Monkey Commerce

"An additional 5% discount that can stack with up to 2 other Villages with this upgrade."

- In-game description

Monkey Commerce is the second upgrade of Path 3 for the Monkey Village. It adds an additional 5% discount to all base costs and upgrades up to Tier-3, initially providing a 15% discount. This 5% bonus discount stacks additively with up to two other Monkey Commerce Villages, providing up to 25% discount total.

It costs $425 on Easy, $500 on Medium, $540 on Hard, and $600 on Impoppable.

Appearance
Monkey Commerce adds a banana sign to the thatch roof of the Monkey Village and a wooden entry step.

Summary
Monkey Commerce is a powerful upgrade for saving money, especially on CHIMPS Mode, where income bonuses are disabled, and using discounts accessible via Monkey Business and Monkey Commerce is important. Of the two, Monkey Commerce can be utilized more powerfully, saving a lot of money if used correctly. Keep in mind that these bonuses only affect up to Tier 3 upgrades, and that Villages have a large footprint. Monkey Villages with Monkey Commerce are best used to mitigate the cost of Tier 3 upgrades from expensive towers like Super Monkeys.

Super Monkeys are the best choice to get the most out of your Monkey Commerce upgrade. You can quickly recoup your initial investment with the money saved on your upgrades, and you can still benefit from the other effects of a Monkey Village tower such as its range boost, and its upgrades: Jungle Drums, Radar Scanner, and Monkey Intelligence Bureau. Even using Monkey Commerce for one Sun Avatar saves you money. Placing and upgrading a Monkey Village to Monkey Commerce costs (1870/2200/2380/2640), but building one 3/2/0 Super Monkey next to a tower with Monkey Commerce saves (4324/5085/5502/6102) per monkey, saving you about 3000 gold on your first sun avatar.

In addition to Super Monkeys being significantly cheaper, upgrading nearby Monkey Villages is cheaper too. This can help you access both of the other upgrade paths, greatly assisting your nearby offensive towers by upgrading to Monkey Town or Monkey Intelligence Bureau for a much more affordable price. Even though Monkey Commerce Villages can easily be sold and rebought as Radar Scanners with the Bigger Radius or Jungle Drums upgrade, this act of selling cannot be done in CHIMPS; this is one occasion where the in-built neighboring Monkey Commerce discounts become very useful on CHIMPS.

The amount of money saved from one Monkey Commerce is very significant, but additional towers with Monkey Commerce only stack the 5% discount. One Monkey Commerce alone would require a bare minimum of ~$14667 worth of base costs and upgrades up to Tier-3 to break even with the cost of a single 0-0-2 Monkey Commerce Medium, ~$12467 on Easy, $15840 on Hard, and $17600 on Impoppable. It is worth taking note that one single 0-0-2 Monkey Commerce costs $1870 on Easy, $2200 on Medium, $2375 on Hard, and $2640 on Impoppable without additional discount. Adding an addition Monkey Commerce right next to an existing Monkey Commerce would reduce down to ~$1590 on Easy, $1870 on Medium, ~$2020 on Hard, and ~$2244 on Impoppable, thereby increasing the total cost of one Monkey Commerce placed nearby an existing Monkey Commerce to ~$3459 on Easy, $4070 on Medium, ~$4396 on Hard, ~$4884 on Impoppable for the reward of discounting nearby towers by 20%. The range for stacked discounts is not nearly as wide as the range of a single Monkey Commerce, so it is worth knowing the range of the Monkey Commerce overlaps to ensure that the stacked discount is always utilized.

Tips

 * On Medium Difficulty, it takes a bare minimum of ~$14,667 worth of base costs and upgrades up to Tier-3 to break even with the cost of a single 0-0-2 Monkey Commerce.
 * On Easy, the break-even discount threshold is lowered to ~$12,467.
 * On Hard, the break-even discount threshold is increased to $15,840.
 * On Impoppable, the break-even discount threshold is increased to $17,600.
 * One 0-0-2 Monkey Commerce costs $1,870 on Easy, $2,200 on Medium, $2,375 on Hard, and $2,640 on Impoppable.
 * Monkey Commerces are best placed nearby Super Monkeys, especially Super Monkeys that would be upgraded to 3-0-2 Sun Avatar.
 * When purchasing a 3-0-2 Sun Avatar from scratch, in which the total cost would be $35700 on Medium ($22,000 + $4,500 + $2,500 + $2,500 + $3,000 + $1,200), one Monkey Commerce would drop the total cost down to $30345 ($18,700 + $3,825 + $2,125 + $2,125 + $2,550 + $1,020).
 * There is simply almost no benefit to discounting towers where the amount of discount is less than the cost of the discount villages themselves, unless it's for specifically adjusting sacrifice values for Sun Temples or True Sun Gods. Note that it's actually worse to discount Banana Farms that would become invested into Monkeyopolis, as the potential income generation value for that tower would be decreased.

Trivia

 * Sun Avatar is the only upgrade to single-handedly save more money than the cost of a 0-0-2 Monkey Commerce Village itself.