Once you get to level 18 in Buildit, you can join a club. Clubs are limited to 25 members and have officers: President, VP, and Senior.
Clubs set up criteria you have to meet to join (minimum level, minimum Contest of Mayors [CoM] rank, etc.). Some clubs are public; others are private (by invitation only). You can browse to find a club that suits your language and objectives.
The first club I was in was almost totally inactive. I was already doing Contest of Mayors assignments, and only one or two other people out of 25 were doing them, and nobody was using the "chat" feature.
So after a while I left and joined one called "No Drama, No War." This club was extremely active and competitive in CoM. If you weren't actively doing something, they asked you to "log off," i.e. quit, and then come back when you were ready to play again. If you forgot, one of the Club officers would log you out (remove you from the Club). As a result, they had over 25 players associated with the Club and always achieved the highest possible club prize (Legendary). They also had very experienced players who were really helpful in answering questions about the game. Only the top 25 got the Club prize, and usually you needed between 30,000 and 40,000 CoM points to make the cut.
I stayed with NDNW for several weeks, but they didn't allow "feeders" (a feeder is a second city that you have to produce commodities for your main city), so I started a new club with my feeder that I called Exodus. I patterned it after NDNW except I allowed feeders. I initially called it "Exodus No War" but had to change the name because players would search for clubs using the key word "war" and our club would come up! Several times new players would come in and they would literally start off with a chat post, "START WAR!". So I changed the name to Exodus (No W-A-R).
It took a while to get to critical mass, but for months now we've had enough players to usually get the second highest club prize (Epic). And we have a great culture of helping each other out.
I'd be remiss if I didn't credit the NDNW for teaching me how to play. They had a President called "Q" who IRL is a lady from Delaware, and she was an amazing person who always helped everybody out. Somehow the Game accused her of cheating (she wasn't), so she quit. A really smart (and competitive) guy named "Death Valley" took over, and he runs the club to this day (but I think they changed the name). "DV" stops by Exodus once in a while and helps our less experienced Members. I think they also changed their no war policy, which allows them to complete war-oriented CoM assignments.
