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City Island 2 Tips, Cheats & Strategy Guide: 6 Hints Every Player Should Know

Sparkling Society’s City Island 2 is a city-building game for Android and iOS that follows up on the original City Island title and falls well into the category of “simulation tycoon games,” as Sparkling Society says. You get to build houses and community buildings and decorate them, set up a transport system with a train station, and create jobs for your people so that your city earns money and gold. You’ll also have quests provided by your own people, and have the chance to do a whole lot more in your virtual city, all with the goal of making it as great a place to live in as you could.

If this is your first time playing the City Island franchise, we recommend you to check our quick City Island 2 strategy guide, as we’ve got some tips that can help you get settled in as you run your city.

1. Use The Time Lapse Cheat

The brutal truth is that it does take a while for buildings to be completed in City Island 2, and that’s especially the case once you’re an expert and in the later stages of the game. And while the wait won’t be that long at first, you can speed up the process and not have to wait for your buildings. The key to doing this is the time lapse cheat, where you can advance the time on your phone or tablet by the amount of time required to complete your pending building. Return to the game and you’ll see your building all completed.

2. Don’t Overdo The Time Lapse Cheat

One drawback of time lapsing is throwing the date and time on your device all out of whack – it’s easy to miss appointments or reminders that way, after all. With that in mind, we suggest only using the time lapse cheat if the wait is simply unbearable, but not every time you need to wait for a building to be completed. Better yet, make sure you change the time back to normal after you’ve set it forward – you won’t lose anything and your buildings will still be there, in completed form.

3. Tips For Building Roads

Now, that you’ve got buildings, you’ll also want to have some roads next to them so that you can make the most out of your buildings. However, you don’t need to ensure that the roads are connected to each other. For example, you can stick to building just one road and surrounding it with as many buildings as you wish. That’s also the case with canals and walkways, which activate all buildings they touch.

4. Focus Your Expansion On The Rare Buildings

Eventually, you’ll want to go for those rare buildings on the map, such as the hydroelectric station and the currency exchange center. Again, those buildings will be activated once your roads touch them, and once that happens, they can give you some nice benefits in the game. For instance, the trade center and the currency exchange center will both allow you to convert your cash into gold, which is the game’s premium currency. We’ll tell you more about that premium currency in a little bit. The hydroelectric station, on the other hand, provides more power to your buildings.

5. How Else Can You Get Free Gold?

Aside from making use of the rare currency exchange building, there are other ways to get yourself some gold. One way is to go to the in-app store to make a purchase – that’s not going to be free, just to let you know. The free way is to go to the Free Gold menu that you see when you start playing a session of City Island 2. That menu contains a plethora of offers from Tapjoy; personally, we find their offers quite inconvenient and/or laden with catches. That’s why we suggest carefully reading what’s in the offers and checking what’s in it for you. Some of the offers are free and come with no strings attached, but others may ask for your personal information, including, but definitely not limited to your credit card number. Be careful when accepting offers, and once again, make sure there aren’t any gotchas included.

6. Follow The Citizens’ Quests

Last, but not the least, you’ll want to follow and complete the quests given to you by your citizens. Any time you feel like your game has gotten too big for you or like you’re in over your head, you can always regroup by following the quests, as they’ll lead you on the right path and provide you feedback on how you’re faring so far.

Silas

Thursday 21st of September 2017

How do you build a dock? I looked everywere

Snook

Sunday 9th of July 2017

I did the time lapse. Thanks for the heads up on the hours adding up. I've got 8 days before I earn any money

Chelsie

Saturday 27th of August 2016

I used time lapse cheat now none of my businesses will make a profit for 300 hours. Can this be fixed?

Legend gamers

Thursday 29th of August 2019

Tis can be fixed just gollow these steps: 1. go to settings and extend the date (+1 day) 2. Come back to the game but be carefull not to collect any money from the commercial buildings 3. Go back to the setting and make the date come back to the real time 4. Again go back to the game and enjoy playing !