Town growth-Why do towns love to grow up into the mountains?

[ssvh.net]

I really like the openttd game and I allready played hours. But one thing i allways wonder about the longer I play a scenario is why towns allways grow in uphill or downhill directions.

Instead of making use of the flat land around towns they seem to prefer to develop in directions of a road which leads into the mountains (e.g. on the picture below Izumo climbs up the mountain in northern direction and down on the other side).

It would be more realistic if there was some kind of a penalty for town growths uphill and if towns would rather prefer to grow on leveled land.

[CommanderZ]

Because the roads can't branch on sloped areas, so the only way for the town to grow is along that road.

[ssvh.net]

What i had in mind was that towns make more use of the terrain which i marked red in the picture below.

[CDArena]

I'd be interested to see how the AI actually works for town growth. Presumably it checks from the town center, spiraling outwards until it finds a space along side of a road. Presumably it might place a house at the end of a half-road, but not at the end of a full road. If it ran out of spaces along side a road, I would expect the AI to attempt to continue an existing road-end.

I think it works something like that, because I have noticed that the AI tends to expand along existing roads - this allows you to somewhat shape the growth of a town by pre-placing road pieces.

The actual town-growth seems to be more complicated, because single story houses near the center are replaced with multi-story houses as population grows. And what happens when two towns are close to each other - do they respect town boundaries?

[Eddi]

Town growth doesn't go in spirals. It starts at the center, and chooses one of the 4 directions along the road. at each crossing, it may again randomly choose a road. this continues until it either gets to a dead end, or a suitible place for a house, or a suitible place for a road.

in the example town, this means, growth distributes about equally on the 4 "sectors", two of which go uphill, and two go in the valley. there are no further connections between these sectors, which could redirect the growth. if you build more parallel roads from the town center along the valley, the growth would focus more on those directions.

"Town boundaries" are not respected, a large city may grow "around" a smaller town, basically consuming it.

[ssvh.net]

Are there any plans for future releases to improve town growth, to make it less random?

I actually posted this topic on the forum cause I think that the current towngrowth is to random and not realistic.
Sure towns follow infrastructure/roads and develop along them this is a good point. But to follow a road blind and choose randomly the direction of town growth is not so realistic and leads to results like in the picture above.

Just had an idea: Adding something like a "cost" factor could make town growth more realistic.
3 points could be considered for example:

-depending on the height above sealevel town growth is more slow (villages in the mountains would grow slower than towns in flat land)
-adding a "cost" penalty for growth uphill or downhill. towns first would make use of flat land and growth along a road into the hills/mountains would be slower
-using existing roads and company roads (as far as I understand this point is allready implemented)

[Nite Owl]

Do not allow the towns to build their own roads (Advanced Setting). Use the vast amounts of wealth you earn to build the roads for them so that they will only grow in the directions and places that you want them to.

[Bad_Brett]

[ssvh.net]

Sorry "Bad_Brett", so far no cable cars in Openttd.

Other example:

[Felix Atagong]

I really like the openttd game and I allready played hours. But one thing i allways wonder about the longer I play a scenario is why towns allways grow in uphill or downhill directions.

Maybe its citizens like the view, be honest wouldn't you prefer your condo on a mountain top than in in the valley?

What I do hate (although that's a strong word) is the fact that after a while you have a few very big - almost impenetrable - town clusters with zillions of inhabitants and miles of traffic jams. A bit like every big city in real life, thus...

[Kogut]

Do not allow the towns to build their own roads (Advanced Setting). Use the vast amounts of wealth you earn to build the roads for them so that they will only grow in the directions and places that you want them to.

Or make AI that will do it for you...