CityVille Guide: Tips, Tricks & Hints

Hey, guys I've been playing CityVille for about three weeks now and I have reached level 33 (I placed screenshot of my current city above). You can see a picture of my city on the first day, Here.

Over this time I picked up a few tips, tricks & hints I wanted to share with you. I also made some mistakes while building my city, that I hope you can learn from.

Saving City Cash

The one major thing that I did not do while playing CityVille, was save my City Cash for the higher levels. Looking back now, my city could be at a much higher level if I had just saved my City Cash. Instead I was impatient, and I used the City Cash to fill up spots in my Community Buildings, because I did not have enough friends playing the game three weeks ago.

You start the game off with 5 City Cash and each time you level-up you are awarded with one additional City Cash. The only other way to obtain City Cash is by buying it for real $ and most people, including myself, do not want to spend actual $ on a Facebook game.

Looking back now, I would have saved all of my City Cash, (which would have been 38 total City Cash at level 33) and used it to buy land expansions. As you can see in the picture above, City Coins are not the problem (I have over 400,000 coins), but it is actually the increasing demand for zoning permits that will limit your city's growth.

When you first begin the game a 12x12 Land Expansion is 21,000 Coins and you need only one Land Permit or you can just pay 1 City Cash. However, each time you buy a Land Expansion the amount of coins needed increases by 1000 and the amount of Land Permits required increases by 1. The amount of City Cash required increases by 1 as well.

To obtain Land Permits, your CityVille friends can send you up to 1 Land Permit per day. The more CityVille friends you have, the more likely you will receive Land Permits from them. If you send out Land Permits as gifts, it is likely some will return the favor.

On the other hand if you don't have a lot of CityVille friends, you must rely on City Cash to buy Land Expansions. No matter what level your City currently is at, continue to save your City Cash for Land Expansions, it will definitely be worth it later on. 


Community & Storage Buildings

Community Buildings are the buildings that will increase the maximum population of your city, meaning you can build more Housing. However most Community Buildings require a certain number of friends that you must hire, before the buildings can be completed. The good news is that you can hire the same friend to work in multiple Community Buildings. The bad news is that the same friend cannot be hired for multiple positions in the same Community Building.

Due to these limitations, you should only build Community Buildings that require a number of friends that is less than or equal to the number of CityVille friends you have at that time. For example, if you have eight CityVille friends you should only build Police Stations (7 friends required), Post Offices (5 friends required) and City Halls (3 friends required). You can also build Community Buildings that require a large number of different items, but I feel this takes forever, since these items can only be obtained from friends. A list of Community Buildings and their requirements can be found Here.

Another interesting thing I found, was that, unlike Businesses and Housing, Community Buildings and Storage Buildings do not need to be connected to roads. You can pack these buildings in the corners of your city and they still do their job. I found that I saved a lot of space with this trick, and it left me more room for Businesses, Housing and Farmland.


Many CityVille players think that all buildings must be connected to roads. They waste a lot of their City's space placing roads everywhere, when in reality they don't need to. It would make sense that Community Buildings would need roads for people to get to them, but in this game it just doesn't matter. Be sure to keep this in mind when building and rearranging the structures in your city.


Headquarters

As you progress through the game, you will be given a large headquarters that you can place in your city. I originally built my HQ, but soon found that it took up too much space and so I demolished it. However, it did not disappear, but instead it reappeared in my inventory and it said that I could rebuild it at any time (costs 10 energy to rebuild).

Even though the HQ is not built in my City, I still can collect and supply my franchises as if my HQ was built. You can also continue to expand your franchise to your friends' cities as well. In addition to this, if you wanted to build your HQ, just like Community and Storage buildings it does not need to be connected to a road.

The only benefit I found of having an HQ built in your city is that with each franchise expansion, your HQ building will grow a story higher. You can create an extraordinarily high skyscraper if you expand your franchise to enough cities. Basically, if you have enough room then build your HQ, if not then it is definitely not a big deal and it won't negatively affect your city's growth.


Becoming Mayor

The list of quests needed to become Mayor can be found Here. These quests are relatively easy, but I found the second to last mission to be difficult. For this quest you must build a grade school and to complete it to need to get 15 items, which can only be obtained by spending City Cash or by asking your CityVille friends. I actually spent 10 City Cash on this mission, because I only had a few CityVille friends at the time.

Once you complete the Grade School, you must complete the Become The Mayor mission. For this mission you must have 1,000 population and collect from business 30 times (after you receive the mission).

You then become the Mayor and you unlock Piers! Piers are very important as they allow you to obtain supply through boats, rather than wasting land space to grow crops. In my city I currently have 9 piers and can fit about four boats around every pier. In addition to this, Piers serve doubly as storage buildings and can hold up to 420 supply each.

Supply is very important, because without it you cannot supply your businesses and if you can't supply your businesses, you can't collect from your businesses. If you can't collect from businesses you will not receive any coins from your businesses (It's a vicious cycle). Make sure you have enough goods to continuously supply your businesses.

Maximizing Your Energy

Using your energy efficiently is very important in CityVille. Energy is used to harvest crops, collect from houses, businesses and boats, build every type of building and cut down trees. You can gain energy in the following ways:

#1. Waiting- Five minutes of wait time = 1 energy

#2. Visiting Friends' Cities- Each visit will get you 1 energy (Once a day)

#3. Spend City Cash- 9 City Cash = 12 Energy Battery (Not recommended)

#4. Building, Collecting, Harvesting- You can sometimes get some energy from building, collecting from buildings or harvesting crops, although this is not a very common occurrence.

#5. Collections- Once you complete a collection you can receive some energy, depending on which collection you complete. For example, the Pumpkin Collection will give you 3 XP and 3 Energy.

#6. Gifts- Friends can give you some energy each day, in the form of a gift.


#7. Leveling-up- Once you level-up, all of your energy will be restored. Make a note that this is one of the most important tips to maximizing your energy. Just before you level-up (1 or 2 XP away) you should make sure that you only have 1 or 2 energy left. You should then use this energy to gain that 1 or 2 XP needed for you to level-up.

Once you do this, you will level-up and gain back all of your energy. What you DO NOT want to do is have 10+ energy and then level-up immediately. In this case, all of that energy would go to waste, since you can only gain up to the maximum amount of energy you can hold. This list can be found Here.


Play Around Your Schedule

If you remember one thing from this guide let it be to Play Around Your Schedule. In other words, play CityVille when you have free time, rather than make free time just to play CityVille.

If you have school or work, or any other important things to do, make sure that CityVille doesn't get in the way of that. If you know school ends at 3:00 PM and you usually get home around 3:30 PM grow daily crops, so that you can harvest them the same time each day. On the other hand, if you think you will be busy later or if you play every few days, grow crops or send out boats that take two or three days instead.

If you do have time to play more often, play the game according to the schedule that you have set for yourself. Do Not sit there watching the 5 energy minute timer, waiting for 1 more energy. That will waste tons of time and it could very well make you go insane! Haha, I may be exaggerating a bit, but really, do not spend your entire day playing CityVille, it won't make you level-up any quicker.

Thanks for reading, I hope this guide was helpful!

If you have any questions or comments, feel free to comment below. I will gladly answer any questions you may have.