Town expansion.

[mauried]

Is it possible for towns when getting larger to expand into the water if they are on the coast, by placing blocks of land into the water similar to what players can do.
If not , if a player adds extra land around a town by doing the same thing, will the town expand into the extra land the player has provided.
Asking this question in relation to towns which are on small islands in the middle of large ares of water.
tnx

[Taschi]

Is it possible for towns when getting larger to expand into the water if they are on the coast, by placing blocks of land into the water similar to what players can do.

No, I don't think so, but it might be possible to write a Gamescript that can do that?

If not , if a player adds extra land around a town by doing the same thing, will the town expand into the extra land the player has provided.

Pretty sure it does.

[mauried]

Thanks , I suspected that the towns wernt able to expand into the water, it would be good if they could, especially when playing on maps with lots of water in them the towns can get limited in size pretty quickly.

[odisseus]

Towns do expand into the water, but they do it very slowly. If you find a town next to a small lake, preferably with a regular grid, and grow it for 50-100 years, you'll find that the lake has been completely filled in, with the exception of water tiles under existing bridges.

[IdiotOnTTD]

Towns do expand into the water, but they do it very slowly. If you find a town next to a small lake, preferably with a regular grid, and grow it for 50-100 years, you'll find that the lake has been completely filled in, with the exception of water tiles under existing bridges.

Yeah, it's really slow. But there are benefits to having them expand on their own, you don't have to waste money for one. And I'm pretty sure they kinda get mad if you landscape too much.

[Eddi]

And I'm pretty sure they kinda get mad if you landscape too much.

It says "landscaping" in the difficulty setting, but what they really care about is trees (and buildings, of course). once there are no trees, you can terraform all you want.

[IdiotOnTTD]

Very Anti-Tree people in these towns. I have seen towns get angry over adding land into lakes though. It may have been a mod but I'm not sure

[mauried]

Another town expansion question.
Can towns expand into adjacent towns, ie can 2 small towns close to each other expand to become one large one.
Is there any limit to how large a town can become.
tnx

[odisseus]

Yes, if there are two adjacent towns and one of them grows much faster than the other one, it will eventually engulf the other town. However, the game will still consider them as two separate towns — OpenTTD has no such thing as town merging or absorption.

A town can theoretically grow without limit, but in practice the growth will be constrained by obstacles such as rails, hills, water, or eventually map edges. Some players have grown towns that had millions of population.

Also there's a technical limit on the town population based on the largest number that the corresponding variable can hold, but that limit is so high (more than 4 billion) that it's probably impossible to reach in practice.

[Eddi]

i might misremember this, but i think town growing in one location stops if it meets a road belonging to another town. so the bigger town will grow around the other town, but they don't mix

[mauried]

Thanks all.
I was wondering how the town authorities work when its not obvious where the merged towns borders are.
eg sometimes a town authority will stop you building an airport because of the noise concerns which is obvious when there is only 1 town authority, but when there are multiple towns which have become one from a visual perspective how does this work?
Is there some kind of range from the towns name that determines this kind of thing.
Same deal for funding new buildings or buying exclusive transport rights or building new roads etc.
In relation to Eddis comment about the roads , if a player builds lots of roads around a town , will the town expand along the newly made roads, or does this idea only work if the town itself builds the roads.

[Eddi]

town authority is completely determined by distance to nearest town center, and completely independent from where the town has expanded to.

[GarryG]

I wonder when the do next upgrade to the OpenTTD game that they could add to the towns Local authority. "Fund Land Extension"

They already have "Fund New Buildings" and "Fund Local Roads" so why not "Fund Land Extension"

[Wahazar]

I wonder when the do next upgrade to the OpenTTD game that they could add to the towns Local authority. "Fund Land Extension"

They already have "Fund New Buildings" and "Fund Local Roads" so why not "Fund Land Extension"

You mean this "authority zone"? Would be nice if it was able to expand according to city size, even at cost of neighboring small towns, instead of being static.

[mauried]

Heres an interesting example of a town being taken over by an AI.
The town started small at around 1300 population , and I slowly built it up , and then this happened in less than a minute.
The pink stations are the AI.
Although the town authorities will stop the building of too many airports near a town, they dont seem to care about too many stations of other varieties.

[odisseus]

Whether the town would expand along the road that you've built depends on a number of factors. Some towns have a regular layout (2x2 or 3x3 grid); these towns won't grow along a road that doesn't match their layout. However, there is a setting that disables road funding by towns; with this setting, towns are completely dependent on player-built roads, and any town will use any road that can be reached from its central tile.

Regarding the excessive station building, this is a problem of the particular AI that you're using. You should report this to its maintainer.

[mauried]

Thanks , I figured the AI was problematic , just looks bizzarre.
As for the town expanding along the roads Ill play around with road patterns and see if any encourage more town expansion than others.