Saturday, July 26, 2008

Your Hitlist Price

Ever wondered how much it costs to hitlist you?

In your Mob wars game, click on My Stats. Then Add to Hitlist. You will see your price there.

It should work out to this formula:
$10*passive income+$5,000+$20*(number of people you've hitlisted).

If you had been recently hitlisted, your price will be DOUBLED for about 2 hours. This is to deter multiple hitlistings on you.

But of course, it doesn't always work :)

So start getting your passive income up. Use this mob wars calculator as a Next Best Buy guide.
Don't be a poor target...

Thursday, July 17, 2008

Strategy with Banks

If you are new to Mob Wars, you probably do not earn enough to do LandBanking (see earlier posts) yet. You have little choice but to pay the bank tax of 10% each time you deposit, just to keep your meager savings from the more professional mobsters.

In your early stages, you will be growing your income doing jobs and paying the banker. Buy Villas and Restaurants when you can. By the time you can afford the Apartment, you should be able to begin your LandBanking.

Banks should then be used to store cash for your Hospital expenses. I have also used banks to store leftover cash, after making all my purchases and land bank deposit at the end of my gaming session (no, I can't play this all day).

Newbie Tip on how to use the Mob Wars Calculator:
Based on the ROI recommendation, you will be prompted to buy Hotels and Restaurants even though you can't afford it yet. Just plug a high number in those fields (like '99') and all will be fine. Remember to remove the number plug once in a while to check if you can afford the Restaurant or Hotel. You can stop using the number plug once you can afford them.

Plug a higher number for the Properties that you do not yet see in your game.

Enjoy!

Tuesday, July 15, 2008

What's in Version 1.6

Two things in this version of the Mob Wars Calculator.
The Stockpile's Next Price now works correctly for purchases above 500 quantities.

The other update is rather wicked. Mobsters who play with HitLists should love this.
See the sheet tab labeled "Enemy_01". You can now store the User_id and Name of your favorite targeted mobster onto the sheet.

You are given two URL links beside that field. You can click to launch the add-to-hitlist directly in your default browser. Or launch the mobster's profile (where you can decide to attack, punch or hitlist).

Well, not always. I think Excel 2003's APIs are too old and they don't launch the mobwars page directly.. You can however still do a right-click and copy the link. Then go to your browser and paste this link into the Address box.. (Maybe it's time to move away from Excel 2003.)

"Enemy_01" sheet tab. When you do a right-click at the Sheet Tab, you will see a menu box open. Play with the "Move or Copy.." menu option. Yes, you can now Copy to create Enemy_02, Enemy_03 etc. I don't know how many mobsters you can keep on Tab, but my old notebook slows down after the 25th Mobster..

Have fun!

SaveFile.com

Have moved away from MediaFire because of consistent upload failures.

Let me know if this free file hosting service from SaveFile.com doesn't work for you. Post your download challenges as comments here and I'll try to help.

Why a Mob Wars Calculator Spreadsheet?

It's a matter of bandwidth and cookies.

I work with the web a fair bit and typically flush my browsers' cookies and cache very regularly. You should do this regularly too, for your own privacy and security. But with this practice, I'd drive myself crazy having to repeatedly key in my mob wars numbers.

Also, I'm pretty tight with my network bandwidth expenditure, and am nowhere near Facebook's multi-server allowance to post and repost all graphics and text with almost sheer abandon.. Similarly, I don't like using online calculators because I don't want to use up other people's bandwidths, free as it is. Oh, did you know that you could also be tracked?

My Mob Wars Calculator is designed to be used on Microsoft Excel 2003 and above. Yes, I lose out on a bunch of functionality (from Excel 2007) and flexibility (from programming in say, PHP). But hey, you tell me if you like the Calculator.

If you've followed my versions up through the Mob Wars Discussion Board, you'd know that I've spent quite a few hours on this. I'm just going to unabashedly ask you to buy me a beer (click the BUY ME A BEER button) on the right bar of this blog. Thanks in advance :)

For those who do not have Excel nor other compatible means to use the spreadsheet, try out this link from microsoft:
Microsoft Excel 2003 Viewer
(and no, I don't know how to support this viewer if it fails for you)

Basic Usage

Couldn't be simpler.

The ONLY places that you are allowed to enter anything will be the cells colored GREEN.

All other colors are distractions! Well ok, they do make the spreadsheet look better.

Within the sheet, you can typically navigate within the GREEN cells using merely the Tab key on your keyboard. Of course, arrow keys and mouse clicking works too.

You should start with the sheet tab named "NEXT BEST BUY". This is where you enter the number of properties that you have already own in your Mob Wars game.

There will be a Green colored "<<-Here" indicator in a column heading "Next Best Buy" that will move up and down as you enter your properties. The spreadsheet is calculating on-the-fly as you key in stuff. Only pay attention to it AFTER you have keyed in everything that you own. Only then will the indicator make sense. For newbies, your best bet is to follow the "Next Best Buy" Indicator for your next purchase. Buy what you can afford in the Mob Wars game, then flip back to the spreadsheet to update your purchase. The Indicator will then point to the next recommended purchase. Yes, you will be prompted to buy a lot of Villas and Restaurants..

Update your current Stockpile in the Stockpile sheet tab too - this will allow the calculator to correctly work out your net passive income. You will be able to cross-check these values within your Mob Wars game at the City Menu.

Check out the Analysis sheet tab to see how much time is needed to save for your desired next purchase. Strategies in a different post.

Save your spreadsheet.

ROI Method

The Mob Wars Calculator deploys a simplistic ROI method to offer the Next Best Buy recommendation.

The Return-On-Investment (ROI) formula is the Income of the Establishment against the Actual Next Price of the Establishment. With this the Indicator will offer the Next Establishment on a comparison basis across all Establishments (only). Undeveloped Lands are NOT

The Actual Next Price includes the lowest cost of the Undeveloped Land with the Establishment price. You may realize certain inaccuracies with this formula if you have been stocking up a lot of Undeveloped Lands. But strategies in a different post.

Undeveloped Lands are NOT included in the Next Best Buy evaluation. This is intentional. See the Land Banking post.

You will notice that the ROI to buy 1 Villa is the same to buy 10 Villas. Your decision point is affordability versus Time To Own (TTO, from the Analysis tab). When you can, always strive to buy 10 in bulk. When you buy 10 in bulk, 9 are actually discounted because they are priced at the lowest Actual Next Price. You can experiment with the numbers on the spreadsheet to understand what I mean.

Simulations and Scenarios

Simulations of alternative purchase scenarios are not automated on the spreadsheet. Simulations are where you may wish to see if it's worthwhile to wait two hours to afford 10 Villas or to buy 5 Restaurants now. There are just too many scenarios to factor in, and HELLO, there is a Mob War going on - you might get robbed while fiddling with your buttons. That would certainly make affordability a moot point...

Of course you may do your own manual simulations/scenarios on the Mob War Calculator spreadsheet to develop your own strategy to move forward. If you mess up everything, just don't save. Or re-type in all your properties from scratch.

Land Banking on Mob Wars

In a short sentence, Land Banking is where you use Undeveloped Lands as a safe haven for up to $110 million, tax-free.

Land Banking ONLY works under these conditions:
  • All Undeveloped Lands (from Empty Lots to Container Yards)
  • The first 10 quantities of Lands purchased in bulk.
  • Selling the 10 quantities in bulk.
For example, when you start with zero Empty Lots, the next price indicated is $5000. When you buy 10 bulk, it would cost $50,000 and the next price will then be at $10,000. Every time you sell a property, you will only get back half the value, but of the value of the next price indicated. This means when you sell those 10 Empty Lots in bulk, you get back exactly $50,000. Zero net loss. And oh, for however long you leave the Land Bank alone, you are GAINING interest in the small form of the income against those properties.

Compare this with putting money in the Mob Wars Bank where you are taxed 10% for each deposit. Ouch.

When you buy 10 of each Undeveloped Land as a Land Bank strategy, you would have put aside exactly $110,550,000. And that's a sum that's untouchable by other mobster attacks.

No, Land Banking does not work with the Establishments. When you sell Establishments, you only get back the half value of the Establishments and nothing on the Undeveloped Lands.

Important Note: How do you cash out the Land Bank to make other purchases?
Remember: Always sell in 10s.

When you can afford to buy 5 Apartments, you gain the best purchase value and cash retention when you follow this sequence:
  1. Sell your 10 (LandBank) City Blocks in bulk first
  2. Buy 5 City Blocks in bulk
  3. Buy the 5 Apartments (which would use up the 5 city blocks).
Trust me, you'd waste money on any other sequence.

Strategies Used in the Mob Wars Calculator

Undeveloped Lands are used for Land Banking. Period.

The ROI values for Undeveloped Lands are just too lousy for passive income investments.

I posted this example at the Discussion board so I'll just quote it here.

You know, i tried using Container Yards as another investment arm and I think it won't work until your passive income is much much higher, regardless of it's ROI value at the 300 villa mark. It now becomes a matter of opportunity cost. Let me explain..

When you buy the 11-20th container yard, the next ROI becomes 0.0667%.
The comparable ROI for about 450 villas.

Remember, you are at 300 Villas. The gap is 300-to-450 villas. Or 65-to-105 casinos. In other words, it's a pretty long journey for the rest of the Developed Lands to reach this same ROI.

Meanwhile, your container yards become locked. If you use it for a landbank again, you lose 30m off the sale just to claim back 150m (90m + 60m) for other investments. I'm not too sure how you want to calculate the opportunity cost angle, but I can offer two views.

First is if you sold off the container yards, that you added 30m to the price of the next investment.

Second is that if you didn't sell off the container yards, you added 3 time cycles to the duration of every income accumulation (assuming your current passive income of 50m). Yes, these extra time cycles will become smaller as your passive increases, to the point where you decide it is negligible (maybe around the 450 villa mark). Which is back to my beginning point that it is not yet viable to use container yards as an investment vehicle despite its current ROI.
Enjoy!

Mob War Acknowledgements

Mob Wars is a Facebook application with a grow-your-own mafia theme. Trademarks and Copyrights are property of their respective owners.


The Mob Wars Calculator blog is dedicated to the mobster wannabes having trouble growing their passive income in the fastest ROI-recommended method.

This is NOT a Mob Wars support area. However, certain strategies may be described.

Back to your Mob Wars environment:

Mob Wars on Facebook
Mob Wars Forum
Mob Wars Discussion Board and Updates

Enjoy,