Weekly Mayors Competition Problems

I LOVE this game! I play it WAY too much. I love almost everything about it. . However, this whole contest of Mayors gives players who want to blow their own real money on simcash an unfair advantage over people who really can't afford to waste hard earned money.  Much to my chagrin, I have already given into the pressures of this and wasted about $5 to $15 of my own real money just to keep up with the other players who are stupidly spending at will or hacking the game for simcash.   How stupid am I to get sucked into that logic of using my own damn money to play this free game?! I just can't afford to do that anymore because it's insane to waste your money on this.  So I really have no incentive to compete with players who can just buy their way to wining these contest. I believe that's how the game designers wanted it.  I wish they could be make the contest fair to those who want to play honestly and fairly without buying their way to victory for a game that gives them no real life achievement. This is same situation with epic projects as well.  Players can just buy their goods with simcash to get easy epic points.  It took me an entire dame day to get to 160 points just to earn a fraction of Cheeta token. it was painful and wasteful process. Sorry dude, that is not freaking worth it!  But, never the less, this game let's you do what ever the hell you want with your own city so I really can't complain too much.  I'm really just open for any tips to overcoming these disadvantages. 

There needs to be some kind of in game moderator to remove those using cheats.  In my current league a city named Valtapolis reached around 29,000 within a few hours of the league starting.  This is probably only possible with unlimited amounts of Sim cash.  Surely it would be possible for EA to confirm that the player is using cheats and bar them from the leagues?

You don't have to cheat to get in the 20,000's. I ended up with 17K last week. I just chose the highest value assignment each time. 2 of with were 3K each. Speed up tokens make it a lot easier to get an assignment done that are just basic "build x number of items" types. I completed a 1500K task in 5 minutes and only had to use 16 bucks of sim cash. it was a "complete 2 deliveries to Paris" assignment and I had a plane currently there then completed it, used 16 sim bucks and had the next plan arrive early and then completed that

If you are in the middle of one assignment and you see that the highest lvl assignment still left is for example "Produce and Collect 15 Tables" then you need to have the nails and wood planks built up so that that as soon as your current assignment is done you start the next one and you already have the materials for it. you then use a cheetah speed up tokes and you have those tables done i less than an hour. 

I have heard that there are already measures in places for the cheats.  If they're effective is debatable.  The one I heard (Saw it in youtube video) is that if they have an insane amount of simcash or coin they did not earn legitimately, when they do an action that involves communicating with the server such as the Trade HQ or selling items, that it checks against what is on the server and if you have a significant difference than what it should be, it will zero out the simcash and/or simoleans.

As for the other issues.....  Also keep this in mind.  Those with lots of cheetah buildings will have a clear advantage over those without any cheetah buildings at all.  It took me 3 cheetah tokens to get to 10,000 this week.  I also used 4 Llama and 2 turtle speed-up tokens.  I would not have made it that high otherwise.  The more you build, the more you can accomplish faster.  I'm poised to move up this week providing that not many others pass up my score.

I've seen many cities that are just loaded with Epic buildings.  For me, I'm earning 1 turtle and 1 Llama daily and 1 cheetah every other day.  However, some of these cities are obviously getting 5 or more of each per day.  If you can make 10 Cheetah speed-up tokens per day, I can easily see people jumping very high very fast. 

Is it an unfair advantage?  I'm not sure that it is.  It may seem that way, but even with all legitimate ways to play the game, you too have the opportunity to get that high.  It will just take a while to get there.  Some of these guys have been playing for over a year, where I've only been playing about 3 months.

Now if we're talking someone who is level 20 and hasn't even unlocked the Epic Projects yet, then that's a different story altogether.  An obvious cheat.  There's not much we can do as players other than to report them.

To the guy who complained about taking all day to build cheetah buildings.  I was like that at first too, but I was upsidedown on my storage capacity.  When I first started doing epic projects, I had 190 storage capacity at level 31.  I've since come to believe that you should NOT go up in levels too fast.  Your storage count should match your level.  If you're level 32, you should have 320 storage.  If you're level 12 you should have 120 storage (or more).  I stayed at level 32 for a very long time while I worked on getting my storage up to par.  I've seen people in their high 40's with a storage capacity around 150 and don't see how they even play the game.  You can't store enough to do much.

I'm level 34 now with a storage capacity of 310, so I'm just now getting close to where I believe it should be.  When I first started doing epic projects I couldn't make cheetah at all.  The best I could do is Llama.  As I increased my storage I noticed a lot of time being left on the clock when I hit 80, so one time I decided to go for it and it took the entire 24 hours to make Cheetah.  I made it, but just barely.  As it is now, I make cheetah in about 12 hours.  Half the time it took me before.  That is because I store no less than 5 of each item prior to starting the Epic.  I also ensure that most or all of my special items have been used, so I have room for more.  The more you can store, the faster you can go up.  Then make sure you have 100,000 simoleans before you start it and max out your speed-up tokens.

One or more of the guys here can go from 0-160 in an hour, so it can be done quickly, but not without proper preparation beforehand.  I can only do Cheetah with the Beach right now.  The other areas don't yet have enough 3 pt objects to make it, but I can make Llama with any of them.  I'm concentrating all my keys on the beach right now until I can get that time down to something I find reasonable.  Say, within 3 hours, then I'll move on to another Specialization.

I'm convinced that staying happy with the game is contingent on being able to speed up the shops.  Otherwise you're just fighting against time and time will always win. 🙂  It has certainly made things a lot easier now that I can collect speed-up tokens somewhat regularly and only see it getting better as I slowly work my way towards earning multiple per day.

@mbrown2626  You don't have to wait till you start the assignment to start building the items.  As long as you don't collect them until after you start the assignment it will count.  I did this with 3 different assignments this time around.

In my case, it wanted 36 Electronic components in one assignment, 17 drills in another and 15 couches in a 3rd.  I started all 36 components, 6 drills and 4 couches all at the same time, but I did not start any assignments.  I also started or bought enough of other components to needed to build the rest of them... While they were building I did other assignments like.....  Launch 2 disasters.  Launched, fixed and launched again while those were building.  I think I did 3 different assignments while the EC's were building.  Once the EC's were ready to collect, I started the assignment, collect all 36 EC's and collected my 1700 in less than a minute then moved on to the drills.  Now that I had enough EC for the drills, they were simple, just load up store (which has max slots opened) and throw a cheetah on it.  Continue working other assignments while those are building....

You have to be VERY careful to not collect any by accident.  It can be ready to collect and count, so you don't have to make everything from scratch after you start the assignment.

As a side note, I've never seen an assignment worth 3000.  My highest assignment was the 15 couches at 2500.  Although I didn't have any other assignments that were even above 2000.  Most are all under 1000.

Btw, the info in here is very good but I wanted to let you know that no matter how many epic buildings you have you can only keep a max of 5. If you win extra tokens they will allow more but once it gets below 5 then all you can keep in your pocket is 5. Of course, with enough buildings..and I do mean a lot...10 cheetah buildings = 1 token...so you'd have to have around 50 cheetah building to acquire 5 tokens a day. Which yes, definitely puts them at an advantage. I would say consider preparing with well stocked inventory of hard to find items and basic stock to make things with..as much as you can..put the hardest to find first..like corn, duffle bags, etc..save up 250,000 coins to buy whatever else you may need. You can do an epic in a reasonable amount of time without going completely broke. I have 1 turtle, 3 Llamas and 12 cheetahs. After the turtle experience, lol, I decided I needed a better method. Turtles are ok for churning out nails etc..but they aren't going to put much of a dent in market items with an hour. I have had to run 2 Cheetahs back to back on appliances etc. sometimes. Also, make sure you have plenty of buildings with 2-3 points earnings...this is imperative. If you only have a few low point buildings it's going to be a long hard struggle.