Smr Simple!

You may have noticed that if urban centers are not interacted with, they will eventually decrease in size. This is especially important for the transition from Town to Village... one they're a Village, the only way to revive them is to supply the lone resource they want, and sometimes that's a herculean effort.

In two test games, I didn't do anything at all for 210 years. Both were Northeast scenario, Financier difficulty, with no opponents.

Metropolises become Cities after 54 years, 2 months. For Northeast, that's Wash. DC & NYC in ~Feb. 1884. (Months varied slightly across the two test games, by approx. +/- 1 month.)

Cities become Towns after 62 years and 6 months. For Northeast, it's Philly, Dover, Harrisburg, and Baltimore, ~May 1892.

Towns become Villages after 87 years and 7 months. For Northeast, that's Frederick, York, Aberdeen, Wilmington, Allentown, Trenton, and Atlantic City, in ~May 1917.

Furthermore, all places continue to "decay" if not interacted with at all, given the same time spans shown above. For example, if DC & NY are left totally untouched, they become Cities as shown above, then Towns after another 62 yrs, ~6 mos. (~July 1946), then Villages after another 87 yrs, ~7 mos. (~Feb. 2034). The same kind of rule holds true for Cities -> Towns -> Villages.

When the decay happens, it happens all at once, to untouched cities... in May 1917, all untouched original Towns (six in my test game) become Villages in the same instant, and their Mail and Passenger resources disappear from the minimap. The +/- one month is across different games; in the same game, they all transition at the same time.

The practical implication of this finding, is to be sure to serve esp. any Towns you want to work with, by 1917. Or 87 years into other scenarios. I haven't actually tested other scenarios, but I would guess they use the same simple approach.

Of course, 87 years is a long time for anyone building full tilt. Anyway, there it is.

Another possibility is to remember that Metros and Cities have all 3 industry slots available (with 1 or 2 filled), and Towns have 2 slots available (with 1 or 2 filled). You might be able to buy an industry of interest in e.g. a City in 1892 or Town in 1917 if you can't get there just yet, so that it's there for you after it shrinks (and an open slot may no longer be available). This could be critical for a Town shrunken to a Village.

Edit: Fixed errors in last paragraph.

good research,
any idea how I could keep a town a town?
I tried to supply a train with a single passenger car from town A to town B, but sooner or later both towns grow into cities.
I thought it would be nice to have a route between small little towns only.
I also tried to run a single resource car to a village to keep it a village size, but soon it becomes a town and keeps on growing.

Hmm, good question, Trump. I would guess that you can't do that with normal play (i.e., a steady supply of any resource, whether P&M or something else). You'd have to tightly control what it gets.

It could be tried either by occasionally (manually) sending e.g. 1 passenger car to it.

Alternatively, you might have a Town nearby (or even far away) that has rapid Mail service to some third city... if you ran 1 mail car between your target town and the highly-serviced one, it wouldn't get much mail, see? (Mail accumulates slower than passengers, so it'd be a better choice, and towns accumulate stuff more slowly than larger cities.) A farther away, highly-serviced Town would be even better... the increased distance means less deliveries over time. But it would be more track work. (Still, it is the rare occasion where being more distant is better!)

Just some thoughts. It wouldn't be hard to tell how much a car-load of something causes a Town to persist... just leave a Town untouched until it nears the time limits I described, drop off one load, and see how much longer it survives. (First, check exactly when it does decay.) I might test that sometime, but it's not high priority for me since most folks want towns to grow.

If you do determine what kind of load it needs to survive, you might could then e.g. fire off a Grasshopper with one load of passengers every 10 years or whatever (killing the Grasshopper when it arrives).

Let us know if you get numbers on this!

How about setting up a train going back and forth between 2 nearby cities. Put it back and forth as many times as possible on the routing screen, then hop over to the 'town' with 1 mail then back to its regular route. The 2 other towns get their pass/mail and the 3rd gets 1 mail every what, 5th or 6th run?

Excellent idea, Snoop. That would keep the deliveries far apart. Why didn't I think of that!

yeah, I know I could delay deliveries etc., but the reason behind this was:

while a good portion of the map becomes very busy with large metro areas, there sometimes is a corner on the map with no trains at all.
I would like to keep the little towns look and have like an oval track connecting 4 towns/resources with a nice long train going in an oval (that's how I once started with a layout)

I got an idea, I will try it and let you know if it worked.

ok, it worked.
sometimes we forget to think about to most simple things.

after making an oval to connect small towns, I just chose 8 cars that will not get any load because none of the town supply or demand the goods needed.
you can even change to passenger/mail cars as long as there is no supply of passengers/mail.

Trump, are you saying the towns stay alive, without any deliveries at all?

Also as far as I can tell, empty cars do not slow an engine down.

RedKnight wrote: Trump, are you saying the towns stay alive, without any deliveries at all?

yes they do, I'll attach a picture of a train that runs now for over 50 years with full passenger and full mail cars, but no deliveries anywhere.
it's losing a lot of money though.

RedKnight wrote: Also as far as I can tell, empty cars do not slow an engine down.

I think you're right, but in this test I used full cars.

Huh... how did you get it to not drop things off?

So the towns have gone past the date they would've declined, and they didn't, eh? I wonder how that works... is it possible they don't decline, simply if they have a rail connection (and the train doesn't matter)? I didn't connect anything at all in my test games, so I would've missed that. Then again, most folks will be setting up routes, if they've connected a town.

But if the train stops, it should naturly drop off and pick up pass and mail. I had a train that was to deliver corn for a bonus to city C, picking it up between A and B. 20 Minutes later, darn if C still needed corn. Well, I was also shipping goods from A to B, and when it stopped at B, the corn was delivered as B needed corn also.
Each stop drops and picks up, which is why most if not all start a load of pass at A, then click on B and just 'close' without touching the load. The AIs do it all the time.

the passengers and mail are not dropped off because none of the three towns where the train stops has passengers nor mail.
the fourth town where I loaded the passengers is no stop anymore.
in other words, you could also connect to a town/city wherever and load passengers and mail, then route the train to your oval, remove the original place from the route and delete the rail that connected to the oval.

today I have another idea that I wan to try, I'll post that in a different post later.

Ah, right, I gotcha, Trump. I'm just so used to making sure I'm not confusing my trains at all (because they're liable to snarl up my network), that I couldn't even think about doing something deliberately abnormal, LOL.

Erm... why don't those towns have passengers and mail? I thought all towns did. Only villages don't.

Sorry to be so dense. I'm still not seeing the whole picture.

RedKnight wrote: Erm... why don't those towns have passengers and mail? I thought all towns did. Only villages don't.

you're right, the whole time I was mixing up villages and towns

that's the bad news... the good news is, now it all makes sense to me