With dCity we are getting more than a mathematical NFT city simulation on the HIVE blockchain: It adds various tokens and communities into its ecosystem, is entangled with the BeeSwap exchange reward token BXT and invites to Splinterlands tournaments. Let's dive deep into one of the most fascinating games on HIVE.
What's the Deal?
dCity is a Hive blockchain communal city simulator for arithmophiles and presidential aspirants alike. Players amass buildings to employ citizens that contribute to daily rewards while working towards long-term goals such as acquiring technologies and lobbying for President.
Players also have the opportunity to spend other Hive tokens such as BEER (BEER Fest), STEM (Science Convention) and GAMER (Poker Night) to trigger in-game events that provide temporary bonuses and chances to earn additional NFTs. Even DEC (SplinterFest) can be used to generate ENTRY, a token reserved for participating in Splinterlands tournaments hosted by dCity!
The Story So Far
dCity first launched as SteemCITY in early 2020, and mobile functionality was achieved shortly thereafter. Following the fork to Hive, SteemCITY rebranded as dCity as part of the Great Hive Migration in the spring of 2020. After multiple updates and a general settling-in period, the summer of 2020 saw the introduction of Splinterlands tournaments hosted by dCity. A new Stadium building was added to generate ENTRY tokens used to participate in these tournaments.
dCity doubled down on community integration by later adding support for NFT Art Galleries directly within dCity. This art was sourced from NFT Showroom with dCity Art serving as an auction platform for dCity players wanting to promote their work. In early 2021, dCity hosted its largest Splinterlands tournament with a 1 million DEC rewards pool.
Since then, dCity has enjoyed regular updates with continuous development towards new features. While NFT Showroom Auctions were eventually discontinued due to lack of interest, the willingness to support the community through creative features remains a constant.
Tokens
SIM is the native token responsible for all major transactions within dCity. It represents a city's revenue and can be used to purchase additional cards or added to the SWAP.HIVE:SIM liquidity pool for daily SIM and BXT rewards (the reward token of the BeeSwap exchange).
ENTRY is a secondary token created exclusively for participating in Splinterlands tournaments run by dCity. They are acquired from Stadiums and can be spent to start SplinterFest events for increased ENTRY production and a chance of acquiring Chaos Legion packs.
NFT Cards
All dCity assets are represented by cards that can be purchased with HIVE or SIM. These cards are then activated in a city to begin providing passive benefits (and possibly penalties) based on the city's overall attribute totals.
Buildings have been released in three sets (1st/2nd/3rd edition) with the following attributes:
| Population | Total number of Citizens added to a city. |
|---|---|
| Income | Daily SIM generation when fully staffed. |
| Popularity | Population modifer (positive OR negative). |
| Workers | Required population to generate the building's income. |
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Some buildings also provide Education (daily chance for Technology NFT) or Creativity (daily chance for Cosmetic NFT) and can have unique abilities like producing Hive tokens.
Combined Buildings are eventually created by combining many basic Buildings with a Construction Site. The result has significantly improved attributes and often has a new ability.
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For example, Experimental Lab is made by combining the following buildings:
- 1 Construction Site
- 5 Laboratories
- 2 Research Centers
- 1 Office
- 1 Parking
- 1 Public Restrooms
- 1 Better Documentation Practice
If the player later wishes to recover these "ingredients", they would only lose the Construction Site burned when forming the Combined Building.
Citizens represent specific individuals within a city's Population that provide bonuses and penalties on top of providing 1 Population. They can have all of the same base attributes as Buildings, but certain abilities are unique to Citizens.
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For example, the Gambler and Gamer variants both contribute to the production of their respective tokens, GAMER and ENTRY.
Technologies provide various bonuses that must first be unlocked (once every 36hrs) in order to have a chance (every 24hrs) of receiving them.
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There are 6 Technology branches: Control, Education, Automation, Utility, Economy, and Health. Successfully unlocking and acquiring one of each Technology in a branch provides +1% Population.
Crisis Prevention protects against the 6 types of crises that exist in the game: Pandemy, Fires, Riots, Economy Crisis, Power Outage and Nature Disaster. Each card protects against a specific crisis for the specified period of time:
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Crises have a global chance of occurring during daily rewards distribution that steadily increases until the crisis is finally triggered. When a crisis begins, all players affected receive the associated penalty for the day. Crisis Prevention cards are generated by Combined Buildings.
Cosmetics currently represent backgrounds for the city display and visuals like clouds and fish.
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What's Happenin'?
Since the new year, dCity has retired NFT Showroom auctions due to lack of interest. This was announced alongside hiring a Community Manager who will also be responsible for handling dCity's marketing.
HIVE distributions are being reduced to account for the current market downtrends, and steps are being taken to shift funds into more stable income sources like BeeSwap. The goal is to ensure rewards remain a constant well into the future.
Additionally, the SIM Millionaire Club was announced for all those with 1 million SIM in either their Hive wallet or the SWAP.HIVE:SIM liquidity pool. Members of this club will have exclusive access to the initial auctions for Splinterlands cards being sold to shift dCity funds into BeeSwap. Bidders will be able to pay in HIVE or USDC, and club members will eventually gain access to special events and raffles.
Carteltopia
The Cartel is pleased to introduce @ecoinstant as the mayor of our humble dCity! He lives in Colombia, which might lead to some funny jokes about Colombia. Time will tell!
To help kickstart the @cartel-dcity account, 104 cards were provided by @flauwy as a working base:
This might have been a viable city at some point in the past, but just like real cities, over months and years of neglect, they can degenerate into an unprofitable mess. We can see that the popularity changes have taken a toll on this city, but its nothing an experienced operator cannot fix!
The first upgrade any serious dCity player should consider is the Law Firm:
Small city strategies might be able to get by without buying one, but any serious dCity needs a Law Firm for the 10% tax reduction. Now we have one. This means if taxes reach 100%, something not so uncommon recently, we'll only pay 90%. It's not a direct 10%, though, as a 90% tax rate would only be reduced to 81%.
We also had the problem of Population, so @ecoinstant picked up several farms for 525 SM each to balance it out. Here's how our initial city is looking:
A quick fix and our income has increased more than four-fold!
That would have been an excellent starting point, but @gerber went and lowered the popularity bonus once again, something we knew was coming but not when. So, our perfect city now needs more people. While considering how to solve this problem, we received a generous donation from @kennysgaminglife:
@ecoinstant was also asked by @vasupi what the best method is for increasing Population. We're using Farms, as it gives +1 Income with the GMO Technology on top of the base Population. That was exactly what we were going to buy, but Farms jumped from 529 SIM to 639 SIM:
@ecoinstant felt it was best to hold off on buying more Farms, so we settled on Basic Homes after he reviewed the market for the next cheapest Building. They don't give much income, but with the Popularity multiplier set to continue shrinking, this could be a good investment either way. The Cartel is now the proud owner of 250 more homes!
@ecoinstant will be providing many more updates and tips for managing your dCity in his weekly updates. If you have any questions, feel free to ask in the comments below!
Where Do I Sign Up?
dCity is not a free-to-play game, and you'll need a Hive account with the Hive Keychain browser extension (or HiveSigner on mobile) to access the game. Once you've logged into the game, you can purchase random cards, directly, for 4 HIVE or 800 SIM each. If you'd rather focus on specific Buildings and Citizens, you can use the in-game market or browse NFTMart's dCity collection. There's also a dCity section on Monster Market worth perusing.
Auctions
While unlikely to be the first thing you aim for, eventually you'll want to consider bidding on Buildings and ProGamers. The available Building will rotate at random and accept SIM bids while the ProGamer remains the same and accepts BATTLE bids.
The main appeal of ProGamers is the increased ENTRY production which is tied to participating in Splinterlands tournaments. If you're not an active Splinterlands player, ProGamers will simply be a source of tokens you can trade or sell.
The Basics
Every city relies on the following "attributes" to determine how it functions each day. These attributes represent the sum total of all cards currently active in your city and any events or other non-card modifiers.
Population determines the number of people living in your city.
Income indicates your daily generation of SIM tokens. At >1000 Income, crime events have a chance to generate Criminals.
Popularity applies a direct multiplier to your Population. At >50 Popularity, your city has a chance to gain 1 free Citizen (Homeless, Immigrant, or Student) each day.
Education provides a daily chance to receive an unlocked Technology. The maximum chance is 25% (1% per 40 Education).
Creativity provides a daily chain to receive cosmetic Background/Animation NFTs. The maximum chance is 25% (1% per 80 Creativity)
Events
Before picking out your Buildings, it's worth knowing whether or not you want to incorporate the use of Hive tokens. This is particularly important if you have an external source of these tokens that allows you to generate enough to always activate the associated event. If you have sufficient Hive tokens, you can start one of the following 6 events:
| EVENT | COST | BENEFIT | Chance for NFT per 2hrs |
|---|---|---|---|
| Art Convention | 250 CCC | +80-180 Creativity | 20% Artist |
| BEER Fest | 5 BEER | +50-100 Popularity | 20% Worker/Hard Worker |
| Poker Night | 20000 GAMER | -5-20% Crime | 15% Gambler, 5% Addicted Gambler |
| Science Convention | 50 STEM | +40-120 Education | 20% Scientist and STEM Miner |
| SplinterFest | 500 DEC | +5% ENTRY | 18% Gamer, 2% Chaos Legion pack |
| WEED Fest | 30 WEED | +40-120 Creativity | 20% Artist, 2x WEED Farm production |
Each event lasts 24 hours with a 4 day cooldown between uses, so plan your purchases accordingly. You can see which events are active in the top-left corner of the city map screen (below the Crises tracker):
Crime
Crime is a random negative in-game event that can happen every 24h based on the number of Homeless/Immigrant Citizens in your city relative to its population. When crime is triggered one of the following happens:
- -75 Income for a Shopping Mall
- -150 Income for a Bank
- -300 Income for a Car Dealership
- -400 Income for one Casino
- -1000 Income for one Central Bank
- -5% to your city's base Income
The following Buildings help reduce your city's chance of experiencing crime:
- Cinema
- Court
- Gym
- Police Station
When crime occurs in a city with >1000 Income, there's an inverse chance of one Citizen becoming a Criminal. Thus, if your daily chance for crime is 20%, there's an 80% chance that one of your Citizens will become a Criminal when crime occurs.
Crises
Crises have a global 1% chance of occurring during daily rewards distribution that steadily increases to 20% until the crisis is finally triggered. You can track the current global risk fo each crisis in the top-left corner of the city map screen:
When a crisis begins, all players affected receive the associated penalty for the day. Crisis Prevention cards are generated by Combined Buildings.
The following 6 Crises are possible:
| CRISIS | PENALTY |
|---|---|
| Economy Crisis | -10% Income |
| Fires | -5% Income |
| Nature Disaster | -5% Income/Popularity |
| Pandemy | 20% of the Population cannot work and have +0.4 support costs |
| Power Outage | -5% Income |
| Riots | -5% Income/Popularity |
Consuming a Crisis Prevention card will protect against the associated Crisis for 7 days. The chance of acquiring a Crisis Prevention whenever the associated Crisis occurs is as follows:
| PREVENTION | CRISIS | COMBINED BUILDING CHANCE |
|---|---|---|
| Crisis Bond | Economic Crisis | 10% per Central Bank |
| Energy Reload | Power Outage | 20% per Power Distributor |
| Prepared Police | Riots | 10% per Police Academy |
| Vaccine | Pandemy | 10% per Experimental Labs |
Growing Your City
Since Population is your most important resource (Buildings are worthless without people to run 'em!), you first goal should be to math out enough sources of Population to cover the workforce required for your desired production Buildings. If, for example, you want to buy a Factory (40 Workers), one option would be to also buy 10 Basic Homes (4 Population). You do not need Citizens to begin your dCity.
Citizens
Once you've surpassed 50 Popularity, your city will periodically "attract" free (Homeless/Immigrant/Student) Citizens (one per day). Initially, they will be a burden on your city's output, but each of the three freebie Citizens can be trained into other Citizens.
Training
Each day, your Homeless/Immigrants Citizens have a chance to be converted into the following:
- 80% Workers
- 10% Artists
- 10% Scientists
This chance is increased by 0.01% for every Homeless/Immigrant Citizen in your city and 3% (6% with Government Boost) for each Job Center (Building). If your Popularity dips below 10, you cannot train these Citizens.
Students have a chance to degrade into Homeless Citizens or train into Eco Activitists, Policemen, Scientists, Soldiers, or Workers. This chance is increased by how old each Student card is and how many University Campuses (Combined Building) are in your city.
Loading
Certain Citizens can eventually be "loaded" into specific Buildings designed to benefit from "holding" them:
| CITIZEN | BUILDING | BENEFIT | CAPACITY |
|---|---|---|---|
| Artist(s) | Ad Agency | +0.2 Income | 10 |
| Criminal | Prison | +1 Income | 50 |
| *Dust | Warehouse | +1 Income | 50 |
| Hard Worker | Construction Company | +2 Income | 20 |
| Scientist(s) | SpaceSIM Company | +1 Income | 50 |
Dust is produced by Industrial Zones (Combined Building) during a Crisis.
Loading trades the attributes on each card for the loading benefit of the Building. This allows you to negate the penalties of Criminal and Dust. These Buildings can be unloaded at any time.
Construction
Like Loading, Combined Buildings are designed to compress multiple cards into one at the expense of a Construction Site card. By stacking all of the required cards for a "recipe" onto a Construction Site, you'll trade the attributes of the individual Buildings for the Combined Building's attributes (and possibly abilities). You can recover all of the "ingredients" by reverting the Combined Building into its parts, but the Construction Site is burned when initially forming the Combined Building.
Keep in mind that Combined Buildings are the only way to generate Crisis Prevent cards. This makes the Central Bank, Experimental Lab, Police Academy and Power Distributor important cards to aim for once your city has sufficient income to begin acquiring the Buildings necessary to construct them.
Technology
Once you've acquired a fully staffed Research Center, you can begin unlocking Technologies (once every 36hrs) and discovering unlocked Technologies (every 24hrs). The cost to unlock a Technology increases as you progress further into each Technology branch ranging from 30 SIM to 1000 SIM within each branch:
Automation Technologies increase the production efficient of Factories and the your overall Income/BEER generation.
Control Technologies primarily reduce the chance of crime occurring.
Economy Technologies provide additional Income for economic Buildings.
Education Technologies decrease the unlock cooldown, increase the discovery chance, and improve Citizen training.
Health Technologies reduce the impact of Pandemy and provide Income for Pandemy-related Buildings.
Utility Technologies provide Income for a variety of non-economic Buildings.
Government
As your flourishing city continues to progress, its average total value over the last 30 days is used to determine your SIM Power. SIM Power determines the weight of your votes when picking a President, how much you can influence the various lobbying topics, and how rewards for the five ranking categories are weighted.
Lobbying
Your total SIM Power can be split across four lobbying topics:
- Income Tax (max -20%)
- Ranking Rewards (max 1% of rewards pool)
- War Tax (max 10%)
- Holding Rewards (max 300 daily HIVE)
The average division of SIM Power (adds up to 100%) determines each topic's results. If only 50% of all SIM Power is allocated to Income Tax, then it will provide a discount of -10%. This same process is used to determine how the daily HIVE rewards are split across the five categories.
The President
Once a candidate has been elected, they have 14 days to activate/deactivate various global metrics. Excluding Income Tax, they are:
- Police Tax (-1% Income, Police Stations 4x as effective)
- Education Tax (-5% Income, +10% Education)
- Art Tax (-5% Income, +10% Creativity)
- War Tax (-10% Income, 80% of tax distributed to holders of War Shares)
- Eco Tax (-5% Income, +1/+2 Income for Wind Turbines/Solar Plants)
- Jobs Tax (-5% Income, Job Agency 2x as effective)
- Basic Tax (-1% to -20% Income, used to fight SIM inflation)
- Luxury Tax (-20% to -70% HIVE, penalty for cities with no SIM income)
The War Tax requires players to amass war shares in order to benefit from the taxed income. You can increase your war shares by acquiring the following Guildings/Citizens:
- Drone Factory (10 shares)
- Military Base (2 shares)
- Military Industrial Complex (1 share)
- Soldier (0.1 share)
The Luxury Tax is particulary important, as it minimizes the gains of pass earners by forcing them to build a city with a positive SIM income.
Tax Refunds
During times of extremely high income tax (like right now), Churches, Eco Activists, Policement, Soldiers and Students each provide 1 tax refund to help bolster SIM Income. Knowing this makes prioritizing them (within reason) incredibly valuable for the long-term growth of your city.
Play2Earn
Each day, your city earns SIM, but you can also earn HIVE based on your ranking across five metrics:
| CATEGORY | % of TOTAL | REWARD POOL |
|---|---|---|
| Income | 30.1% | 72.293 HIVE |
| Population | 7.68% | 18.446 HIVE |
| Popularity | 15.1% | 36.267 HIVE |
| Education | 26.6% | 63.887 HIVE |
| Creativity | 20.52% | 49.284 HIVE |
The total rewards pool is generated from 50% of all HIVE spent minting random cards. Up to 1% of this total amount is distributed across these categories each day.
The Splinterlands Connection
To make planning out a Splinterlands focused city easier, this is all of the ENTRY token information token you'll need to be able to participate in future Splinterlands tournaments hosted by dCity.
ENTRY Tournaments
To keep tabs on any future tournaments, bookmark the Event page where Splinterlands tournaments are listed. Click on the dropdown menu showing "All Coins" to filter by ENTRY. This will hide all tournaments that don't use ENTRY tokens to participate.
SplinterFest Event
By spending 500 DEC, you can gain +5% ENTRY generation for 24hrs with an 18% change to receive a Gamer Citizen every two hours. This 24-hour period also includes a 2% chance to gain a Chaos Legion pack.
ENTRY is produced by Stadiums (require 17 population, each) and enhanced by Gamer (+1%)/ProGamer (+3%) Citizens. You can bid on ProGamer Citizens using BATTLE tokens.
SIM Millionaire Club
Also, players with 1 million SIM in their wallet OR in the SWAP.HIVE:SIM liquidity pool qualify to be club members. Members will have early access to the upcoming Splinterlands card auctions dCity plans to run as part of transitioning funds to BeeSwap.
dCity is an extremely mathy game that requires exception organizational skills to maximize your rewards. Spend time getting to know the various formulas and metrics through the dCity info page, and participate in the following social platforms to make sure you're up-to-speed on the latest news:
- Community: https://peakd.com/@dcitygame
- Discord: https://discord.gg/FkMAPV3
- Twitter: https://twitter.com/DcityGame
This article was written by @ecoinstant and @entrepidus, edited and proofread by @francis.melville.
Our Cartel operator for dCity is @ecoinstant.
