One of the biggest names in mobile gaming has released a new title that should appeal to anyone who enjoys games such as SimCity BuildIt and others of its kind. Gameloft’s City Mania is now available for iOS and Android devices, and aside from building your city and making it as glorious and prosperous as you possibly can, you’ll be able to recruit dozens of funny characters and unlock more of them, while strategizing on how to expand, upgrade, and keep your population as happy as possible. There are hundreds of buildings for you to create, different items and landmarks you can use to decorate (including actual ones like the Eiffel Tower, Leaning Tower of Pisa, Tower of London, and more), and, once again, funny characters that have their own personalities.
We don’t want to spoil the game too much, especially since there’s a ton of things to learn about it so you can achieve mastery and build the ultimate city. So how can you do this in the most time-efficient, stress-free way possible? Read on, as we’ve got you covered with our City Mania strategy guide. We’ve got more than ten tips and tricks for you for running your city in an effective and efficient manner, and we’ve got all the important topics covered and explained in detail.
1. Keep On Building Houses
When it comes to unlocking new stuff in City Mania, and when it comes to leveling up and creating a city whose population numbers millions, your best bet is to build houses, then build them some more. This would require you to place construction sites, and after you’ve seen that site transform into a house, you can set up another construction site right away. Also expect to unlock several new structure types as you go along, building more houses and leveling up. But don’t expect things to be a walk in the park once this happened – requirements may vary from building type to building type, from house to house. In this case, you should continue what you’re doing and place construction sites one after another if you could.
In fact, we’d recommend building as soon as you’ve logged into the game and collected any resources that are there to collect, so you can make the most out of your time.
2. Build Those Homes Smartly
Although you should act as quickly as you could when building houses so you can level up and unlock new building types faster, you shouldn’t be placing those construction sites willy-nilly. One thing to keep in mind is to place your houses next to fire stations and other establishments that ensure the wellbeing and/or safety of your residents. If a house is too far away from these places, people will move out due to the risks involved.
Likewise, you also should be placing your houses far away from pollution-generating buildings. Do not build new homes near factories, as the pollution your residents have to deal with will affect their happiness, and affect your bottom line once everything is said and done.
3. Amuse Your Population With Entertainment, Have The Right Services
It should go without saying that the happiness of your population is of paramount importance. That’s where the second tip comes in once again – avoid building houses far away from fire stations, etc., or close to factories, etc., don’t build willy-nilly. If you build houses that are too close to each other, your population won’t like that either. Aside from avoiding that, you also need to ensure that your citizens are provided with adequate entertainment, while also providing them with services. Factories are important too, just as long as they’re not too close to the houses.
Aside from a fire station, you need electricity and water for your population, and buildings that cover those services. As for entertainment-related buildings and structures, keep in mind how many homes could benefit from these buildings, as well as your parks. A happy population will earn you more moolah, so do what you could to ensure their happiness and satisfaction.
4. You Can Relocate Buildings If You Wish
It happens to the best of us – you may place a house or another building somewhere, then regret it later on if you realize you may have placed a home too close to a factory or power plant, or if the fire station doesn’t cover enough homes, for instance. But you don’t need to fret if you end up making such mistakes. You’re free to move a building or home to another place, and if worse comes to worst, you can demolish it. It’s not as bad as you think, and not as bad as it would be in the real world, so don’t worry about it too much.
5. Upgrade One House At A Time Only
When upgrading houses in your city, avoid upgrading more than one at a time – one house, one upgrade, and that’s it. The reason behind this is the fact that Bizzies can give you a gift for upgrading one house at a time, and not anything more than that. So who, or what are these Bizzies and how can they help you? Well, they happen to cover a very important part of City Mania and its mechanics, so read on as we discuss them further in a separate tip.
6. What Are Bizzies And Why Should You Care About Where You Place Them?
As we hinted in the above tip, Bizzies play a key role in City Mania’s mechanics, and an argument can even be made for them being the heart and soul of the game. These are people you can assign to jobs to help you run your city, as Gameloft explains in the game description, and once you’ve assigned them to these jobs, they can offer some game-changing boosts to some of your city’s more essential buildings. Each Bizzie has their own specialization, and that simply means they can’t be assigned to any random building, but it won’t be uncommon for you to have multiple choices as to where you can assign your Bizzies. The general rule here is to assign a Bizzie to a place where they can benefit a building the most, but many have suggested that they’re best-assigned to service-related buildings. That’s where the area-of-effect system comes in – if Bizzies are assigned to services, they can increase a building’s area of effect, or increase said building’s productivity. As such, place them in the largest building of its kind so you can get the best effects, regardless of what they are.
7. Bizzies Can Also Improve Your Star Power Rating
Not only can Bizzies help your buildings achieve optimum productivity and then some, they can also increase your Star Rating significantly. A higher Star Rating allows you to unlock more advanced buildings – an example of this would be the Medium Factory you can unlock once you’ve reached the first Star Rating. That’s going to produce a substantial amount of additional electricity for your city. All the information you need regarding Star Rating perks can be accessed via the Star Power icon on the left of your screen.
8. How To Unlock More Bizzies
The game will allow you to unlock more Bizzies by playing the game like you normally would and opening the free crates. However, there’s an even more lucrative way of unlocking them, albeit one that’s considerably harder and trickier. Each day, you’re given the option to collect cards corresponding to a certain Bizzie. That would usually require you to spend a truckload of resources, and resources in this game are quite hard to come by. But if you’re able to pull it off, we suggest that you go for it, as that could speed things up. Work on those requests if you’ve got the luxury of time and/or resources, or you won’t be getting much out of this method , if anything at all.
9. Fulfill The Special Requests
City Mania will sometimes have special requests, or tasks, that you need to complete in order to get lots of resources as a reward. For example, you may need to build a certain number of houses, or you may be asked to reach a certain population threshold. These tasks can be achieved the organic way, but if you know what they are, then consciously work toward them so you can get your resources faster.
10. Expand Your City’s Storage
Speaking of resources, you should make sure to expand and upgrade your storage whenever possible. Early on, you’ll already have several buildings that are producing a ton of resources, but the catch here is that any items in storage need to be varied as much as possible. This would require you to get more storage space, though this extra space is essentially crafted, so to say, as certain premium materials are needed for this.
These upgrade materials can be collected by opening crates, or they can also be given by Bizzies as rewards once you’ve upgraded a house or set up a new building, just as we told you several tips ago. You can also use your cash, which is the game’s premium currency, to buy the materials, but this may sometimes cost you a good chunk of your premium currency, as you’ll need a lot of materials. We suggest using your cash for these storage upgrades in the early goings, but as the costs progressively ramp up, you might not want to spend that currency too often.
11. Factories Need To Run Like A Well-Oiled Machine
As we said earlier, the first thing you should do upon logging into the game is to collect the resources generated by your buildings. But after that, you should then move on to creating items that won’t take a lot of time to complete. Typically, production will be ready to commence, and any completed items will be ready for you to collect while you’re still playing. As for the things that take more time to complete, you can schedule these for periods when you expect to be away from the game for a while, such as if you’re getting ready to go to sleep. Make sure your factories are being run smartly, and that way you’ll be progressing through City Mania faster than you normally would. As a bonus tip, you can also monitor the requirements for building upgrades, or requirements for filing Bizzie meters to further optimize production.
12. About Building Fusion
City Mania, as we’ve observed, seems to have more than its fair share of RPG-inspired mechanics, and one of these is the option to fuse buildings. This option becomes available once you’ve made it to level 13, and doing so offers you some neat benefits.
When fusing buildings, you need to take two buildings that are close to each other, whose levels are both maxed out. This will cost you some resources, but you’ll end up with some spiffy-looking, more productive buildings, while also saving some space. With space constraints often coming into play in this game, you’ll need all the free space you can get, so fuse buildings if you’ve got a chance to do it!
13. Expand Your City
Lastly, if you tap on the lots next to your city, you’ll have the option to expand your city by buying those lots. That’s another great way to get more of that much-needed space, though the catch here is that lots may vary in pricing. You will also need to collect certain rare items, and that’s going to require you to tap on the Bizzies and give them a high-five. (Yes, you read that right.) You’ll need a bit of timing here, high-fiving a Bizzie just as they’re at their peak.
Going back to the lots, choose the lot that costs the least, as that’s going to make it easier for you to expand, and easier for you to get the real estate you need to move forward.
There you have it! That’s all you need to know in order to build the perfect city in Gameloft’s fantastic new game, City Mania! Do you have additional tips or tricks? Or just want to share your thoughts about the game? In any case, feel free to leave a comment below!