Designing a game’s economy is like balancing an ecosystem. Too easy and it bores. Too hard and it frustrates. In Build Your Empire we learned this through iteration, breaking things and starting over.
The three metrics
Our game has three core metrics the player must manage:
- Cash — starts at $500K. Daily revenue minus salaries.
- Morale — starts at 70/100. Naturally decays -0.5/day.
- Innovation — starts at 30/100. Decays -0.2/day.
The Valuation (final score) is calculated as:
Valuation = 30% × Cash + 40% × Talent + 30% × Innovation
Talent = Employees × $50K × (Morale / 100)The snowball problem
The first version had a problem: hiring employees generated revenue, which allowed hiring more employees, which generated more revenue… Infinite snowball. The game was won just by spamming “Hire”.
The solution: non-linear costs. Salaries scale with levels (1.0x → 1.3x → 1.6x → 2.0x → 2.5x). More employees = higher cost per head. This creates a curve where there’s a hiring “sweet spot”.
Decay as pressure
Natural decay of morale (-0.5/day) and innovation (-0.2/day) forces the player to act. You can’t sit and wait. If you don’t launch products, your innovation drops to zero. If you don’t invest in your team, morale collapses.
The trick is in the rates: too much decay and the player can’t do anything but maintain metrics. Too little decay and metrics become irrelevant.
Cooldowns as rhythm
Each action has a different cooldown: Hire (2 days), Launch (5 days), Marketing (3 days), Funding (10 days). This creates a natural rhythm where you can’t do everything at once. You have to prioritize.
Lessons learned
- Spreadsheet first — model the economy in a spreadsheet before coding anything
- Playtest with extremes — what happens if I only hire? Only launch? Do nothing?
- Decay rates are your most powerful balancing tool — adjust with decimals
- The player must feel their decisions matter — if the optimal strategy is obvious, the game fails
- AI competitors are a mirror — seeing others grow faster motivates action