Economic Considerations

The trick to mastering games in the Freemium Grinder City Builder genre is getting a solid grasp on the economy and how best to work it to your advantage. This is not actually as easy or as hard as it sounds - you just have to be consistent and committed to the doing of it.

There are two aspects to the economy - collecting taxes for each building in your town, and collecting wages from each Job / Task that your character complete. The Jobs / Tasks also deliver XP.

Building Tax

While this is not the biggest source of income it is the most regular, thanks to the regular timers on each building which permits you to obtain regular income each time that you log into the game through the day.

Job / Task Income

This is where the real money is, but only when you work it strategically during income play. We make that stipulation - income play - because most of the time at least some of your characters will be doing specific tasks for specific missions and quests, which means you will not have full control over all of your characters at any given time to use them strategically to obtain the best income rates.

That said, this is really only an impediment early in your game play, when you have such a limited population of characters in your town. Once you get a decent amount - something over twenty is the goal - you will find that predicting your daily income will be far easier.

Income Strategy

What we are talking about is the core of the income strategy: predictable income.

The idea is to have an idea of how much you will consistently earn each day from your available characters - that way you can plan out your spending so that you are not constantly out-spending yourself!

The reason that is an issue has to do with a number of factors... There is the cost of new buildings, the cost of Land Expansion Slots, and the costs of adding objects and items you will use to make your town uniquely your own.

In practical terms there are also the buildings you are required to add for missions and quests - as the story mode is rich with these.

Success in the game - specifically economic success - is found by planning out your game play to maximize your income as well as determining your optimal daily income.

The strategy that you employ in that regard is to figure out how frequently you can log in and play - for example if you know that you can log in and play every 4 hours, then you will want to pick Jobs and Tasks that are four hours long - since that way each time you log into the game you are able to collect the wages and XP for the last round of jobs, then initiate the next.

That gives you the ability to estimate your daily income, which then allows you to figure out how many Land Expansion Slots you can unlock each week, and how long it may take you to save up a nest egg (the most optimal amount seems to be $500K) that you will want to build up to and then retain, since for the first 30 Levels or so that will permit you to purchase any building that the game asks you to via story mode.

And Finally the Donut

Now that you understand the basic economics of the game there is one other factor that you need to take into consideration -- the Premium Currency in the game, which is Donuts!

For the most part, to obtain Donuts you must spend real-world money. That is not entirely true mind you, because there are a number of ways to obtain Donuts:

• The Weekly Mystery Box.

• Clearing Wreckage and Toxic Waste from Land Expansion.

• Special Missions / Quests that pay off in Donuts.

• Special Events that also pay off in Donuts.

While the Premium Structures are not cheap, if you do not want to (and do not plan to) spend real money in the game, as long as you are careful never to spend ANY of the Donuts you get from the above - meaning you save them ALL - you will eventually be able to purchase some of the Premium structures.