Ever wanted to know how to make a city without spending over F300,000?

Ever wanted to make a city look brilliant, while on a budget?

Here is a brief guide of tips for you.

Planning

Before you begin making your city, raise F550,000 (you will receive F250,000 back upon approval), and make a region that is roughly square shaped worth F500,000 (around 224 by 224 in blocks is probably best). Be sure to choose a plot of land well away from other cities, and is reasonably flat and has a good water area. Be sure to have some trees nearby, or in the city to prevent you having to buy numerous saplings.

Once you've claimed your plot of land for your city (with help from a moderator), you'll need to come up with ideas for both a theme, and design.

Naming your City

Your region name should be the name of your city, and not a random phrase like 'bobscity' (unless you want your city to be named 'Bob's City'.

When naming your city, you should use server map to see what other cities are called, in order to prevent duplication of names. (Do not use the wiki as a reference for city names, we do not have every city on here).

If your struggling to come up with a city name, I can suggest one of three methods:

You could try naming your city with it's main element (e.g. Lake) and a suffix or prefix (e.g. 'Lakeville', 'Daisy Lakes').
You could use Google Maps (or your map software of choice), and look for city names, such as New York, Brisbane or Madrid.
You could use a city name generator or a AI Robot to come up with a name for your city.

You should avoid:

Long city names, such as 'Llanfairpwllgwyngyllgogerychwyrndrobwllllantysiliogogogoch' or 'Sand and Stone City'. Names should not exceed 3 words, or 10 characters. This helps make them both able to be abbreviated, and also snappy and memorable.
Don't break the server rules. This does neither of us any good.
While you can use the word 'City', 'Town' or an variation, there is too many cities with this name on HelloMiners, so it would take too long trying to find something that would standout.

Planning Roads

A road layout is key to a nice looking city. While a simple grid layout can be effective, easy and quick to setup, a more effective and cheaper method is actually to not have a full-grid layout. Something like Cardiff or Alexandria in terms of road layouts, if with greenery between the roads or nearby, can look effective, pretty and still not use a bulk load of materials.

Roads with depth (aka the gray concrete being lower than sidewalks/pavements (choose your preference)), being 4 blocks wide road surface, and 2 blocks wide (with stairs adjacent to the road surface), is a simple and effective way to making your roads look nice, without spending too much money.

Pathways

A basic, simple path (either lining woodlands or a river) can also prove effective. It doesn't have to be detailed, and can use items such as brick slabs or stone brick slabs, with a simple border of stone or other materials, and a fence, can prove nice and provide an alternative to roads (plus, breaks up the pattern of continuous roads). To make things even better - they don't have to be the standard 3 block width!

Lighting

City lighting can take many forms. You could either do ones embedded in the pavement, a single stick light (sort of like Old Fashioned English Lighting), or a overarching light (sort of more modern lighting).

For ease, I'd recommend the two former options. Always use a nice, non-obvious light block like shroomlight, or froglights. Avoid glowstone or sea-lanterns.

Another highlight for lighting is the pole, and covers. Always use a stone wall / fence / fence / stone wall / light block system, and a series of trap doors around four sides, and a stone slab at the top. Don't use plain stone, use materials such as andesite.

Public Buildings

Every city on HelloMiners to achieve Tier 1 needs 2 public buildings, one of which being a city hall. Don't over complicate or make the build designs too large. While detailing is a necessity, you should not make them too big.

A good starting set of public buildings are always:

An airport
An city hall

After those two, I'd recommend:

Some form of event holding facility (e.g. Bandstand, Stadium, Theater).
An non-functional public building (e.g. Police Station, Library)

Parks

Like public buildings, every city needs a park. These should clearly be a park, and here are some items you should add:

Benches
Lighting
Trees and Plants

And a series of recommended items (one of which I'd say is mandatory for each park, to make it more unique):

Market Stalls
Fountains
Bandstands

You should add a pathway, either using dirt paths or a pathway.

Green Spaces

Your probably thinking 'But a Park is a green space'. I shall agree with you. They are good green spaces, however it's also good to have non-park green spaces, areas filled with grass, trees and natural wildlife of some kind.

Don't sell materials until approval

Doing this will actually save you some money initially.

What about Nether Hubs?

While this is useful, it can be an unneeded expense. Don't worry about these as much, but they can be useful to let people quickly get to your city.

Plots

There should be at least 10 plots in your city. A good size that sells well for plots is 15x15 to 30x30. You should set the land value to a reasonable price too (to calculate using this, do (LxW)*Val), and a good amount is somewhere between F11 and F14.

Pre-Builds

Pre-Built plots are popular, but you should not make them too large or overly detailed. It is a simple design, made to sell and easily set players up in your city.

Preparing to Apply for Approval and Tier 1

When your feeling like your city is ready, you should do some final preparations in order to make your city effective.

Plan the City Rules

City rules should be on a rule-board in the city somewhere (in-game, of course). I'd choose somewhere easy to get to, and central (such as an airport or city hall). These should be easy to understand and read. Good examples can be found below (under 'Example Cities').

Getting Feedback

Always, always ask players to visit your city before starting approval, and ask them for feedback and advice. This will help you greatly.

Going for Approval

Now, your ready for approval. Come to the City Tier Application forum area, and make a topic to begin. Once your city is approved and tier 1, you can add a flag to the server map, and apply for an airport. Once you've done this, find a city that agrees to split the cost with you (at least), and connect.

After Approval

Once your city is approved, you'll also receive half the city's worth back into your balance. Use this to get a expansion to Tier 2, which will not be explained here apart from a brief 'double all counts needed'. Oh, and advertise.

Any Feedback

If you have any feedback about this guide, please use the talk page.

Guide by: Edgewurth. For more guides, go to Category:Guides.