I often get questions on Discord or in the comments of my posts on dCity like:

What cards do you recommend I buy? How do you choose which cards to buy? Is it better to focus on increasing population or increasing income in SIM?

In this post I'm going to share my strategy for buying on the dCity market in order to help friends and readers who have asked me for advice. Different goals and strategies are possible on dCity. I don't know if it is the best strategy but it is the strategy I chose to follow.

I have chosen to focus solely on increasing SIM production in my city because increasing population is less convenient than increasing SIM production.

My main goal in the short term is to increase the SIM production of my virtual city to 3000 SIM per day after taxes that are currently at 21.5%.

When I reach my goal I will invest my daily SIM production in the following way:

• 50% purchase of dCity cards
• 25% increase of Hive Power
• 25% Leo Power increase

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My buying strategy

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To reach my goal (3000 SIMs per day) I need to buy the cards that allow me to have the maximum return of SIM per day.

My buying strategy is as follows:

• I buy the cards that have the best SIM Income/$ ratio.
• I exclude cards that have a negative popularity attribute (with rare exceptions).
• I exclude cards that produce an increase in the negative "Crime" factor.

To select the cards to buy, I built a simple spreadsheet that calculates the SIM Income/$ ratio for each card for sale on the dCity marketplace.

*** ## SIM Income/$ ratio *** To calculate the SIM Income/$ Ratio I need to know the following information:

Note: The HIVE and SIM token values are from the evening of December 29, 2020.

Calculating the SIM INCOME/$ ratio is easy and if you want to do it too I will explain how to do it.

• To calculate the SIM INCOME/$ ratio (using SIM as payment method) you need to apply the following formula: Card Income / (Cost in SIM card * Dollar value of 1 SIM).

• To calculate the SIM INCOME/$ ratio (using SWAP.HIVE tokens as a payment method) you must apply the following formula: Card Income / (Cost in SWAP.HIVE card * Dollar Value of 1 HIVE)

I like to think in terms of dollars but if you want to calculate the SIM INCOME/HIVE ratio the calculation is even simpler and more immediate.

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My latest purchases

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Last night I did a little shopping on the dCity marketplace. The cards that had the best SIM INCOME/$ ratio were as follows:

• Hotel
• Restaurant
• Ad agency
• Stadium
• Weed Dispensary
• Cinema

As you can see from the image below the card that had the best Income SIM/$ ratio last night was the Hotel card (18.37).

The Income SIM/$ ratio is the main element I consider when choosing which cards to buy but it is not the only one. I also consider and evaluate other secondary elements:

• the INCOME - WORKERS difference.
• the production of tokens different from SIM.

In this case the only card that produces other tokens besides SIM is the STADIUM card that produces every day 1 ENTRY token.

The value of the ENTRY token is however very small (0.0016 HIVE) and the additional SIM gain that the Hotel card gives me has a higher value than the value I would get from the ENTRY tokens produced by the STADIUM cards.

After doing all the evaluations I proceed to buy the Hotel cards.

I bought a total of 40 Hotel cards and spent a total of 191,052 SWAP.HIVE.

*** Now my city has a lot of beds, so I can receive many tourists. But the tourists have to eat too :)

So I also bought 10 Restaurant cards (second choice based on SIM INCOME/$ ratio) using SIM as a payment method

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*** For the purchase of the Restaurant cards I spent **10898 SIM** equivalent to **51,329 HIVE** *** *** The total cost of my last investment on dCity was **242,381 HIVE** *** # How soon will I recover my last investment?" *** In my spreadsheet, I entered the **break-even point** calculation for each card. In the calculation I have also considered the current value of taxes that produces a decrease in SIM production and consequently lengthens the time to recover the cost incurred in the purchase of cards.

As you can see from the next image each Hotel card I purchased will take 129.14 days to recover the cost incurred. After 129.14 days it will produce only profit. The 10 Restaurant cards will take 138.85 days to reach the break-even point.

Obviously the break-even point will be reached in a shorter period of time if:

• taxes will decrease
• SIM tokens increase in value

Otherwise the number of days needed will increase.

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The effects on my city

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Now I'll show you the effects that my recent purchases have had on my city.

Before the purchase my city had the following characteristics:

• SIM production: 1416 SIM per day
• popularity: 1267
• population: 1685

After the purchase of the Hotel and Restaurant cards the situation is as follows:

• SIM production: 1873 SIM per day (+ 457)
• popularity: 1547 (+ 280)
• population: 2270 (+ 585)

The percentage of citizens without work drops to 0.79% and in my next purchases I have to consider also the population factor.

To reach my goal of 3000 SIM per day I need to invest more and I will do so in the next few days.

How do you choose which cards to buy? What is your main goal on dCity?

I hope this post of mine is useful to those who have asked me for advice on dCity, those who have just started playing and those who are simply curious about the basic mechanisms behind a beautiful game like dCity.

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Important Note:

**dCity more than a game is an investment and mainly as such must be treated**.. In every kind of investment there is always a **risk factor** to evaluate and consider.

I'm happy and satisfied to have invested in the dCity game but I can't predict the future (unfortunately) and so this post of mine is not an invitation to invest on dCity.

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The images in this post are screenshots taken from the sites:. https://dcity.io/ https://leodex.io/ Images containing formulas and calculations are my property. The font used in the calculations images is Open Source. ***