Strategy guide
Economy Guide
Tycoon Cards is designed around exponential growth with deliberate diminishing returns. Understanding the curves helps you make better decisions about when to buy, when to prestige and when to farm packs.
The Three Curves
Every idle game balances three curves against each other:
- Income growth — how fast your per-second income increases as you buy more businesses.
- Cost inflation — how fast business prices rise (15% per copy).
- Prestige scaling — how quickly prestige points grow relative to lifetime earnings (square-root curve).
Income vs Cost
Early in a run, income grows faster than costs because each new tier of business is more efficient than the last. As you exhaust the efficiency gains, cost inflation catches up.
The moment you feel costs outpacing income is exactly when you should prestige. Prestige resets costs but preserves card bonuses, giving you a fresh start on a steeper income curve.
The Prestige Square Root
Because prestige points scale with the square root of lifetime earnings, every 4× increase in money only doubles your points. This creates a natural rhythm:
- $1M lifetime → 1 point
- $4M lifetime → 2 points
- $16M lifetime → 4 points
- $64M lifetime → 8 points
- $256M lifetime → 16 points
Grinding past $256M in a single run earns very few additional points. It's usually faster to prestige and let the +2% bonuses accelerate your next run.
Card Compounding
Cards persist through prestige. This is the game's compounding mechanism: every prestige run makes the next one faster because your card bonuses remain active.
Long-term, card collection matters more than any single run. A veteran with maxed-out Legendary cards will breeze through content that a new player finds gruelling.
Long-Term Planning
- First 30 minutes: Focus on click power and the first few business tiers. Ignore cards.
- First hour: Buy Starter Packs, level up common cards, first prestige around $1M.
- First day: Multiple prestiges, Premium Packs, mid-tier businesses maxed.
- First week: Farming Elite Vaults, chasing Mythic/Divine cards, prestige points climbing.
- Ongoing: Max every card, prestige for ever-larger point gains, complete the collection.