"Town grows every 24 days" - but it gets smaller

[Asperamanca]

I am playing on a fairly small map with sub-tropical climate, and I noticed that almost all towns shrink - the world population is lower after 10 years of play than when I started.

The puzzling thing is that there are towns that continuously show something like "town grows every 24" days in the info screen, but if I visit them after a while, they are smaller than they were before.

What's going wrong here?

[kamnet]

What NewGRFs and scripts are you using?

[Asperamanca]

These are the files I used for install:

opensfx-0.2.3-all.zip
openmsx-0.3.1-all.zip
opengfx-0.5.0-all.zip
openttd-1.4.0-windows-win32.exe

Aside from that, I only added AIs via online content.

[Transportman]

I'm not sure, but IIRC the "Town grows every 24 days" message refers to how often the game tries to expand the town via random walk. If you have a big town, the deconstruction of houses might happen more often, resulting in shrinking towns.

[Asperamanca]

It's a small town, like 400 pop. And there's empty spaces next to roads not too far from center.

[siu238X]

Usually the best way to let others help you to find out the problem, is to attach a savegame here. I guess you can do it.

[Asperamanca]

Well, it solved itself in a way. For about 15 game years, the world population didn't grow at all, although there was a lot of transportation of all kinds. Then, within a few years, the population doubled. Can't say I get the algorithms behind that growth, but it worked out for me.

Thanks for your comments.

[PikkaBird]

A bit of dumb design in the default houses means that - especially in tropic and arctic - in the 1950s "town growth" means replacing a lot of buildings with populationless statues and fountains.

[Phreeze]

especially in tropic.... in the 1950s "town growth" means replacing a lot of buildings with populationless statues and fountains.

DON'T QUESTION THE GREAT LEADER AND DICTATOR