Strawberries Are the Best Crop, not carrots, in Cityville, Strawberry Mastery is Great!

Cityville offers a complex system of supply and demand inside a city-management simulator. It's a fun game, with lots of interesting buildings and city layouts to explore. It also borrows a familiar element from its sister game, Farmville, with the planting and harvesting of crops. The crops are used as supply for the various businesses that generate income in your town.

There are many available crops, including carrots, eggplants, and wheat, but the one plant that everyone should grow, all the time, are strawberries. No other plant combines a quick turnaround, a potentially long shelf-life, and a potentially large supply in a short time-frame like the strawberry.

Strawberries are ready to harvest in five minutes. But, if you don't get to them right away, that's not a problem. They will sit on the vine for days, or even weeks, without rotting. Strawberries are the only crop that will not wilt on the vine. If you get to them right away, great. If you don't, that's great, too. Zynga games take advantage of human anxiety. They make you want to go check on your property, where they can generate revenue from adwords and microtransactions. Constantly choosing crops that do not take advantage of your anxiety impulse can prevent the sort of addiction that can cause your wife to shout cross-eyed at you to get off the darn computer and stop constantly checking on things! You can walk away from your computer unconcerned that something bad is going to happen if you don't pay attention to your simulated city. Strawberries are the only crop that offer you that peace of mind!

A player who logs in one day can quickly plow and harvest two or three crops of strawberries, every time they log on, without too much trouble. The five minute turnaround means that a player, even at low levels, can manage a strawberry patch to support their businesses without a lot of time or energy lost.

The only concern with strawberries is energy-usage. A conservative player can still easily harvest multiple crops to keep up with their businesses by visiting neighbors for extra energy and signing up for the free e-mail daily gift from Farmville, increasing the available energy for gameplay. Still, even players that are running low on energy, strawberries can be planted and allowed to grow without concern for time lost because of the fact that they don't wilt. Every other crop is on a deadline! Not strawberries!

And, instead of leaving the patch fallow between sessions, the strawberry crop can be planted and left for days or weeks, waiting for the player to return. It is the only crop that cannot be lost.