A Guide
Layout of the guide
- About Me and Stats(Do I know what I am talking about? Possibly
)
- Noobs Just Starting Start Here
- Oh **** I Followed Quests and Leveled. What Does It All Mean?
- Player vs Comp
- Player vs Player
- Building your Hood(Economy)
- The Store
- Overpowered Gold *New*
- Common Pitfalls, A Summary
Thanks for all the positive feedback on my profile and on the forum!
About Me
Hi! I'm tired of rolling noobs so now I am writing a guide. Right now I'm only at level 35 and playing this game on my iTouch and I've come to the realization that almost no one knows how to play this game. My stats at this stage are easily better than nine out of ten and I could easily raise them yet higher(I've generally been more econ focused than stat). Feel free to post your thoughts comments and suggestions and I'll add them or at least respond to them.
My Stats
I'm only going to list the ones I think actually matter
Mickey
324 545 575
Lvl:35
Attack:2205
Defense:2625
Income:11079 per hour
Fights Won: 1928
Fights Lost: 178 (mostly early on to gold spenders)
Robberies Won: 713
Robberies Lost:1 (oggling a gold spender hood, misclick)
My Hood: Imgur Link to My Hood
I may not be the highest level yet in this game, but as of yet I have only ran into one person with similar econ/attack/defense who had not spent money on gold.
Noobs, Just Starting. Start Here
In the Beginning There was a Mobster: You are now a mobster wtf do you do? Name yourself you limey bastard. Come up with your permanent alias who are you? It doesn't technically matter, but as of yet you cannot easily get your named changed so make sure you like it. One option although it is not necessary if you want to make it easy to get a massive mob fast, you can consider putting in your player code as your name. What is a player code you ask? A player code is the 9 digit player id number assigned to your character. This id lets people find you and invite you to their mafia. When you accept an invite to someones mafia it also adds them to your mafia. As of yet there is no downside that I have been able to discern to gainning more mafia, however there are many upsides. (More on that in Oh **** I Leveled and Player vs Player).
Layout of Crime City: CrimeCity is a simple game early on to get used to the buttons and options go to profile help if you feel really intimidated or just press goals and follow the quest system which'll start you in the right direction. The quests will get you familiar with the layout of the game and give you some nice ample rewards. This game essentially breaks down to three arenas which I will go into more detail on. Player v Comp, Player v. Player, and last and most importantly, the economy heart of this maturing game, Your Hood(SimCityish)
Oh **** I Followed Quests and Leveled. What Does It All Mean?
I'm going to assume at this point you have a little knowledge of the three arenas of the game and you aren't retarded. So now that you've leveled and became more powerful there are four things that happen that are important.
Unlocks: One. Bam it tells you about what you unlocked and gained access to. There are a wide variety of items, buildings and harder areas that you unlock progressively as you go up in level. This is not necessarily a good thing. Blasphame you say? Along with gaining these unlocks you are also gaining access to rivals of your level. This means as you go up in level you fight harder people who possibly have been playing much longer that can also come to your hood and beat your face in and steal your ice cream money. Big noob mistake one. DO NOT LEVEL TOO FAST. Give your money buildings time to accrue income. Earning more money before you level = buying more and better gear for your mobsters. Now you are thinking. "Ok Mickey "Two Toes" then why don't I just stay level one forever?" Well you could, but then I'll break your face because that is boring.
Skill Points General: Two. You gain more skill points. You have the three new shiny skill points. You can invest them in one of four things. This really isn't as important as it seems But I'll go into it anyway.
- Attack- Increase your attack stat. This is only important for PvP(Rivals). Note: This is not a multiplier for every mobster you have in your mafia, but just a static improvement to your attack or defense.
- Defense- Increase your defense stat. This also only applies to PvP. It would theoretically however help your economy by saving your buildings from being robbed.
- Stamina- Allows you to attack and rob rival mobsters. [PvP] You regain 1 stamina every three minutes. You start with 5 stamina it takes two skill points to increase it by one.
- Energy- Allows you to do jobs and quests in the Computer's hoods, such as Canal Street. You gain 3 energy every minute. 1 skill point increases your energy by ten. As you get higher level and have harder quests jobs require more and more energy and can take more instances of you tapping the quest and investing that energy before it is complete. By level 35 just to start some quests it takes almost 200 energy.
How to Invest Your Skill Points: "So what should I invest my points in Mickey?" You can read this or you can trust me that, honestly, it has only a minor impact on the game. Do whatever you want. I have two theories. One you could go for a PvP build and forget totally about the PvComp side of the game and throw it into attack or defense. Yes you wouldn't get good quest items, but you would get more respect(by winning fights PvP you gain respect, another in game currency besides cash and gold) before you leveled since you were gainning xp only by PvP and you could buy more awesome respect items to make up for that disparity. Thus say by investing all your skill points by level 100 you could potentially have an extra 300 attack OR defense OR combination thereof. This is relatively worthless. 300 attack by level 100 is nothing in the scope of the game. I've checked out the hoods of lvl 80s that didn't know jack with over 6k attack So whats another couple hundred. My Other Theory: Convenience. Sometimes you want to play the game more. I like investing my points in a way that I fill my stamina and energy up in a way that they take the same amount of time to recharge. One skill point in energy gives you ten Energy that takes 3.3 minutes to recharge. Two skill points in Stamina gives you one Stamina that takes 3 minutes to recharge. Skill points carry on over levels so you can invest in 1 stamina one level leaving you with 1 skill point that you can carry on into the next level and invest in stamina twice. Does it matter? As of yet not really. In the later game it becomes ridiculously easier to spend energy than it is to spend stamina. So maybe you'll want more energy. Its ultimately all personal preference.
Your Mafia and Gaining Mobsters: Three. You now gain the potential to have five more mobsters. Your mafia is always limited to your level x 5. Currently it caps out at level 100 so you can have a maximum of 500 mafia. You only have two mobsters? You need henchman. Get more. There are two ways to gain mobsters. One google it and you will find a forum filled with player codes you can add or two go to rob someone check out their "comments" under, "rival profile," people post their codes there all the time. Protip- When you gain mobsters you can visit their hood's and get $100 for visiting their hood. This is very nice in the early game. Menu--->More-->Visit Mafia==Money. (Note: I believe there is some kind of cap I ran into doing this in the early game)
An Extra Little Bonus from Leveling: Four. Your energy and stamina becomes totally recharged. Sweet. This can be nice when you go rob someone to get xp and level just so you can get that last three hundred energy you need to complete a job PvComp and get money and stuff.
Kudos to Amber
Player vs. Comp
Quests and Area Leveling: You are now gleefully following quests, robbing, killing and pillaging to your hearts content. A couple of things to remember on player vs comp. One you can make areas better by increasing their "Level." I haven't done much of this since I've been progressively going to new areas as my quests lead me there, but my understanding is increasing the level increases the amount of money you get from any job done in that area. I think it could also lead to other bonuses such as decreased energy cost or possibly increased item yield, but as jobs in higher level areas yield better rewards per energy spent and better items I have only continued further forward and haven't leveled areas to see the potential outcomes. A note on leveling areas, the progress to increasing the level of an area is only advanced by doing new jobs in that area that you haven't done since the last time you leveled the area. Also, you get one point of progress to leveling the area per job. You cannot level an area by robbing the old lady in the corner repeatedly because it is low energy job and easy. You only get one point for the robbing the old lady. Also the kidnapping the president's daughter job that costs 10,000 energy will also only get you point of progress towards leveling an area. I'm not a big proponent of leveling areas because I don't know of any good rewards or items you get as of yet. If anyone knows good job/area items they should post about it.
(This section needs more knowledge than I possess. Where are the best items? We need a loot guide)
Getting Items with Easy Quests: Some people advocate doing easy quests to get easy items to arm your mafia with. I'm against it, because it will make you level too fast. Just follow the quest system and take your time.
A Tip on Questing: Another warning. Not all quests are worth doing immediately. Some are very expensive for their short term pay off. You will eventually do these quests just don't spend everything you got to do them quickly. I have two examples. The warehouse quest where you upgrade a warehouse to lvl 7. You get this one early and it costs a ton of money and will break the bank if you rush it. (Once you do get a lvl 7 warehouse it is amazing just work on your other economy a bit first) Also some item buying quests are money sinks compared to their reward. The buy five stab vests costs 45k, but the reward sucks! I imagine this only gets worse in higher levels.
Player vs. Player
Combat System: Lets talk about PvP. So just how does the magical combat system work. First off Mob. A little review, for every level of your character you can have 5 mobsters in combat up to a maximum of 500 mobsters at level 100. (This could very well be raised in the future) If you want to gain mob google "toucharcade forums crimecity mob" and you'll find a gold mine of player ids or check people's comments when you go rob them. Why is mob important? Cause each Mobster or Mobsteress can carry 1 gun, 1 melee weapon, 1 armor, and 1 vehicle. The best combination of these makes up your attack/defense rating. Cool. You go to attack someone you look at their defense rating you see its two hundred below your attack and you lose when attacking. WTF? Funzio has some attack defense system they keep secret. You attack you get a multiplier within reason that is probably somewhere between .9 and 1.1 or somewhere thereabouts, defense gets their own multiplier. Its not horrific or insurmountable so deal with it and go for crushing victories where your stats are substantially higher.
Notes:This is just my guesstimation of how the combat system works. If you know the real mechanism. Say it. Also a common misconception your fellow mafia's attack/defense that are in your mob has no impact on your actual combat attack/defense rating.
A Common Glitch You Should Know About: "Mickey you lied to me, you two toed liar! I'm not using all my best items in battle, I'm just using my top sixteen rows and three columns or in other words 48 different item types. For a total of 158 items when I'm level twenty have 100 mobsters 100 melee weapons, 100 guns and 100 armor and should be using 300 items." Hey you've been listening. Don't worry, this is just a glitch that Funzio is working on with the Fight Results screen and has no bearing on your actual attack vs defense in the battle.
Robberies: "Weak miscreants keep stealing my hard earn ice cream stall money even though my defense is substantially higher than their attack!" Robberies work differently than actually attacking opponents. Base defense ratings are cut in halfish when being robbed since it is easier to get a higher defense rating than a high attack rating. A couple things to keep in mind. Each building has its own defense rating. More expensive and higher level buildings generally do better in defense. Towers and defense buildings defense values during robberies are not halved, and are a useful tool to stop robberies just be careful to not overbuild them and hurt your economy. (Waiting for dust to settle Robberies rules have changed a bit and may change again)
"What items kill the best Mickey??" I'll get there in the store section.
My Hood, The Economy of CrimeCity
Pay attention. This is easily the most commonly misunderstood, overlooked and improperly used part of the game. Econ in CrimeCity is essential. Buildings can earn you "new money". By "new money" I mean how much money you invested in building the building plus more money. New money means new guns and new cars that those without the buildings could not afford. New money is good.
More Expensive Higher Level Buildings Vs. Earlier Cheaper Buildings: First off, A common mistake made by many in this game is that people buy the more expensive buildings and try to level them. Bad move. As a general rule of thumb the more expensive the building is the more inefficient it is. What I mean is yes a Loft sounds amazing. You get 11k every twelve hours at level 1. Hellz Yeah. Problem is it will take over a month with PERFECT collection to pay off the initial investment. Your earlier buildings pay themselves off faster and can generate a lot of money. Lets put this in perspective. I saw someone with a level 4 laundromat(under $1,000 cost) and a level 1 History Museum($36,000). It takes 48hrs for a History Museum to pay $3,600.00. In 48 hrs that laundromat could have earned $28,800.00 dollars. That means a history museum costs over 36x more and has 1/8th the earning potential. Its a staggering difference the laundromat is insanely good. In general cheaper buildings pay themselves off much faster than more expensive buildings. So don't skip early buildings! Eventually it is still important to build that history museum and later buildings. It will pay off. Just build the cheaper buildings first.
Fast Turnover Vs. Slower Turnover Money Buildings: The general consensus in the community is that your building/upgrading priority should be focused on buildings that generate money more frequently and can be collected multiple times a day, such as Laundromats, Italian Restaurants, Babershops, Souveneir Stores and etc. There are a couple reasons for this. First they boost your potential hourly income much faster than big pay off buildings like warehouses and gun shops so depending on how much you play they definitely can earn you more. Second they aren't as susceptible to being robbed. For instance, If you show up in a rivals hood and see a level 7 warehouse with money over it you rob it. You rob it until you can't rob it anymore and buy ak47s for everyone. However, the smaller pay off buildings while still often robbed aren't nearly as prioritized by potential thieves.
Want to know how long it takes for your building to pay off its building cost or upgrade cost. Help build and check out Tloord's Guide!
Defense: A big mistake that is made by many and seems counter intuitive is that people with weak defense over build defense in their hood, thereby hurting themselves. You show up in a hood. You see 20 watch towers and a level 4 laundromat. Ninety percent of the time if you are playing properly they are weak compared to you and you don't even need to check before you can attack them. Instead of building economy they are sacrificing space, money and upgrade time to build defense. This is a critical mistake, this just creates a cycle where one falls further and further behind. Towers do have their place and are important to secure your hood against robberies just try not to over rely on them.
Expanding: Expanding your hood is another pitfall, where I see people making mistakes. Do not upgrade in only one direction. Every time you expand your hood the cost and time to expand again increases drastically(For me the cost went up around fifty percent last time) Maximize your hood area by upgrading in an alternating pattern (Left, down, left, down etc.) The costs and time to expand your hood rises very very quickly! Also be careful to not over expand. Use up all of your space before you expand and if the next expansion feels a little absurdly pricey it probably is for you wait until you've improved your econ some more before expanding.
Decorations: An aside. I know decorations look cool, but if you are using up floor space for tables you are also sacrificing money. There is always another building you could build. Eventually you should build all the buildings, just build the cheaper ones first. Space should always be as tightly filled as possible. Protip- build (get the cheap pines that are 1,200 not 1,500)pine trees on the sidewalk to block your building levels from view.
Kudos to Kane064, Amber, Tloord
The Store, Items
General Info: There are a couple points I want to emphasize with the store. Do not buy items that are too pricey early. Don't do it. Yeah you got six freakishly good combat shotguns, but you could have had over 30 AKs and had a much better attack/defense rating instead. This is always a tricky your goal should be to get every single one of your mobsters with the best melee weapon, an armor and a gun(notice I didn't say car) they can have while still always upgrading your buildings and expanding your hood. Items work in a similar fashion as the money buildings did they get more expensive faster than they become better. In other words for their attack and defense to double their price will more than likely at least quadruple.
Cars: Why didn't I mention cars before? Cars are outrageously pricey for what they offer. At some point they will become cost efficient; however, this point is a couple months into the game at least. You need to have a roaring economy by the time you buy cars. In the early game just buy whay you need of cars for quests and no more.
What Weapons to Buy First: Alright, you don't have money to be buying decent guns, armor, and melee's at first so where do you start? A good initial order is to go melee(brass knuckles), armor(steel toed boots), and then guns(shotguns). This should bring you to about level thirty after which things begin to become more muddled based on what you are doing with your respect. These are all in the 400 to 600 dollar range and offer a good amount attack and defense.
Respect: Respect is a "finite" resource. You earn respect by doing robberies and attacking rival's hoods. Every time you do this you gain xp and consequently go up in lvl.You cannot be lvl 2 and have 10,000 respect. The Combat Boot. This item is ridiculous in the early game for the respect it costs to buy. I went Combat Boot and Tommy Gun to help keep my defense attack similar. For instance the next best value respect weapon is the Tommy Gun. For 1 Tommy Gun it costs 100 respect = 10 attack 6 defense or 100 respect= 2 Combat Boots for 10 attack 16 defense. The short term benefits of Combat Boots are enormous, but keep in mind you will one day replace the Combat Boot. So stay competitive and buy some, but at some point try to save your Respect for more expensive items that will have more long term benefit. Also I like to maximize my Respect income by robbing buildings that tend to give more respect per xp. I like Chinese Restaurants, Clothing stores as they tend to give close to 1 to 1 ratio. Generally later more expensive and more upgraded buildings give a better respect to xp ratio.
Kudos to Junglistical.
Overpowered Gold
Initially I was vehemently against gold. In the early stages of the game gold items are so good they are basically impossible to compete with so it was easy to hate on Gold and gold spenders. Now as an older and higher level man I realize that it has its place. CrimeCity is a great free game brought to us by Funzio. Be nice support the developers and CrimeCityMark who deals with complaints and repetive questions on the forums all day and throw in a couple bucks for gold. Besides Gold is overpowered, and overpowered is always nice to have on your side. [Hint Hint Crime City Mark tell someone to give me gold. I'm pluggin for you guys!]
How much gold to buy: This is a personal preference, but remember the more money you give Funzio in one chunk the more they reward you by giving you more gold for your buck.
Gold Items: These provide only a short term benefit. Cheap gold Items will give you more stats for your gold(therefore your buck) than the expensive items. This is similar to how cheaper respect items will also give you more stats but unlike respect items at this point of development even the cheapest gold items are basically never replaceable by in game cash items. To find out which gold item was the best, I did a simple test. I added up the stat points and divided by the amount of gold so I came up with a weapons stats for gold spent so that I could compare the items. Thus the higher the number the better the value. The result, the wasteland pistol is the most ridiculous of the cheap items weighing in at 16 attack and 18 defense for 25 gold it has a ratio of 1.36 stat points per gold spent, next up the skull breaker bearing 1.27 stat/gold, and then the pickelhaube at 1.26stat/gold.(notice they are the cheapest gold gun/melee/armor) The worst item to throw gold on-the Anti Air missile Launcher at .55 stat/gold. Though if you want to buy a "nice" gold weapon that still give good value, the Crusher Gatling Gun did suprisingly well compared to its expensive peers.(Crusher Gatling Gun .81stat/gold).
Gold Buildings: Gold buildings are an interesting case. There are three thoughts that come to mind when I'm considering buying a gold building. One, are gold buildings that have faster turnover better? Two, as you become higher level and unlock new gold buildings are the higher level gold buildings better or worse for the gold you spend? Three, are buildings better value that cost more gold? Again to figure this out I did another ratio(Income per Hour/gold)), where a higher number indicates better value. Unfortunately here I'm limited by my level since I don't know what the pay off stats are on higher end gold buildings, but I still developed a general rule of thumb for CrimeCity players. The less gold it costs, the quicker time period before it cranks out money and the higher the level unlocked the better value. The most stand out buildings. The Ice Cream Stand 3.95, The Carousel 4, Chicken and Waffles 6.48, and following the rule the highest level building I unlocked was the best-The Smoke Shop at 18.333. On the other hand the Worst building(also following the trend) The Techno Club at 0.104. One more thing it may cost more in game cash to upgrade later gold buildings, but if you are only planning on buying gold once go for better buildings. They'll pay off.
Note: This implies that no matter what level and income you are at you will always get good value for spending your gold as gold items are always good and gold buildings get better for the gold you put in the later their level unlocked. Funzio wants you to buy gold.
Common Pitfalls A Summary
This is just a quick summary. For those too lazy to read or that want a quick recap.
Don't level too fast. You'll fight people bigger than you quicker than you need to.
Don't buy expensive buildings too fast. These take much longer to pay off their initial investment. Build cheaper buildings first.
Don't overbuild defense and decorations. Income is essential. More defense and decorations gives you less space for money buildings=worse gear for your mafia.
Pack buildings in tightly in your hood. Don't waste space!
Expand Proper Like. Fill up your space before you waste money expanding again and expand in a pattern that maximizes area(Like Left, Down, Left, Down)
Don't buy expensive weaponry. Expensive weaponry while good in the late late game is very cost inefficient when you are trying to outfit 500 mobsters.
Don't by cars early. Cars are the most cost inefficient item in the game. Get them in the late game.
Always be upgrading money buildings.
Work your way up the money building tree.
Keep expanding your hood and adding new buildings.
Increase your income rate as fast as you can.
Gold, the cheapest gun is the best, the more gold it costs the lower the "value" of the weapon.
Gold Buildings, The later the level unlocked, and the quicker its turn around (i.e. generates money every hour is better than every day) the better.
Feel Free to Post Your Thoughts/Add More. Now Go Kill People.
Originally Posted by rustbinlid
I see spending gold as like getting "work free" bonuses to your stats that simply artificially inflate your stats because you spent real money to just have better stuff. Does not reflect your economic management or knowledge of the game. Also as I have no gold experience my knowledge is limited and I'm curious whether later game unlocked gold buildings are earlier than early game unlocked gold buildings. 