UPDATE, 19 July 2011: NimbleBit released an update to Tiny Tower, version 1.2, that reduces dream job rewards to 1 tower bux instead of 3. If you want to take advantage of this strategy, don’t update to 1.2 yet.
Here’s the tactic I use to get a shitload of tower bux in Tiny Tower. It was passed down to me by my colleague @Cere13ral, who is Chinese. They’re shrewd, the Chinese.
The trick is to assign bitizens to their dream jobs. This instantly nets you 3 tower bux per happy bitizen. Problem is, the bitizens you have probably wants jobs in establishments that your tower doesn’t have yet. What you need to do is create residential space for new bitizens to move in, whose dream jobs potentially match your existing establishments.
Now if you build a new residential apartment (giving you five free spaces), it’ll take forever for bitizens to move in. You’ll have to wait for a bitizen with a lift request to that floor. If your tower is, say, 30 floors already and you only have one floor with free residential space, then that’s only a 1 in 30 chance of getting a lift request to that floor. That’s 3.33%.
It’s worse for taller towers. The chances of anybody moving into Baycrest Apts. above is 1 in 51, or 1.96%
What you need to do is distribute those free residential spaces spaces among all your apartments. Simply: evict the fifth (unhappy or contented) bitizen on every residential floor you have. This dramatically increases your chances of getting a new bitizen for every lift request.
The superior setup. Every residential floor has one free space.
Compare, for example, having 2 residential floors with 5 spaces each vs. 10 residential floors with 1 space each. This is the same amount of free space, but the chances of getting a new bitizen is different. On, say, a 30 floor tower, the 2 floors give you a 6.66% chance of a new bitizen. The 10 floors give you a whopping 33% chance of a new bitizen.
This gives you a near-constant flow of new bitizens! Once someone moves in, have a look at their dream job. Do they match what you have? If no, evict them immediately to leave that space free (be heartless). If yes, assign them the job and enjoy the 3 tower bux.
It’s still a matter of random chance, but the increased flow of bitizens going in and out of your tower gives you much better odds than just keeping your contented citizens and hoping you eventually build an establishment that matches their aspirations.
This is a great way to get a lot of tower bux really fast, which speeds up your tower growth if you exchange it for money. But there are also other benefits.
First, it lets you fill up your establishments with happy bitizens much faster. Happy bitizens doubles the stock of your items per order. One doubles the first item, two doubles the second, and three doubles the third item. This make your stock last longer, which means you have to check up on them less often and they also net you more profit while you sleep. Plus, you can make astounding profit when you get the big spender VIP to buy that doubled third stock (for example, my Architect’s Office third item is Tower Design. By default, it stocks 10,500 pieces of this. Fully manned by happy bitizens, the stock is 21,000 pieces. If you get the big buyer VIP to buy this, that’s an instant 63,000 coins!)
Using this method I was able to jump to around 25 happy bitizens to 80. Also, grow my tower really fast.
Second, it actually gives you something else to do in the game. Before this, I was reduced to just restocking stores, ferrying people up and down, waiting for tips and VIPs. This gets boring. With this, there’s the additional task of managing and moving the bitizens around.
That’s it! Get to it! May your towers reach the heaven and your bitizens walk amongst the gods themselves.
Some additional notes:
You can start with this method immediately, but if you were like me, you probably have all bitizens fully employed so when you start evicting the 5th tenant of every apartment, you’ll end up with some commercial floors that only have two people in them. That’s okay. You can move your employed bitizens around the shops. You only need them when stocking. So once you fully stock a store, move the third (or even 2nd, if needed) bitizen to the next store that needs stocking.
In the meantime, while you’re waiting for new happy bitizens, build new residential apartments to create more space. What’s the ideal number of residential apartments for this method? Well since we want each apartment to only have 4 bitizens, follow this formula:
[ (number of commercial floors) x 3 bitizens ] / 4 residential slots = number of residential floors you need
The beautiful thing about this method is that it works even if the commercial establishments already have three happy bitizens. Go ahead and evict any of the happy ones and employ the newcomer. You’ll get another 3 tower bux. So even if you’ve already managed to get 100% happy bitizens, you can still use this method to gain bux.
Oh yeah, lastly, don’t concern yourself with the stats anymore. A happy bitizen with 0 stats is better to employ than a content bitizen with a 9. The discount is negligible compared to the benefits of double stock. Even if they’re all happy already, don’t be afraid to evict one for a new one with lesser stats. That’s still an extra 3 tower bux.
