我很喜欢数字，最近刚玩《CityVille》，主要是因为我在Buzz Monkey的好友都在玩这款游戏，游戏具有潜在的“社交”功能，这也是Facebook游戏如此受欢迎的原则所在。（请点击此处阅读本系列第2、3、4篇）

Cityville from techtree.com

这款游戏基于“能量”结构——玩家每隔5分钟就会获得一份新能量，直至达到极限水平。玩家的最大能量每个关卡只会多增一份，但若玩家能够高效运用自己的能量，这完全没有关系。每份能量能够让玩家在游戏中进行一次“点击”——点击通常能够给玩家带来资金收益。所以《CityVille》的游戏宗旨其实是“如何在每次点击中最大化自己的收益”。

资金主要通过两个渠道获得——房屋租金和商业活动收入。商业活动也会消耗“商品”（游戏邦注：这主要来自农作物）。根据农作物的不同，商品的价格在1-2个钱币间不等。与《FarmVille》和《FrontierVille》不同，农作物分析在这款游戏中较为直观而简单。查看价格/商品，然后在时间允许范围内将其最优化。即便是每次以1个钱币购买1件商品都可以算是笔好交易，因为通过结合交易活动，商品就能够带来众多收益。所以无需担心太多你的农场经济，而是应该考虑如何持续供应商品，维持自己的贸易活动。

从数学角度看，游戏的最佳部分在于玩家还能够购买“装饰品”，这能够提高交易收益。所以将装饰品的数量最大化也是一大考虑要点。但首先，我们会先着眼于房屋的资金问题。

chart from strangedesign.typepad.com

我的等级不够高，还无法验证5座大型建筑的占据空间。就分析角度来说，“Price”无关紧要，这是一次性消费，理论上看所有这些建筑都会在随后阶段创造大量资金收入。我们真正关心的是最大化每小时所创造的资金。

我们先来看看$/Hour一栏，这告诉我们，从理论角度看，每个建筑每小时能够创造多少资金。建筑的收益创造水平依次排序是：

Country Home、Lake House、Upscale Condos、Cozy Cottage、Skyscraper Condos、Family Townhouse、Colonial Chalet、Terraced Brownstone、Sprawling Mansion、Ranch House和Suburban House。

所以Country Home是我们目前最佳选择，是吧？当然不是。我们无法随心所欲地植入此类建筑——我们能量受限，人口受限。从长久来看，Country Home创造的钱币最多——但这需要我们整天每隔5分钟进行点击。我从“Energy %”一栏就发现这点，数据显示Country Home要呈现最大效用需要100%的能量。

我们的另一限制就是可利用人口。我已算出每10个人口每小时创造的收益。我们新的最佳选择方案是：

Cozy Cottage、Country Home、Family Townhouse、Lake House、Upscale Condos、Terraced Brownstone和Suburban House，然后是急剧降至其他建筑。

当然就极限人口数量而言，Cozy Cottage和Country Home的规模都非常局限——你会发现$/Pop-hour和“Unit Max”（游戏邦注：是指能够利用100%能量的特定建筑类型的极限数量）存在密切联系。

我们会放弃考虑Country Home和Cozy Cottage，因为就连初始城镇的人口都已超过120。若你需要安置额外人口，那么一两座Cozy Cottage将有所帮助，但你需要最后点击这些房屋，因为它们很快就会变得不像其他选择那样节省能量。若你有朋友帮助（提供额外能量），这些Cozy Cottage从短时间来看就是非常高效的财富创造者。

所以我们的最高效财富创造建筑列表是：

Family Townhouse、Lake House、Upscale Condos、Terraced Brownstone和Suburban House。

下面我们分别来看看这5类建筑。

Family Townhouse——出色的初期建筑，随后就会很浪费空间

城市的建造空间非常有限。在游戏一开始，当土地/人口比例很高时，你最好只创建Family Townhouse。但最后你会耗尽空间——这发生在玩家在总人口960的土地上实现效率最大化之前。

Lake House——若你能够负担，这是最佳游戏选择

Lake House是房屋建造郊区地段的选择。它具有较高的$/hour，这代表非常突出的$/population-hour，这些建筑在人口超过2000时依然富有效率。这也属于3×3尺寸的建筑，这是迄今最佳的选择方案。遗憾的是，所有这些优点都依靠极高代价换得——真实成本。Lake House无法通过钱币购得，只能通过“美元”这种真实成本换得。玩家能够通过升级获得些许资金，所以将若干资金投入Lake House将是很好的投资举措。但我不会考虑采取完全建造Lake House的策略。若你能够负担，那么不妨这么做！

Upscale Condo——利润丰厚，过于耗能

Upscale Condo能够带来丰厚收益——它们创造众多现金收入，能够承载许多人口。遗憾的是，它们的循环周期是60分钟。若你每天只登陆12次，它们的效益就会低于Terraced Brownstone和Suburban House。若你是位疯狂的《CityVille》玩家，但没有真正掏钱，那么这就是你的最佳选择。但若玩家每天登陆不到15次，此方案就不再像其他选择那般有效。

Terraced Brownstone——特别住房选择

Terraced Brownstone可以算是《CityVille》中的最佳房屋选择。它们每天需要玩家登陆3次，方能实现效率最大化，它们在城镇人口超过6000人时依然保有竞争性，它们占据的面积很小。只要你的城镇人口达到建造Family Townhouse的标准，过渡至Terraced Brownstone就会变成你的目标。

Suburban House——懒惰玩家的可行选择

Suburban House和Terraced Brownstone同样富有效益。它们的规格是4×4，这个尺寸有点大，但只需隔18小时点击1次（游戏邦注：不同于Terraced Brownstone的8小时）。所以只要你每天能够保持登陆1-2次，那么建造Suburban House就是最佳选择。当然，它们无法承载很多人口，所以你定希望能够引入若干Terraced Brownstone。但这适合体验不频繁的玩家——更长久的循环周期会让Suburban House变得更富效益。若你只是1周登陆1次，那么你就可以忽略所有这些建议，采用Stylish Contemporary house——最大化你的点击收益。

代表含义

刚开始时，玩家应该只建造Family Townhouse，同时搭配Country Home，因为玩家这时拥有的能量远多于操作所需的能量。一直建造Family Townhouse到空间耗尽为止，然后转而只建造Terraced Brownstone。购买Lake House是很好的选择，但它们需要玩家真正掏钱。

游戏邦注：原文发布于2010年12月18日，文章叙述以当时为背景。（本文为游戏邦/gamerboom.com编译，拒绝任何不保留版权的转载，如需转载请联系：游戏邦）

Considering: CityVille economics

For those of you who may not be aware – I like numbers quite a bit.  (I won’t tell you how much, but I have a precise figure in mind)  I’ve been playing CityVille recently – mostly because all my friends from Buzz Monkey are playing it, which gives it that elusive “social” flair which really makes Facebook games shine.  I’m dedicating this post to all my Buzz Monkey peeps, and hope they enjoy the way I suck all of the romance out of city-building!

The game runs off of an “energy” structure – you gain 1 energy every 5 minutes, up to your maximum.  Your maximum energy increases by 1 each level, but that isn’t really important if you’re trying to use your energy efficiently.  Each energy affords you one “click” in the game – a click will generally earn you money.  (Building things is a tiny fraction of your clicks, so I’ll ignore it.)  So CityVille really begs for a “how to maximize my money per click?” (or money / time) sort of analysis.

Money is earned in two primary ways – rent on houses, and income from businesses.  Businesses also consume “goods” – which are grown from crops.  Depending upon your crops, goods cost between 1 and 2 coins.  Unlike FarmVille and FrontierVille, crop analysis is pretty straight-forward in this game.  Just look at the price / good, and optimize to the extent time allows.  Even buying goods at 1 coin apiece is a fine deal, since goods pay out so much money when paired with a business.  So don’t worry too much about the economy of your farming – worry more about keeping a constant supply of goods available to fuel your businesses.

The best part of the game – from a math perspective – is that you can also buy “decorations” – which increase by some % the payoff from any business or house within 3 tiles from the decoration’s edge.  So maximizing your number of decoration bonuses / building is also a consideration.  But to start, we’ll just consider the straightforward money issues with housing.

I’m not high enough level to verify the footprint size of the 5 largest buildings – if anyone wants to verify those numbers I would appreciate it.

For analysis purposes “Price” doesn’t really matter – since that is a one-time cost, and all of these buildings provide a theoretically infinite amount of money over time.  All we really care about is maximizing our realized coins per hour.

We’ll start by just looking at the $/Hour column, which shows us how much money each building can theoretically generate each hour.  Our best earners, in order, are:

Country Home, Lake House, Upscale Condos, Cozy Cottage, Skyscraper Condos, Family Townhouse, Colonial Chalet, Terraced Brownstone, Sprawling Mansion, Ranch House, Suburban House.

So the Country Home is our best option by far, right?  Of course not.  We can’t simply place as many of these buildings as we want – we are limited by our energy, and by our population limit.  A single Country Home produces maximum coins over time for any single building – but it requires that we click every 5 minutes, 24 hours a day.  I’ve captured this in the “Energy %” column, which shows that each Country Home requires 100% of our energy for maximum efficiency.  Yikes!

Our other limit is the available population.  I’ve calculated the payout per 10 population per hour.  Our new best options are:

Cozy Cottage, Country Home, Family Townhouse, Lake House, Upscale Condos, Terraced Brownstone, Suburban House – and then a huge drop-off for every thing else.

Of course, both the Cozy Cottage and the Country Home are still very limited in terms of maximum population – you can see a strong correlation between $/Pop-hour and “Unit Max” (the maximum number of buildings of that type to use 100% of our energy).

We’ll stop considering the Country Home and Cozy Cottage, since even beginning towns exceed 120 population.  Using a Cozy Cottage or two can be efficient if you need to house a few extra population, but you should always click on those cottages last, since they will quickly become less energy-efficient than other clicks you will have available to you.  If you have friends helping you (providing you extra energy) those Cozy Cottages can be efficient earners for quite a while.

So our ordered list of the most efficient buildings for coin generation stands as:

Family Townhouse, Lake House, Upscale Condos, Terraced Brownstone, Suburban House.

Let’s take a look at each of these five.

Family Townhouse – excellent early build, waste of space later

The amount of build area available for your city is strictly limited.  In the early game, when your ratio of land/population is high, you are probably best off building Family Townhouses exclusively.  But eventually you’ll run out of space – probably well before you maximize their efficiency at 960 total population.

Lake House – your best whole-game option – if you can afford it

The Lake House is a suberb option for housing, from any viewpoint.  It has a very high raw $/hour, an excellent $/population-hour, and it remains efficient past 2000 total population.  It’s also a 3×3 footprint building, which is optimal for reasons we’ll discuss later.  Unfortunately, all these advantage come at a price – real cost.  The Lake House cannot be purchased for coins – only “dollars” – which require a real-world expenditure to acquire.  You do earn a few dollars by leveling up, so sinking a few into Lake Houses might be a very good investement.  But I won’t seriously consider an all-Lake House strategy seriously.  If you can afford it – do it!

Upscale Condo – Very profitable, too energy-intensive

Upscale Condos have a lot going for them – they generate a ton of cash, and hold a lot of people.  Unfortunately, they cycle every 60 minutes.  That means you need to log in every hour to maximize their numbers.  If you only log in 12 times a day, they drop significantly below Terraced Brownstones and Suburban Houses in terms of efficiency.  If you’re a mad CityVille player, but not actually paying, then this could be your best option.  For anyone logging in fewer than 15 times a day (at one -hour intervals) this is probably not going to pay off as well as other options.

Terraced Brownstone – Your housing option of choice

Terraced Brownstones are probably the best housing option in CityVille.  They require 3 logins per day to maximize efficiency, they remain competitive past 6000 population (I believe the maximum population can’t even go that high), and they have that crucial small footprint size.  Once you start to grow your town past the point where you can use the Family Townhouse, transitioning to Terraced Brownstones is absolutely what you want to do.

Suburban House – a viable option for the lazy player

Suburban Houses are almost as efficient as Terraced Brownstones.  They have a 4×4 footprint, which is a bit large, but they only require one click every 18 hours, as opposed to 8 hours for the Terraced Brownstones.  So if logging in 1 or 2 times a day is all you can manage, you will be better off with Suburban Houses.  Of course, they don’t hold much population – so you will still want to include a significant number of Terraced Brownstones.  But if you play infrequently – the longer cycle-time makes Suburban Houses more efficient.  If you only log in once a week or so – then you probably should ignore ALL of this advice, and simply use Stylish Contemporary houses – to maximize your income per (very infrequent) click.

What this all means

When starting out, you should use Family Townhouses exclusively, keeping your initial Country Home around as an energy-sink, since you’ll have a lot more energy than you know what to do with.  Keep up with Family Townhouses until you start to run out of room – then switch to building exclusively Terraced Brownstones.  Buying Lake Houses is always a good option, but they cost real $$ to place.（Source：strangedesign）