One thing at a time? Priorities?

[CorellianNative]

It seems you can realistically do only one thing at a time in this game.   ...either play the contest of mayors to get those elusive platinum keys, OR increase your population to unlock more stores/specializations, OR build some epic buildings to make speed-ups, OR fill up your storage trying to collect dozens of the three items you need to unlock space, OR turn your factories and stores into money-making machines to increase your simoleans, OR do delivery after delivery to gain gold keys, etc, etc

It seems if you try to do everything at once, you end up with mediocrity. Oh you might get past Town League, but you'll never see a platinum key, or you might have a huge city, but your sim-folk are not happy and they move out......

Maybe if you are on level ninety-something, or if you pump a lot of real cash into the game, or if you play 24/7 you can do everything at once,  but for someone who started playing a month and a half  ago, I am finding it all a bit overwhelming. Don't get me wrong: I do love how one thing feeds off another - I mean this is what the game is all about! It's just that for a new(ish) player there is a huge curve with each new level opening yet more complications. You can't just embrace every new thing, and jump into it fully as I'd like to. 

I need to take time off from the contest, in order to increase my city storage. 130 just does not cut it. (especially since half of that is items I am collecting for expansions, vu items, etc)

I need to get a whole lot more gold keys, so I can build more specializations, so I can then produce speed-ups, so I can play the contest more effectively, so I can get some platinum keys, so I can get buy the really useful buildings, etc, etc, etc.

Phew!!!

Now, I am NOT complaining, I am merely asking:

Are other people doing all this at once? Or do you stop every now and then, and just concentrate on one thing?  If you have stopped to do one thing at a time, what did you concentrate on? And why that thing at that time?  What do *you* find is a priority?

 Here's where I am right now....

Level: 25

Population: 218 000

Storage: 130

Epic Buildings: 4x Bronze, 1x Silver

Mayor League: City

Factories: 4x 5-slot nano-tech,  4x 4-slot mass production

Services: fully covered by all services required at this level - ie nobody wants to move out. 99% happiness.

Specialization: everything so far is covered by parks and education.  About 1/3 is covered by beach.  No transport, entertainment, gambling or mountain coverage.

VU Tower level: 4

Simcash: hovers around the 200 mark, but I am slowly building it. 

Simoleans: changes all the time!

Expanded territories: 2 Beach areas, 1 Mountain area.  I have enough real estate space open for several dozen more buildings, and my layout is the efficient linear/grid system as recommended by players who have population of millions. 

In *your* opinion, what should I concentrate on next?  I am thinking my city storage needs a HUGE increase and is my number one priority.  Agree? Disagree? All opinions appreciated.

[DocVu · Accepted solution]

IMO

Priority 1 fully expand land - because land parts are next to impossible to get at higher levels. People used to park at level 10 for two months and do this. Never ever sell a land part until you are done.

Priority 2 expand storage to at least 300 since it supports everything else

ignore the CoM until much later when you have epics making gold coins daily.

The game is progressive. They added the CoM after the Epics, which were added after the things before them. I played it like this: land expansion > built support structures > build residences > gold key production > specialty buildings > expanded storage to 350 > upgraded buildings to Epics > upgraded storage to 500 > upgraded rest to epics > played C0M using all my gold speed-up coins from the Epics> got exhausted > rearranging city and waiting for further land expansion in future release

[DocVu · Accepted solution]

IMO

Priority 1 fully expand land - because land parts are next to impossible to get at higher levels. People used to park at level 10 for two months and do this. Never ever sell a land part until you are done.

Priority 2 expand storage to at least 300 since it supports everything else

ignore the CoM until much later when you have epics making gold coins daily.

The game is progressive. They added the CoM after the Epics, which were added after the things before them. I played it like this: land expansion > built support structures > build residences > gold key production > specialty buildings > expanded storage to 350 > upgraded buildings to Epics > upgraded storage to 500 > upgraded rest to epics > played C0M using all my gold speed-up coins from the Epics> got exhausted > rearranging city and waiting for further land expansion in future release

[CorellianNative]

I like your answer - it makes a lot of sense.

Expansion items harder to get at higher levels.......   is this because the higher you go, the more items there are, so the expansion items get lost in the mix?

Cos that would make "the earlier the better" make sense. 

I think I am going to concentrate on expansion of land (inc beach and mountain) and storage.

Of course that means I still do need to do something to make simoleans, to purchase any expansions I find in the GTHQ.

[DocVu]

Yes, they do get lost in the mix. They also pop-up less frequently in the gift bubbles at higher levels.

[CorellianNative]

Update a month on:   I have opened 18 of the land expansions, and have a storage of 260. Expanding is all I am doing. No Contest-Of Mayors, no building, no nothing. 

Playing like this is incredibly boring, and a real chore. 

 Sigh.  Games are supposed to be fun.

One more month, and I will stop this silliness, whatever stage my expansions are at, and just *play*.

[IceCityFTW]

Hi

that's a lot of work you have put in. Congratulations!

To stop the game from being o you should try to do as much other stuff as possible without disrupting you main task. BTW, I totally disagree on upgrading land as a priority, storage should be your main focus. You can never have enough storage as you probably have noticed and I also find land stuff available at least on lvl 29

Some other stuff that can be done while farming land (if you REALLY want to do it)and storage parts

- buy cheap and sell expensive. There are a lot of deals that can be found when searching the trade HQ.

- disasters to get the golden keys needed for specialization buildings

- epic buildings, if I understood you correctly you don't do them now. If not then start immediately, they are needed later

Another advice is to decide right now if you wanna do the CoM. If yes then you should start doing the competition NOW. The first leagues really don't have any good rewards and it's easy to advance to the next in the beginning. So start doing it to be as high as possible when you really want to give it a go

- if you decide to go for the competition you should never upgrade a building unless you have a mission to do it. The game gets harder for each level

- you are actually´, in my opinion, probably in the best possible position to do CoM successfully, you have access to speed tokens and you have a couple of levels before it gets really hard