SimCity BuildIt Tips & Tricks

SimCity is one of the most popular computer games of all time, and you can even enjoy the series on your mobile device with SimCity BuildIt. Here are some of the best SimCity BuildIt tips and tricks that you should take advantage of.

SimCity BuildIt isn’t exactly like the computer version, as some of the features are catered for mobile devices, but the idea of the game is to build a city and grow it with as many people as you can fit into the population.

The game heavily resembles the 2013 reboot of the city-building game, coming with similar graphics and a familiar look and feel. That’s certainly welcomed on the mobile platform, as the graphics for the latest SimCity game are pretty impressive.

However, SimCity BuildIt comes with a few differences in order to take advantage of smaller screens and touch screens. It’s a free game to download and play, but there are in-app purchases that you can buy. The game tasks you with manufacturing materials to build residential buildings, stores, and other services, all of which take time to make, but you can speed it up by using your SimCash.

In any case, if you’ve been playing the game and are looking for some help, here are some of the best SimCity BuildIt tips and tricks that you should use.

Figure Out a Good Layout

Pretty much the one goal of SimCity BuildIt is to have as many residents as you can possibly have, and to do this, you need to figure out a good and efficient layout for your buildings and squeeze in as many residents as you can in the small amount of space you have.

Personally, I like to go with a layout that consists of a 2×2 block of residential buildings, followed by a single row where I can put different services and parks. This makes up one city block, and I simply repeat this throughout my city.

It’s probably not the best layout for cramming in the most residents, but I find it to be the most efficient when it comes to needing as few services as possible, since you need police departments, fire departments, hospitals, etc. These cost Simoleons and they can add up quick, so the fewer service buildings you need, the better. As you can see the screenshot above, I only need two small police departments to cover 24 residential buildings.

Keep Your Factories and Stores Busy

Just like with any factory, you’re not doing yourself any favors by having the assembly lines down. Make sure that you always have materials cooking in your factories and stores, that way you’ll have a variety of goods that you can use to upgrade your residential buildings.

If your storage ever gets full, don’t stop manufacturing. Instead, simply sell any excess items you have in your Trade Depot to make room in your storage for more items, for which you can then sell again if your storage gets full.

Doing all of this ensures that you have enough items to upgrade buildings, and it even gets you a bit of extra cash by selling excess items.

Upgrade City Storage and Expand When Possible

Speaking of your storage getting full, the best way to prevent that is by upgrading it. In order to upgrade it, though, you need special items that you can’t manufacturer in your factories or stores. Instead, you have to collect them either by popping speech bubbles that come up randomly or buying them in the Global Trade Headquarters.

The same goes for expanding your land to get more space to build on. You need to collect special items in order to do this.

What many players do is simply spend some time collecting these items and expand their storage and land as much as they can so that way they don’t have to deal with it down the line.

Just don’t do what I did when I first started out and sell those special items when you receive them, because you’ll need them eventually.

Spend Your SimCash on Store Production Slots

When you first start playing the game, you’re given 50 SimCash for free, but you can easily get more by paying for it using the in-app purchases. You can use SimCash to speed up various processes to make the game go quicker, but that’s not the best way to spend your SimCash.

The best way to spend your SimCash is by expanding the store production slots to fit in more slots. The more slots you have for your stores, the less often you have to refill them and the more productive you can be with manufacturing items.

As for factories, the only way to expand those slots is to build bigger factories, which cost Simoleons. Plus, bigger factories become available only when you reach a certain level in the game. For stores, the only way to expand slots is to spend SimCash, so be sure to spend most (if not all) your SimCash for this purpose.

Be Patient and Camp

One of the biggest mistakes that you could make in SimCity BuildIt is adding too many residential buildings and upgrading them too quickly. Remember, you need money to build various services like police, fire, health, etc. and the more buildings you have, the more service buildings that you’ll need to build.

If you build a whole bunch of residential buildings without having enough Simoleons to build enough service buildings, then you’ll be in quite a conundrum and residents will start to move out because they don’t have a police department nearby.

Instead, be patient and stay on a certain level to save up cash until you have enough for fire departments, police departments, etc. This is known as “camping” and it basically involves doing nothing but manufacturing items and then selling those items to make money. One great method for this is by selling chairs, which go for 1,500 Simoleons for five chairs.

One player came up with a way to make around 24,500 Simoleons per day and only playing the game for 40-50 minutes per day. It’s not a cheat at all, but just by making chairs and vegetables, and then selling them, you can make up to 170,000 Simoleons in a week. That’s a lot of cash.