How to grow by 5000 without breaking a sweat.

Over time expanding in cityville has gone from adding a few hundred to 100 and now about 5000 citizens. The new expansion rules for cityville can be very intimidating but with a little thinking ahead and saving you can still make your city grow as far as the eye can see.

Here is something I have seen said on message boards about expansion pretty regularly.

“How am I supposed to expand when I don’t have enough room to build all these houses.”?

Solution 1
Neighborhoods.
Neighborhoods were a great addition to cityville a while back. They are helpful because you can currently put as many as 15 residences in each neighborhood. Now here is the thing. You have to put high yield population houses in to the neighborhood for it to make much of a difference. If you want to build neighborhoods for expansion purposes you need to build neighborhoods that hold mansions and apartment buildings. A park place villa is my favorite house for expansion as four will pretty much meet the population requirements. This will only account for one block of your neighborhood. Plus Mansion estates NBH typically give you generous population drops. Regularly clicking on the neighborhoods which really just means once every day or so costs 15 energies which may sound like a lot, but if you practice being a good neighbor you can look at it as a way to gain 15 exp points, 15 energies and a nice little chunk of change for visiting your neighbors.

Another Neighborhood to build is one that allows apartments. The Garant Apartments are a good one to meet population needs. The family housing neighborhoods make for the worst solution to this issue because there are not any family houses that give you a large enough boost to make the space taken by a neighborhood worth it.

The two properties I recommend are expensive and may seem daunting to many players especially beginners but if you read my guide on making money effectively you can pull in enough money to buy some of them. The task becomes quite a bit easier if you have businesses like the Salvador’s, or the free metro business the Salon. Both are available as quest rewards. With intelligent use of decorations you can make around 50,000 in one click. In order to do this you need to put together a bonus area. This means surrounding a block of space big enough to put a high yield business in the middle of a group of decorations that increases the percentage of your profits. Many quest rewards are great for this purpose, The Christmas presents gave out Black Diamond Slope, thanksgiving gave us the holiday table, there is the Matterhorn, and so on. If you have been using these decorations just for looks you are missing out. I suggest checking out the potency of your decorations. Surrounding a business with fireworks shooters from the Chinese newyear mission or Wind Turbines, which can be bought for regular gold pieces will pay themselves off quickly. Start by building those types of thing right next to the business on all sides. One of the best all time decorations is the small solar panel. At the moment I don’t remember what quest that comes from, but if you want a list of quest guides you can check out cityville chat or the games.com blog for all the info you can read. Before you say that you cannot afford all of these things just understand that you have to take a long approach to the game and always be on the lookout for quest rewards that are decorations, as soon as you get a quest done see what the decorations add. Trust me I started out with the country cottage and a coffee shop just like everybody else.

2. The Bridge

If you have already expanded across the water by building the bridge, check out the bridge upgrades. Once you begin to upgrade your bridge you increase your population by clicking the moving truck icon. No house building is needed for this one, trucks will just drop off the people. They must be moving in with families who live there already. It costs energy each time you use this method but as you increase the level of your bridge the population increases rise. If you have the energy to spare this is a nice way to get over the hump over time.

3. Sky Scrapers
Building the skyscrapers which can be bought coins and requires material collecting is a relatively easy way to get a hold of more land. They cost no more than 50,000 at the most and once you are done with one you will have around 6500 people just like that. And the best part is that the population can still grow through random increases.

4. Build an Embassy for every country you canThe embassies are a gold mine for players who regularly play. If you patiently collect passport stamps you can cash them in for not only great housing but some cool decorations that in some cases would otherwise be city cash items. Some of these can be used in your bonus areas to increase profits. Put down the Embassies and enjoy.

5. Islands
If you have free space in the water you can purchase islands. In many cases most people do not have an spots for islands if they are having trouble find population on land but there are many who expanded out in to the water long before expansions got complicated. The Islands make water just as valuable as any other real estate in the game. Islands can be bought with gold and require gathering parts but once done provide enough population to put anybody over the hump. And then you can expand to more dry land. It is counter intuitive but if you have a lot of blue space on your board it is a great use of it.

6. Buildings that are quest rewards
Cityville has taken to providing high population housing as a part of a quest. Be on the lookout for quests like the valentines quest which rewarded you with the adventure house, the governor’s mansion and others like it. If you are thousands away from building population through the normal process finishing a quest which only requires asking for parts and such if a pretty cheap way to go about it. But if you are not aware of how many people you need to add before you get to lay down that blue square you will regret your lack of vision. Which brings me to me final point.

7. Pay attention and be careful when building.

Through an unfortunate design in the game you are given the right to expand once you meet the population goal set for expansion be it 100 or 6000. If you somehow gain 6600 people from one building but were only 20 people away from meeting the required growth you will only get one more expansion for the huge gain. So pay attention to this and use the bridge or population drops or even small cottages or newlywed houses to put yourself over the hump when you are close. You can knock them down afterwards if you don’t want them taking up space.

A friend of mine pointed out recently that nothing new has come off the desk of the mayor of Meribia in quite some time.  When I put this site together I did so in a way that made sure its advice was topical and universal. It addresses thematic issues that come up in game play as apposed to providing a running commentary on what is being released for the game houses quests etc. Despite this I will be releasing a series of new articles to assist all in need. Take care.