I need 400 potions per house upgrade but only get 76 an HOUR. I can't get more potions without more population.

[Loser]

Am I soft locked? I only have 18k population and I need 40k to upgrade the healing centre.

[Truth_X_ile]

There's 11 major things you need to take into account when dealing with your issue

The Top 4 Major Things You Need to Know

3 Housing Locations: Within Grasslands, Arid Plains & the Snowlands, you'll find all the housings you need to increase your population, but that isn't enough on its own, other fundamental things can help increase your population, of course I understand you'll also need higher levels and population to reach the later areas, it's just best to note that there are other locations that have housing for you to know about

Managing Happiness: Investing in buildings that increase happiness, happiness actually increases your population by a percentage based on the happiness rating, immensely useful

Repairing Buildings: Don't neglect your town, while you "CAN" repair everything, you can also manually fix specific buildings by clicking the Wrench & Screwdriver Icon that shows up on a building that needs to be repaired, so you can focus on the buildings that affect happiness and total population means

Town Health: Always make sure your town health is always 100%, it is a must thing as much as repairing buildings, the cost to cure 1% will be 1/10 of your current amount created of herbs or potions, curing 10 will be the exact amount of your amount created, you can find this above your buildings, should look like a Green Plus Symbol, next to herbs and potions icons while of course the number next to the plus icon is the amount you are curing, simply click one and your town will be healed that much percentage

Basically Happiness is a must as well as keeping those buildings repaired so it doesn't overly affect your population decrease, while the tips below focus more on everything as a whole that is necessary to keeping your population management in check

Other Tips Basically Needed for Longevity & Population

Invest in Making Herbs: This is fundamentally needed in order to increase your production in potion making, but can also be used to increase happiness when it's getting low if potions aren't readily available

Invest in Making Potions: Of course this is your issue, it's low, but each tick provided of your amount of potions made, means every hour a tick is processed, you'll gain your base potion making in that time, of course increasing it's production would obviously help as well

Resources & Buildings: It is very important to keep an eye on repair costs, building costs to upgrade buildings as well as how many resources you are creating of each one, as various buildings require more or less than other buildings do, just when they reach their next tier, they'll need prominently even more resources

Storage, Following Resources Tip: Don't neglect your storage, you need to upgrade this building along with all the resource upgrades you're working towards

Invest in Education: Education actually help increase the base amount of resources you gain, the higher your Education, the more bonus supplies for resources you will receive

Seasons: These are a major factor in how productive your town will make progress towards it's ticks, mostly being the most harsh during Winter, progress will be slow during this time compared to other seasons

Cash Mule: Township is a cash mule, until you unlock the Town Hall for taxing purposes which will then eventually nullify most of your needs towards progress in township, your reserver money will be an issue if you can't manage to upkeep the cost for repairs on your town

Township is really slow, I started but not really started Township on my Hardcore & Standard characters but ignored it as it sat there doing nothing, for Adventure Mode, it was my last skill unlocked and literally was around the time of the update, so I got my Hardcore Character up to 120 Township, mid way with Stanard & trying to make slow progress with Adventure Mode as I have no Legacy Ticks to make it faster

I never bought into the early grind of Township, only started Township after the major update to change how Township worked, nor did I look into how it works, just learned from scratch on my own, confusing at first, but once you know the fundamentals on growing and progressing your town, it becomes really easy eventually

But hopefully, I've helped you understand and potentially resolved your issue you were having

Good Luck & Have Fun