There are not so secret talks going on about planned Megacities being built around the new tile release in the United Arab Emirates on earth2.io tomorrow. The amount of coordination, effort, and financial resources it will take to pull this off begs to ask the question - is it worth it?
We theorize the answer is no. Here's why:
1) There will be no time to do infrastructure, roads, and the sought after Megacity tile art. Part of the reason megacities are able to exist is because the organizers of the city have time to plan in detail every aspect of the city. Boundaries. Where to place the tile art. Where to put roads. Where the city center will be. What country to place it in.
2) The pricing of the tiles will not be sustainable if the UAE sale goes down as planned. One of the advantages of point #1 above is that you can control the tile price by picking a low-priced country and take your time acquiring tiles so as not to drive the price up rapidly. That won't be the case on Saturday, where tiles will be selling as fast as people can click their mouse buttons. The price could exceed $1 per tile within the first 15 minutes.
3) After the initial surge, the number of tiles sold and tile price of UAE will likely remain stagnant for the foreseeable future, so any growth economically will be relying on forces external to tile prices. Liberia is a prime example of this. After they started the Megacity there, the prices surged, but since then the tile price and number of tiles sold has been next to nothing.
Liberia Tile Price
Liberia Tiles Sold
4) Some important considerations with megacities is to look at how they will impact the Earth2.io world and the users building the megacity. The size of a megacity in UAE will be a fraction of the big megacities already in existence due to price barrier and tile stagnation (see point #3 above). Also, it's likely that there will be more than one group attempting to build a megacity in UAE so the groups will end up cannibalizing each other. Last, people buy in the megacity will have to sacrifice NOT buying in popular areas.
5) Potentially the biggest issue is these planned UAE megacities are going to require guilds to work together to purchase the tiles in one fell swoop. This will cause internal conflicts eventually as you have different ideology and leadership among the guilds. Who gets to choose what happens where? Who is ultimately in charge? It's possible they can coexist peacefully, but it's more likely heads will butt and there will be internal strife.
"Megacity"by wecand is licensed under CC BY-NC-ND 2.0
We feel the idea itself, while noble in trying to unite many Earth2.io players together, is a very risky one. Confusion is almost inevitable which will lead to the execution of "the plan" failing. What happens when the plan doesn't work out perfectly? Are the guild leaders going to end up eating the costs of building the megacity at an exorbitant price-per-tile (Class 2 tiles at that)?
Why take on that risk when you can do it somewhere else for a fraction of the cost where you will have time to plan and coordinate your efforts thoroughly? It's as if people are deluded by the low price tag and think that they will be able to swoop in with mass numbers and get everything they need for their project at .40 a tile or less. It's FOMO, plain and simple.
What happens when the guild members accidentally overlap each other when they are trying to buy their property after the countdown ends? Or when someone who isn't part of the guild learns of the plot (and let's be real, it's not a huge secret and they won't be able to keep it a secret) and tries to buy land in the middle of the megacity thus ruining everything? It's simply not possible to plan for these circumstances.
Can a megacity be built in UAE? Of course. But at what cost? That's the bottom line. We argue that building a megacity to just take part in the spectacle of a low-price tile release is misguided and doomed for failure.
What do you think? Let us know in the comments below.