NOVEMBER 2018 UPDATE!!

However starting with the October 2018 cat update, numbers started plummeting again. As of early November Diamond Falls is hovering around 60 residents! Everyone wants horses and cats and clothes and aren't that interested in plots. In fact, in the wilderness, instead of people asking for plots, you now see people trying to SELL plots for gold, even throwing in wool. So it will be interesting to see how this pans out, to see how many people still want to get a traditional plot and do traditional building - rather than all role play. It does seem pretty certain, though, that it's going to be extremely difficult to build large towns. Expect small towns to continue to dominate. And long-time existing large towns that haven't been deleted, of course.

Maximum Residents Calcuations

So how many residents can you realistically expect to get? It is hard to say exactly because each town is different, and people behave differently over time. But I can use my town Diamond Falls as a CASE STUDY, and try to figure it out.

As of November 2017, my town seems to have hit an equilibrium on residents, meaning that the number moving in equals the number leaving, and I am stuck at about 110-130 residents. I don't mind, actually, as that is a LOT to manage, but let's try to figure it out.

There are 3 kinds of residents: The "regulars," which play almost every day, "other core" residents who play at least once a week, and "inactive" users who have stopped playing because they got bored (either after only playing Builder Buddies for a few days, or they played for a few months then got bored or their iPhone broke).

There are also regulars who decide to move out and start their own town, or join a friend who is starting their own town. For this discussion we can consider these people "inactive." They are usually replaced by new regulars, eventually.

It's really difficult to try to decide how 110 residents of Diamond Falls would fit the 3 categories, so I'll try my best guess:

• Regulars: 12
• Other Core: 25
• Inactive: 73

If the Diamond Falls population is stable, then we are gaining about 2.4 users per day.

THAT is the critical number. See if you can figure out how many users you are getting per day. When you are first starting out, it won't be 2.4 as there won't possibly be that many new plots available. But once your town gets larger, and there are more and more "spare" plots as people move out, it will get larger up to a limit. Apparently 2.4 is about the best Diamond Falls can do to attract new people.

So... if you have a young town, how big will it get? Here's a chart and example:

Let's say you can make and sell about 2 plots a week. That's 2 residents/week, or about 0.3 residents per day. Let's also say you sell plots cheap in order to try to grow faster, so your inactive users might be 80% (instead of the estimated 66% of Diamond Falls). In the chart, 0.2 residents/day @ 80% is 8 and 0.4 residents/day @ 80% is 15. So 0.3 is about in the middle, that would be about 12 residents. So you can expect your town to grow, in time, to a maximum of 12 residents. (The allowed number of plots is 8 times that, which is 96.)

This is all hypothetical, but 12 residents is very typical of a lot of small towns out there.

SO... how can you grow more? Two ingredients are needed. First, you need a really cool town design to attract residents. And a good name, and you need to play a lot, and a lot of the other things covered under 'Being a Mayor'. Second, you need a way to be able to sell more than 2 plots per week. You can do this by having more "spare" plots. If you've already hit the "limit" of residents, and those residents aren't buying extra plots for themselves, you can start building up spare plots. And more plots will become available as people leave town. Also, as the town grows larger, you will get more income from plot sales and may be able to annex more than 2 plots per week.

The bottom line? YES, absolutely you can do it, but obviously it is going to take TIME! Most mayors give up after about a month or two, so they never do grow beyond the 12-or-so residents. But if you stick with it for the long haul, you can pass the 12 resident limit and grow like Diamond Falls did. (NOTE: It took 9 months to get Diamond Falls to the 110 resident level!) The chart gives you a rough idea of how much you can grow to as you are able to increase the residents/day.

Have fun, and good luck on your town!