I'm playing two cities in a private region. One is doing well. The other, well, not so much...

In an attempt to restore some balance, I decided to send 30k to the less fortunate city via the region-based "gift" feature. The money left my good city almost immediately, but hasn't yet (1hr30 real time) arrived. I've tried leaving the game and opening it again, but all I seemed to be able to trigger was a "Your gift has been sent" notification.

How long do gifts take to arrive? Is there a secret trick for speeding up the process?

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7 Answers

The amount of time it takes for a monetary gift to arrive depends on traffic between your city hall and the destination city hall. Excessive server latency can also cause issues in sending gifts, but these issues are no longer as common.

Sending a gift between cities is not instant. A car with a simoleons icon and a thumbnail of the senders Origin avatar will leave their city hall and make it's way toward the receiving city hall. Funds are deducted from the sender's account as soon as the car agent is generated. It is a good idea to wait for the news bulletin indicating that a gift has been sent before switching cities. Once receiving this notification, switch cities and wait for the car to arrive. If you click on the government icon, you can watch it makes its way into your city to your city hall. At this point, the funds will be added to your treasury. Your city hall must be "powered on" to receive the gift.

Server issues used to prevent gifts from ever arriving, but those issues appear to have been resolved.

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Which town are you waiting as; the sending or receiving?

When you send a gift, a car leaves your city hall that carries the gift, thus the resources are deducted from your account immediately.

I sent money only once so far, but I also noticed that the money did not arrive instantly. So I switched back to the sending city, switched to region view and tracked a government car from there until it reached town hall in the target town. When I switched again, money was already accredited.

If you don't see any government cars in the regional view (cars with the government icon) as the sending city, I'm afraid your money was lost due to a bug.

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When you are in the gifting city and you click on the region view, you will see a government car with the gifting city's player's icon and a little simolean badge in the top left-hand corner. You can watch this little car visit the gifting city hall and travel to the giftee city hall. The car can take a little bit of time due to traffic congestion.

I had the same problem , lost 1 million simoleons that I gifted to my own city for over 24hrs, however I have found that the gift always seems to come through after I have taken out a bond in the city I have gifted to.

I have no idea why gifting would be linked with this, but it has worked for me every time so far, and also works for my brother.

Hope this helps some people as this was very frustrating for me.

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If you add a helicopter pad to your city hall then the cash gifts will be pretty much instant.

As of patch 5, cash gifts are now given electronically (not by car anymore). So, traffic should no longer be an issue.

I've had this problem as well. I think it has to do with how quickly you switch back to your other city(because as others have mentioned, a car is literally driving to the other city with the money). I sent $6m to a new city I started, and then almost immediately switched back to the new city. It never arrived, I think it disappeared into the aether. I will try another experiment where I watch and make sure the car arrives.

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