CityVille Building Buddies: Everything you need to know

If you've lost CityVille neighbors due to the game's increasing difficulty, or friends simply moving onto other games, you might have noticed the game getting more difficult for you as well, since you don't have as many active neighbors to rely on for building materials and collectibles.

As a way to help some players keep up the pace, or to even increase the rate at which they can complete buildings and quests, Zynga has launched a new "Building Buddies" feature in the game. Why only "some?" Well, the prerequisites for this feature are pretty insulting, in my not-so-humble opinion. While the level requirement of 9+ is fine, you have to be a player with less than six active friends to actually use this feature. Is it just me, or does that number seem really low, given just how often we have to use our friends for help in the game?

That personal question aside, this feature can be thought of as one similar to the FarmVille Friends feature in FarmVille, in that you'll be able to become "Building Buddies" with other CityVille players without actually having to add them as Facebook friends. This, in turn, helps you retain your privacy. You'll need to manually sign yourself up for this feature by heading to Zynga's Account Preferences website (while being logged into Facebook) and then clicking on the check-boxes to opt yourself in/out as you please (you'll be opted out by default, and must turn it on, removing the checks).

As for the information that is shared, you'll be able to see other player's names, profile pictures, game levels and how often they play the game. If you have a common neighbor with this stranger, you'll see that too. Once you add them as Building Buddies, you'll be able to visit each others' cities and use your five standard bonus energy while there, and send and receive gifts / game requests to those players.

Unfortunately, we're not sure when, if ever, this feature will be "turned on" for players that have more than six active neighbors. It's interesting, as FarmVille friends allows us to do the same thing, but isn't limited to only those with non-active friends on their lists. We'll make sure to let you know if this changes in the future. In the meantime, you might as well head over to the Account Preferences page and opt-in to this feature yourself, just in case it does turn on in the future, you can "luck into" accessing it via a fluke (hey, stranger things have happened).

Check out the rest of our CityVille Cheats & Tips right here.

Are you a player that's eligible for the Building Buddies feature in CityVille? What do you think of this new feature? Sound off in the comments.