I literally JUST bought a Thumby out of a vending machine this past weekend, so this post feels a bit serendipitous for me. Thanks for sharing, and I'll have to check this out!
Small bug: the sim seems to double count residential population for taxes, industrial pop gets ignored. The duplicate logic seems to exist in UI but it's correct there.
Also I wonder if all the repetition could be reduced, or would it affect performance on MicroPython?
Yeah great catch. So I mentioned this in the README but much of the mechanics were heavily inspired by jhhoward's MicroCity. This is the same way he calculated taxes and I figured to test it out to see how it worked in game. I really liked the flow of how his game played and seems like there are some pros/cons to that inbalance.
Pros:
- Makes residential population more valuable for taxes, which helps early‑game cash flow.
- Encourages zoning residential since it has outsized budget impact.
- Offsets the fact that residential growth can be more constrained by pollution/unemployment.
Cons:
- Skews the economy away from industrial/commercial impact.
- Makes budget feel inconsistent with “total population.”
- Can mask balance issues by injecting extra money, making difficulty tuning harder.
Also I wonder if all the repetition could be reduced, or would it affect performance on MicroPython?
https://github.com/chrisdiana/TinyCity/blob/88d07cf98f13bb73...
Pros: - Makes residential population more valuable for taxes, which helps early‑game cash flow. - Encourages zoning residential since it has outsized budget impact. - Offsets the fact that residential growth can be more constrained by pollution/unemployment.
Cons: - Skews the economy away from industrial/commercial impact. - Makes budget feel inconsistent with “total population.” - Can mask balance issues by injecting extra money, making difficulty tuning harder.