CityVille Cheats and Tips: How Decorations Earn You More Coins

While efficient Goods management and mastering your Franchises in CityVille will certainly make you a far more successful mayor, one player has pointed out an extremely important aspect of the game that has the potential to send your profits sky high by implementing some hardcore decorating methods.

You can see in the image above, Josh Morlan (a.k.a. morlanjo) has done his math, using the Pool Hall as his example, he calculated that:

    Normal Pool Hall output: 420 coins
    Output with bonus: 1391 coins
    1 energy = 1391 coins
    Each Charlieville train I send out for more goods nets me 991 coins (that's
    -400 coins for the 100 production)

Basically, collecting money from businesses will always cost 1 Energy (Note: Resupplying businesses with goods doesn't use up Energy!). So he decided to choose a business that will pay him the most money and raise its profits by surrounding it with decorations that offer the biggest boosts. For most folks, that big boost decoration would be the Arboretum, which offers +16% and costs 4,000 Coins. In the top image, you can see he's also using the Bronze Statue (+2%) and Flower Patch (+1%) to plug any leftover space. Why is there space leftover? Well, your business needs to connect to the Asphalt Roads in order to make money. Between his Bronze Statues, you can see the small strip of Sidewalk that lets the Pool Hall connect to the street.

After all these changes, each Energy Josh spends on the Pool Hall will now nab him 1,391 Coins instead of 420 Coins. The great thing about this setup is that you can reuse the Arboretum on the sides by putting down another business. You can also swap out the business for a higher paying one when it becomes available. (Hot Tip: The bonus boosts work for when you collect, so you can use this decoration plan on more than one business. You just gotta do it one at a time.) This seems to be the best Energy-saving and money-making plan for the long run.
Macoan's CityVille 4x4 decorations chart
Another user, Michael A. Coan (a.k.a. macoan) made some handy charts to help other players with laying down decorations. For businesses that take up a 4x4 space (such as Josh's Pool Hall), click here. For those that use up 3x3, click here.

CityVille Cheats and Tips: Guess What? You Don't Need Roads!

There's two schools of thought when it comes to the best way to play CityVille -- that is, whether looking pretty and saving land is more important than cramming things to the hilt and saving Energy. Right now, the prevailing wisdom of players is to value Energy-saving over land space. Today, we already showcased an awesome way to save Energy by using decorations. But if you find yourself running out of space more than Energy, here's some pointers:
CityVille Franchise HQ bonus
1. Franchise HQs don't need Roads to work. They take up 5x5 of space, which is a lot, but you need them to manage your franchises. Most people put these buildings off to the side, but they offer a +2% boost range of 11x11 to businesses. (You can see from the sample image that one HQ can bonus boost up to five businesses.) So put 'em where you can use their bonus boosting power!
CityVille Community Buildings
2. Community buildings (e.g. Post Office, Police, City Hall, etc.) and Storage buildings (e.g. Silo, Red Barn, Sticks, etc.) don't need roads either. Community buildings give out money and owning them allows you to have a bigger population. And Storage buildings let you have more goods. But other than that, these are pretty useless. Profit bonuses from decorations don't work on them. So if you have to put a building in the corner, do it to these two kinds!
CityVille Roads versus Sidewalks
3. Contrary to the headline of this post, roads are important. We all know certain buildings can't earn coins unless they're somehow touching the roads. So what do I mean when I say you don't need them? Well, the game starts you off with some Asphalt Roads already in place. This means most of us are tempted to keep using them, so we buy more for 10 Coins each. But a better substitute is actually the City Sidewalk, which costs 20 Coins. If you care about space, one Asphalt Road takes up 3x3 land, but one City Sidewalk takes up just 1x1 land. Instead of connecting your buildings by using the Asphalt Road, use the City Sidewalk!

(Note: A piece of City Sidewalk must be touching a piece of Asphalt Road to work. See the above image where I put down one piece of road in the middle of nowhere, connected the Sidewalks to it, and the businesses are functional? And that one Coffee Shop has some Sidewalk sticking out of it, but the game says it's "Not connected to road.")