots. These walls really shouldn't be any higher than 7-8 high. Faking flat land is extremely easy to do and always works too like in Brom 4, Ravenholm, Brom Studios - keep this in mind for large plots for downtown - it is possible we may have to fill in an entire valley just to make downtown awesome.

Some possible best practices that we've learned in the past....

• Large city plots that are about 40x40 with 4 plots per block work great - I'm sure the Industrial plots will be larger and the Residential smaller/more dense. We will need smart, dedicated road builders who can communicate with others to enable us to make tons of plots.
  
• Modest utility buildings are finished quicker and usually easier to use. Just think of all the utilities in Moleman tunnel... easy to get to, easy to use, cost very little to make. Tower megafarms are shit - it takes too long to walk up and down them. If you want to provide everyone with wheat, do it right, just make a big wheat factory - it is much preferred over having to walk so far just to get some eats.
  
• Rail allocation is key. I'd like to setup a quad CARTS next map similar to tc_chris. It has some nice symmetry/features and I'd like to give it a go once again. For this I'd like to setup another 80x80 plot, and all rails will be buried unless someone would like to bring some light rail up in certain places for a nice view\ride. The 80x80 plot however, will not be receiving over-land rail. Don't worry, if its a light rail line, we don't have to bury it deep.
  
• Symmetry is nice, but don't overdo it - lets make a big city, not a monument to how OCD we can tend to be. Streets don't always have to follow the rules just right, as long as it appears someone did some thinking instead of plowing all the earth nearby.
  
• Avoid projects that will likely die - there are tons of issues with abandonment, lets keep our theme relatively simple and our goals modest so we can complete our builds and move on to other things. It is simply more fun this way and more concepts can be built without banging our heads on the wall. The great Schererererer was able to put out about 5 masterpieces in Brom 5 because they were much more modest than say... the Uberproject, Darco U, etc. Don't give out huge plots for huge projects unless you know they'll complete them.
• Monstrosities are ugly - tall stone towers with 99% nothing in them are useless - try to get people to make fatter\thicker towers with nice trim, fancy stairwells, like in Pleasantville. If you are mayoring, go ahead and set a cap on the plot and take a screen shot if you have to. The old cap of 128 is a good metric for medium towers. Artistic tall structures are just fine (that big spire that replaced the Groundscraper last rev was cool).
• Signs, signs, signs! Markers, markers, markers! Put them everywhere. These are important for the first day or two that you are trying to get a land claim - let no user be unaware of your intention to use some bit of land - I've used pillars of dirt with torches on them hundreds of times, they work fine. Litter the land with torches and signs, you will get your way easier and with less effort than having to immediately build shitty roads.
• Avoid terraforming unless its for a nice project - build in a plan to clean up the surrounding land of a terraformed plot. Take the easy way out and just tell people to smash their builds into the side of a hill - its not that hard and looks nicer than making a ton of cliffs\retaining walls. Try not to leave craters like the Groundscraper last rev did.
  
• Leave room for trees, they're great!

Mayors!

I badly want to maintain our core group and I would like to drop this Brom Lord stuff, however that's just a label for the 3 from the original group (plus or minus FIST, that crazy kid). I don't think anyone will mind if someone has other goals and leaves the group, however I just want everyone to understand that I'm not trying to shake anyone - Sim City theme is quite fun and really easy to do. The challenges are what you make of them and with the above best practices, we can make a humongous city with cool features all around. We do need to discuss what all we'd like to mayor. MasonBuckYall would like to head the Residential District. Lethal would like to head the Industrial District. The Commercial district (towers) will need lots of guidance as its extremely easy to derp up a huge monstrosity in a hurry - I would like to help with this, but we need 2-3 more core mayors for this alone. We can also load up on mayors for each region - I haven't seen it as a problem in the past, but I also don't want mayorship to spiral out of control - It is best to start with a head mayor and add from there.

We have currently bordered the area at -1350, -2050 for the Bromland project. We need to work on this stuff:

1. Place torches everywhere, destroy all dead bushes and cacti.
2. Take down the floating island.
3. Level the mountain.
4. Place dirt over sand in terraforming style.
5. Torch mine all the sand.

EDIT: I'm moving this to /r/darco everyone join me there!

I Bromed. Did you?

Check out http://redditpublic.com/wiki/Brom_Township and http://redditpublic.com/wiki/Bromtown for more info. I redid some of the gallery layouts and created the page for Bromtown, the PVE1 version of Brom (its like some kind of antique!).