Levels 1-5 - Getting Started

The first thing to note when you play SimCity BuildIt is that you can't start over!

That's right, currently there is no way (or at least no easy way) to start your city again from nothing.

This means that any premium currency you use or golden keys are gone once they have been used. You can however easily demolish buildings and rebuild them, or simply move them and of course re-do your roads and city layout.

Once you start the game, the in-game tutorials take you through the initial stages of how to add roads etc...

You'll lay your first residential zone and commercial building. I placed my buildings supply store close to the motorway, and the residential building at the other end.

The next thing you need to do is power. Personally, at the beginning of the game, because you have limited simoleans - which you need to utilise later I opt for the coal power plant. Initially it is ok to stick it on the road you have just built - see the screenshot above. Just move it away from the residential zones and the beach later on - see screenshot below! :)

As well as power you'll also need to add water, you'll only have enough Simoleans to add basic water towers but that is enough, they are easily plopped to the side of the map, out of the way of your expanding metropolis!

After you have your initial buildings dropped, now would be a good place to start reorganising the structure of your city. Here we have separated industrial and power buildings away from the residential zones.

Quite soon you'll be prompted to add more residential zones, we have gone for a layout such as below which affords 2x2 residential blocks within a road structure, or even 3x2. You'll need to provide spaces later on for services such as fire, police and health.

QUICK TIP

After a few levels you probably still have a lot of simoleans and even some simcash, but you haven't - this will get wiped out in the later levels as you are compelled to build police stations and other services. So don't be tempted to build parks too early, yes they will keep your sims happier and boost your population, but you'll need the cash for other things later on.

QUICK TIP

SimCash is the premium in-game currency, you start with 50, but it's not too difficult later on to add some more of this, sometimes by watching video ads or sometimes by completing achievements. I only spend this currency on adding more slots in my commercial buildings as that brings usefulness throughout the lifetime of the game. Try not to use SimCash to speed up an individual action.

So now you have been playing the game for a little while you'll be prompted to add residential zones and also to provide supplies to upgrade buildings. At this stage we have clearly defined the structure of our city with the residential blocks clearly away from the polluting industrial zones and power stations. We are also trying to leave a few blocks free to cater for the fire, police and health services which need to be added in later.

Please see the screenshots below for a visual representation of what I am trying to say.

Once you have reached level 5 you'll be prompted to add fire services. If you have followed the city plan in this guide and have not wasted your money on parks at the beginning stages, you should have enough to plop a Basic Fire Station (11,000 SImoleans) - You may need to re-jig your residential buildings a bit to make sure everyone has fire coverage, but as you can see from the screenshot below a basic fire station should cover all your residential buildings at this stage. Believe me it's a lot better than building multiple small fire stations!

QUICK TIP

Don't fill up your queues with lots of items that take ages to craft unless you are planning to be away from the game during the duration of the queue. Basically you'll find that some building requests come in that require items that if your queue is already stocked will take ages to craft.

Now it is just a matter of filling building requests to grow your population and earn SImoleans. Don't be tempted to spend your SImoleans, later on you'll need to build more Fire Stations as your city expands and also Police Stations and Clinics.

Once you get to level 5 you can then plop the City Hall, this is accessed by going to Services > Government and selecting City Hall. This will allow you to collect taxes. You get more depending upon how happy your sims are, how wealthy they are and how many you have. You can collect taxes by selecting the Simolean icon above City Hall whenever it appears.