Advice on Buildings and Strategy

[upsman_17]

Just looking for a little advice. I think I may be leveling up too quick by fighting/robbing too much. I was reading a thread yesterday that was saying once you get to level 50, opponents will get much harder. Right now my stats are:
Level: 42
Fights won: 788
Fights lost: 184
Robberies won: 900
Robberies lost: 154

# mafia: 127
# weapons: 360
#armor: 154
Total attack: 1540
Total DEfense: 2181
Income /Hour: 2875

As you can see, I have been dominating decent enough in fights/robberies in order to build up respect points to cash in for better weapons. Since I have been winning on an 80-85% rate, I figured I was doing ok since I see alot of people at my level with far inferior or comparable stats. But the thread I read yesterday scared me a little that maybe my strategy has been wrong and I havent build my income/hour up enough for my level. People in the thread were suggesting sitting/turtleing for a bit to others in my situation so they could start upgrading before getting to level 50. Is it true that the competition changes that much 8 levels from where I am now?
Also, I have 1 Dominican restaurant and am deciding on which higher level building to put up next, should I do another Domican or was thinking maybe a movie theatre. Or if anyone has another suggestion I am open. I would like to start building only 12/24/48 hour buildings. But in order to start upgrading them, my income will need to go up bc I noticed the level 2 upgrade on the dominican is
200K+, thats a lot of robbing otherwise. Thanks for any advice all.

[schlumpf]

the "strong competition" which at that time was at level 50, now is above 90. You could however do more on your economy. Depending what you have in the bank, Movie Theatre is good for the money, but if you don't have much upgrade the cheaper low-level buildings first.

[upsman_17]

Also, does anyone know of a thread or have a link for all the loot drop jobs? Thanks again.

[upsman_17]

@ schlumpf - I have about 350K banked. Most of my lower level bldgs are at level 5 or 6. REcently I have been upgrading/building defense buildings so I can compete later in the game as I do not plan on being much of a gold spender. Game money shouldnt be an issue as long as I go back to my former game plan which netted me between $75-125K/day fighting to buy/upgrade buildings and between 750-1250 respect points for better weapons. It seemed odd that magically at level 50 the competition would get that much tougher when I dont see many with far and away better stats than me at level 42.

[dudeman]

You're worrying about nothing. Look at your rivals list and get an idea of what average stats are for your level, and make sure you continue to increase your stats at the same rate or faster than you gain levels. You will be fine if you do that.

I think whatever post it was that you were reading about level 50 was probably an old post. I'm quite a bit further than level 50 and I apparently still haven't begun appearing on higher level player's rivals lists. I'm only guessing but I don't get attacked or robbed by HL players, so it's an educated assumption.

As for buildings, you won't regret the movie theaters. Lofts and Dominicans are nice too, but getting two movie theaters made a big increase in my hourly income which made everything a little more affordable.

[procsyzarc]

@ schlumpf - I have about 350K banked. Most of my lower level bldgs are at level 5 or 6. REcently I have been upgrading/building defense buildings so I can compete later in the game as I do not plan on being much of a gold spender. Game money shouldnt be an issue as long as I go back to my former game plan which netted me between $75-125K/day fighting to buy/upgrade buildings and between 750-1250 respect points for better weapons. It seemed odd that magically at level 50 the competition would get that much tougher when I dont see many with far and away better stats than me at level 42.

It's a moving bar 50 was long ago, I would say about L110 - 120 is where it opens up now and by the time you get there even if leveling quickly will more likely be L150.

$125k per day will not even come close to cutting it latter and it doesn't scale with level as people are smarter latter and delete their non sync'ed buildings,collect when they pop and bank everything. If you not earning in the millions per day or at the absolute least 500k per day by L100 you will find it tough.

Also people talk about camping too much, it really isn't needed and your stats will be fine as long as you level smart ie getting your exerience from fights robs that give RP or from farming better weapons so your stats are increasing naturally as you level. Once things open up there are always going to be some people that can beat you no matter how much you camp and you will always find a large supply of people you can beat.

[erik]

If you do a good job building your economy AND you spend your Energy on M4A1, level away.

I considered stopping once to build up, but thankfully decided against it. You can't buy back days of missed energy.

You can be a player with good stats AND a good economy AND level. Just choose efficient upgrades (READ "0" defense upgrades) and park your bum at a camp site. Oh, and PVP away every point that doesn't go for a big RP or loot hit.

[Stitch]

It's one thing to turtle/camp. Quite another to farm :)

[downrange]

I agree with erik, and will reiterate some of his points with my perspectives and experience.

Energy.
If you're at level 42 and you're not farming M4 A1, you're probably falling behind the top 10%, who will eventually bother you with robberies of the buildings you mentioned. If you're like most folks here, Map exploration can wait 'til later and farming should be the priority use of your energy.

Stamina.
I also think it's resource wasteful to not be using all of your stamina as well, and recommend grinding out LMs and single-XP robberies if you want to "nearly camp" (farming will level you faster than this to the point that the robberies are nearly a rounding error in terms of XP gain per day). This is my favored way to almost-camp but still be maximizing use of time (the most limited resource in this game). When I don't have free time to do the more selective robbing, I PVP attack instead. Overall, I've oscillated and at times will focus on fight streaks, but I seem to keep coming back to a roughly 80/20 mix in favor of robbery vs attack (level 86, 16000 robberies, 4000 attacks). I'm back to grinding out robberies for now, but have branched out to include higher-XP/higher-RP robberies after about 10,000 robs.

Money.
Reinvest as much as possible and use Tramp Stamp's guide. Defense buildings are unnecessary at that level, and the resource drag is more significant than it appears. At lvl 84, I still have basically only the def buildings that relate to goals. And although I will eventually buy lots of Gat Turrets, that will probably only come after spending on hundreds of steel garrote (which i have not needed to do yet, but is probably coming soon).

Overall - including my experience as example.
If you're farming, buying value equips only, and doing just enough PVP to fill in a bit of atk/def points (to avoid having to buy any mid-range gear -- reinvest that money instead!) you should be well within the top 10%. As I got to the 50s and 60s I was pulling away from the pack. In about the mid-60's to 70s I found lots of players who had gone "100% full PVP attack" got as strong or even a tad stronger, but that only lasted about 10-15 levels before they started to see diminishing returns on additional PVP loot relative to my hoard of M4 A1 and higher-value RP items like NBVs.

[downrange]

It's one thing to turtle/camp. Quite another to farm :)

This is quite true. From my prior post, you could omit the farming part and be a near-camper by grinding Laundrymats only. That may be a middle-ground to consider, I suppose. But it's just not as valuable as it seems it should be to turtle/camp. I think quite a few of us heavily considered it. Low/mid-level camping was the initial intent of my secondary account. After gathering some more experience though (in my case, via my primary account) I eventually came to the conclusion that seems to be approaching consensus for the forums overall though - camping seems like a great idea, but ultimately isn't. For a very select few (/me tips hat to Duder) it can work to be a satisfying route.

I used to wish camping was more productive in this game. I'm camping two accounts in MW, and camping is my general inclination. But in CC, camping turned out to be almost counter-productive vs at least the "near camping" rob-LMs type of strategy, and almost certainly vs the farming strategy too -- the M4 A1 is too powerful to ignore. There are just too many factors to list, and while camping for a while at a few points in the game can definitely achieve certain goals - it generally comes at an opportunity cost that is steeper than the average inexperienced player will realize at the time.
Those of us who have heavily considered and/or used a camping strategy at times, seem to me to be almost universally reporting some eventual lament about it, and advising against it. If I'm wrong, folks speak up! But this is what I feel I've read from others, and what I'm advising now too. We're trying to help.

Also, of importance to note. The 10% banking loss which low-level campers flip into a 'gain'. This benefit seems HUGE at the time, and there's no doubt that it's significant for a while. If the income from money buildings was the sole source of income in CC, the effect of that 'bonus' 10% would last much longer, but there is a lot of PVP money to be made in the mid levels. And while the money generated by farming isn't huge, it's another offset to that 10%. There's certainly some gain to be had there from the delta between banked and unbanked for a while, but it's so tough to quantify when that effect has been marginalized that most players are better off to resist being seduced by it from the very start.
There are shades of grey here, and becoming unattackable for a while in the mid levels seems to have been successfully employed by quite a few players. But I think that's generally been successful for folks who are confident about their own strategies to the point of not asking the forum for assistance.

[Faye]

I'm sorry, but I thought you could only farm M4A1's from the boardwalk, which does not unlock until Level 51??

[Duke.0]

Look at your rival's stats

Specifically, make sure your overall mafia defense is higher than all of your rivals attack numbers.
That's a good way to prevent robberies and you loosing fights.

If your defense is 2,181 and 99.9% of rival attackers don't have over 1,500 attack, you should be good to go and wake up each morning to a screen of green news feed.

[Duke.0]

I'm sorry, but I thought you could only farm M4A1's from the boardwalk, which does not unlock until Level 51??

I started farming M4's at level 30 from Junkyard - Blue Scrap Box
There is also a location at Pier 13 and a few others....but the main ones are Junkyard / Boardwalk.

[Faye]

/me slaps forehead.. good thing I frequent these forums...read something once, and you find out there is more than one answer. ugh