EDIT(5th March 2010): I wasn't clear on my intention. This is not just to imitate real world situation.
This could create situation where only higher level of service will able to create larger transportation
client. You could partially service city and fast forward the game, city still can grow at comfortable manner
to increase the network later at player's taste.
Plus, there were situation where when city gets large enough, some could ignore
part of city area since city can still grow with partially serving the city. Plus, there is fast forward thus
it is more so.
Game's one of goal was to connect everything together. This proposal was to curve down
above mentioned controversial situation where one arbitrary ignores developed area.
Also, when online play comes into play, this feature could used to show more per city service quality
player can express.
As cities grow, they become dependent on player's transportation service to run their city.
Affected by its size village, city and capital size.
I wish we could put various negative value multiplier on passenger, mail and freight on different
stage of city size. Like example below for example.
Multiplier type Village City Capital
Passenger 40 60 80
Mail 20 30 40
Freight 20 30 40
Pass.Dependency 0 -20 -40
Mail.Dependency 0 -10 -20
Freight.Dependency 0 -10 -20
So at city level, if one succeeds departing all passenger, it will be 60-20=40 and will be as if there were no penalty.
If no passenger departed for example in above city, half of supposed to be growth value from passenger multiplier
will turn into negative value and either subtracted from city population or add up as penalty to be overcome
with later growth.
EDIT: If this renders game harder to grow too much, pak designer or interested player can modify the growth
factor to off set the proposed effect.
Would this not mean that, if a player started a new game with lots of larger towns, they would all shrink until they became villages or the player got around to connecting them?
For that matter, I assume initial population to be absolutely independent.
So, if they were cities or capitol class from the beginning, they will remain so.
There's even other possibility I can think of where they have one or two decade time before
they get actual shrink/penalty.
There could be actual shrink in population number(so there's less passenger/mail generated and
next industry generation is pushed away)
or
Growth penalty where population does not shrink but city could suffer a penalty where
if for example if it is -100, city must grow +100 for actual real growth can be started.
EDIT1-5th-March-2010-:This shouldn't make these cities and capitols exempt from
dependency factor. Maybe instead of city size class, it should change depending on
how much it grown. So in chart in 1st post, it will be instead of village, city, capitol, it will be
experienced growth: X,Y,Z. For example, 500, 2000, 10 000.
So, first 500 population growth is free of dependency, from 501~2000, the next stage and so on.