Can you build up your cities? I kind of wonder.

[Batchman]

The last scenario I played, along with making money and building up a monster network of trains and cities, I also chose one town to perform a bit of a test on. I took this one town, nicely located near everything it was asking for, and kept it fully supplied with passengers, mail, lumber, milk, food, goods, and produce ... everything it asked for. I had it's demand for everything at 0, and also hauled away to other cities all the things it produced (only passengers and mail).

 

I did this for ten years, and it never gained a single house or industry or anything in the area.

 

Kind of makes me wonder if there is actually any hope of trying to grow a city at all.

 

Anyone else ever run into a problem of not being able to get anywhere to grow, even if you supply every demand?

[Gwizz]

Yes, I think sending and receiving passengers will help a city grow. 

[MaglevForever]

The answer is Yes. But there are some caveats.

To keep things basic, in the editor on the economy page there is a setting for the growth rate. This can be a maximum of 5% per year. Most maps use a far lower setting. This growth rate plays a big part in the likelihood that a new house or industry will appear. Because typical growth rates are very low, my view is that this only matters in practical terms if you are playing a map that will take more than 30 years to make strategy choices that are specific designed at growing cities at the expense of short-term profit. For example Jeffry's US History map that must be downloaded from the thread of that name.

Check out this thread: http://forum.dune2k.com/topic/25090-how-to-increase-city-growth/.

[Batchman]

OK, so it is only a long-term thing which is probably going to lose you money (at least short term) in the process. I think I will go back to not worrying about it. Was fun to give it a try for one scenario, though.