Cecilie's TT hints:
Trees, Trees,... City ratings

Appalling - ME?!
Trees, Trees .....
Chop 9 to 12 trees!
Trees on Coast trick!
Bridge trick!
Raintree country
see also my 2 other texts relevant to towns, cities:
Simple town development
Advanced town development

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Q: Why am I so unpopular
with the local authorities of
'Little Sourton-on-Grumblewoods'?
A: Maybe because you have been bulldozing TREES! the TT city dwellers are nature lovers. You may tear away all of a town's streets without irritating them; but build on ONE tile with tree(s) on it, and you lose one 'city rating point' = 'popularity point'.

The City Rating scale: from Outstanding-6 to Appalling-1; Each main class has 6 main (hidden) sub-ratings. So from Outstanding-6, you can bulldoze 6 tiles with trees, before you become 'Excellent-6'. The number of trees per tile - 1 to 4 - doesn't matter.

I know it - computer freaks prefer the scale to be 0 to 5; I do myself. But for those who just play games, and do not program them, I use scale 1 to 6 as reference.

Bulldozing a medium temperate house costs 2 points; Shop&Offices 3 p up; in TTo: church 7 points; stadium about 11 points, I believe.
In TTd, Tropical climate: the smallest houses cost 0.8 p (only 7 people).

Planting trees - I hear some of you Panting!
Planting a tree increases your city ratings by 0.2 points in my scale; but only if you are 'mediocre' or worse. In other words: to cancel the effect of chopping one tree, you need to plant five

NB: City rating is not the same as station rating! - They have very little to do with each other.

To increase your city rating: transport passengers and/or mail between stations in the town: in not too large cities this will increase your rating by 1 or 2 points per month in TTo;
0.5 or more points per month in TTd; and also help population growth.

NEW: transporting other things than passengers/mail may help if the station is central enough!
You get your city ratings increase when you load up; I don't believe you get any more when you deliver.

The city ratings increase depends on number of central stations transported from, not on no of passengers/mail/other transported!
So if you need to get your city ratings up faster, build one or 2 extra bus stations, + add another bus. 1 transport per month is enough for city ratings increase - you need more than that for good station ratings.

In TTd, Tropical: transporting diamonds to the city sometimes seems to help!? Maybe some cities 'specialize' in liking diamonds, food, goods ... but I haven't enough data on this yet.

To sharply DECREASE your city rating in TTd:
Have a central station, origin within 5 tiles of the town centre - and let cargo pile up, pile up ... When the entry in your F7-list, the list of stations shows a bright angry colour along with the item (coal, passengers, etc), your city rating is probably going down, each month!

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Trees, Trees....
Trees are lovely in Nature, in forests, in gardens, outside my windows, and far from towns.
In TT, near cities - they are usually a nuisance.

The TTdx (TT de Luxe) players advise you to plant trees, to increase your city ratings.
I do not. The arithmetic is simple:
- bulldozing 6 tree tiles takes you down from Poor 1 to Very-Poor 1.
- planting 30 tree tiles (1 tree per tile) takes you up from Very Poor 1 to Poor 1. - Planting on NONE tiles doesn't help.
In a few years, maybe you need to BUILD where you just planted!

In an emergency, to get UP from 'Very Poor': plant near the 'none' limit, in an area where you THINK you won't be building anything ... if a new industry turns up here, don't blame me.

or: plant within 16 tiles of a TTd farm; then maybe the farm will cover your tree plantation with new FIELDS ; then you have the choice between spending city ratings, or spending money, when later you want to bulldoze here.

see also: Trees on Coast trick!

If left alone, the trees will spread. A tree tile 'seeds' a small tree on the same tile, or a neighbour one; sometimes the seed 'jumps' further out, and maybe lands on 'bare land'; this often happens with tropical raintrees; these Rainforest trees spread faster; Rail barriers won't stop them. (try a cactus barrier??) And they are expensive to remove!

After some years, undeveloped towns are surrounded by nice woolly green, and building anything here becomes difficult. Check? Look at the start scenario for a competition game, and look at some peoples' result saves 10 or 20 years later!

Developing cities will gradually remove trees near to the centre, but you can't count on which ones.

So the sensible thing to do is to try some tree control in areas urban, or where you plan rail lines etc:

• Chop 9 to 12 trees:
  Early in your game, near most of the towns you're not using now:
  select 9 to 12 trees which might foil your future plans, and bulldoze them. This brings you down to 'mediocre 6.4', or 'mediocre 3.4' - where you are just allowed to bulldoze a medium 'houses'.
  Then let time take your city ratings up by 0.15 p/month, letting you chop some more later.
• Which 9 to 12 trees? Priorities:
  • Tree tiles with many 'grass' neighbours - Larger spread risk.
  • Tree tiles with 2 to 4 trees - Won't disappear without help.
  • Trees die when they grow old and stringy. So a tile with 1 old black oak can be left to clear itself.
  • Tree tiles out of reach of a TTd Farm. Tiles less than 16 away from a farm might become 'Fields' (see fields picnic).

• Do the '9 to 12 tree chop' also for small uninteresting towns!
  a: You may want a rail line through the town's area.
  b: Some day a new industry may plop down beside that small town, making it an interesting one.
  c: Early in the game you have more 'TT spare time', since you can't afford to start that next expensive big project yet.
  d: It's better to spend a few pounds and mouse clicks chopping trees now than to have to resort to Trees on Coast later.
  
• With about 8-10000£ you can start 1 bus in 1 town; with the same sum, you can afford to do '9 to 12 tree chop' for about 20 towns!
  In 5 years' time, these 20 towns will each have about 30..60 fewer tree tiles in your area of interest, than if you had done nothing. Trees spread, remember!

. . . .

• Plan which central trees / houses to bulldoze later; do it when your city rating is good enough / when the house comes 'under construction'. Keep the city rating around 'mediocre 3'. The 'mediocre' range is a good place to be!
• Place rails or loose half roads around groups of trees; the trees may eventually disappear, and at least, in 'Temperate', they won't spread. The town can build on a tile with a 'half-road' on it, but not on a tile with a rail.
• It's often possible to tempt the city to bulldoze a broken tile with/without trees on it: direct one of the town's roads at it (or a 'pincer' around it: 2 roads wanting to meet).
  When the town becomes active (see road race) , it will often lower / raise the odd point to continue the road; saving you the trouble. this works well in TTo, and in TTd, Temperate climate. not so much effect in TTd, the 2 other climates.
  
• Your beloved AI Opponent often helps remove unwanted trees! to increase your town rating, plant a tree on the next city tile he's going to place road or rail on!
  But he sometimes chops your city's houses too.

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