CityVille Cheats & Tips: Getting Started Guide

It's time to set out on another adventure and travel to the far away lands of CityVille. Zynga's new city-building game puts you at the head of a small country town. After becoming mayor, you'll construct businesses, spread franchises, build homes, and even do a little farming. CityVille is full of great features, but this can often be a little overwhelming. Fortunately, our CityVille Cheats & Tips: Getting Started guide aims to help your city quickly develop into a budding metropolis.

Continue reading to check out our brief CityVille Cheats & Tips: Getting Started Guide to help you get started building your own city.

Getting Started
cityville cheats getting started guide
CityVille uses the standard XP, Coins, Cash, and Energy formula found in most Facebook games. You use up Energy doing tasks around your city, and you gain XP and Coins from completing these tasks. Get enough XP and you'll level up. Leveling up opens up new businesses, houses, decorations, and more for you to build in your city. Finally, Cash can be bought and is used to buy premium items, services, and to opt out of sending requests to your friends.

However, CityVille does mix things up by including Goods. Before you can collect Coin payments from your businesses, you must use Goods to stock up your store, so it's important to have a strong supply. Goods can be obtained through shipments and by harvesting crops (more on that later).
cityville cheats getting started guide

Houses & Community Buildings
In CityVille, you'll need to construct houses in order for your city to grow. Building houses will allow more people to move in, and allow you to collect more housing payments. However, your city has a maximum population limit, and as your city's population approaches the max, the citizens will get progressively unhappier.

To raise the maximum potential population, you have to build Community Buildings such as a City Hall or a Post Office. In addition to using up some Energy, these buildings require several of your friends to help by becoming employees. The alternate option is to pay 1 Cash per every position you need filled.
cityville cheats getting started guide
Businesses & Franchises
Constructing businesses is crucial to the prosperity of your CityVille City. Businesses, once unlocked, must be built and stocked before they can start making money.

A business can be turned into a franchise by building it your friends' towns. Once you have a chain going, you can build the franchise HQ in your own town and start collecting extra Coins. You are paid more based on the number of stores your franchise has opened. Collect your bonuses at the HQ.

Complete Goals & Collections
Like other popular Facebook games, CityVille is loaded with goals to complete. Completing goals rewards you with a variety of extra Coins, XP, Energy and other surprises. At the beginning, goals are often tasks that you would be doing anyways. So when getting started with CityVille, it's best to do everything based on what goals you currently have, to get those added rewards.
cityville cheats getting started guide
While in CityVille and working on your town, special items sometimes pop out of buildings. These items make up collections. Collect one of each of the five objects from the same set, and you can trade them in for XP, Energy, Coins and more.
cityville cheats getting started guide
Farming & Shipments
CityVille also allows you to work the land. Farming is one of the ways you'll be able to maintain a constant supply of Goods. Build farm plots on the land, plant seeds, and harvest crops to receive XP and precious Goods. As always, make sure to harvest those crops on time.
cityville cheats getting started guide
The other way to earn the Goods that stock your businesses, earn you coins, and keep your town running, is by using shipments. After getting started and completing various goals, you'll be allowed to make shipments with the train. Shipments either allow you to buy or sell Goods from neighboring towns. The larger the transaction, the longer the train will take to return. As you progress through the game, new modes of shipping will become available for even more ways to collect Goods.

Neighbors & Friends
In CityVille, to turn your town into an urban metropolis, you're going to need a horde of friends to help you. Friends can be used for almost every task. When visiting a neighboring town, you'll be able to harvest crops, water seeds, collect rent, and help local businesses. As mentioned above, you can also create franchises and send trains to your friends' cities.

Another great tip is to watch your friends' walls and your Facebook news feed. Your friends are bound to post notices to their walls offering free XP, Coins, and Energy which can be extremely valuable when getting started with CityVille.
cityville cheats getting started guide
The world of CityVille has a ton of features and they can be overwhelming at first. Keeping track of goods, opening franchises, and collecting rent, all on a limited Energy supply can be incredibly difficult. So although our CityVille Cheats & Tips: Getting Started Guide covered many of the basics, check out our CityVille Cheats & Tips: Energy Guide for even more detailed CityVille help.

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CityVille reaches 100 million players, nearly half of all Facebook gamers

Honestly, we all kind of expected this to happen. CityVille has reached 100 million monthly active players, Mashable reports. Though, it is still staggering to see one Facebook game reach nearly half of all social gamers in just about 40 days when it took the previous champion, FarmVille, months to reach a mere 84 million players. (It's crazy to call 84 million players of a single game "mere," but c'est la vie.)

Actually, CityVille hasn't quite reached the 100 million mark yet, but with 99,903,740 players and up to 400 thousand added daily it truly is only a matter of time, according to Mashable. Regardless of whether CityVille has eclipse the rest of the Zynga game lineup, they're not going anywhere. Zynga games hold four of the top five spots in AppData's list of largest Facebook apps. In fact, a game by another developer doesn't appear on the list until 17th place with Digital Chocolate's Millionaire City. However, it's unlikely that CityVille can retain 100 million monthly players for long much less stay on top. Then again, it's more than likely that it'll be yet another Zynga game that eventually topples the gargantuan city builder.

How long do you think CityVille will remain on top? What game or developer do you think can give CityVille and Zynga a challenge?

Angry Birds Vs. CityVille: The birds are soaring to social networks

Angry Birds All Good
And here we were, calling out to the heavens, "Who will stand up to the mighty CityVille?" Unsurprisingly, Angry Birds creator Rovio mentioned at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, Spain that it will be taking our irate, plump avian friends online and onto social networks (i.e. Facebook). Though, it is surprising that we didn't think of this when drafting our predictions for 2011. Who else could defeat Zynga and the most popular social game ever than the most popular mobile game ever?

While Rovio wouldn't provide any details concerning its imminent move to our web browsers, according to The Next Web, it did say that it plans to bring another 100 million players in the move to Facebook. (Alright, so Facebook isn't confirmed, but the game's Valentine's Day edition suggest otherwise.) Considering the game has already reached 75 million downloads--and social games are free to play--that's not too far a stretch. Not to mention Rovio has the strength of the Angry Birds name, which is just about everywhere from board games to stuffed animals and Super Bowl commercials.

With that kind of following, Zynga should be shakin' in its boots right about now. Especially with CityVille in slow decline from its peak of over 100 million players last month. When your game has been featured in a Super Bowl commercial you probably don't need to worry about that cross promotion nonsense. Since Rovio is currently working on Angry Birds Rio, the birds likely won't be hitting Facebook until Spring at the earliest. Will Rovio prove the naysayers wrong?

March Madness Facebook Game Showdown: Round 1

Every March, the college basketball season ends with its NCAA Basketball tournament. Sixty-eight college basketball teams qualify for a frenzied rush to be named the best team in the nation. The tournament is a single elimination tournament, one loss and your team goes home. Due to the crazed nature of the games and frenetic pace the tournament has been given the name "March Madness."

At the Games.com - The Blog!, we are just as passionate about Facebook games as some people are about basketball. So -- we thought -- what the heck! Let's make a tournament of Facebook games.

Here's how its going to work:

We chose the top 16 games by daily active users and seeded them by their total number of players as of March 17 (St. Patrick's Day felt like a good day to get the numbers.)

All the first round match-ups have been listed in this post.
Vote which game you think should advance. It's that easy!
Vote early and vote often.

We'll tally all the votes over the weekend and set up out second round match ups based on which games got the most votes. It's win or go home time for you favorite Facebook games! Let the madness begin!


In our first match up we have a real David vs. Goliath. Can the upstart Car Town of Cie Games hang in there verses the hulking behemoth of a game in Zynga's CityVille? Car Town has been on the decline for the last month but has retained its most loyal players. Can it hang with the monster of CityVille?

(1) CityVille vs. (16) Car Town
CityVilleCar Town
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The number two seed is Zynga's (You're going to see Zynga a lot) FarmVille. If this had been last year, FarmVille would have been a clear number one. FarmVille has drawn the Games.com Blog's favorite game, Popcap's Zuma Blitz. This is really a match up of two contrasting styles and has different types of players. There is no way FarmVille can lose is there?

(2) FarmVille vs. (15) Zuma Blitz
FarmVilleZuma Blitz
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Our third match-up brings to wildly different styles to the floor. Zynga's Poker, the granddaddy of all Facebook games is taking on the cute bastion of feminine fashion, CrowdStar's It Girl. The audiences for these two games could not be more different. Could this be our first upset match-up?

(3) Zynga Poker vs. (14) It Girl
Zynga PokerIt Girl
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Zynga's FrontierVille locks horns with LOLApps's RavenWood Fair. Two games so similar could really battle to the very end. FrontierVille has the advantage in age but Ravenwood Fair has the leg up on beauty. Could this be an age before beauty situation? It could be a toss up.

(4) FrontierVille vs. (13) RavenWood Fair
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Popcap's second entry Bejeweled Blitz is the favorite in the dreaded 5 vs. 12 match-up. Wooga's Monster World has history on it's side. In the NCAA basketball tournament the 5 seed is upset more by the 12 seed than an other seeding in tournament history. Could this be Monster World's chance to shock the world?

(5) Bejeweled Blitz vs. (12) Monster World
Bejeweled BlitzMonster World
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Two older games go head to head next Zynga's Cafe World battles Playfish's Pet Society. Both games harken way back to 2009 when Playfish and Zynga were still vying to supremacy for which company would be the biggest on Facebook. (Wow,things have changed)

(6) Cafe World vs. (11) Pet Society
Cafe WorldPet Society
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Zynga's Treasure Isle attempts to vanquish Playfish's Restaurant City in the next match up. Playfish and Zynga have a long history of going head to head and each had a game in nearly every genre in the early days of the Facebook game market. They both be itching to eliminate the other!

(7) Treasure Isle vs. (10) Restaurant City
Treasure IsleRestaurant City
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The dude match-up of the tournament is Zynga's Mafia Wars verses Digital Chocolate's Millionaire City. Both these games have a bit more of an edge and man-centric feel to them. We'll see if they come out fighting.

(8) Mafia Wars vs. (9) Millionaire City
Mafia WarsMillionaire City
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CityVille: Premium Goods double in production, maximum capacity raised

If you were unsatisfied with the amount of Premium Goods you could both produce and store in CityVille's relatively new Factory feature, you'll be happy to know that Zynga has changed both of these elements for the better, allowing you to earn more Premium Goods when you gather your friends' help on each job.

Now, Factories now pay out double the amount of Premium Goods per worker (that is, friend) that you have helping on your job. That is, if a job used to pay out a bonus of 55 Premium Goods for each worker you had helping, you'd now receive 110 Premium Goods on that same job, by collecting just a single friend.

To account for the excess Premium Goods you'll now have on hand, Zynga has also doubled the amount of storage you'll have by default for Premium Goods to a total of 2,000 Premium Goods. This is on top of your normal Goods storage, and is not affected by how large that storage bar happens to be - it is an entirely separate meter.

It seems as though Zynga is started to move in the right direction, adding things that help the game rather than hurt it (at least in the eyes of the majority of players). We'll make sure to let you know if this trend continues in the future.

What do you think of these alterations to the Factory system? Have you even built the Factory in your town, or did you think it was too large to care about?

CityVille: New decorations accompany Dance Studio Goals

Yesterday, we brought you a complete guide to CityVille's new quest line surrounding the introduction of a Russian Dance Studio to your city. If you are interested in adding more items to your town in the same Russian theme, you'll be happy to know that a duo of new decorative items are now available in the game's store.

These items are inspired by Russian Stacking Dolls, and in fact, one of these items is one such doll. The Stacking Doll is a decorative item that can be placed near a business to add a 1% boost to its payout. You can purchase a single Stacking Doll from the store for 300 coins.

The other item is the Pigeon Popper, which looks incredibly similar to the Stacking Doll (in terms of the item's shape), but is of course themed after a Pigeon, rather than a Russian woman. It is also much more expensive, being a premium item costing 8 City Cash. The Pigeon Popper adds a 2% bonus to all surrounding buildings.

For a complete look at the other items released in this theme, which include the Dance Studio itself and the Fine Arts Theatre, make sure to check out our guide.

What do you think of these new decorations? Do you like cultural decorations in your game, or would you be happy with a never-ending supply of new flowers, trees, and the like?

April Fools! CityVille Energy Bandits Goal: Everything you need to know

Even CityVille is taking part in the tomfoolery of April 1 with a new mini-goal of sorts, "Energy Bandits." In addition to your everyday Bandits, Energy thieves have appeared in CityVille, and it's your job to capture them personally. Upon logging into the game and collecting from a few properties, Sam will appear exclaiming, "The energy bandits have been seen in your town!" Clicking OK will present you a treat.

Save Energy!

    Catch as many Bandits as you can in 30 seconds


As soon as you press that "OK" button, Sam will ready you to click on as many Energy Bandits as possible. When you accept, you'll have 30 seconds to catch as many Bandits as possible. The Bandits will then literally appear in the street and you must click as many as possible to get that much Energy in return as a reward.

ENergy Bandits on the loose
When you complete the shortest Goal in the game ever, a message appears reading, "April Fools!" A happy April Fools it has been, as you'll find that Energy posted to your total for being a quick clicker. Let's hope Zynga gets into more skill-based Goals and, better yet, games down the line.

Have you seen this Goal in your city yet? How many Bandit did you capture at once?

CityVille: SugarVille contest winners show off their sweet tooth

Back in the middle of April, Zynga launched a candy-themed contest in CityVille called the "SugarVille" contest. This contest asked users to create real world buildings entirely out of either packaged or loose candy. The prizes were large - up to 500 City Cash for the first of five winners, but the pride of creating a real structure in the real world is probably just as sweet of a reward (ok, maybe not as great - I sure know MY city could use that type of cash). Now that the contest is over, Zynga has officially announced the winners, and how sweet their entries were!

With all said and done, the five winners definitely deserved their prizes, as you can see from the first place finisher - forums user Queen Betsy who walked away with the 500 Cafe Cash prize. To take a look at the other winners' entries, meet us behind the break.


2nd prize: delcy11

3rd prize: TieTjuh

4th prize: Giggles381

5th prize: Little Isa

Each of the five winners walked away with at least 50 City Cash, and Zynga is asking users what they think about the contest, perhaps in the hopes that they'll be able to offer a similar contest in the future. Either way, it's great to see how creative the CityVille community is, and we can only hope for more opportunities to show off that creativity in the future.

CityVille Reel World Timed Goal: Everything you need to know

A new timed goal has launched in CityVille this week, taking us back to the great outdoors for some fishing. If you're level 35 or above, you'll have access to this goal, which can be started at any point in your game - it's up to you when exactly you'll begin. Using our guide to the goal, you should be able to prepare yourself as much as possible before actually starting the goal, and that way you'll have a better chance of earning the gold trophy and the prizes that come with it.

The Reel World

    Get 10 Fishing Lures
    Harvest 30 Pumpkins
    Collect 8 Times from a Seafood Restaurant


A Seafood Restaurant costs just 7,500 coins to purchase from the store, and if you're a veteran player in the game, it's highly unlikely that you don't already have at least one sitting in your town. It requires 140 Goods to operate, so your best bet to completing this particular task quickly would be to make it the only business that currently has Goods, so all citizens will flock to it, causing it to sell out much faster than normal. Pumpkins, meanwhile, take 18 hours to harvest, so unless you follow our suggestion of having pumpkins already to harvest before starting this goal, that's some serious time you'll spend (waste), waiting for them to grow.

If you can complete these three tasks within the first 24 hours of starting the goal, you'll receive the Gold Trophy, a Sailboat, 2,300 coins and 1,200 Goods. Unfortunately, you must complete this goal at this top level to receive the Sailboat. If you don't finish within the first day, but can complete the goal before the 72-hour mark has passed, you'll receive the Silver Trophy, 2,600 coins and 1,200 Goods, while finishing at any point after that cutoff gives you the Bronze Trophy and 1,200 Goods.

Luckily, it seems that these timed goals are becoming a bit easier with each one that's released. So long as you plan ahead with the pumpkin task, you should have no real trouble finishing this one off in 24 hours, but we still wish you good luck in your attempt!

What do you think of this latest timed goal? Have you received the Gold Trophy on any timed goals in the past?

CityVille Campaign Committee Goal: Everything you need to know

If you're looking for a way to earn extra coins, XP and Zoning Permits in CityVille, and you have a lot of friends that are always willing to help you out, you might be interested in the new "Campaign Committee" goal that was launched this week in the game. This feature is open to users that are at least level 15 and have at least one City Hall building in their town. As of right now, this is a one-time only feature, and instead of showing up on the left-hand side of your screen as other goals appear, this one must be activated by you by collecting from your City Hall when it's ready.

The next time you collect your profits from your City Hall, you'll see a new menu, asking you whether or not you'd like to start this new goal. You'll have just 24 hours to collect as much help from your City Hall staff members as you plan your campaign for your run for Governor. There are three levels of prizes associated with this goal, with more upgraded City Halls unlocking better prizes, and the amount of friends that ultimately help you also affecting your rewards. For a Level 2 City Hall, the three level of rewards are 10,000 coins, 40 XP and 3 Zoning Permits.

Once you start the goal (remember, it's a manual start - you can choose to do so whenever you're ready), you'll be able to post wall posts to your friends' walls asking them to come help you out. If you happen to have many spaces filled by Samantha or just blank staff positions, you can fill those by asking friends as well. When a friend responds to your call for help, you'll see a green check mark appear next to their name on the list. After the 24 hour period has passed, you'll receive whatever prizes you've received for your current level (note: you can track your current status on prizes by looking inside the goal's menu, as seen below).

Again, this Campaign Committee goal is a one-time-only activity for your town. Perhaps if it goes over well enough with users, we'll see another opportunity to ask our friends for help with campaign "donations," but for now, just focus all of your efforts on earning the most rewards from this feature while you can.

What do you think of the Campaign Committee feature in CityVille? Would you like to see this be an ongoing feature in your town?

CityVille Capital One Bank: Everything you need to know

While we already knew that Capital One would be appearing via a new bank building in CityVille, we didn't know the exact details until now. That's right - the promotion has launched in the game this evening, bringing with it the "branded business" in the form of the Capital One Bank. This bank looks like a fairly modern building, and has Capital One written along the top corner, but overall isn't overly "advertising." It costs 5,000 coins to add to your town, and must be built using four energy to build the frame.

From there, you won't be able to actually name your building, but you can operate it using Goods like other businesses. Specifically, the Bank requires 100 Goods to put into service and will reward you with 500 coins once those Goods are used. What makes this particular business special however is that it introduces "branded business mastery" to the game.

While this doesn't give us any sort of indication as to what other "branded" businesses will be coming to the game, we do know that we have just over a month to master this one. As with upgrading businesses, mastering the Capital One Bank will require you to continually stock and collect from the business whenever possible, with each round giving you a single point. Once you reach 50 points, you'll receive your reward, which we know is some form of decoration (probably a statue), but don't have the specific name as of this writing.

As for purchasing the building, it has a different time limit than that for actually earning your decorative reward. You can only purchase the Capital One Bank from the store for the next 28 days, giving you around a week to earn the decoration even after that point. Good luck!

Check out the rest of our CityVille Cheats & Tips right here.

What do you think of this Capital One Bank and the new branded business mastery feature? What sorts of branded businesses do you hope Zynga releases in the future? Sound off in the comments.

CityVille Rose Garden Goals: Everything you need to know

While summer may quickly be drawing to a close, CityVille hopes to keep the summer fun alive by letting us have a place to grow beautiful flowers. Appropriately enough, this new "building" is called the Rose Garden, and you'll place it in your city when completing the first of four new goals that go along with it.

Garden State

    * Place Rose Garden
    * Plant a Rose in the Garden


The Rose Garden is a 4x4 structure that works similarly to the Zoo, in that you'll only be able to display three flowers on the outside of the garden, but can actually leave more of them inside. To start, you'll receive a single flower for free (that's right - this one doesn't need to be built at all after placing it in your town): a White Wild Rose. Once you look inside the building, just click on the Plant button and you'll be able to "feature" that rose as one of the three that show up on the outside. Once you finish these two (simple) steps, you'll receive 160 coins as your reward.

A Late Bloomer

    * Ask friends for 3 Shovels
    * Have 3 Gardens in your City
    * Water your Gardens 5 Times


Gardens can be watered once every 18 hours, and yes, you can have more than one in your city. In fact, you'll need to have three before you can finish this goal. Your second and third Rose Gardens would cost 50,000 coins in the store, but luckily, you can also purchase Small Rose Gardens (a smaller version of the regular Rose Garden) for just 8,000 coins. These do count for the completion of this goal. As for the shovels, you'll be able to post a general news item to your wall asking for three. Finishing this goal gives you Sculpted Tree.

It's Showtime!

    * Get 10 Rose Bushes
    * Have 1 Rose Collection item from the Garden Collection
    * Place one Rose Garden Gate in your city


To earn additional bushes, you'll go into your gardens (as seen above) and then click on "Ask for flowers" to ask your friends to send you some bushes. Finishing this goal gives you 32 experience points.

Comin' Up Roses

    * Ask friends for 4 Vases
    * Have 7 Roses Planted in your Gardens
    * Have an upgraded Flower Kiosk


As it looks like each garden can only display three flowers, you'll need to have flowers in at least three Gardens to reach seven. As for updating your Flower Kiosk, you can find our guide for doing just that right here. Finishing this final goal gives you a Roses Fountain.

We'll make sure to let you know if other kinds of gardens are made available in the build menu in the future, but for now - have fun growing and displaying all of those roses!

Check out the rest of our CityVille Cheats & Tips right here.

What do you think of the Rose Garden feature in CityVille? What do you think of these goals? Sound off in the comments.