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解析《CityVille》中的装饰物经济学原理(2)

发布时间:2012-01-04 15:30:06 Tags:,,

《CityVille》中的商业与房屋或庄稼篇的内容并不相同,前者并不会与时间相挂色,仅与商品有关,并以此转变为金钱。虽然这种转变需要花费一定时间,但是却不长——最多只需要8至11分钟,而最快速的转有时仅需要60秒。可以肯定,这种速度远远超过了我们在游戏中的能量收集速度。(请点击此处阅读本系列第1、3、4篇

在选择商业时,你首先必须明确的,每件商品能够为你带来多少收益?

goods from cityville(from strangedesign)

goods from cityville(from strangedesign)

这是一张非常清晰的图表,我们可以看到Coffee Shops和Burger Joints是根本无用的,玩家完全可以不建设这类建筑。在游戏早期,玩家可以选择经营Flower Shops和Bakeries,并在后来转变为Game Shops和Diners,最后再尝试Handbag Stores和Sushi Bars。这些建筑的最初成本都较低,除非是最后几个——而且你也不会一开始就投入1百万个货币去经营Tower Eats吧。我发现我们可以选择一些货物需求较少的商业项目,如此可以帮助我们有效地销售商品。我认为上图的数据推理就足以帮助玩家经营《CityVille》中的商店了。

然而,我们还必须考虑到装饰机制。装饰将会增加商店和房屋支出。一般而言,你装饰的每一块瓷砖附近的商店或住宅都会增加1%的支出。在游戏中任何事物都会与货币挂钩,例如Bakery增加1%的利润也就等同于你将会获得41个货币,而如果加上装饰物,你便有可能从中增加2.5%的利润!

我将以一些图像解释这一机制。每个装饰在基本方向上都会有3个正方形的形状。如下图:

tile decoration(from strangedesign)

tile decoration(from strangedesign)

带有颜色的正方形代表3×3以及4×4建筑的最佳布局。如图上所示,我们可以在正方形的上下方安置3个这种布局的建筑,并且在每一边再添加一个,即在有效区内共安置8个建筑——但是这并不是我们想要的。最佳布局是指我们能够在建筑物旁边的所有空白区域内都进行装饰,即达到每个3×3建筑拥有27%的装饰空间以及每个4×4建筑拥有30%的装饰空间。

所有的房屋都需要尽可能设置在街道或者靠近你街道的人行道旁边。而街道大约有3个格子的宽度——也就是还处于装饰的范围内。这就意味着你无需对街道另一边空间进行装饰。所以你不能以相同的方法装饰建筑两旁的空间。如果你使用人行道,你可以通过装饰完善另一边的建筑——但是如果你只布置了一行房屋而非两行,那么最终也不能达到完善的效果。而通过先规划道路,然后房屋,再进行装饰,然后再回到房屋,道路如此反复循环,你的装饰效率可能会提高到80%以上。

虽然这种效率听起来很诱人,而且这也是一种非常廉价的方法,但是30%的提高并不意味着最终的胜利,我们还能从装饰中获得何种利益?

并非所有的装饰只能覆盖一个正方形,有些甚至遍及4,9甚至16个正方形。每个装饰所提供的奖励%等同于它所覆盖的正方形的数量。如此看来,一个能够提供16%奖励的装饰比起16个提供1%奖励的方法有效得多。除此之外,这些更大的装饰也仍然拥有“3个超越边缘的正方形模块”,当装饰不断扩大时,它的“边缘”也会不断扩大——这就意味着装饰能够覆盖更多区域并且产生更多奖励。基本上,一个装饰能够利用奖励获得最多48块正方形区域,但是一个4×4的装饰却可以使用16%的奖励去获得84个正方形!更多奖励X更多覆盖的房屋=我们的城市能够赚取更多利益。

如果是2×2和4×4装饰:

2X2 and 4X4 decoration(from strangedesign)

2X2 and 4X4 decoration(from strangedesign)

一个2×2规格的装饰将能够同时覆盖4个建筑而不只是3个。这就意味着我们能够比单独装饰一个正方形(只能获得27%的奖励)获得最多40%的奖励。但对于更大型的建筑来说并不管用,因为它在每一边仍然只能重叠3块区域。我曾经在第一部分文章中提到3×3房屋或商店是优于4×4格局的选择方案,因为从装饰重叠方面来看这是个可行的方法。

还有一点需要注意的是,在两个建筑物之间我们获得了额外一行空间能够用于装饰。现在我们的建筑物所占领的空间是6行而不是5行了,如此我们也拥有了更多的装饰空间,我们便能够从建筑物两边的装饰中获得更多潜在收入。这种效率甚至高于最大的4×4基本装饰规模。

4X4 decoration(from strangedesign)

4X4 decoration(from strangedesign)

在4×4规模的装饰中,我们可以在两边安置4大建筑(记住这些大型建筑已经完成了装饰)。而在中间区域我们获得了3行空间用于进行更多装饰。不幸的是,我们不能在两个建筑之间或者中间的装饰物中再添加更多此规模的装饰。但是如果我们交替设置1×1或者2×2大小的装饰,我们便能够更好地覆盖两边街道的建筑并从中获得70%的奖励。在两边安置两行相同的装饰,我们便能够从每个建筑中获得140%的奖励!(但是这种方法却很难实现,因为我们必须保留1行人行道空间。而如此布置却太过于密集!)以下是这种原理的布局图,其中也有一些可取之处:

layout(from strangedesign)

layout(from strangedesign)

黑色和灰色区域是最大规模装饰,红色区域是中等装饰,而蓝色绿色是最小装饰区域。

另外一种方法是围绕着单一的建筑扩大奖励,并在你完成收集任务之前将每个建筑移至这个建筑点。对于我来说这是一项繁琐的工作,但是却能够给我们带来240%的利益。

layout (from strangedesign)

layout (from strangedesign)

与Zynga的其它游戏一样,《CityVille》也通过玩家在游戏中的快速点击和物品收集给予他们相应的货币奖励。当我从10个Terraced Brownstones租客中收得房租时,我便能够一次性获得1000个以上的货币。这种奖励非常诱人,并且因此玩家便不会轻易移动建筑物了。如果拥有20点能量,我便能够获得4300甚至更多的货币奖励了。

最后,我贴出自己构造的城市截图。我排除了所有低效能的建筑,有效地规划了我的城市布局。

layout (from strangedesign)

layout (from strangedesign)

以此布局,每天单房屋便能够让我获得超过1万5千个货币,而我的手提包店中的120个商品也能够创造1112个货币。

但是我们还需要面临一个小问题,也就是空地的处理。有些人在此添加了一些新的建筑(它们是4×4布局,但商店却是3×3格局)。所以我便选择从奖励区域中移除一些新空地,直到将它们填满后再移进来。

游戏邦注:原文发表于2010年12月20日,所涉事件和数据均以当时为准。(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 Part 2

I’ve already gone over my calculations for the most optimal housing purchases – so let’s dive into the businesses.

Businesses in CityVille are fundamentally different from houses or crops, because they are not (very much) time dependent.  The depend only upon goods, which they convert directly into money.  They do take a bit of time to do this, true, but it’s really not very long – about 8-11 minutes for the long ones, and sometimes less than 60 seconds for the quick turnaround businesses.  It far outpaces your energy collection rate – that’s for sure!

So when selecting a business, you really only need to concern yourself with one thing – what is its payout per good?

This paints a pretty straightforward picture – Coffee Shops and Burger Joints are garbage, and should never be built.  Players should look to Flower Shops & Bakeries in the early game, transition to Game Shops & Diners later on, and eventually add Handbag Stores & Sushi Bars.  The initial cost of these buildings is negligable until you get to the last few – is it worth a million coins for a Tower Eats?  I have been finding it useful to keep a few low-goods business around, because I like to spend my goods efficiently.  But I don’t think business are really going to require any reasoning more sophisticated than the above table.

However, we do have one last meaty topic to get into – decorations.  Decorations increase the payout % of businesses and houses.  Each tile on which you place a decoration will, in general, increase the payout of nearby buildings by 1%.  Even better – things always round up to the nearest whole coin – so a 1% increase in profits for a Bakery will yield a payout of 41 coins – which is actually a 2.5% increase!

I’ve got a series of images to explain the mechanics of this a bit more clearly.  Each decoration has a range of 3 squares in each cardinal direction.  To make this clear, I’ve put together a simple set of images for the basic 1-tile decoration:

The colored squares indicate optimal placements for a row of 3×3 and 4×4 buildings.  As you can see, we can cover exactly 3 such buildings on the top and bottom.  We could fit one more on each side – for a total of 8 buildings within the affected area – but that’s not what we want to do.  For optimal packing, we’d fill ALL of the white area between the buildings with decorations – for a total improvement of 27% per building (for 3×3) or 30% improvement per building (for 4×4).

All buildings require that they be either adjacent to a road, or adjacent to a sidewalk which is adjacent to a road.  Roads are 3 tiles wide – exactly the range of decorations.  This means decorations on the other side of a road do nothing for you.  So you can’t do the same packing on both sides of the building rows.  You can do some decoration improvement on the other side if you use sidewalks – but that’s dramatically less efficient, since you’re only improving 1 row of buildings rather than 2.  You can get 80+ efficiency by laying out strips of roads, then buildings, then decorations, then buildings, then roads again.

So this efficiency boost sounds nice, and it’s actually quite cheap.  But even 30% doesn’t really seem like much of a victory… isn’t there some way we can squeeze a bit more bonus out of decorations?

Oh yes there is.

You see, not all decorations cover just one square – some cover 4,9, or even 16 squares.  And each decoration provides a %bonus equal to the number of squares it covers.  This seems to make sense – because providing a 16% bonus with a single decoration is just a quicker way to provide 16 1% bonuses, right?  Except that these larger decoration still have a range of “3 squares beyond their edge” – so as a decoration becomes larger its “edge” becomes larger – which means dramatically larger areas can be covered by that larger bonus.  A basic decoration can apply its bonus to a maximum of 48 squares, but a 4×4 decorations can apply its 16% bonus to a whopping 84 squares!  Higher bonus X more covered buildings = much, much better payoffs for us.

Consider these stacking images for a 2×2 and 4×4 decoration:

A 2×2 decoration can overlap 4! buildings instead of 3.  That means simply packing these instead of our 1-square decorations gives us a 40% maximum bonus, instead of 27%.  It doesn’t help much with our larger buildings though, since it still only overlaps 3 on each side.  I mentioned in my first post on CityVille economics that 3×3 homes and businesses were preferable to the larger 4×4 options – the way they fit within overlapping decoration zones is a big part of that.

Another key thing to notice is that we’ve actually gained 1 additional row between the buildings upon which to place decorations.  Our building rows are now 6 rows apart, not 5.  That space gives us even more potential space for decorations, which ups our potential payouts to both rows of buildings.  This effect is even more dramatic with the largest basic decoration – a 4×4.

With the 4×4 decorations we can now place 4 large structures on each side.  (Remember that each of these larger decorations is already 4x more effective than the 2×2 decoration.)  And we’ve gained 3 full rows in the middle for even more decorations.  Unfortunately, we can’t pack additional decorations of this size in between the buildings and the central decorations – but by alternating 1×1 and 2×2 decorations, we can get a coverage pattern which provides an even 70(!)% bonus to every building on both streets.  By putting an identical row of decorations on both sides, we can reach 140% per building!  (That’s a lie, because we need to save 1 row for a sidewalk.  But it’s pretty close!) Here is a schematic of that layout – there are others which are equally profitable:

The black and grey blocks are the large decorations, red blocks are medium decorations, and the blue & green blocks are small decorations.

Another alternative is to simply maximize your bonus for a single building spot – and move each building into that spot before you collect.  That seems like a whole lot of work to me, but here is a layout which gives you a maximum of 240% payout.

CiteVille, like other Zynga games, gives you a coins bonus for clicking and collecting items in rapid sequence.  When I collect rent from 10 Terraced Brownstones, I get a bonus of 1000+ coins for doing them all at once.  That’s a pretty significant bonus – and it provides further disincentive for moving your buildings around between collections.  With 20 energy, I regularly achieve the maximum bonus of 4300 coins or so.

Finally, I leave you with a screen from my own city, so you can see how well I practice what I preach.  I’ve purged my low efficiency buildings, and given myself a regularly tiled layout.

With this layout, I’m clearing more than 15,000 coins a day from my housing alone – and that handbag store is paying a cool 1112 coins for each 120 goods I feed it.

One tiny problem is that vacant lots – on which people put new business franchises – are 4×4 elements, even though all the shops appear to be 3×3.  So I put new lots out away from my bonuses, and move them in once they get filled.(source:strangedesign


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