Strategy in Cityville's Guide to Franchises

Something unique to Zynga's brand new Cityville is its Franchises. This new feature allows you to initially choose one business of your own to expand into your friends' cities. Starting a franchise is simple enough. Just visit a friend's city and find the empty plot of land in their town. Players can also add additional plots of land and invite their friends to do business with them.

Find out how to create the foundations of a CityVille empire after the break. Before we dive into this, the most important thing to remember is that Goods--the lifeblood of all business in CityVille--come only from farming and other select missions. This secondary resource to Energy fuels all of your businesses including your franchised ones. As a rule of thumb, your farmland should always be planted (though, they do wither) and you might want to build silos. Lots of them.

If this is the first time your expanding, then you'll see a list of all the businesses you run in your hometown. Choose one and plop it down on that land just waiting to make some money and you're good to go. Though, it'll cost some coins to build the new branch--but fortunately it won't cost any Energy and it completes instantly. Your friend will later have to accept and soon enough you'll be making some extra cash.

Franchised businesses work much like normal ones, though they're backed by what's called an HQ. It's from this massive building that you can supply your branches in all of your friends' cities with Goods as well as collect daily bonuses. Here is also where you'll discover that you can have more than one franchise with your second opening up at level 10. You'll be taken through the whole process via a series of goals--which can be found on the left side of the screen--lead by a balding businessman named Edgar.

After building your franchise into a bustling business with a headquarters, you'll be asked to employ some friendly competition. This goal will ask you to send 10 spy-packed tour buses to your friends' businesses to get a leg up on your opponents. Completing goals similar to these will help grow your franchises and increase your profits.

Think of franchises as what you're really leveling up rather than your city. While in the real world we wouldn't suggest a mayor do that, it seems that Franchises are going to be what advances us further in CityVille than just having a pretty little town. As a recap, there are three essentials to maintaining a Franchise in CityVille: Goods, Energy (which will come from...) and visits to friends. Now, go forth and and capitalize that city... and a few more while you're at it.

Everyday there are new things being updated and added to Cityville.  To keep up with the best players and to have a game plan that works why not visit Cityville Masterplan