Lesson learned: "On Sale" isn't quite what you expect!

In a recent blog, I mentioned that EA currently is promoting a 30% off the rooms that make over M$1,000,000 in the Monopoly Hotels game.

In that blog, I did an analysis of various rooms and merrily concluded that a 30%-off sale would mean 30% off the total cost of ownership.

Instead, I found, as often happens in real life, that the truth was slightly different.

For example, in that blog, I calculated how, with the discount, the total cost of ownership of a Basketball Room would add up to a M$83,300,000 instead of M$119,000,000 at full price.

Two things were wrong with this assumption:

1) Lower priced guest rooms cost 50% of the purchase price to build, but apparently some of the higher-priced rooms (or maybe the higher-yield rooms) apparently cost 67% of the purchase price to build! (That was a shock!)

and, even worse:

2) the discount only applies to the actual purchase price! i.e., the build cost and the paint cost are not discounted at all!

I guess this assumption is an easy-to-make beginners' mistake - all the discounted rooms I've purchased until now have been rooms you buy with gold: i.e., rooms which do not have any additional price (only time) associated with the build and paint phases - once you buy a room with gold, you only need patience, not more M$ or gold!

And how, you ask, did I discover I was wrong?

Well ... simple.

I purchased one of the high-yielding rooms that are currently on sale. 

Not just *any* room.

The *best* one: the Microphone room.

Here's how my thinking went:

Microphone room: Purchase + build + paint = M$99,000,000 + M$50,000,000 + M$20,000,000 (yes, I was rounding up on the build and paint phases) = approximately M$170,000,000 total cost of ownership.

Therefore, on sale, the total cost of ownership would be M$170,000,000*.7=M$119,000,000.

A nice little savings there.

So I decided to save up. Madly.

Spent some of my hard-earned gold (which I'd been saving towards eventually buying a Flute room) to buy a Volcanoes room in the Ventnor Museum so that I could collect M$1,250,000 extra every 3 hours to speed up my savings towards my very first microphone room.

Come to think of it, I even purchased the Marvin Gardens hotel at full price (M$19,500,000) to collect the 200 gold to help me buy that Volcanoes room ...

Collected rent as frequently as possible to maximise my intake.

With the help of that new Volcanoes room and the several Rock Wall rooms I've slowly been upgrading to, it still took me 3 whole days to gather up the discounted purchase price of M$69,300,000.

And now, half an hour ago, I reached that number.

So there I went, merrily purchased my very first Microphone room as the first room in Marvin Gardens.

And there I was: all prepared to now have to pay only 50% of the purchase price, i.e., about M$35,000,000 to build the room.

Imagine my shock when I clicked on that saw to build the room and saw this:

Oooooops! 

That throws my calculations off - by a LOT!

Why? Well, it really doesn't matter much in the larger perspective, but sheeesh! I'd planned to have enough to build this sucker in about 2 days time ... instead, it's going to take me 3 days or more, because it's no longer a long weekend and work means I can't always check my phone at regular intervals to collect rent. :)

And, given that this is a pricey room, I expect it will take days and days to build and paint, too - the Rock Wall takes over 4 days to build and paint, so I am guessing the Microphone room, which costs WAY more than the Rock Wall, will likely take close to a week to build and paint. 

And THEN I have to wait at least 36 hours for my first rent collection.

Sigh.

Patience is NOT one of my virtues ... collecting that M$66,000,000 is going to be tougher than collecting the purchase price of M$69,300,000 was, at least in terms of my patience. :)

And then, I presume, the cost to paint is going to be another loverly M$33,000,000 ...

Oh, well.

No point grumbling.

It is what it is, and now that I have purchased the room, it makes sense to build it and paint it so I can finally see some quick earnings once it starts to pay out.

Now I know - I'll keep this lesson in mind the next time I see a  "Sale" proclamation from EA!