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Town
Development

Awhile ago I moved from Tropical to Temperate - and rediscovered how fast cities can grow! For some reason town growth is sluggish in Tropical and SubArctic climates.

Towns growing, or not growing
Grow towns with just INDUSTRY! - CENTRAL stations
No passengers needed?
The road race
Picnic in the Fields
Which house goes next? maybe the STADIUM!?

see also my 2 other texts relevant to towns, cities:
Simple town development
Trees, city ratings

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--- Towns growing, or not growing ---
First let's define the difference between a growing and a non growing town:

A growing town: at almost regular intervals, it demolishes one of it's old buildings, replacing it with something new. Now and then, it builds a new house on grass, field, etc - or maybe on a half-road. These new houses will, in time, lead to a larger Business Area, then larger buildings ...growth.

What sort of regular intervals between rebuilds? this seems to depend on the town's size now, and on the number of central stations serviced. Examples: 25 days for 400 people, 2 bus stations. 2 months for 130 people, 1 rail station. Town size seems more important than number of stations.
But probably number of stations is important for 'new house' frequency.

When a trial run shows the church being demolished on May 23, this will always happen. The rebuild event has been scheduled long in advance for that particular house tile, with about 100% probability. Building new houses has a lower probability, these are not always repeated in new runs. Or if repeated, not always at the same place.

A non growing town will also rebuild old houses, but in an irregular way - maybe once or twice / year. The rebuild event has been scheduled with a low probability, so in a re-run it often won't happen. New houses occur, but are more rare. Growth is much much slower.

A growing town's city ratings go UP by 0.35 points (~1/3 tree chopped) per month with 1 central station; by 0.35 points more for each extra central station.
NB! if the stations are properly serviced!
In addition: if your city rating is 'mediocre' or less, you get an additional 0.15 points per month.

A non growing town's city ratings go UP by 0.15 points per month if the city ratings are 'mediocre' or worse. If 'good' or better, ratings stay the same.
So: for those towns you won't be growing for awhile: You should find 9..12 trees which might be in your way; chop these, to get to 'mediocre'; then let time make your city ratings better.
Chopping 9 trees takes you to 'mediocre 6.4'. 12 trees takes you to 'mediocre 3.4' - where you are still allowed to rip down a medium house, but not a townhouse. Between these 2 values is a sensible place to be.

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--- Grow towns with just INDUSTRY! - CENTRAL stations ---
For years I and other TT Theorists have been preaching: "to develop towns into cities, u need passengers, buses ..."
Well, it's not true! ... not quite true.

While playing around with someone else's TTd save, I saw a town grow even with NO passengers or mail being loaded from it's rail station!
I experimented, and found the golden key to town development:

To grow, a town needs 1 (or more) central station:
= a station with it's origin no more than 5 tiles from the town centre in one direction, + up to 3 in the other. 5 N, 3 W is OK!
6 N, 0 W is NOT.
Earlier theory: the station's origin must be maximum 5 tiles from the centre - 5+0, 4+1, 3+2.

and:
Some of the stuff in the station should be loaded up each month. You don't have to load up ALL the items; 1 item is enough!
And you don't need to load up mail or passengers! You can leave the small stuff, the 2 mailbags per month.

It's possible to start a station 5 tiles (or less) from Town centre; quickly walk it away from town, avoiding passengers / mail; walk to the coal mine or forest or ...;there make your railway station, start trains, etc.
Next month the town will start showing the growth behaviour - it's city ratings will go up by 0.35 or 0.5 instead of 0 or 0.15.

Using this principle, I have started stations some months before being ready to actually transport the stuff. But NB: one MUST take off some of the cargo!
If too much of 1 cargo item piles up in a station (about 600..900 units or more), your city ratings will go DOWN instead of up.

Stations less than 5 tiles from centre give the same ratings-UP effect, but probably lead to more frequent new house building. I've compared a few towns in competing game-saves from the same scenario: after 10-20 years, towns with station 3 from centre seem to grow faster than towns with station 5 away.

How have I - and other people - avoided discovering all this before? Well ... most stations 5 tiles from the town centre include passengers.
So we assumed that passengers were mandatory.

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--- No passengers needed? ---
So now we can save the cost of all those road vehicles?
1 bus, 2 bus stops, 1 road depot cost about 9000£; Property maintenance 1200£ /year; value loss for the bus about 1000£ /year.
If you spend this on 20 towns, your initial 200000£ loan is gone, you will lose money, and are soon bankrupt.

If you save those 9000£ you might have spent on a not too important town, you have money for lots of 'town development Light', including chopping trees down to 'mediocre' around a number of towns.

Well, buses are still good for developing important cities. Many game saves show that the more central stations a city has, the better it grows. Once you have a bus or 2 in a town, 2 or 4 extra stations are cheap.

But for those small towns you can't normally afford to develop, my central station principle comes handy! So I spend a little extra money walking a station from town to coal mine; and get some town development 'for free', while earning money on the coal.

One of my example towns (Burgeton, Delta North scenario) has no passenger vehicles; but 2 'industry only' stations for coal and iron. I did this mainly to be allowed to chop some of those trees - I need future railspace in this area.
But Burgeton is rejoicing, and has built 1 cinema, and 1 big 'Shop+Office' in half a year!

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--- The road race ---
2 of our aids to city growth: the road race and the fields picnic.

The road race is my name for the situation where a town gets active, and starts pushing out roads. The goal of this activity is usually building a new house on grass, preferably a stadium.
In my experience, the road race happens much more often, and more energetically, in the Temperate climate than in the other 2; the road race happens to both growing and non-growing towns.

When a town has a road race, you should help it go in the right directions! Block tiles you don't want disturbed - especially tiles you don't want a new house on!
Point the road at broken points, trees etc. Lake Edward (Delta North sc.) gave me a good race, pulled down hills + 9..10 trees, and shaped the town's roads nicely; see roadrace track: a, and b - - c: all this was done by the town - I just added/removed road bits.
House D will be chopped for roads.
Note: Lake Edward has no stadium! The energetic road race aimed towards building one. Finally I got a new house on my half-road - at 'E', nice and central.
'O', 5 tiles from town centre, is the origin of my future level-2 Mega station, covering the town, the Farm + Forest (outside pictures).
To get the maximum effect out of a road race, one should stop the town from building that new house too SOON. Use trial runs to see WHERE, rail the chosen tile, etc. Finally: place a half-road on a likely central tile (most of them are 'bare land' now), to invite a house here.
Duration: the road race lasts about 10..25 days. If the town hasn't built that new house by then, it gives up.

Important: Keep the towns stadium-hungry! In towns which have no stadium, block possible stadium-sites: a rail on 1 out of 4 tiles, where a house might be rebuilt into a stadium.

Another example: Tranquil Valley (Delta North sc). This town had houses blocking the roads on the West and South sides. I ruthlessly chopped some under construction houses: A, B, C, (D), to get those roads extended and straightened.
Then the town started a road race:
.
See the nice square road network, with straight hillsides, and roads out to all sides!.
The town now has 13 houses instead of 16 or 17, (1 new house at E). But much more house sites, and growth space in all directions.
And the 3x3 Business area hasn't shrunk,

the 1st G-house is on the way. NB: I've forgotten the stadium-stoppers - 3 are needed. I added them later.

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--- Picnic in the Fields ---
The fields picnic helps you get better city ratings; sometimes in exchange for paying to bulldoze fields!

A TTd farm will, now and then, generate a new rectangle of fields, somewhere whithin 16 tiles of the farm. This 'NewField' will cover grass, trees, rocks and some/many old Field tiles; but ignore houses, roads, rails etc - even half-roads.

When this happens in a town's authority area, and many of the tiles involved are field or grass tiles, and you are more concerned with city ratings than with saving a few pounds, you can join in:

First make sure you're well down in the 'mediocre' (or lower) range - chop some trees to get there.
Maybe flatten a broken point or 2 in the NewField area? This may be hard later. Then rail a few (grass) tiles which you need for future plans.
Now plant trees on those FIELD, GRASS, ROUGHLAND or ROCKS tiles remaining - this takes your city ratings up by 0.2 point / tree planted (if mediocre or worse).

Then the NewField arrives quite suddenly, removing both old trees and the new ones you planted. Later, when you want to build here: Either you can now afford to Plant+Chop trees on all the Field tiles; or, if not:
Use my Bridge trick! to remove fields, this costs about 300£ /tile cleared.

Note: The fields picnic event is generated with a low probability, a few days before the event. If you fiddle a bit with vehicles, it may easily not happen. It is also sensitive to the number of tiles you block. If you 'reserve' too many tiles, your newfield won't arrive. Useful when you DON'T want it - out in NONE territory.

I've always advised against planting lots of trees - one may regret it 5 TT years later, when that new industry turns up ...
but in Farm areas, where NewFields are likely to occur sooner or later, one may relax my rule a bit. But make sure you leave a few FIELD tiles un-planted here and there - all the NewFields I've seen have overlapped SOME old field tiles.
I've never seen the NewField event in a tropical scenario.

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--- Which house goes next? maybe the STADIUM!? ---
Both "What do I get instead of that townhouse, on may 23?" and "When/Where will next month's house be rebuilt" are TT random events, decided some / much time before it happens. The program decides that the townhouse at 7 Elm street will go on May 23.
At some time it sets up a series of probabilities for WHAT to build instead. Example:
Shop,Office type A: 10%
Cottage: 30%
TownHouse: 20%
Park: 25%
Bare Land: 15%
When the day arrives, the random draw will determine which of these turn up.

For awhile I've tried - with varying success - to fiddle the random seed, in order to get the house I wanted, in important towns. While doing this, I discovered that:
"When/Where will next month's house be rebuilt" is decided by the SAME random draw as:
"What do I get instead of that townhouse, on may 23?"!
The 2 events are linked!!

So I tried to get Land's End - the largest town in the game - to smash it's stadium - it was blocking most of the town centre.
It was hard work - Land's End had 25 houses to choose between, and needed LOTs of fiddling before it worked. And each time: save, then let the game run for about 27 days, to see what gets built next. Rather tiresome, so only the stadium is important enough to get this treatment - for important towns.
NB: you may have to accept 'park' or 'statue' now, along with 'mash the stadium next month' - Linked, remember?

Later I've made 2 more towns mash their stadia, that was much easier - fewer houses to choose between. Moral: Try to get rid of that stadium before the town gets big. Then stop a new one from being built, keeping the town hungry.

How is this 'fiddling' achieved? - Well, that varies a bit.
A number of actions on vehicles have an effect on the random seed, but which actions seems to vary, over time:

Stopping vehicles (road or rail)
Starting vehicles ( " " " " " " " )
Sending vehicles to depot
Giving orders to vehicles
Selling vehicles
Buying vehicles
All of these, and some others, have effect now and then.

The one which almost always seems to work is

- - -"Buying new road vehicles"- - -