One of the most popular questions that comes up in the game is what do we upgrade in the village. After you work through the value of all the upgrades, you come to rest on the fact that the two best upgrades are:

Collection bonus - credits you with additional products for the running project when you harvest your farm

Points bonus - extra points for every co-op project you complete while the village tractor is running.

What is life without a little math? Lets take 100,000 apples, 10% bonuses and level 1 apples.

100,000 apples will allow you to do 23.8 apple projects for 6,667 points. If your tractor (points bonus) is running, we can apply a 10% points bonus, and you get 7333 pts. Remember this number; it's important. 7333.

Now, If we apply a 10% collection bonus, we will be credited with 110,000 apples and be able to do 26.2 projects for, wait for it...

7333 points. Very interesting indeed.

But wait! In the real virtual farming world*, no one has exactly 4200 apples with a 7% project bonus, so lets apply some statistical average error to both cases (and apples has the worst waste ratio/error of any project, and both scenarios come out with 6810 pts.

So, mathematically, they are the same.

Let's dig a little deeper.

The points bonus cost $10,000 village funds to run for 24 hours. The collection bonus is always running. Collection bonus wins.

The points bonus is cheaper to upgrade than the collection bonus. Points bonus wins.

The collection bonus lets you do more projects which means more loyalty points, equal to your upgrade (like 10%.) Collection bonus wins.

With a 10% bonus, you only need 22,727 apples instead of 25,000 apples to complete a level 2 apple project. This makes it a little easier for co-ops to do the next higher level of projects, specifically very young co-ops. Collection bonus wins.

Collection bonus wins, but not because of the math. The easiest (and often smartest) thing to do is upgrade the cheaper of the two, unless you are close to the collection bonus. If you are in a non-competitive co-op and don't run the tractor anyways, focus just on the collection bonus.

*yes, I said that.

The cost for all of the upgrades can be found here.

Happy Farming - Smart