Bloononomics

For this article, Bloononomics will mean Bloon Economics. This article will help you with the economics of playing Bloons TD games, and particularly BTD4, BTD4 Expansion, and BTD5, but most of this will only cover BTD5.

Do not spend more than the reward!
Very obvious, but people do this - Don't spend 300 on Special Agents, so you can win a Daily Challenge that will only give you 50. If you are going for the Awesome Points though, the loss might be countered by the gain.

Ways to earn cash
Early Game: Banana Farms. Farms can quickly give money even in the early rounds. It is advised that you quickly upgrade them to at least 1/0, which is quite cheap and gives quite the payoff later on.

Mid-Game: Monkey Village/Town. This reduces a tower's price by 10%, By Round 40 to 60 depending on the difficulty of the track, you should have a good economy to buy a 3/x Monkey Village that gves 50% more money from popping Bloons. Be careful when upgrading to this, as it costs quite a bit ($10000 on Medium) and MOABs start appearing in these rounds. Consider getting an adequate defense that can hold off these rounds first before getting a Monkey Town. They can be great later when upgraded to 4/0 as well. Not so much for the beam attack, but more by reduced ability cooldowns.

Late Game: Supply Drop Snipers. These guys really give you lots of money in later rounds. If you do it right, you can have $10,000,000 by round 120. They are excellent, especially in free play where rounds are long enough to use it again and again. They also attack bloons and they use much less space.

Money vs. Lives
In some tracks, it is wise to sacrifice lives for money (or vice-versa). Easier tracks don´t need it, like Snake River, or Archipelago. Harder/Split Tracks require this more often. Monkey Tycoon makes convenient to Buy/Sell towers. On tracks like Switch and Lightning Scar, Road Spikes and Pineapples are impractical, you need as many lives as you can get. So, in the early rounds, if you know that your defenses are weak, but you want to keep them the way they are, try placing one, and just one, pile of Road Spikes at where the track splits or converges. This will help eliminate the rough bloons early, so you don't have to fiddle with going back and forth and back and forth with Road Spikes and Pineapples between the two ends of the track. Sometimes it's better to use Road Spikes on MOABs and Ceramic Bloons when they first spawn so their children won't be as much of a nuisance.

The Monkey Village
Placing a Monkey Village will lower the cost of towers and upgrades in the Monkey Village's range. This is really good for expensive towers and upgrades as it lowers the cost of upgrades and towers by 10%. If you buy the Monkey Town upgrade it will make a pretty good payoff.

The more expensive the upgrades, the better. Getting high-tiered Super Monkeys, for example, in the range of a monkey village will save well over the $1600 used to buy it.

Stages and Strategy
Try to use the track to your advantage like Park Path, as it´s a long path, so use Spike Factory at the end to make lives, or Path "O" Aces on Bloontonium Lab, or Mortars and Bomb Towers on Mount Magma. Basically try to use the stage to your advantage.

Fiddle around with targeting. Towers like 2/3 Boomerangs and Buccaneers of any upgrade just don't function as well when they're not put to "Strong" or "Last". This also means moving Dartling Guns strategically, like popping Regrowth Bloons one at a time to control the rate at which they regrow. Monkey Ace paths as well. Aces besides 3/x or higher work better when their flight path is close to the track, since the darts will be less spread out. Sometimes the ideal path is "∞" and "O" instead of "8", so change the path accordingly.

Money efficiency
Try to save in-game money by not buying stuff that you don't need, especially if your defenses are good. Buying Farms is a much better investment. If you do it right, you can get a farm by Round 5-6 Hard without any Premiums on most tracks.

Useful Towers
Do NOT waste your money on useless towers in early game. Ice tower is only good in mid game since you may freeze enough bloons to make it worthwhile. Glue gunner, on the other hand is almost completely useless since upgrades to help it pop bloons are SO expensive. It costs 270 on normal mode to glue 1 bloon for a few seconds, but you can spend 200 for a dart monkey and actually do damage.

Dartling Guns, you control them, so if you are focusing on a "Bloon cluster", or a MOAB, and you see some bloons heading for the exit you can pop them, unlike other towers that have to let the bloons in their range. Without them bloons can escape ultimately costing you lives.

Super Monkeys are amazing... when upgraded. Robo Monkey with the Plasma Blasts has more than double the power (Due to increase in Rate of Fire) of even a Plasma Monkey, and thus can kill MOABs fairly quickly. Play efficiently, though. A Robo-Plasma costs a hefty $21150 on Medium while under the influence of a Monkey Village. A fully boosted Temple, though, is an excellent example of the word "Overkill", but it costs a lot to get a "Max Temple" (aprox. 300,000), including all the sacrifices needed.

Ninja Monkeys are to be looked at because they can see Camo bloons and the upgrade, Bloonjitsu, coupled with Distraction (4/2) can halt even Ceramics completely. But they are outclassed at low rounds, as Dart Monkeys do the same job for a lot less money. Lead Bloons can also be troublesome for the Ninja on rounds like 37, 38, or 39, forcing you to get some extra lead-popping tower, which costs more money for the defense overall, which means it is not as cost-efficient.

Monkey Ace is excellent on split tracks. Neva-Miss Targeting gives accuracy, giving the Monkey Ace a lot of accurate popping power, but not a whole lot of overall popping power. Operation: Dart Storm is where it's at. While it may not be as good vs. Ceramics and higher, it is excellent in popping many lower-level bloons, such as Rainbows and Zebras. Aces aren't too good below Tier three upgrades, though, and Lead Bloons can still slip by even with the x/1 upgrade. The Spectre can pop many more bloons than Operation: Dart Storm, but it costs a whopping $18000 on Medium, and it's not to good on taking on BFBs or higher on its own.

Banana Farms are a must. Unfortunately, you can't use these and Darting Guns effectively at the same time. The Monkey Bank Upgrades (x/3,4) however, will allow you to aim Dartling Guns without having to mouse over Farms constantly. The best farm overall is debatable, while 4/2 makes more money ($3000 per round), 2/4 will allow you to use darting guns more efficiently.

The Bomb Tower. It is very good if you have it upgraded to Bloon Impact (4/2), it will cause widespread and major damage. 2/3 MOAB Maulers are also a good option.

Sniper Monkey is good against high-leveled bloons and can immobilize MOAB-class bloons on the first path. Its x/3 upgrade allows it to pop Bloons 3x as fast, which is great for crowd control. A 2/3 Sniper reduces a Ceramic to 8 yellows in 1 second! Its ability, the Supply Drop, can make even more money than a (4/2) Banana farm in rounds long enough, I.E. 86+. Use this strategy on rounds like 40, 43, 47, 49, 50, 51, and 55. Just set the snipers to strong and let Burny Stuff Mortars (x/2) pop the Yellows. Please note that Sniper Monkeys are good at affecting individual Bloons, but not at large masses of Bloons, as in a Bloon Rush. They will not shoot fast enough to shoot all the Bloons on the field.

Mortar Tower is effective by means of easily controlling where it shoots. In BTD5, it can be upgraded to add napalm, which can pop any non-MOAB bloon, one layer per second, for up to 6 seconds. Best of all, the Mortar Tower can also be upgraded x/3 to be able to pop Camo Bloons and remove camo status from the Bloons. Unfortunately, this tower is completely ineffective against MOAB-class bloons, except by means of removing camo status from DDTs.

Temple Sacrifices
Sacrifice:

Mortars/Bomb Towers: From twin, to up to 6 golden huge blast Missiles ($30K of Bomb/Mortars (or combined) for the best Missiles)

Ice Towers: Splash Ice Shot, big damage to MOABs, Snap Freezes hundreds of bloons ($30K for best Ice)

Glue Gunners: Large Corrosive Glue splat shot ($30K for best glue.)

Monkey Apprentices: Super Tempest Tornado ($30K for the best tornados.)

Super Monkey/Any other tower not listed: A wave of 16 darts, then 16 blades. $30K here also boosts plasma damage to obscene levels, make sure you upgrade this category.

A Temple is extremely expensive so make the most of it.

How to build the best Temple:
 * 1) Buy the range upgrades for the sun god.
 * 2) Put these towers in the sun god's range:
 * 3) * 3 0/4 Mortars or 6 0/4 Bomb Towers
 * 4) * 3 4/0 Apprentices
 * 5) * 3 4/0 Ice Towers
 * 6) * 3 0/4 Glue Gunners
 * 7) * 2 0/3 Super Monkeys
 * 8) Upgrade the Sun God to a Temple.
 * 9) (Optional) Get another village and upgrade it to 2/1. (Tier three upgrades are up to you)

Note: Step 1 in not recommended for those who wish to place multiple Temples.

Monkey Money vs. Experience Points in BTD5
The player can't gain the both Monkey Money and Experience Points efficiently, so they must choose before a game, which of them is his priority.


 * Gaining Monkey Money by playing a lot of short games. The best way is to play Expert tracks on Easy (or Medium, Hard), where the player gets the most MM for a short time spent by playing.
 * Gaining Experience Points by playing just one but very long game. The best way is choose one of the tracks, that are easy to play for the player (mostly Beginner tracks like Monkey Lane, Park Path, The Rink). The best mode for gaining a lot of XP is Apopalypse. If the player plays on Easy (or Medium, Hard), they should continue through Freeplay Mode. The player should play as long as they can, because the best XP rewards are in the later rounds. Or play MOAB Madness Special Mission. The 2nd July Daily Challenge is a effective way to earn Experience Points too, giving around 40 million Experience Points by round 140. Past round 85, you'll need to use lots of Ground Zeros by selling and re-buying.

Premiums
Some of the premium upgrades available help the player with lives and cash. Most people have to choose between getting premiums for Lives or Cash (Some people with lots of NK coins are able to get both of these things)
 * Purchasing Lives is useful if you plan to play a very long game. Healthy Bananas is the best premium upgrades for these as it allows Banana Farms to generate lives per round as well as cash. It just takes 2 (2/2) farms and 10 rounds and it can earn as much as a single purchase of More Lives. Triple Lives allows you to get 3x more lives than usual, which is useful for getting to the higher rounds.
 * Purchasing Cash is mainly useful on very hard tracks (Mainly Expert, and Extreme tracks). They are useful for getting better towers. Double Cash gives you double the starting cash and double the cash for popping bloons. Using this with Monkey Town will give you a lot of money. If you make a mistake, then using Monkey Tycoon will allow you to sell the tower and all of it's upgrades what you paid for it, very useful in Deflation or if your strategy fails. Cash Injection are OK, but it is recommended you do not buy this in the late game as you can make that amount of money with a (4/2) Banana Farm in 3 rounds. (or 3 (4/2) Banana Farms in 1 round.)

Make use of NK Coins!

 * Remember, if you love renting upgrades, you will eventually pay more than if you buy them once forever. So, if you have NK coins, you might want to spend them to spare your monkey money.
 * Also, buying Monkey Money can be a waste, as it is quite expensive.
 * The best premium is probably either Double Cash or Big Bloon Sabotage (BBS) because they both make the game much easier.

Do not buy useless upgrades!
True, but most of the people do this - Do not buy upgrades you don't need. For example, if you have a x/2 Monkey Village and there is a tower in its range that has an upgrade which ONLY allows it to detect camo bloons, don't buy it, unless you plan on getting further upgrades. Or, if you are in freeplay, do not buy upgrades which allow you to pop leads or camos, like White Hot Spikes except if you are trying to get Spiked Mines. So, when in freeplay you want a Spike Storm, buy 1/4 Spike Storms instead of 2/4 ones. When using this strategy, you can save a lot of money.

Economic Upgrades
Especially in BTD5, but also in BTD3 and BTD4, there are a lot of economic upgrades, which can be more cost efficient than some other upgrades. They may also help with saving lives.

BTD3
Buying multiple Monkey Beacons may not be helpful. Getting the Laser Vision upgrade for the Super Monkey is better than buying another Super Monkey.
 * This is because Monkey Beacons are really expensive, so fitting all towers inside its range first may be more helpful than buying more of them.
 * This is because it is cheaper (2 Super Monkeys cost $8000, while a Laser Vision Super Monkey only costs $7500), it also pops 2 bloons each projectile, and it can also pop frozen bloons by your ice tower, making it far more helpful.

BTD4
The Spike-o-pult/Triple Shot upgrade for the Dart Monkey may be harmful. Getting a Monkey Buccaneer with Crow's Nest is better than getting a Monkey Beacon with Sonar Beacon. Upgrading Banana Farms is better than getting more Banana Farms.
 * Unless your Dart Monkey is parallel with the track, you will find that this upgrade not only reduce its accuracy, but it will also reduce your fire rate. Sticking with level 3 Dart monkeys is not only much cheaper, but it they are also generally better on curvier tracks.
 * Unless the map has no water, it is recommended you use a Monkey Buccaneer for camo detection as it has more range, is cheaper, and attacks bloons.
 * Doing this is much cheaper, spending less money for more income.

BTD5
The Spike-o-pult/Juggernaut upgrade for the Dart Monkey may be harmful. The Cluster Bombs upgrade for the Bomb Tower may be harmful. A Banana Republic is worth less than 2 Banana Plantations.
 * Same as above, unless the tower is parallel with the track you'll see a general reduction in effectiveness. Triple Darts are not only cheaper but they are much better against spaced bloons.
 * If Bomb Shooters are your main popping power, then this upgrade will severely decrease their effectiveness as it will prevent them from popping blacks/zebras. (A 4/x bomb however, can pop black/zebras.)
 * Unlike in BTD4, a Banana Republic is more expensive than buying 2 Banana Plantations. A Banana Republic costs a total of $5900 giving only $500, while 2 Banana Plantations cost a total of $5400 but they give $520 rather than $500.