I have to comment on this, I like the way I laid my city out, its pretty organic. It wasnt efficient for playing, but at least I had the city looking the way I liked it rather than looking totally utilitarian-ish. It's just a matter how the player chooses to go about playing the game I guess. Oh, speculations are fun, I love reading all the theories on the GOLD HEARTS. Anyone else love this kind of secretive/unknown/explorative stuffs?
Do not level up much This post is pretty long but is worth to read, meanwhile you probably wanna re-roll your city, just like what I did. Pixel people is an incredibly great game. My first time playing it is like most of you -- try different combinations, expand as soon as I canÂ… at around level 17 I found it takes 5 million coins to fill up hearts at Gene Pool, and there is a sicky achievement requires 100 times! My cps was like around 300, which means it takes 5 hours(with full-output, and you know some buildings only work 20min after full upgrade so you have to come back often to activate it) for a roll, and I couldn't expand any further because that makes it even harder. Besides, my lands was consumed by a lot of stupid Rocky Mansions, which made my output so low I gave up my save. In the new game I searched online for formulas and made a shortest way straight to Gene Pool. For saving land, I went level 4 to unlock Atomic Cottages. To use the rest lands, I built Forensic Lab which is most efficient in early game, every profession I made this time is well considered. You know what? That worked great! My cps was around 130 and it only takes 73000 for an instant surprise at level 4, 10 minutes a run, 30 times quicker than unplanned game. And sometimes it returns 50000, almost one more free. Plus, the 2u and 5u rewards are wonderful cheap in this way. I spent 2 weeks farming on this, after used 210u to max my lab, and about same cost to fully-upgrade all my production buildings, I still had 200u available. My animal collection was early completed when I had only 65 lands, don't ask about the achievement, too easy this time. I planned to save more u before moving forward but 1.3.0 screwed my farm up. You must already knew what happened, yes, they moved instant surprise function to Animal Shelter for no reason, and the additional sockets made my cps much lower than before. So this time I pushed my progress to level 9 to unlock Shiny Towers. Of course I have a lot of lands this time saved from residences. That made me easily got the Animal Shelter, but there is a more attractive building await: Casino. I must admit doing two stupid things in this run: 1, I expanded to level 11 to get more lands. 2, I spent 100u in a evil mission just because I didn't know what the reward was. If you have chance back, don't follow these mistakes. Because the leveling system in this game is not well balanced. I could already fired the numerical designer if I am his boss. See other posts you will find cost caps of 4 million for Animal Shelter and 10 million for Casino. So what? Those are unbelievable big numbers, although mission rewards and surprise rewards raise as well, seriously, the rate is definitely not a good deal. The surprise reward cap is 100k(small) and 500k(large) coins. You need 20 large surprise coin packs to get just one spin in Casino. And how good is your normal output from production? 3k? Let me tell you what I get at level 11: the cost of Animal Shelter is 410k, 770k for Casino. I have 680 cps income with no duplicated jobs at all, and I win 270k in a large surprise pack, which means 3 jackpots afford 1 Casino spin. This is much more reasonable comparing with high levelers. But I still curse the expansion by my mistake, because at level 9 or 10(I don't remember exactly), the Casino only requires 270k and large coin pack gives 250k, almost equal. All the reason I expanded is, I didn't know there is glass-based houses reward like Precarious Heights that don't cost lands at all! So now if you have got a brand new game save, the most efficient way is: 1. To get church as soon as possible(you need a dreamer gene so that requires level 2 or 3) 2. Do not expand at all, use u from trees or Utopia mines and donate to get lands. 3. Go straight for preparation of Animal Shelter, HQ and Casino. Once you get bureaucrat gene, build HQ and complete socialite mission immediately. 4. After you got casino, your time has come. You can roll lottery with a very cheap price, and you will get random glass residences for more people, get random u for more land(make sure donate them in Church, do not expand in Law Firm) for new buildings. With slow but firm development finally your cps can support you play in Casino very frequently. You are invincible. Yes, that's what the designer guiding us to do, that's the theory of this game -- DO NOT LEVEL UP. If you're at a cap, consider to restart your game in a better way and thank me. Spoiler So did I erase my save and start all over again? Just imagine farming surprises thousand timesÂ… I didn't. The only reason supporting me to continue this broken save is, I have found a bug that increases coin income fast. Firstly, you need to go Police Station to check achievements. See if your game crashes while clicking Game Center button. Congrats if so. Then, enter your game and exit normally. Have a good sleep. After hours, enter your game again, run all your buildings, then go into achievement, crash it by clicking Game Center. You will find your buildings stopped, your coins increased just like hours passed. So now you have more coins for playing in Casino! After boosted coins and exchanged them into land-free residence/tree/decoration or u or animals, just bomb it again, after re-launch it you will find coins increased again. Remember, do not build any unnecessary thing this time Thanks for the developers for bringing so much fun. I bought time doubler, but will not buy any u before you adjust the balance in correct way.
Great post. Sounds like you figured out what the Church is for - getting more land without leveling up. Genius! That said, as someone who's running a 4.1k cps city on 341 land, I have no intention of starting over. a) I built the city on my own through trial and error and I don't want to erase that, b) the city supports itself just fine in terms of the amount of surprises I actually want to buy, and c) when new content comes out I want to explore it fully, not feel constrained by worrying about ruining my perfect surprise factory. That said, if I could have a second game on the same device, I would definitely try out this strategy!
The fact is that the first time you play something is always more exciting than when you go back to it. This update was fun to play but it was not fresh and new like when I first loaded up the game. Nothing that you can really do about that. Having said that, here is my 2 cents on the update. Missions - I really don't like them. Maybe its the name because they don't really feel like I am doing anything (just killing my animals). I thought Missions would have some kind of puzzle to solve by having to go to different locations in your city. Buildings - Do we really need a Broadcast Station, TV Station, and Radio Station? I agree with one of the posts earlier that there is so much creativity in the people's names and descriptions but some of the building are lacking. Clicking - I realize this is a clicking game. And I guess all the clicking is supposed to drive you to buy more u, but buying more u doesn't stop the clicking. Why not allow us to upgrade to level 10 now? You could raise the u cost to upgrade and I'm sure most folks would be ok with that. If there was a Mission system that made you click around your city, that would keep people in the game rather than just having to click to restart timers. Decor - we need more of it. I leveled all the way up before updating. To get back to 50%, I had to buy a lot of duplicate decor (I have 10+ parking lots, 20+ vtol pads, etc). Now with the Casino, I have tons of various color plazas that don't really fit with my city (except at the altar). Two suggestions - more decor options and a prize at the Casino that allows you to glassify one of your existing decor (or tree) tiles.
One question, one suggestion: Q: What's the max CPS assuming no duplicate buildings? S: It would be nice to see a toggle for number of upgrades on buildings instead of going into each one to check. Something along the lines of replacing the coins with hearts option.
I think too many people are expecting too much from what is essentially a pick up and play type experience, the game itself is superb IMO, literally the only freemium game I've ever got into and spent money on. While its human nature to always want more, there are limits to how much can be done in this kind of game, and I personally feel the last update went above and beyond what I expected. I was one of the main complainers about the time it took to release the last patch and was too vocal about it and for that I apologise. If the next patch is as good as this one I will be really pleased, even more so if we don't have to wait too long lol. Great game and keep up the good work!!
Thanks a lot for replying It's great that you have passed the hardest time during level 15+ to end, Man! Your points are really true for people who already get there. Actually I don't want to be an OCD injured as well, I wanted to build a reasonable city with good layout instead of a lot of production facilities crowd together. Following is to everybody, especially to LambdaMu. The tricks I shared are just to help people(especially new players) who feels(or will feel soon) same as me about the balance setting. A good, well-balanced game will be designed as that you can have fun as you pick it at anytime. Pixel people could be an epic sandbox simulation game but there is something fatal inside -- The punishment is too cruel. In a normal sandbox game I can feel free and safe, I can make any mistakes playing it with an easy-recovery system. But in Pixel people, it's like a giant trap: Firstly it's auto-saved, which means your every single action is irreversible; And, there is few instruction telling the development or trend, it's OK for a well-balanced game because players don't want to be bound; But the most critical is the balance setting really sucks, in early game you won't realize or imagine how ridiculous the growing curve of time and coin costs with leveling-up is, and it is very easy to make a boring dead-city if you're not super lucky to only created necessary professions. Every move calls for billions coins and hundreds hours, and your city can only produce millions per hour, plus you have to often check it to click tons of building to make those lazy guys continue to work. There are only two ways to get rid of this boring situation: 1. To buy IAP u, buy a lot of them, but you will find it's such a grabber that might cost you 100u (=4 bucks, although mine was from trees) in a mission with only one cheap reward that you can get hundreds of them from casino, and you will swear to never ever do it again. 2. To follow a fixed, optimized sequence to make income better balanced with cost. That is also boring, but better than nothing to do. At least I can spin lottery every time I logged in at low level, no matter I play an hour or 3 minutes a day. I definitely understand the developers want to make more profit. But seriously, if you are a player, you need a week to make next move, and the only thing you can do before that is to get daily rewards, plus that you must check everything again every several hours, how long could you carry on? Probably people could pay once, twice, after they realized that 2 dollars purchase can only support several clicks, will they continue playing? Will they accept your next game? A good design is to make people happy, and even happier with IAP. Not to make people bored, and buy IAP to reduce feeling of bored. If anyway I'm bored I can just stop playing it and go away, why do I have to buy something to the guys who made me unhappy? I have typed a lot, because I love this game, the idea, the details. Just something wrong in general direction. Doubler is good and useful, meanwhile the free u is enough for me to realize how imba it is, and I gave up purchasing more u, that is the problem. Good to see that something is changing, like moving people out of Rocky Mansions. Just need more adjustment on numerics.
Just spliced a female Spoiler drummer and bassist , and had a good laugh. Looks like there are a few Spoiler K-ON! fans in LambdaMu.
I have a friend who plays this rather lightly compared to the posters here - checking it once or twice a day, She's been playing this app since it came out, and has maybe 7 animals rescued, and barely any utopium. I guess for the non-hardcore player tapping trees for u takes forever, and the heart thing is even more tedious, so they don't bother.
I agree, and I think a big part of the problem is the auto-select mechanism. When you see a mission page for the first time (after the previous slot's completion, or a skip) and see something you like, you can hit the complete button and literally finish the mission in a couple of seconds. That doesn't feel like a "mission" to me. You really ought to have to go and collect the items yourself, in my opinion. Yes, that could be viewed as simple "busy work" but at least it's a bit more involved than just tapping trees. I sometimes give my iPod to my six year old to have him tap trees for me... Also agree. Unlike housing, I'm not going to delete my old decor as I win new astroglass decor. I was never really into the "min/max game" of optimizing my town; I have flower beds behind my nursery, corn and paddy fields behind my farm, a graveyard next to my church, and so on, even though they're not the highest spirit earners. But my town looks better that way. So now that we can win the four types of plazas from the casino, it would look silly to replace my existing logical decor with those items. I think it would be much better to have astroglass versions of all existing decor items (and some new ones would be great; variety is always better) instead of a town full of plazas. I now have 17 bronze, 9 silver, 4 gold and 3 astroglass plazas. After placing a few around the altar, I wasn't sure what to do with the rest, so I ended up using them for a border on my town's bottom edges, kind of like gargoyles on a building.
Question for Ivan: since the three types of astroglass housing all have the same population density (2 pixel people per glass square), why is there a geometric progression of utopium cost when they are obtained via missions (5, 20, 100) instead of a linear progression? Thanks!
Can anyone confirm if the city square gives the best CPS? I been trying to fill other 4 land building to see if they will produce a higher payout, but none of them are going as far as 200 CPS from the city square.. :/
You're correct in terms of cps per building. But many people perfer to think of it in terms of cps per land. City square requires 5 land (4 for the building plus one full shiny tower) meaning it returns 41.6 cps/l. As of 1.3, the Tavern is actually slightly better. It gives 84 cps but only requires 2 land (itself and a full shiny tower) for 42 cps/l. Of course, City Squares are easier to get built and staffed as you only need 12 people per 10 land instead of 30 people per 10 land. However, if you put people in Astroglass housing, that changes the equation in favor of the Tavern. At the extreme, if all housing is free, the City Square returns 52 cps/l and the Tavern returns 84 cps/l. Note that both buildings run for 5 minutes, upgradeable to 50 with one-time IAP and upgrades. Another notable 4 square building is the stadium, which returns only 48 cps but runs for a ridiculously long time.
That's the highest CPS per building--but it occupies 4 squares, so you get 52 cps per square. The tavern and hero mansion are both much better, at 84 cps for buildings that occupy a single square. The dance studio is next, at 60 cps for one square.
I think it does, but for 50 min. I opted to get stadiums which is 48 cps compared to the 208 cps from the city square. Since the stadiums make money for 20 hrs, I figured youd have to refresh the city square at least 6 times a day to get the same amount as the stadium and most days Im unable to do that. So if you play at least once and hr, you can make a lot more from the city square.
stadiums I'm currently using 7 stadiumss 6 fully upgraded for 20hrs. 3 vtol pads upgraded fully upgraded to 20 hours, 3 circus upgraded to 10 hrs, and 4 film studios upgraded to 12 hrs, but i think they can go 20 fully upgraded. Also got like 5 or 6 farms. I prefer long work times over high high cps. I do have two taverns and and 2 hero mansions fully upgraded but even though they put out a high cps, I prefer the structures that can go a long time, like farms, theater, publishing house. etc. My max is like 2.5k, but I can not touch it for a many hours or so and still be getting 800 to 100 cps or so .
I got 14 stadiums fully upgraded that give me 48cps for 20h, that's 14 click a day to collect 48m coins! They are the absolute best in terms of return if you only play once a day. And I did that for a few weeks before the update. Also 12 Bars at 24 cps for 15h, 15m more. I opened them because before the update, they were giving 18cps but only employed 3 clones, which was the best earning for a click ratio if you included land use. Now they employ 6 pax, so not as good. I'm opening now Theatres that give you 20cps for 15 hours and use 3 dudes. And I got 4 City squares only, because as I play on my iPad, I usually can't check often. But they are the absolute fastest earners for 50m. My rule of thumb : I didn't upgrade any buildings that give you less than 20cps for an hour per upgrade (or 40cps for half an hour, 10cps for 2 hours...). Of course if you're able to check in every hour, things are a bit different. But you got to sleep anyway, and you know, have a life so I rather have buildings that produce for a few hours at least
Ballpark now beats Sushi Bar for title of "WORST EARNER". 2CPS with Bank bonus with 15 minute work cycle (30 min with IAP). It only has 1 worker who earns 1 CPS, it should have a base work time of like 8 hours, level 5 upgrade should be 40 hours to make up for the awful CPS. Terrible.
