The City Must Grow Cheats

The City Must Grow

Cheat Codes:
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Submitted by: David K.

Definitive Growth Guide (with Tips):
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Written by Desim

My findings so far on how to make your city thrive.

-=Take a Turn=-
The game is turn-based and here is a collection of notes about that.

* At each turn, you will get a chance to place a zone/road, this is selected 
  randomly.
* There is no time-limit to your turn so take that time to assess your situation 
  fully before making a decision.
* The turn only ends when you hit the big yellow arrow button or hit [Space].
* You can always undo your actions during a turn with the other button next to 
  the end turn button.
* At the end of the turn, the game calculates if your decision has contributed 
  to growth or if other active effects are affecting the end of the turn.
* Resources usage will also be calculated at the end of the turn.
* Your city growth bar goes down one point each turn if nothing gets built/zoned.
* The game ends when the bar is depleted and your score will be calculated based 
  on your total growth and turns survived.
* Knowing this, in the end-game, try to combine negative effects at the same turn
  to mitigate the drop of growth (eg bulldoze a structure at the same time you 
  expect another effect to be added at the end of your turn)

-=About Growth Points=-
Here are the things I took note of to manage my growth bar and stay alive for more 
than 2000 turns.

-=Growth point mechanics=-
* The game will always remove a growth point at the end of your turn if there is 
  nothing that would otherwise affect the growth positively.
* Your Growth bar will only move at most 1 point either up or down, effects are not 
  cumulative, hence don’t rushing it.
* If you have a negative and a positive effect at the same turn, the growth will 
  be counted as negative (to be double-checked).
* Knowing this, in the end-game, try to combine negative effects at the same turn 
  to mitigate the drop of growth (eg bulldoze a structure at the same time you 
  expect another effect to be added at the end of your turn)

-=Neutral effects=-
Placing roads don’t give growth points, so the growth will go down no matter what.

-=Positive effects=
* Placing a field, forestry or mine will directly yield a point at the end of the 
  turn if they can be built with resources available.
* Placing a field is one the cheapest way in terms of employment and resources 
  required to get a city growth point.
* Residential homes will yield 2 city growth points: 1 once building starts/ is built 
  (?) and one once people settle in.
* Some structures don’t yield points right away and require to have a structure 
  fully built on it first.
* Most buildings take at least one or two turns to get built, that delay increases 
  with higher tier structures.

-=Negative effects=
* Unemployed people leaving town.
* Homeless people leaving town.
* Unhappy people (aka starving) leaving town.
* Collapsed buildings (when they remained unoccupied for too long).

-=Collection of Other Tips=-
Below is a mish-mash of remaining tips and findings, I’ll give a more structured 
shape when I get my head around everything I’ve written in it.

* You always start in the middle of the map.
* The map is about 57×57 squares tall.
* The map is square except if a body of water is cutting through the edges.
* The most important thing to keep in mind is to never rush placing a certain zone 
  if there is not a very good reason to do so.
* Always place as much roads as possible in early game to explore your map as fact 
  as possible.
* Roads are good for exploring and uncover 5 squares deep, so space your roads  
  accordingly for efficient exploration.
* All roads should make a single circuit, if a piece gets disconnected, buildings over 
  there will get in trouble or your didn’t need the road to start with.
* At the beginning, concentrate on exploring in straight lines from your starting 
  point while maintaining development as balanced as possible until you unlock the 
  resources view
* As soon as you have resources view, start to locate the best 30% of your map where 
  you’ll start you build your city centre.
* Don’t rush the next objective either as this will give you another building.
* City should as much as possible be installed only on plains or mid lands 
  (except if you have an abundance of any other resource blocks).
* Stone and coal resources blocks will be unusable once mined.
* Because the mines can get depleted, stone and coal reserves are the only non-renewable 
  resources on your map, so don’t go sell them.
* Farm tiles develop depending on following conditions: on plain, next to water, very 
  low ground. If none of those conditions are met you will get an orchard.
* Farm tiles have 4 development types: dark green, light green, yellow and orchard with 
  following respective yields per square: 48,36,24,24). This means placing a field tile 
  on a plain does not guarantee maximum yield.
* Maximise your farm yield by only placing them on plains + near water bodies.
* There is always a 2 square wide strip of wet/low plains all around the edges of the 
  map, optimise their usage for fields!
* You start with a small set of resources (2.5k wood and 1.0k of crops).
* Early buildings will need wood, hence don’t wait using your first reserve of wood to 
  build at least one forestry to keep your budding city sustainable.
* Forestries built on high Lands in the resource map yield 14 wood each turn, 10 on Mid 
  Lands and on Plains it even falls to 8 and that makes sense because what the hell are 
  you building it there after reading my notes on fields.
* fields, forestries and mines don’t need roads adjacent, so remove them to squeeze out 
  anything in the ground except if you need to keep a building connected.
* Residences will start consuming food, as there are 3 people living in a 2-square house.
* Each person consumes 12 food per turn.
* Higher tier residents will also require dairy products and processed foods.
* You can earn money through office buildings.
* Seaports can also yield some money if you sell your resources there.
* You can only sell/buy as many batches of resources at a seaport as there are workers 
  available for it.
* Seaports make for a good reserve of spare workers if you are not selling/buying much 
  resources, use the worker slider when needed to manage employment demand.

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