When I last left off, I had acquired a Restaurant in dCity, but failed to provide any population to work it! Luckily, a hungry Homeless person came by and decided to stay.
And even though it takes 10 people to fully run the Restaurant, I noticed that I was receiving a small trickle of SIM bucks (the in-game currency) on a daily basis. I guess this Homeless person was doing some work in the Restaurant... presumably cooking for themselves, since there was no one else around? And somehow making a profit? I don't know. Things can get weird in a one restaurant, one person town!
Anyway, this wasn't something I would complain about. After a few days I received my Hive tokens and I was finally able to add some life to the town with an 'Apartment'. A whole building of them I assume, because it increased my population by 20!
Hooray! Now I was able to get the full income from my Restaurant! But wait, what's this? I now have an over 50% unemployment rate! And I'm losing a significant percentage of my SIM income to pay for Social Services!
While I appreciate that my local government is looking out for everyone, this just wouldn't do. I needed to find some jobs for them! So I browsed the available buildings in the Marketplace and settled on a Weed Farm. This bad boy has a decent income, increases my popularity, and generates WEED tokens on a daily basis!
I had now spent 18 of my 20 Hive, so I swapped the remaining amount into SIM tokens (~450 in total) so that I could bid on the in-game auctions that popped up every few days. And now I was all set for the next week. I just had to kick back and let my money and weed roll in!
The next morning I checked on my city and saw something shocking! Taxes! Lots of them! 21% taxes actually! WTF? What am I paying these taxes for!? After some poking around I found the government tab which explained what each tax section was used for. Unfortunately, none of them applied to my town! And even if they did, the percentage bonuses are clearly favoring larger cities. So my income was being taxed and those taxes were being used to help the rich get richer. Damn. I get enough of this in real life, I don't need the same in my fun, simulation game!!
I took my complaints to Discord and aside from one plucky fellow city owner who showed support (thanks BRO Guy), I was told by several people that I needed to purchase more buildings. And despite my limited efforts, they either were incapable or simply refused to understand how the current tax system in dCity places an unfair burden on new players and towns. They just seemed to assume that anyone new would immediately throw 100+ Hive at the game!
I just wanted to have quiet little town where I could grow some WEED in peace without THE MAN, bringing me down!
sigh
And to make matters worse, Gerber, the creator of the game, says that he is going to turn taxes up to maximum soon! Boooo! Boooooo! Taxation without representation!
Note: I do realize that this game is in development and my ranting about in-game taxes is partially for fun. However, I do think I have a valid point about the tax system disproportionately affecting new players and smaller towns. Not everyone is going to have a town like this one pictured below and if the game creators want to acquire and keep new players, they should put some thought into the new player experience.
Two Week Results
So far I have spent 24 Hive on the game, which at its current price of about 25 cents, equates to a total of $6.
I have made a little over 100 SIM and have accumulated 0.957 WEED tokens.
I have another 20 Hive coming in later today that I will probably drop into my city. I guess I need to find a building or two that will benefit from the taxes imposed by our Imperial Overlord!
Here is my current city overview. I'll return next week with another update!
Thanks for your thoughts on how taxes impact new players. As one who advocates 'All of the taxes, all of the time' it's helpful for me to see the other perspective.
But let me share some thoughts about the benefits of in-game taxes...
While some of the taxes do provide certain benefits to larger cities, they also tax the larger cities (same percentage, bigger city, more taxes paid).
In addition, every tax provides a net benefit of removing SIM inflation. Lower inflation means long-term earnings will be more stable, which boosts ALL players (your cards hold value better).
Well inflation is handled handled by the basic tax, right?
"Basic tax - just basic tax 5%
Basic tax from 1-20%. The President can use it to reduce SIM inflation."
The other SIX tax categories are all geared towards owning specific buildings, and increasing those buildings by a percentage, which means having more is better (because the building effects are cumulative), thus leading to the rich get richer result. That's the part I have a problem with.
Not 100% true. Both MIC war tax benefit and Eco tax benefit depend on the size of your SIM income and how many buildings you have. Many smaller cities will benefit far more from both, because the SIM they lose to taxes is much less and the reward for owning the buildings is flat — it does not scale. You would be better off having 2 MIC's in a city that gets 1000 daily SIM income than having 5 MIC's in a city that gets 10,000 SIM income.
With eco tax, same idea.
Your math is disingenuous. 10,000 SIM = 10 x 1,000 SIM. 5 MIC = 2.5 * 2 MIC -- you are scaling by a different amount! Give me the numbers for a 10,000 SIM city with 20 MICs vs 1,000 and 2 MICs.
Also, your perspective is skewed. 1,000 SIM / day income is not a small city! That is 50x my current size!!
Then you only need 1 MIC and you will earn way more from it than you would pay in the taxes to support it.
And like the example I gave you with ECO, it's impossible for all the top players to fully offset their taxes by buying enough MIC. (While MIC distributes 80% of taxes collected, while ECO only distributes 25% of taxes collected, MIC is much more rare than solar and wind turbines. I would have to model the precise calculation to find out how far down the rankings the total MIC in existence could cover.)
Not true at all. As I showed with the ECO example in my response, all 'special' taxes are designed to benefit smaller players (because it's much more feasible for a small player to buy enough buildings to cover their tax burden).
The only benefit rich players get from high taxes is reduced SIMflation, and this is a benefit that all players get!