How to increase Target Population?

[Gorby]

I've finally played a map to late game, but can't seem to get my cities to grow anymore. Throughout the game they grew as expected, similar to TpF1, but then I get to the late game and it just kind of stops. Fully supplied cargo, etc.

In the city status window there is a "Target Population" listed that is the basis for you total town population (see screenshot). I could swear that number has never increased for the duration of the game.

What is the Target Population based off of? How can I increase it? It's now 2050 in the game and the city hasn't grown in 30 years.

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1966344635

[Autocoach]

For comparison with mine , can you advise how many cities on the map please ?

[Gorby]

3 cities on the map, I believe it is medium size - I made it in the map editor. There is a "back and forth" rail connection between each, as well as a highway road connection with a bus route.

[Mackintosh]

As I understand it (and have observed it to some extent) that number does increase over time, up until 2050, at which point there is hard cap preventing further uncontrolled growth. It's a measure to keep performance in check. You can't change this cap unless you're playing in sandbox mode. Someone please correct me if I'm wrong.

[Autocoach]

You can edit the 'base' number in sandbox mode , but given you only have 3 cities I doubt that the multipliers can be improved much . This 'base' number does increase a little over time but I believe that stops in 2000?. It may be worth adding more cities if you are going the sandbox route - perhaps as suburbs of the current ones.

[Gorby]

Now that you say that, I've discovered that when placing cities in map editor or sandbox you can choose from 5 sizes of city from Tiny-Huge... completely over looked that before. Those sizes determine the preset and un-changing 'Land Use' value per zone in each city (although you can change them yourself with sandbox).

I had chosen 'Small' for my cities, making the land use 90. When you start a map, the target population is equal to the land use. At some point it changes to 1.5 times the land use.

Sure enough, now that I've enabled sandbox I can change the land use values to 150 and now my target population is 225... I'm going to see how high it will let me take it :)

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1966378255

[ClearchusOfSparta]

I believe the limits are between 50 and 800 for each of the variables

[Vimpster]

The target size, before adding the modifiers, increases by 50% between the years 1850 and 2000. After that it will never change. If you start in the year 2000 you will never see it change as the 50% growth will have already been applied to all the towns during map generation. The only way to keep increasing the size after the year 2000 is to keep adding more growth modifiers. But of course how much growth modifiers can be added will be dependant on the map you are on.