Welcome to my small city! I only ever reinvest earned SIM. I've always focused on increasing my income. I was lucky in the very beginning when I randomly purchased several cards with STEEM. That's how I got the factory, shopping mall, airport, and cinema. Those are big money-makers in my opinion but also require lots of workers. I remember spending a long time accumulating enough SIM to buy houses one by one to fill those employment needs.
I've come a long way since those days, at least I think. For a while I was even supplementing my SIM by selling Starbits and bought some cool buildings like my first stadium, brewery, and WEED farm.
A while back I was perusing a number of dCity posts by people with massive, sprawling cities and was even asking them for advice on the most cost effective buildings. Some said to buy hotels, others were saying to buy farms but only below a certain price. There were a lot of things I had to consider so I eventually decided to do my own research.
So I made a list of buildings (I=income, W=workers).
- Restaurant- I: 10, W: 10
- Hotel- I: 10, W: 15, pop: 4
- Zoo- I: 10, W: 20
- Circus- I: 10, W: 20
- Brewery- I: 9, W: 10
- Night club- I: 8, W:10
- Law firm- I: 10, W: 10
- Farm- I: 6 (+4 w/ tech), W: 11, pop: 5
Most have around the same income, which makes all of these desirable. However, once the required workers comes into play, you might think twice about wanting a zoo or a circus. With the hotel, it's at least a little offset by the 4 citizens the building comes with and even more so with the farm.
Now lets compare prices! Since December 19 I have been compiling the lowest list price for each of these buildings in order to better understand the fluctuations and make better purchases. Here is a graph of that.
It's almost as if they all want to be the same price, somewhere around 1000 SIM. I wonder why breweries have the pattern of small spike, big spike, small spike, big spike. Unfortunately the early data from breweries is missing. I thought the law firm was going to keep dropping but I think it's stabilizing at around 1450.
Here is the table with the precise numbers.
So, what have I been buying according to all these numbers? Farms! They are one of the most affordable with a mostly stable price. It is highly recommended that you acquire the GMO Farming technology, increasing its income to 10 like most of the other buildings, BEFORE you start buying farms so that you don't suffer the popularity penalty that the tech also comes with. If you buy it before buying a bunch of farms, you save yourself the hassle of having to compensate for the loss of population due to the popularity decrease. I don't know if I'm making sense.
As you can see, I have amassed 6 farms so far, and I'm going to keep buying farms (and basic homes). I just bought the Factory A.I. tech and that's why I have so many unemployed citizens. For a while at least, I won't have to worry about shortage of workers. Crime is very much still a problem though and sets me back from my goals. I bought a second police station and the crime percentage didn't change at all, so I decided not to waste any more SIM there. In the future, I'd also like to buy more job centers since I have more than enough immigrants and homeless. I don't get rid of them because they're part of my workforce.
My goals in dCity have always been long-term and my progress, slow but steady. I like it though, and am anticipating their next update. I'm sure the team has been hard at work all this time cooking up something special.
That's all from me for today. I hope you found the graph I had been working on useful. Should I continue it? What do you think?
Until next time!