While not quite as robust as the main games in the franchise, SimCity BuildItoffers plenty of challenges for players who enjoy city-building and resource-collecting games.Gamezebo’s SimCity BuildIt Tips, Cheats and Strategies will help burgeoning city-planners out by ensuring their city’s starting foundation is as solid as possible.
Plan Ahead
Every time you place a residential zone in SimCity BuildIt, remember that if the zone is not covered by the necessary city services, the building will ultimately become abandoned and won’t generate any tax income for you. This is bad.
As you place fire stations, police stations, and so forth, pay attention to their area of effect. You want to get the most coverage possible, so placing a fire station right in the corner of your city zone isn’t the smartest move, since the fire station’s area of effect will be overflowing into the deadzone, where you can’t build.
Also, remember that factories and service buildings do not need to be covered by firefighter/police/etc. protection. Notice how in the image above I have positioned my two fire stations to blanket the residential areas, but left the industrial buildings (bottom left) well out of the zone.
Sell Your Excess
Your factories should always be working. As you play, queue up some of the resources with the faster turn-around, and before you leave the game to go do something else, queue up some of the resources that take extended amounts of time to produce.
Occasionally thought bubbles pop up with a gold coin in them. If they are popped, a city informant tells you of the potential to sell your resources for some coins. Unless the deal is really weak, it’s best to always sell the lower-tier resources, as you can always get them back in a few minutes with the factories anyway.
No Paving or Relocation Fees
There is no cost to up-rooting a residential area and plopping it down into another suitable location. Same goes factories and city services like government buildings and power plants. There is also no charge for paving roads.
With this in mind, it can make getting out of a poorly-planned situation super easy: just extend the road out and loop it around, or simply drag it into a dead-end. Then move the buildings you need to move out of the way to the freshly-paved road, then rotate the buildings in and out as needed. When you’re all done you can delete the new road, or simply leave it as is and have it become part of your city.
The Road to Nowhere Success
Dead-ends are your friends in SimCity BuildIt.
Look at my city in the image above; notice that stretching out of the northeastern side of my city is a long road all by itself? At the end of that road is the sewage processing plants that keep my city smelling fresh. They themselves smell awful, which is why they are all the way up there.
Because roads are free, there is no reason why you shouldn’t keep those stinky buildings (factories included) as far away from your residents as possible. While their location comes with an area-of-effect stink-zone, their services provided do not. As long as they are attached to the road, they will service the city, no matter how far out you place them.
Expand With Caution
I found that I was constantly getting access to more residential areas than I could support. Sure I could plop down buildings alongside new roads…but I lacked the finances to support those homes with utilities and services.
After a bit, I realized that’s ok, and instead I focused my efforts on improving what I already had.
Resist the urge to fill up your whole map with buildings and roads. Focus on a portion of the map to begin with, or you’ll just be stretching your resources too thin and will have difficulty making much progress. Remember, the bigger the building is, the more people can live in it, and all those people are going to pay you taxes.
What do you think is more valuable for you as a tax collector: twenty acres of trailer parks, or two acres of huge skyscrapers?
Tom Christiansen
Former Good Morning America child star, Tom spends his time these days writing lots of things for people to read. He's a fan of independently developed video games, and always roots for the underdog. Send him animated .gifs on Twitter: @tomscott90. He likes those things
