Generation of cities with a population more uniform

[Milko]

Hi

When I create a new game I often get a few very large cities and many small. I do not really enjoy to make urban transport in large cities, so I was wondering if it was possible to force simutrans to generate city with a population more uniform. I tried various settings but I never got good results.

I'm using Exp8.2 - Pak britain

Now I'm using attached settings.

Giuseppe

[jamespetts]

Milko,

the next version (9.0) will have additional settings enabling one to select the number of larger cities generated, which you could set to zero if you choose.

[wlindley]

What if the city generation algorithm reflected the passage of time "before the start of the game" perhaps along these lines:

• Set the year back 100 or maybe 300 years, according to a setting somewhere, perhaps "further back" when playing a "more modern" game -- perhaps reflecting the relation of "game start" to the oldest buildings in the pakset
• Create all towns very small to start, and let them grow with progressively newer buildings
• After selecting a town site, determine whether to actually build there based on a probability from the Growth Factor (see below) of the potential town site.
• With each town created, advance the Year, and continue to add towns with a probability based on "years remaining to game start" divided by "total towns desired", and in each year not adding a town, expand existing towns, also based on the Growth Factor.
• Industries would be added as time progresses as well. This means little towns which early-on get shops and factories (consumers and workers) , would tend to become larger cities, and attract more shops -- a feedback loop just like real life.
• Growth Factor bonuses would be:
  
  
  
  • Proximity to where a river meets the ocean, and to lesser degree, the confluence of two rivers, oceans generally, and rivers generally
  • Proximity to industries, particularly those with high passenger demand

That would solve the problem of cities having "too many new buildings" as well as make for a much more realistic map, would it not?

[jamespetts]

I think that something along these lines but much simpler has long been planned for Standard.

[sdog]

the new system in experimental 9.x works wonderfully -- if you take time to find good parameters.

And it's quite a long time on this system, for a medium sized map 0.5k x 2k and 250 towns, 100 rivers it took me about 10 minutes for map generation on a intel core2 system. (the number of rivers is quite important for the time too.)

perhaps we should start to collect some good parameters in another thread.

[inkelyad]

'max length' for rivers/intercity roads is important too.

And 10min is too long. Do you run debug or optimised version of binary?