Simcity BuildIt Followup

Happy New years everyone :) Make any cool resolutions?


Follow up to iOS Simcity Buildit, I've hit level 16! This marks end game for the periodically added required services that your citizens will demand. There are still three more specializations to unlock at 20, 25 and 30 but those are all optional. Beyond those, I still need to hit 90k population in order to unlock the final mini game, disasters. My original plan was to stop building residentials at 16 and start improving quality of life for my existing buildings to increase population that way... but keys take way to long when solely working off the docks and in game cash comes in way to slow if your not upgrading residential buildings unless you build and sell on the player market. Keys spent on education would be the quickest way for me to boost population, but with the Docks, at best I'm averaging three keys a day due to down time between ship arrivals.

Hrm.

Any who, bullet note observations follow.
. There are six total specializations. Parks, Education, Transportation, Entertainment, Gambling, Landmarks.
. Parks are required, your residentials wont advance beyond a certain point without them and your citizens will abandon your residentials if you remove them after. The various parks require population milestones to unlock and require a mix of in game and iap currency's to purchase. Parks annoyingly also require road access.
. The remaining five have a in game cost of entry building that must be placed at all times in order to have access to the rest of the buildings in each category. All the rest of the buildings in each category cost keys. Keys are earned via Docks and Disasters.
. Docks generate work every 6 hours and you have 18 hours to complete the work.
. Disasters require components randomly acquired by reading your citizens thought bubbles or purchased off the player market.
. You will need 32 fully developed residential buildings to reach level 16.
. At level 16 I have the above mentioned 32 residentials. I also have 3 small fire/police/park/medical buildings providing total coverage to them. My city is running off 3 waste management, 5 small sewage, 4 small water towers, one large wind generator and 2 small wind generators.

Tips follow.
. Do not spam build residential buildings. Finish building one then build another. This lets you focus your industrial/ commercial work and also frees you up for maybe selling excess industrial/ commercial product on the player market. If you build your residentials too fast you'll always be broke trying to keep up with the new required services as you level up.
. Ignore the random purchase requests around your city unless your really strapped for cash and your market is full of unsold product. If you must use the random purchase requests, aim for the ones asking for components for inventory/land upgrades and disaster scenarios. Yes selling those can set your progress back on land/inventory and key generation but at least they sell for a decent price. Everything else from those random purchase requests are an insult.
. I've unlocked four work slots on each of my commercial buildings, still have lots of unspent iap and haven't had to spend a dime on this game yet.

Random photos of my city at level 16!

 

My original feelings for this game stand. Its an excellent attempt by EA. The iap prices of certain buildings are really overpriced and speeding up any timers is a total rip off but the iap currency store is decent and the entire game is playable and enjoyable without spending a dime. I haven't spent a penny yet, I will be to support them but its nice knowing that I didn't have to.

What I do BADLY want though is one of two things. Either a edit mode where I can inventory and rearrange my entire city or a pause button where I can move things around without pissing my citizens off.