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CityVille Beginner’s Guide

CityVille is the newest game from Zynga, the makers of the very popular FarmVille and FrontierVille games on Facebook. In CityVille, you move out of the quiet countryside settings of those two games to construct your own successful city from its humble beginnings into a booming metropolis. The game features a lot of different and challenging dynamics which keep it fun, but can also be confusing. So here’s a CityVille Beginner’s Guide, complete with CityVille cheats, strategies, tips and tricks to get up and running quickly.

Your tiny little town will become a booming metropolis quickly in CityVille.

CityVille Basics

If you’ve played many games lately on Facebook, especially any of the city building themed games, then the basics of CityVille will already be familiar. You’ll try to level up by accumulating XP, earn coins, utilize cash (the paid currency in the game) and manage your energy.
Energy is one of the more precious resources in the game. FrontierVille players are already familiar with the concept, but old-school FarmVille players may not have seen it before. Basically, you use up energy on each of the tasks you perform in the game. Energy recharges automatically over time (slowly), and there are several different ways to speed it up. So many, in fact, that we’ve got a separate CityVille Energy Cheats guide dedicated to the subject. All you need to know as a beginner, however, is that you’ll want to maximize your energy use early in the game.

XP, which is short for Experience Points, is earned by completing all the various tasks, quests and activities in the game. As you earn more and more XP, you’ll advance in levels. Besides looking cool, you’ll unlock access to many new buildings and decorations in the game as you reach the higher levels.
Coins and cash are familiar concepts. Coins are the lifeblood of your city. You’ll spend them to build just about everything. You can also spend coins on goods to restock your businesses. You earn coins by operating businesses in your city, which consume goods (more on that later). Cash is the paid currency in CityVille. You start out with some free cash and earn a little bit as you level up. But for the most part, cash must be purchased from Zynga. Cash unlocks certain special exclusive items in the game and also can be used to accelerate the building of some items, particularly community buildings.

Houses

All of your happy city dwellers need a place to live, and there are a lot of housing choices in the game. You also earn rent from all the houses, so they are an important source of coins, especially early on in the game. Each type of house holds a different number of people and larger houses cost more to build. You’re also limited by a population cap, which is the maximum number of residents you can have in your city. To raise that cap, you must construct community buildings.

Community Buildings

Community Buildings are a new concept in CityVille and one of the more confusing parts for beginners in the game. In order to grow your population cap, you’ll need to build community buildings. In addition to costing coins and energy to construct, community buildings need to be staffed by employees. You can either recruit your friends to join your staff for each building or pay cash (the paid currency) to fill the positions. The first community building you’ll construct will be City Hall. After that, you’ll want to build a post office and police station and so on.

Businesses

Businesses are another core component of your city. They provide a place for your residents to spend money, earning coins for your city. The first business you’ll build in the game is a bakery, and you’ll be able to create several different businesses as you gain levels. A very important concept in CityVille is the use of goods. Businesses need to be supplied with goods, which you can produce at your farm and later on through trade with neighbors.

People need to shop and businesses in CityVille are a big part of your growth.

Franchises

Another new concept in CityVille is franchises. Once you’ve build a Franchise Headquarters, you can place franchises of your businesses in your neighbor’s cities. You then supply your franchises with goods and collect coins from those businesses as well. Franchises require a little more management and require a solid supply of goods, but can be a very lucrative way to earn lots of coins in the game.

Farming

What? You thought that now you’ve moved to the big city you wouldn’t have to worry about farming anymore? Not so fast! Farming is a critical part of the game. Crops can be planted and tended to create goods, which supply your businesses and franchises in the game. The crops work very similarly to how they did in FarmVille and FrontierVille. Each type of crop produces a different amount of goods and has a different harvest time, ranging from 5 minutes to a day or two. Crops left untended will wither and die, resulting in a loss of the coins used to plant them.

Farming is still a big part of city life.

An added complexity is storage. Because your goods aren’t consumed all at once, you’ll need to store them. You start out with a single barn, but will quickly want to create silos and other storage buildings to contain all the goods you produce at the farm.

Goals (Quests)

Your early experience with CityVille will be filled with several goals and quests that you receive. In addition to teaching you some of the core concepts of the game, the goals provide you with important early rewards that will help you grow quickly. In fact, you can pretty much stick to following goals through the first several levels of the game. In some cases, you might want to hold off on doing certain tasks (like building storage silos) until you get a goal that requires you to build them.

Friends and Neighbors

Friends and Neighbors have always been a big part of games on Facebook, but they become critical in CityVille. You can visit all of your friends cities and help them tend to houses, businesses, and farms. In return, your friends will be able to do the same in your city. And friends become especially important when it comes to expansion. You’ll need your friends to help you out when it comes to staffing your community buildings so that you can grow your small little town into a thriving city. Visiting and helping friends is also a great way to quickly replenish your diminishing energy supply.