Bloon TD Sunday musing

After 7 consecutive work days, I am having the most unproductive slack-at-home Sunday today, munching popcorn and playing Bloon TD on my laptop.

I have always been fascinated by games of strategy. I think the masterminds that designed these popular games are really geniuses - the game play objectives are always rather simple but so many creative elements can be incorporated into them to make it so satisfying to play. 

I went back to playing Bloon TD again just to see how much the game has evolved since. It still remains a good game to teach kids how to spend wisely, albeit with some adrenaline rush. There have been no change to the kind of towers and tiers upgrade (I have maxed out on all of them), however, there are a whole lot of new power upgrades and some new game types / maps. Most of the time I just stick to playing Battle Arena which is a two-player game that pits me up against other players of similar win-rate.

There are several little tricks to winning like what I mentioned before in my old post. Recently I have discovered one more. There is this power up thing called "Copy Eco". In a nutshell for battles, whoever earns the most virtual money and deployed them most efficiently eg. build the right towers most strategically in the game wins. I would use this Copy Eco power when I reached a level that I guess the other player is earning more 'per minute income' than me. What it does is - if the other playing is earning $500 per minute, I will simply get the same amount (for good) once I activate this power (if your opponent earns less than you, then that's too bad). There are 3 chances that I can utilize this. Once I deployed a MOAB class balloon to try to win, my income would reduce drastically (it's a penalty) and that is the perfect time when Copy Eco comes in handy (provided your opponent hasn't sent a MOAB to you yet!). This little trick worked well in increasing my win rate by 50%. Of course, I guess when too many players know and deploy this trick, everything will kind of revert to mean.

To play in Battle Arena, we need to spend "Medallions" to participate in battles to win XP (which in turn is used for upgrading of powers). If we choose to join the 20/40 arena, it means we spend 20 medallions in attempt to win 40 medallions with XP, then there's the 100/200, 500/1000 and so on. When we have few medallions, we will play safe and bet small. When we have horned our skills enough and gained enough medallions, we can bet big because the chance of winning has gotten higher and we can afford to lose. However, we should not forget that the bigger betting fields attract the more shrewd players. This is a pattern of logic which I found reflective of what's in real life.

We could perhaps think of investment as a long-term game with an end goal e.g. to get enough passive financial income to FIRE. If likened to the Bloon TD game, the MOABs rush attack would be like the market crash and it is the time to test out how strong our financial defenses are. A post (Stock Market is War) that I like by Uncle8888 might also illustrate this.

Once upon a time I regretfully get K.O-ed by a ZOMG when I have hundreds of thousands virtual money cos I could not click my mouse fast enough to maximize my towers. 

Unlike in game play, in real life we cannot foresee what may come and there's no Copy Eco nor copy others. I supposed there will also never come a time when I get tons of money yet the 'investment space' is too small for me to deploy them efficiently in time. 

But again we will never know. ;)

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