MegaCryptoPolis – A “Blockchain SimCity” – But Will The Cost Hurt Users?

MegaCryptoPolis (MCP) is a simulation game similar to SimCity 4 and Cities XL. Players buy land and build structures to increase their influence within a district or throughout the gameworld. 

Most of MCP’s game mechanics run on the Ethereum network, and almost all of the items in the game are backed by crypto tokens. In addition, the game regularly pays out ETH to players who succeed at it.

This article will explain all of the major game mechanics of MegaCryptoPolis. We’ll discuss land, structures, citizens, pets, appliances, and more. 

We’ve spent some time browsing around in the game client and looking at structures. So we’ll also tell you our experience with the game whenever it is relevant. And we’ll weigh in briefly on whether we think the game would be worth committing time and money to.

MegaCrytoPolis gameplay mechanics

This section explains the features and gameplay mechanics of MCP. To make this simple, we’ve tried to avoid discussing features that involve prize money here. Instead, the prize system is explained in a separate section below.

Land

The most basic thing a player can do in MegaCryptoPolis is to purchase land.

When a player buys the first plot of land in a 7*7 region, he pays 0.01 ETH plus an extra amount called the District Owners Ante (DOA). 

The DOA ranges from an extra 0% to 100% of the original price. In other words, if the original price is 0.01 ETH (approx. $1.46), the actual price could be up to 0.02 ETH (around $2.92).

Once the first plot is sold, the price for each additional plot in the 7 x 7 region increases.

In our testing, we browsed around and looked at land prices for new, unclaimed land in several regions. We found that the total price for this land varied from 0.28 to 0.5 ETH (approx. $40 to $72).

If a player doesn’t want to buy unclaimed land from the game itself, he can purchase previously owned land from other players.

Or if a player doesn’t want to buy land and build his own structures at all, he can instead rent buildings from other players. In this case, the ground a building is constructed on is included with the lease price of the building.

In our testing, we found that there were very few buildings available for rent. But we did find one MCP condo advertised on Discord for 0.00868 ETH (approx. $1.24) per day. So despite their rarity, we can verify that buildings for rent do exist in the game.

Structures

Once a player owns land, he can build structures on it. Here is a list of structures and their benefits.

Residential (Modern House, Villa, Condominium) – These buildings can be used to breed citizens. This process works similarly to that of other crypto games such as Blockchain Cuties or Axie Infinity.

Office (Business Center, Office Block) – Use these to earn taxes from players. This will be explained more in the prizes section.

Municipal (Hospital, Police Station, Fire Station) – Earn a % of the prize pools whenever a natural disaster occurs.

Commercial (Supermarket, Trade Center) – Sell citizen stamina recovery services to other players in exchange for ETH.

Industrial (Smelter Plant, Mixing Plant) – Produce wood, metal, sand, or stone for use in production.

Production (Steelworks, Glassworks, Brickworks, Factory) – Turn wood and stone into bricks, sand and metal into glass, or metal and stone into steel. Turn water, steel, and energy into appliances.

Energy (Water Plant, Power Plant) – Produce electricity or water.

Structure improvements

Each structure begins with a level of 1. Resources can be spent to upgrade it to level 2. The maximum level for a structure is 7.

Higher level energy, production, and industrial buildings produce goods faster. And higher-level residential buildings tend to produce citizens with better qualifications. Similar benefits come from using higher-level buildings in other categories.

Citizens

In order for a building to produce resources, it must have citizens appointed to work in it. 

Generation A citizens were sold during the presale. Later generations of citizens were produced in residential buildings.

Each citizen has seven qualifications (attributes): strength, endurance, charisma, intelligence, agility, and luck. Each qualification has a particular type of work that it is used for. For example, strength is used for industrial work while charisma is used for commercial work.

Citizens have titles that rank them based on how high their qualifications are. A citizen whose qualifications are all below 7 is considered a manager. If a citizen has at least one qualification of 7 or higher, he is considered a top manager. 

Professionals are citizens with at least 1 qualification above 8; executives have at least 1 attribute at the maximum of 10, and Top Executives have at least 2 qualifications maxxed out.

Citizens with higher relevant qualifications can produce more materials, command a higher salary in offices, charge more for commercial services, or increase the portion of the insurance fund obtained by a municipal building.

Pets

During a presale event, several different breeds of pets were sold to early contributors. These included mastiffs, whipits, bulldogs, parrots, korgis, and labradors. 

These pets give qualification bonuses to citizens they are paired with. For example, a labrador will grant an agility bonus to the citizen it is paired with, while a mastiff will give a strength bonus instead.

These pets are unobtainable within the game or from the developer. But they can still be obtained from other players.

Cars (in development)

In a future patch, the developer of MCP plans to introduce a new building called a car plant. Players will be able to use this plant to produce a wide variety of vehicles, including sedans, coupes, ice trucks, police cars, wagons, busses, and others. 

These vehicles will reduce the stamina loss of citizens who work in particular types of buildings. However, each building will have a set amount of parking space based on its level.

Appliances

There are five different types of appliances: Fire Alarm, Wi-Fi Router, CCV Camera, Air Conditioner, and Satellite.

Placing an appliance inside of a building increases the building’s influence.

Influence

Gaining influence is the primary objective of MegaCryptoPolis. 

The player’s total influence is the sum of the influence of all of his buildings. 

Buildings gain or lose influence based on which other buildings are located near them. For example, a residential building will gain influence for each municipal, office, or commercial building near it and for the first 10 other residential buildings located near it. 

But a residential building will lose influence for every industrial, energy, or production building near it and for every residential building near it other than the first 10.

Players must carefully plan how they build so as to maximize their influence.

MegaCryptoPolis prizes

MegaCryptoPolis awards a small amount of ETH prizes every 24 hours based on the influence each player possesses. Greater amounts are awarded every 90 to 365 days based on an economic balance algorithm. 

Here is a breakdown of how the prize system is funded and paid out.

Districts

Each piece of land is contained within a district. Each district has a District Owner (DO) that sets public policy for the entire district. District ownership is tokenized and is established during periodic auctions when new districts are created.

The only way to become a district owner is to either win an auction when a new district is created or buy a district from a previous owner.

If you don’t like the policies of the district owner where your property is located, it is usually cheaper to sell your property and buy property in another district rather than attempt to buy the district from its owner.

District policy

The District Owner sets the District Owner’s Ante (DOA) for the district. This is the extra fee that must be paid when an unclaimed plot of land is purchased.

The proceeds from this fee go directly to the District Owner. However, if the DO sets this fee too high, players may avoid purchasing unclaimed property in the district.

The DOA is not charged to players when they buy or sell previously owned land from each other.

The district owner also sets a variety of taxes in the district. However, these taxes do not go to the DO. Instead, 80% of this revenue goes to two prize pools used in the game. The remaining 20% goes to the developer. 

The two prize pools funded by taxes are called the Global Tax and District Fund.

Tax rates are capped at a maximum of 100%. In other words, an action that costs 0.001 ETH before taxes cannot cost more than 0.002 ETH after taxes.

Land sales pool

In addition to the two funds filled by tax revenue, a third prize fund exists called the Land Sales Pool. The proceeds from sales of unclaimed land (not counting the DOA) go into this pool.

Prizes

Here is how these prize pools payout rewards to players.

Global Tax

Every 90 to 365 days, players are paid prize money out of the Global Tax. The higher the influence of the player at the time of the payout, the greater the portion of prize pool received.

The exact payout period for the Global Tax is determined by a balance algorithm within the smart contract that governs it.

District Fund

Every 24 hours, the players in each district are awarded prizes from the District Fund. The portion of the District Fund paid out to the entire district each day varies from 1% of the total pool to 3%. This rate is set by the District Owner every 30 days.

The greater the influence of the player, the greater the portion of this 1% to 3% he will receive as an individual.

Land Sales Pool

In addition to these prizes, players also receive proceeds from the Land Sales Pool each time a nearby plot of unclaimed land is sold.

When a player buys a plot of land within a particular 7 x 7 region, each other player in the region receives a portion of the Land Sales Pool equal to 12.5% of what he originally paid for his plot of land. 

For example, let’s say that a player is the first one to buy a plot within a particular 7 x 7 area. And let’s say the player pays 0.01 ETH for the plot. This player will get paid 0.00125 ETH each time a new plot within that 7 x 7 region is sold. This means that once 8 plots are sold, the player will have made back what he spent on the purchase.

Disaster Insurance Payments

Players who control municipal buildings will get paid a portion of the District Fund and Global Tax in the event that a natural disaster occurs within a district.

For each district in every 24 hour cycle, there is a small chance that a natural disaster will occur such as a flood, fire, or storm. Each type of disaster triggers a payout to players who own a particular type of building. Storms trigger payouts to police, fires to fire stations, and floods to hospitals.

The district owner sets the amount of rewards from the District Fund that will be paid out in case of disaster – up to a maximum of 15%. This amount is matched by the Global Tax.

MegaCryptoPolis review

We registered an account with MegaCryptoPolis and spent some time playing around with the game’s interface. Registering only required an email address and working Metamask extension. We had no problem getting started.

The game opened to an overhead view of a beautiful city spread across several landmasses. The scene was reminiscent of SimCity and other games from this genre. 

A map in the lower-left could be used to navigate to different areas of the city, and a nearby menu allowed us to toggle on and off influence markers, resource nodes, influence levels, and other useful markers.

There were many buildings, including condominiums, villas, police stations, fire stations, and others. We saw some plots of land that had “sold” signs on them, indicating that they had already been claimed. Other plots were still unclaimed and available to be purchased.

In the upper-left corner, we found an island covered with unclaimed land. Each plot had a padlock icon on it that seemed to indicate it couldn’t be purchased. This island appeared to be a new district that had not yet become available.

Whenever we clicked on a building, a popup box appeared to give us information about it. This information included how many citizens were appointed to it, what appliances it contained, and other useful stuff. From within this box, we could make an offer to buy the land if we desired.

From our first impressions, MCP seems to be a very well-polished game. The player interface is intuitive, and we didn’t find any bugs or other obvious problems. So if you like city-building games, you might want to check out MegaCryptoPolis.

Our only criticism is that the game might become expensive very quickly, especially for players that aren’t very good at it. 

However, MCP seems to be growing in popularity. This should lead to bigger prize pools that will allow even bad players to turn a profit. 

Over time, this popularity may peak, leading players to fight for influence over a shrinking prize pool. It is at that time that unskilled players may need to worry that they are dumping money into a black hole. 

But on the other hand, MCP does have very deep and interesting mechanics. Some players may feel that they enjoy the game enough that they are willing to take this risk.

In conclusion, many players will probably enjoy MegaCryptoPolis. But players who aren’t very good at these kinds of games should keep in mind that it could get expensive over time.

Will you be playing MegaCryptoPolis? Let us know your thoughts in the comments below.