A Restrained Strategy
There are several different opinions on the best and fastest way to increase your portfolio value. For example, some say buy the most expensive street you can find, others say buy lots of lower priced streets. Some say to use the Hazard and Demolition cards to attack other players and prevent them from collecting rent.
I have tried each of these tactics by trial and error, and have settled on a restrained approach that I will share with you over the next few days.
- Cheating is simply a hard reality in this game, so get over it.
Playing fairly according to not only the rules but the spirit of the game, will never produce higher scores on the leaderboard than the incorrigible vermin who treat the game like their own Kobiyashi Maru.
I am not endorsing cheating; merely accepting that it happens, so manage your expectations accordingly. - Taxes are a significant factor in this game. No tax is levied if you have fewer than 6 streets, but as soon as you buy your 6th street, all your streets are taxed.
I have a visceral disdain for taxes, so I have chosen to limit my portfolio to 5 of the longest streets I can find. As a result, I pay no taxes, and can apply all my daily revenue to buildings.
I hope you find these suggestions helpful.
Check back tomorrow to read my thoughts on Hazards and Bonus Buildings.
Ciao for now.
- Scott
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Just a quick comment on the short vs. long street issue: Any street works as long as it costs > $1MM, however I am having much greater luck with super long streets. If you can find a street with an initial cost of > $6 or $7MM that doesn’t overlap itself a bunch you will be in heaven. Make sure to get at least 3 bonus buildings though, as losing such a large chunk of income could be devastating.
A little tax isn’t bad, as long as the additional streets bring in enough income. In my case for example, the sixth street needed to bring in at least 1m to be cost effective. Less than that, I would have been loosing money. However, above that level and the sixth street started making me more money than it was costing in taxes. Which is a good thing, considering that all my streets are full at the moment
a few suggestions:
1. upgrade streets every few days to so you’re buying longer and longer streets as time goes by
2. If you just filled up a street with buildings that cost more than $1million apiece, make sure you keep the street long enough to at least get back the amount you paid for the buildings. For Grids and below, you can mostly sell after one day (although after one day you’re still losing 10% of your money, but if you find a GottaHave street, it may be worth it)
3. get out of the cities and head for the countryside – there are lots and lots of county roads out there that are >$6mil and can hold over 100 Grid buildings – that’s $45mil a day of rent. Plus there’s generally less cut-throat, back-stabbing competition out there so you probably won’t get hazarded as much.
4. When trying to buy a long street, keep the “Locate Streets” window open as you scan up and down the street. Once you get to the handle for that street, it will show up in the list (even if the list initially says “uh-oh there are no streets available. once you get to the handle, it refreshes the list)
5. When building on long streets, zoom out one click before you click “Build Property”. This helps enormously since it means less scrolling, and your browser doesn’t have to render the building graphics, and in the event of a chance card you don’t have to scroll as far to get back to where you were (assuming you discarded the chance card). The downside is that it’s a little harder to be sure about which cone you have selected. If you build from the ends of the line of cones, you can more accurately always click on the end cone.
6. Here’s where it gets ugly – which buildings to buy. Early on, Greenhouses and City Centers are best since they’re cheap and pay 100% ROI every day. But once you get into the streets that cost more than $2mil, it just takes to dang long to build that many houses. At that point, switch up to the Grid buildings – they pay 90% ROI the first day AND seem to have a slightly smaller footprint than the 4-sided castle thing (meaning you can stuff more on a street). That strategy will hold you well until you get up to around $100million rent a day. At that point (and with the slowness of the servers), it’s not feasible to build 200 Grids a day unless you’re laid-up in the bed recovering from major surgery. My current strategy (which I developed by watching DonTrump’s purchases) is to switch to Cubics. They cost $2mil, but do pay $1mil/day, so it’s a fairly good trade off (but still sucks). Photats are a second choice, but I like the round numbers involved with Cubics. The stuff above Cubics just doesn’t pay back enough money, although I’m guessing once you get to $300-500mil/day rent, you’ll probably want to chose another more expensive building, I just haven’t figure out which one yet.
7. If you’re really bored, you can go back and “pack” a street full of Grids or Cubics with greenhouses. Sometimes there will be a gap between two grids/cubics that may be big enough for a prison or sewer but isn’t big enough for a Grid. If you’re zoomed out when building the Greenhouse, you can see where these spots are and stick a greenhouse there. And hey, Greenhouses return 100% the first day so you’re still making money. But it is tedious.
Just my suggestions so far.
Say, has anyone else noticed the Tribal/Hasbro folks have been totally silent on their twitter page for over a week now? We get platitudes on the MCS blog page, but nothing at all on Twitter anymore. I wonder if Hasbro transferred the project over to a new company?
I only have five streets and have been buying the most expensive buildings i can buy. BTW level 4