Megapolis: Managing Your Neighbors

This post will give you some ideas on how to manage your neighbors (in-game friends).  I play on the SQ network only, so if you use Facebook you will have different ways to get new neighbors.  I still recommend auditing your neighbors periodically to make sure you are getting the most out of your available neighbor slots.  It is important to maintain a list of active, helpful neighbors as they will be your main source of Megapolis assets for your construction projects.  I have divided this post into two sections: Getting New Neighbors and Auditing Neighbors.

Getting New Neighbors

If you aren't running out of city space and need to purchase a territory expansion, the best way to spend your Megapolis Megabucks is to add neighbor slots for 5 MB each.  You can think of an extra neighbor slot as a great investment.  If your new neighbor gives you 1 asset each day for 5 days, then you just got your Megabucks worth back instead of if you were to spend those 5 MB on 5 assets.  Your Megabuck ROI is even quicker if this neighbor is sending you an asset worth 2 or 3 Megabucks.  Plus, you get to keep your neighbor (or neighbor slot) permanently so you can get many more assets for the cost of only 5 Megabucks.

To get a new neighbor:

1) Audit Current Neighbors

The first thing you should do before changing your neighbor list is audit your current neighbors.  I will describe this step in the next main section "Auditing Neighbors."

2) Add New Neighbor Slot

Spend 5 Megabucks to add a new neighbor slot.  If you have an open neighbor slot and have already requested 8 neighbors, make sure you don't accidentally spend your 5 Megabucks on a new list of friends to add instead of an actual neighbor slot.  To do this:

- Tap the "Friends" icon in the bottom left of the main screen

- Tap "Add"

- Tap "2 Random Buddies"

- Tap "Buy now" only if the screen says "You've already got # buddies.  You can always add one more for 5 megabucks."

3) Remove Any Unwanted Neighbors that Take Up Neighbor Slots

After determining which neighbors are undesirable to keep, remove them from your neighbor list.  It is important to make sure you are only removing neighbors that take up a neighbor slot, not neighbors that have added you and do not take up a slot.  To do this:

- Tap the "Friends" icon in the bottom left of the main screen
- Tap "Add"
- Tap "2 Random Buddies"
- Tap "Added Buddies" in the bottom left
- If your unwanted neighbor shows up in this list, tap Delete.

4) Add New Neighbors

I recommend sending a request to all 8 neighbors that show up on the list without considering their level.  The reason for this is that the first person to accept your request will become your neighbor.  You are looking for the most active players to have as neighbors for the purpose of getting assets each day, so it doesn't matter what level they are.

If you do my above steps in order, you will add 1 new neighbor slot while replacing up to 7 undesirable neighbors.  It is important that you audit & remove unwanted neighbors first because you are unable to add a new neighbor slot if you have any openings.

Auditing Neighbors

I will start off by saying that I don't care if my neighbors help speed up my contracts.  I am a little particular about all of my 4 hour contracts completing at the same time.  I do, however, let them "help" my contract buildings but I just leave the dialog to accept like in the screenshot below.  That way, if my contracts expire on accident, I can use their help to restore those contracts.

Thanks for the help, guys.  I might need it later.

The only thing I consider when auditing my neighbors for removal is what assets they give me and when.  I often just follow rules #1-3 on a day-to-day basis.  When I have time, I try to audit for rule #4 by making a full list or spot check list and recording my neighbors' donations for a few days in a row.  Here are the rules that I follow:

1) Check My City Just Before the "New Day" Begins

To be fair to my neighbors with the rest of my rules, I need to be sure when they are sending me assets. Since there aren't timestamps in the message log, I use the day change as a reference point.  I apply all gifted assets and check all messages as close as I can up to the new day rollover.

2) After the "New Day" Begins, Did Neighbor Send Unwanted Asset?

If a neighbor sends me an asset that is not on my wish list within the first 12 hours of the "New Day," I usually remove them on the spot.  We receive a new asset list for gifting every 8 hours.  So them sending me an unwanted asset tells me that they don't plan on checking their game before the next day begins in case they have an asset for me that I actually need.

If they send me an asset that isn't on my wishlist but is still for a project that I am working on, I let it slide.

3) Does Neighbor Send Unwanted Asset Late?

If a neighbor routinely sends me an unwanted asset within the last several hours of the day, that is a sign of a neighbor to keep.  This means that they waited as long as possible to give me an asset that I needed, but settled on giving me any asset as a last resort.  These are the best neighbors to have.

4) Does Neighbor Not Send Daily Asset Regularly?

If a neighbor does not send assets to me for several days in a row, I remove them.  This is much harder to track, especially since I now have 40 neighbors on my list.  When I perform this audit, I use a spreadsheet or a note list of my neighbors on my phone.  Sometimes I will just select a few neighbors that I haven't seen activity for a few days and track them.  I have a point system:

3 Points: Neighbor sends me an asset on my wishlist, or that I need for another project.
2 Points: Neighbor sends me an asset that I don't need within 12 hours before a new day.
1 Point: Neighbor sends me an asset that I don't need more than 12 hours before a new day.
0 Points: Neighbor does not send me an asset for the duration of a new day.

If 3 full game days pass and a neighbor that I am watching scores less than 6 points, I can em'.

A good thing about rotating inactive neighbors out of your list is that they can still give you assets.  If you receive an asset from somebody and it shows up in your message log as coming from "Player," then that is somebody who used to be on your neighbor list.

Player: now you're just somebody that I used to know.

I read somewhere that people sometimes completely clear their neighbor list and invite a whole new list of neighbors often.  This gives them many "one-way" neighbors that can send them assets without a limit if they aren't aware.  I don't agree with this method, and I avoid neighbors who do this to me by doing my periodic audits.  Those players would fail audit rule #4 and have 0 points after any amount of days being watched.

Megapolis: Portland Train Bug

Lately, I have been using all of my assets to finish up my train depot.  I like to upgrade all of them evenly to maximize my coin rate while minimizing "unused" building requirements. As of now, I have 2 Portland and 5 New Jersey Trains and I only need to upgrade my Maintenance Shop to lvl 4 before I can start upgrading to Amtrak.

I just upgraded my B Train to Portland today.  Then, one of my neighbors sent me Anchor Bolts which would normally go to NJ Train C.  I go to apply them and I see that I can apply them to Train B (Portland) but not train A (Portland).

This isn't just a visual bug.  I accidentally applied 1 Channel to Portland Train B.

Megapolis: Infrastructure Buildings Nerfed 06/03/14

As of 06/03/14 in the afternoon, I noticed the following 3 structures were nerfed:

Pet Dinosaur Shop:

- Time increased from 16 hours -> 72 hours
- Pop cap increased from 9300 -> 13900
- Power usage increased from ??? -> 25
- Coins/Hour reduced from 323.4 -> 71.9

Westminster Abbey:

- Time increased from 4 hours -> 5 hours
- Coins/Hour reduced from 1581.3 -> 1265.0

Tower of Hercules:

- Time increased from 16 hours -> 18 hours
- Coins/Hour reduced from 1006.3 -> 894.4

They could have changed other structures too, but I didn't notice any that might make their debut on my list of best structures.  At least none that would fall into the range of 100+ coins/hour/square.  Here is how the updated structures rank for coins per hour per square:

As you can see, Kingkey is still the best (for now).  Pet Dinosaur Shop has now lost all viability in my opinion.  Westminster and Hercules are still so-so.





What alerted me to this is I started the app to get my daily Alice/Mike/Edward gifts and play the stock market.  I had the "low power" alert at the top of my screen which I found odd.  I hadn't built or upgraded anything new since the last time I started the app.  My Pet Dinosaur Shops were also ready, so I taxed all of those.  I tapped on one that had already been taxed on accident and saw that there were 72 hours to go before it was ready again.  WTF, 3 days?!  I thought it was a bug, so I looked it up in the shop.  Yep, major hit with the nerf-bat.  That's OK though, that building was a majorly overpowered.

Here are some screenshots for your enjoyment (forgive my ugly, yet efficient city):

Megapolis: Periodic Collection XP vs. Buying & Selling for XP

I decided to write a separate post in response to Justin's comment regarding farming experience through periodic tax/population collection.  The tooltips in-game & the Wiki do not include how much XP you get per collection, so I could only sample some of the buildings that my city has.  Unfortunately, I don't have the time to gather all of that data in the game so I don't really have the resources to tell you which building gives you the most periodic XP per hour at various levels.

Instead, I compared how much XP you get periodically from taxing some buildings versus how much XP you get from selling the "best XP per coin" building.  This analysis was a little difficult because buying & selling buildings and buying periodic buildings are two completely different things.  So it was hard to break the buildings down into one variable to compare them with each other.

With that said, I decided to look at two things for each building:

     1) How long does it take to earn $40k coins? (the cost of Therapeutic Center Foundation, "TCF" henceforth)

     2) How much XP do you earn from that building in that amount of time?

When looking at these numbers, they probably seem confusing.  Let me verbalize it for you:

- Look at the 2nd to last column.  That number means that you earn enough to buy a TCF in that many hours from each infrastructure building of that type.  So essentially, you have invested that many hours which can convert to 1100 XP. 

- Look at the last column.  In the time it takes you to earn 1100 XP by buying a TCF, your infrastructure building only earns you that much XP.

With that information, we can conclude that you earn more experience for buying and selling a TCF than you do with periodic experience from these buildings that I have sampled.  I will rephrase it: "All of these buildings earn enough coins to buy a TCF faster than they earn 1100 XP."

One might argue that having more of these buildings gets you 1100 periodic XP faster, but then you just have more buildings earning you coins at a 1:1 ratio to your experience with each building.  I would guess that population buildings earn much less XP per hour than infrastructure buildings because you can't convert your earnings into TCFs in the end.

My final recommendation:  If you are looking to gain experience quickly, continue to build the most profitable infrastructure buildings and complete the most profitable contracts with only coins in mind.  Then, convert your coins into XP by buying and selling the TCF.

Megapolis: Experience Farming at Endgame

This post was inspired by an anonymous comment on my Megapolis: How I Spend my Coins post about buildings that give you XP.  I understand the desire to lvl up quickly because it is a reliable way to get 1 extra Megabuck if you are saving for that expansion or an additional neighbor slot.

I have broken my analysis into two sections: Buildings and Contracts.  We will compare the XP rewarded from buying & selling buildings as well as all of the contracts for the population-based production buildings.

This post is intended to help you get experience when you are at the "Endgame," not necessarily at the start of your city.  I do not recommend buying & selling any buildings if you are just starting out.

Buildings:

In this section, I take a look at buying buildings & selling them for the sole purpose of gaining XP.  I started calculating all of the infrastructure buildings in the shop before realizing that most of them were horrible for gaining XP.  I knew about the Crystal Pavilion because I had read about it somewhere a while ago, but I found one that is better.  Here are the top 3:

     1) Therapeutic Center Foundation
     2) Crystal Pavilion
     3) Yacht and Cutter Design Bureau

As you can see in the table below, the Therapeutic Center Foundation gives you 27,500 XP for every million coins you spend buying & selling the structure repeatedly.

As a side note, all of the buildings that I sampled that ranked below those listed above had a rate of XP per million coins of less than 5000.

I planned on adding more data that compares XP rates per hour for taxing or collecting population from buildings, but I just do not have enough time to sample all of them.  Unfortunately, the Wiki does not always list the XP rewards for collecting, and the tooltips in-game do not either.

Contracts:

While I always recommend purchasing the contracts that have the best coin rate per hour that you can manage with your login frequency, I figured you might want to know which contracts give you the most XP per hour instead.  Thankfully, the Nuclear Research Center and the two contracts that I constantly cycle through are among the best XP building contracts longer than 1 hour.

My city has only Nuclear Research Centers for my population based contract buildings.  I run the 3 hour contract during the day and the 9 hour contract overnight.

Please feel free to comment if you have a question or an analysis request.  The past two posts I have written are based on anonymous comments (you slavedrivers!).

Megapolis: How I Spend My Coins

This post was inspired by an anonymous comment on my Megapolis: Infrastructure Buildings post about how I spend my coins after I reach the point that I consider my city "Endgame."  I would say that "Endgame" means having an excess of coins and you can buy any building in the shop with coins without really having to save up.  I am currently lvl 140 and my city earns over 10 million coins per day playing casually.

I have broken my spending priorities into two sections: Beginning and Midgame and Endgame.

Beginning and Midgame:

In my opinion, the main priorities for spending your coins at the start of the game are:

     1) Contract Buildings that require Assets

The most important thing to do at the very start of the game is fill up your Wishlist and start getting in-game assets.  There are so many opportunities to get coins in the game, but assets are only rewarded by your neighbors once a day or purchased with Megabucks.

I recommend starting your train depot followed by the airport as soon as their starting buildings are available for purchase.  These two questlines involve many assets and grant you many contract "buildings" that are all very profitable.

     2) Contract Buildings with Population Requirements

Contracts are the most profitable buildings you can have until Endgame.  If you log in every 4 hours, the best building for you is the Household Goods Store and buying the Kitchenware contract for 968 coins per hour.  If you log in every 6 hours, the best building for you is the Assembly Line and buying the Solar Cells contract for 875 coins per hour.  There are more profitable contracts that complete much faster than 4 or 6 hours, but these are the ones I chose due to my activity level.

To increase your population quickly, I suggest buying Bosphorus Cottages for 120 pop/hour since they only cost 5,000 coins.  Only buying population buildings required by quests will still give you access to more contract buildings at a reasonable rate.

     3) Quests

Buy buildings that will help you complete quests.  Completing quests will reward you with more coins, experience, and potentially free assets.  I suggest completing the quests that require no assets first (aside from trains & planes).  You can usually spot a building that requires assets if the name of the building has "foundation" in it and if the building has an instant build time.

Endgame:

When you finally reach the point where you have so many coins that you can buy anything, I would say that your city falls into the "Endgame" category.  At this point, I would still say that the priorities I listed in the previous section still stand.  But with your excess of coins, you can look into the following new priorities:

     1) Build Many of the Most Profitable Buildings

In my infrastructure building post, I will try to keep you updated with which building is the most profitable.  As of now, the Kingkey 101 (or 100?) is the most profitable infrastructure building available.  With a coin rate per hour per square of 1181.25, it is even better than many of the contract buildings.

In the table below, I entered my city's most profitable buildings to show how the numbers look when you have bulk buildings.  At an earlier level, I built 88 Pet Dinosaur Shops which net me over 28,000 coins per hour.  I plan on replacing these once I replace all of my other less profitable infrastructure buildings.  By looking at the bold totals, you can see that these buildings alone net me over 217,500 coins every hour and I only have to log in once every 4 hours.

Although these 159 buildings were over a half-billion coin investment, the total ROI (Return of Investment) for all 4 building types combined is 105 days.  But all the while I am getting tons of experience every time I collect.  Besides, what else would I spend my coins on?  :)

     2) Beautify Your City

I am a numbers guy, so this step is not a big priority for me.  But if you have all the coins that you could ever need, then I would suggest redesigning your city with roads, parks, foliage, and buildings that "look cool" rather than those that are more profitable.

Megapolis: Architectural Project Contest

Architectural Project Contest - "Building Design For the Win?"

The Architectural Project Contest timed quest began in the morning on 03/21/2014.  After doing my analysis, I have found that this timed quest is a very good investment due to the low APM values (Assets Per Max Rate) for the contracts available from the Architectural Academy.  You can also just skip the quests and build the pavilion that will give you your desired contract.  I am pretty interested in the 6 hour contract awarded by building the Relaxation Pavilion, but I'm not sure what that is quite yet. It's probably the final reward from the whole timed quest :(

For minimal effort and free assets like with the Earth Day timed quest, you get another 15 minute contract that rewards 133.33 coins/minute.  But it is also annoyingly short and I will barely be able to collect my earnings at the rate that I play.  I will break down the first 4 quests and the contract rates for you.

Quest #1: Upgrading the City

     - Visit 5 Friends

     - House 1,000 Residents

     $ Reward: Some Asset Thing x5 (use on Quest #3)

Quest #2: Architectural Academy

     - Collect Taxes 5 Times

     - Buy the Architectural Academy Foundation

     $ Reward: Concrete Slabs x5 (use on Quest #3)

Quest #3: Architectural Contest

     - Build the Architectural Academy

     - Accept the Organizing an Architectural Contest Contract

     $ Reward: Nothing substantial

Quest #4: Architectural Novelties

     - Buy an East Pavilion Foundation

     - Build an East Pavilion

     - Complete an Organizing an Architectural Contest Contract

     $ Reward: ??????

Contracts for the Architectural Academy

As you can see, the APM for all of these contracts is very low which means that investing your assets in this timed quest is a very good investment.  I don't even think you need to complete construction on these pavilions while the timed quest is active in order to gain access to these new contracts.  The most desireable contracts for me from this building are the 6 hour one and the 4 hour one.  However, I don't know what the Relaxation Pavilion is.  So I know that the APM values in RED could be much higher for a slight benefit over the 4 hour contract that requires only 85 assets.

Also, I do not yet know if any of these contracts allow neighbors to assist.  That would increase the coins/minute rate and also lower the APM rate making those contracts more profitable!

This is where I have currently stopped for this timed quest.  The East Pavilion requires 20 assets and it does not give me access to a desirable contract.  I may invest 75 assets into completing the West Pavilion which will give me the 4 hour contract.  

Megapolis: Mysterious Chest Event 03/18

Free Treasure!

The Mysterious Chest Event happens every once in a while in Megapolis and lasts for several days.  The only rewards that I have seen are unique infrastructure buildings, but they tend to be on the more profitable side as far as coins per minute per square.  They also tend to give a good boost to your population cap.


I recommend opening as many chests as you can and paying coins every time after you get your first 3 figurines if you are saving up coins, or your first 2 figurines if you have plenty of coins.  You can stop at the second building reward if you are feeling practical, or continue to open chests if you are feeling brave.  Even when paying coins to open a chest, you get a bigger reward than you paid for sometimes.

Thanks to Ezterry for the odds & strategy contribution on the Unofficial Megapolis Wiki!

I must say that the set of buildings available for this event look pretty cool - especially the Zenith Tower.  Unfortunately I have only ever gotten 5 figurines during one event before, so we'll see how my luck plays out this week.

Megapolis: Switching Phone and Carrier in 2 Hours

Today, I switched to a new phone and one of my main concerns (although nerdy) was "How do I get to my Megapolis city on my new phone?"  I will share my experience with this and start by saying that it was extremely easy.  I have a 6 month old baby and you may know how much attention they require, but I was still able to finish the entire process from front door to couch w/ new phone and my old Megapolis city in under 2 hours.  This was my situation, so yours may be different and require different steps.  I encourage you to share your experience in a comment.

     - I switched from AT&T to a new Sprint plan
     - I upgraded from an iPhone 5 to an iPhone 5s
     - I use a Macbook Pro and iTunes
     - I played on SQ network with my old phone and my new phone

Switching to a New Phone and Accessing Your Megapolis City in Under 2 hours

Step #1: Backup your Old iPhone

The first and most important step is to save all of your settings, pictures, music, and everything else onto your computer.  Connect to your computer using the iPhone USB cable, open iTunes, and back it up.

Step #2: Start Megapolis Contracts

This step is optional, of course.  I was worried that the entire process of switching to a new phone would take a long time, so I started contracts that took longer than 4 hours.  Instead of purchasing my usual 2 hour contracts for my Courier Airplanes, I bought the 6 hour contracts.  As I sit here waiting for them to finish, I am typing this blog post.

Step #3: Go to a Sprint Store

. . . or the carrier that you are switching to.  Sprint gave me a $100 Visa Gift Card and offered me a bunch of deals on bluetooth speakers and tablets (which I refused).  They also took about 20 minutes to port my phone number over from AT&T to Sprint.  At first, he told me it usually takes 2-3 hours from AT&T to Sprint, so I was ready to head over to Golfsmith or Best Buy to browse, then go home if they didn't call me by then.

Step #4: Buy New Phone & Plan

I went with the iPhone 5s, but only because the 5 was not available anymore.  I didn't want to downgrade to a 4s or buy one of those plastic colorful iPhones.  I like my metal.

Step #5: Update your New iPhone to the latest iOS

Go home, fire up your computer, and prepare to wait around for about half an hour.  Plug your new iPhone into the computer and open iTunes.  I got the prompt to update my new phone's iOS when I first tried to restore my old phone's backup.  Go through the prompts to update the iOS and wait.  This part took about 25 minutes for me.  I decided to register my phone with Apple after this step.

Step #6: Restore your New iPhone from Old iPhone Backup

After your iOS updates and reboots, it will automatically connect back to your computer and show up in iTunes.  Restore your old iPhone's setup to your new iPhone.  This step took me about 15 minutes.

Step #7: Download the Megapolis App on New iPhone

Unfortunately, restoring your old iPhone onto a new one does not automatically download all of your apps.  So you have to go to the App Store, search, and download the Megapolis app manually.  I would also like to mention that I was not able to see the list of apps that I have previously purchased in the App Store.  What the heck?  I had to search for every app that I had before and download them 1 at a time.  Luckily, my old phone was sitting next to me so I could check out all the apps that I had.  Another good thing is the apps download and show up in the same spots as they were before, so you don't have to move a bunch of apps around to get your new iPhone looking like you had it before.

Step #8: Play!

This was the step that I was not looking forward to.  I thought I would open the app and Alice would tell me all about Wooden Houses and give me some crappy new town to start over with.  I thought I would have to contact Social Quantum and request my old user ID to be transferred over to my new phone on a completely different carrier.  And I know how slow a ticket process can be sometimes for IT matters :)

BUT ALAS, MY CITY WAS THERE ALREADY!  Hooray!  I had to scroll around and see the buildings load for the first time, but all of them were in their rightful place and my contract timers were ticking away.

Sharing a City Between 2 iPhones?

Because I was curious, I opened up Megapolis on both my old iPhone 5 and my new iPhone 5s at the same time.  I built a Wooden House on my new iPhone.  On my old iPhone, I closed the app and opened it up again.  The wooden house was there!  Then I tried it the other way by building a Wooden House on my old iPhone and refreshing the new iPhone and there it was - TWO WOODEN HOUSES!  So now I am led to believe that you can share a city using two iPhones.


So there you have it - the complete process I went through this afternoon to get a new phone and load up my city to my precious new iPhone 5s.

Please comment and share your experience with other carriers and phone types!

Megapolis: Earth Day 03/11/14

Earth Day - "Not Worth Day?"

I don't mean that I don't want people to be environmentally conscious in real life.  But for this timed quest, I will not spend any of my precious assets.

The Earth Day timed quest began during the day on 03/11/2014.  After doing my analysis, I don't want to pursue this timed quest past quest #3 due to the high APM values (Assets Per Max Rate).  My main reason is that I am on quest #4 and I need to spend at least 75 assets to find out how many more assets I need to spend to get a desirable contract from the City Environmental Institute.  For minimal effort, you still get a 15 minute contract that rewards 133.33 coins/minute, but it is annoyingly short and I will barely be able to collect my earnings at the rate that I play.  I will break down the first 4 quests and the contract rates for you either way.

Quest #1: Imagine a Blue Sky

     - Collect 2,000 in Taxes

     - Build an Imagine Park

     $ Reward: Concrete Blocks x5 (use on Quest #3)

Quest #2: City Ecology

     - Visit 5 Neighbors

     - Buy the City Environmental Institute Foundation

     $ Reward: Solar Heating System x5 (use on Quest #3)

Quest #3: Earth Day

     - Build the City Environmental Institute

     - Accept the Earth Day Opening Ceremony Contract

     $ Reward: Nothing substantial

Quest #4: Preparations for the Carnival

     - Improve your City Environmental Institute

     - Complete an Earth Day Opening Ceremony Contract
     - Buy the Green City Civic Organization Foundation

     $ Reward: ??????

Contracts for the City Environmental Institute

As you can see, the APM for the 15 and 30 minute contracts is low which is good.  If you are VERY active, then feel free to invest the assets past the "gimmes" for this timed quest.  The only desireable contracts for me from this building are the 6 hour and 4 hour ones.  However, I can't tell how many assets are required past the first step of construction for the extra buildings.  So I know that the APM values in RED will be much higher for the contracts that I would actually use.

This is where I decided to stop for this timed quest.  The next portion requires at least 75 assets and it does not give me access to a desirable contract.  I also do not spend Megabucks on timed quests quite yet since I would rather save them for asset sales that benefit my trains at this time.

Megapolis: Construction of Unique Contract Buildings

Which Contract Building Should I Buy First?

In this post, we are only looking at Unique Production Buildings that allow contracts and take up space in your city.  I will create a separate post that examines Production Buildings that take up no space (like the Zoo Administration Building).

This section will help you decide which unique Megapolis Production Buildings to invest your assets in first.  The main value we will use to compare buildings is Assets Per Max Rate (APM henceforth).  A lower APM for a selected building & contract is better than a higher APM.  A low APM means that you spend less assets in order to produce a reward rate in coins per minute.

In general, your top three choices are:

   1) Baseball Federation Headquarters (0.36 APM)
   2) Agora Tower (0.42 - 0.49 APM)
   3) Conrad Miami Hotel (0.57 - 0.68 APM)

Min APM Versus Max APM

In the table below, you will see that some buildings & contracts have two APM values on the far right.

Min APM: The APM rate if zero friends "help" you increase your profit for the contract.

Max APM: The APM rate if the maximum amount of friends "help" you increase your profit for the contract.

The table is sorted ascending by "Min APM" only, so the buildings & contracts listed towards the top of the list are more profitable at the cost of less assets.  In some cases, a building may move up on your list depending on how many of your Megapolis neighbors "help" to increase your profit for that contract.

Why is "Emergency Services Center" - "Cleaning Up the Aftermath" Low on the List?

With a coin rate of 45.33 per minute (higher than Baseball Federation Headquarters), you would think this one should be an obvious choice to invest your assets in first.  Unfortunately, you would have to invest 160 assets to get a slightly better coin rate per minute as opposed to the Baseball Federation Headquarters which only costs 15 assets to complete.


**Note: Some of the contracts in my table require additional infrastructure or constructed buildings to be completed before you may access that particular contract.  Don't worry, my "Assets" column takes additional construction costs into account if applicable.  For more details on those requirements, please visit the Megapolis Wiki page for that particular building.

Megapolis: Planes or Trains?

The Bottom Line: Trains are Slightly Better

If you have barely or not yet started to build your Megapolis airplane fleet or train armada, then you are probably asking yourself: "Which one should I build first?"  Here, we will take a look at the cost and the rewards for both choices.  It is a close call, but I will start by giving you my one word answer: Trains.

In comparing the choice between building trains or planes first, we will overlook any costs in Megapolis coins.  You will make your coins back faster with more profitable contracts, so the only cost factor we will consider is assets.  I also don't take into account the cost of each asset in Megabucks.  Yea yea, all of these numbers might look confusing to you so I will boil it down to one number that you can look at: Assets per Max Rate (AMR henceforth).  A higher AMR means that you are paying more assets for not as good of a coin rate for your contracts.

One more thing about my data tables.  I entered data for a single plane or train's contracts on the left side with no additional multipliers (train only).  On the right side, my numbers apply to the maximum number of contract producing vehicles - so 10 planes or 7 trains with max multipliers.

Information for all of my tables are derived from pages on the Megapolis Wiki.   All of the formulas are from my own calculations.  I could be wrong, and I welcome corrections where applicable.

Airplanes

Reference Table:

Data Table:









As you can see, the AMR starts off and ends higher as you continue to invest assets into your planes.  Fully upgrading to Long-Range airliners costs 27% more assets than trains, but the max coins/minute you can earn is only 10% higher than having the best trains.

Trains

The general rule of thumb for building your trains in Megapolis is "Get Max Multipliers!"  Without multipliers, your contracts will have a very low coin rate per minute.  I'm talking pathetically low.  Underground and Surface Subway Stations only cost 3+7 and 5+10 assets to upgrade respectively.  Also, don't bother fully upgrading your Subway Stations if they will not help the multiplier of any of your current trains.  You will need to upgrade them all eventually for your higher up trains, but for now save those spots on your asset wish list for other upgrades.

Reference Table:














Data Table:








With trains, you can see that the AMR is slightly lower than planes.  One exception to note is Wide-Body Airliners compared to New Jersey Trains.  At this point, planes are better.  But in the short term and long term for asset investments in most other cases, trains will be a better investment.

I suppose I should also mention that train contracts are harder to "click" through than planes.  I find myself accidentally selecting the Service Platforms instead of the trains on accident.  My service platforms aren't fully upgraded yet though, so maybe that will get better.  I use an iPhone5 so maybe it's better on other platforms.  This annoyance still does not affect my decision to shift my asset investment to trains over planes.

Megapolis: Doge's Palace - 02/28/2014

Edit 03/05: Assets for this quest are now on sale for the remaining duration.  If you want to continue with Quest #6: Carnival Costume or higher, now is a good time to do it while saving some Megabucks.  Other common assets that you could buy now for use with other projects are also available: Concrete Slabs, Insulation, Sling Hooks, Column, Sand, Piles, Glass, and Pipes to name a few.

The Venetian Carnival timed quest began during the day on 02/28/2014.  I recommend starting on this quest immediately as it nets two very profitable contracts!  Also, the first few quests only require you to spend (24,000 + 33,000) 57,000 coins which you can make up in less than a day by completing the new contracts awarded from your investment.

Quest #1: The Spirit of Italy
     - Start Building an Italian Cafe
     - Visit 5 Neighbors

     $ Reward: Flower Bushes x5 (use on Quest #4)

Quest #2: Masks Workshop
     - Build a Venetian Mask Shop
     - Collect 2,500 in Taxes

     $ Reward: Columns x5 (use on Quest #4)

Quest #3: Venetian Palace
     - Build the Foundation for Doge's Palace
     - House 2,000 Population

     $ Reward: Mirrors x10 (use on Quest #4)

Quest #4: Preparations for the Carnival
     - Finish Building Doge's Palace
     - Start the Preparations for the Carnival Contract

     $ Reward: 2 awesome contracts!!


For the cost of two cheap infrastructure buildings, you finish building Doge's Palace (not to be confused with the internet meme) without having to wait for any assets.  If you build the Carnival Costume Store, you get a third nice contract.  Let's take a look at those three contracts:

Preparations for the Carnival
Duration:  15 minutes
Cost:  2,300
Earn:  4,050
Exp:  10
Coins/Hour: 7000 (116.66 coins/minute)

Carnival Costume Shipment
Duration:  30 minutes
Cost:  3,100
Earn:  6,350
Exp:  20
Coins/Hour: 6500 (108.33 coins/minute)

Carnival Float Parade
Duration:  2 hours
Cost:  6,100
Earn:  12,500
Exp:  100
Coins/Hour: 3200 (53.33 coins/minute)

** I added all 10 contracts to the Doge's Palace wiki page on 02/28/14.

This is where I decided to stop for this timed quest.  The next portion requires 55 assets (55 Megabucks) and it does not give me access to a more desirable contract.  I also do not spend Megabucks on timed quests quite yet since I would rather save them for asset sales that benefit my trains at this time.