Designing Tier Bands for 100 Businesses

With 100 individual business pages to organise, we needed a grouping system that felt meaningful rather than arbitrary. Here's how we landed on five tier bands.

The starting point

When the business roster grew from 10 to 100 tiers, we knew a flat alphabetical or numerical list wouldn't help anyone browsing the new Business Encyclopedia. We needed groups — but grouping by what?

What we rejected

Ten even bands of exactly ten businesses each was the first idea, and we rejected it almost immediately. It's tidy on paper, but it doesn't reflect how the game actually feels to play — the jump in cost and income between business #10 and #11 is nothing like the jump between #90 and #91.

What we built instead

We settled on five bands — Starter, Growth, Industrial, Corporate, and Cosmic — sized by percentage of the full roster rather than fixed counts: the first 10% of businesses are Starter tier, the next 20% are Growth, the next 25% are Industrial, the next 25% are Corporate, and the final 20% are Cosmic. This mirrors the actual pacing curve: lots of quick, cheap early unlocks, then progressively longer, more meaningful stretches between purchases.

Why it helps players

A player skimming the Business Encyclopedia can now tell at a glance whether a business belongs to their current stage of the game just from its colour-coded band, without needing to check the exact cost first. It also gave the "Related Businesses" and "Visual Progression" sections on individual business pages a natural grouping to draw neighbours from.

Developer Commentary

🎙️ From the team:We considered ten bands of ten businesses each — perfectly even, but meaningless. Five uneven bands that match how players actually experience pacing turned out to be far more useful.

Frequently Asked Questions

Are the tier bands used anywhere in actual gameplay?

Not directly in-game yet — they're currently a content-organisation tool for the Business Encyclopedia. The underlying cost curve they're based on is the same one used by the live game.

Could the band boundaries change in future?

Yes, if the business roster grows further or the cost curve is retuned, we'd revisit the percentage thresholds that define each band.

Related updates

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