When you play OpenTTD and you play with passengers you want to drive from big city to big city to have enough inquiry and money. So you need to grow your cities. In this article, I will show you all the possible ways to grow your town in OpenTTD.
How chose good town to start?
The first step is to find a good town. You must find a town which has the most people and have the label “city” because this town grows 2x faster. First steps are here:
- Open town list
- Oder by “population”
- And try to find some of the biggest towns
There you have on which icon you want to click:
But selecting just “first” isn’t enough! You must find cities which aren’t near water and aren’t near other towns. Because you need to grow and other buildings, water,.. will stop your city. My city isn’t the best match but is the best on this map.
✅ Doing this could help you!
Boost up by station in city center
The second working step is 5 bus stations and creating a bus line between them. I’ve tried this and the city will get the status “growing in 12 days”. I selected the second city from the table and create a “control group” in one city.
So, I’ve created 5 stations and rented 10 buses. I just unpause the game and I left the game running and there is a table with results.
| Year | City with “tip” | Grow from start | Control City | Grow from start |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2.1.1950 | 2 366 | – | 1 788 | – |
| 2.1.1952 | 2 865 | 21% | 2 003 | 12% |
| 2.1.1960 | 7 537 | 218% | 2 014 | 12% |
| 2.1.1965 | 12 054 | 409% | 1 938 | 8% |
| 2.1.1970 | 18 148 | 667% | 2 053 | 14% |
I could say just that this works well year’s growth of the city was +39% and I didn’t do anything of other tips. Do you remember the image from the first tip? There you have a comparison of them. You could see that town really has an 18 148 population and my buses are in the center of town.
But this system has one problem and be aware of this. Your buses will cost you some money in my case buses cost me 7 000 £ per year. You need to make money from trains which about I write in the article with the goal of OpenTTD.
✅ Doing this could help you!
Boost by funding
You could fund buildings in the city. But it will cost you a lot of money.
I’ve found that city “update” will have cost 155 273 £ and I started on 3 773 population.
I didn’t do anything just pay.
After ten times funding I was -1 555 273 £ and the population grows to 4 519.
It takes three years it’s growing like 6% with a big cost.
Be aware you must fund after the (founded) sing will be off. If you invest when sing (founded) will be visible you just wasting money. Because it works. When you bought it you get just “one and no more cycle”.
🟡 It works but will be better combine it with others!
Do you know that also you could found new town in OpenTTD
Building roads
What I think that works preparing the road grid to grow. The city may not build them so they will grow faster. And yes who builds roads could place airports and stations. If you build a city you want to prepare all aspects of it.
When I want to grow the city I make placeholders for building a train station like there when I just purchase land. And after years I make all infrastructure. So there you could see the city with purchased land:
… this is because I want to have land for city expansion. So I’ve built everything and after that, I returned back to the city. I think that this strategy could work well. If you playing simulation, you need to plan your steps!
🟡 It works but will be better with others!
