This may be old news, or an old question, but I didn't find anything about it so here goes:

In the catalogue, the OfB stages are listed with a price of 5§ per tile. However, I'm about to finish a house here that's currently 19.965§ according to both neighbourhood view info and lot info button, and when I add two tiles of stage, the price goes up to 20.189§ (again both neighbourhood view and info button). Go back in, delete the stage, price goes back down to where it was before. I'm only talking about the naked stages, I didn't wallpaper them or anyhing.

So the stages cost 112§ per tile or what?

Has anyone else had this happen? Any workarounds? If this is a bug is there a fix anywhere? I'd like to know since 112§ is a lot when you're trying to build a starter house ...

This is with Original+NL+OfBp2.

This doesn't only happen to OFB stage but also foundations.
To tell you the truth, I've no idea why. But, a wild guess is the prices are probably for the build feature rather than for the build feature plus all build components of the build feature...

Say, a foundation block actually is consisted of a floor tile, 4 pieces of foundation walls, wallpapers, and an occupied grid and some other invisible elements.

The OFB stage has 4-step/4-click-high stage-walls and different wallpapers instead.

Or, EA Maxis has been messing up the pricing system for levelroom (all the above are raised from this build tool system). It's just that we barely read about people complaining about it.
But at least, I can tell you. You're not alone! :D

Sorry, can't give you any suggestion coz I rarely use OFB stage at all. I don't know enough how to use it fully.

What really saves a lot of budget is the roof tools!

Not in the same way -- I've just tested this out a bit, and for me the prices for the foundations are a bit off, but not by much. Pricing for the stages, however, is actually broken (or rather, it follows a very strange logic in relation to walls/half-walls/fences; see below).


Here's what I've found in my little test:

-- Placed an empty standard Maxian lot
-- Added/removed the following + checked the lot value to find out the prices (I always tried 1/10/100 tiles of stage/foundation because I already expected rounding errors ... (I'm using a decimal comma in case you wonder)):


1. Brick foundation: catalogue price 4§ per tile, actual price 3,2§ per tile

2. Lattice foundation: catalogue price 3§ per tile, actual price 2,4§ per tile

3. Platform foundation: catalogue price 2§ per tile, actual price 1,6§ per tile

It doesn't seem to matter how high the foundations are, whether they're placed on the ground or on top of each other, and whether or not there's walls next to them (the latter I've tested only with the brick foundation surrounded on all sides, here the price was still exactly 3,2§ (32§ for 10 tiles) so I'll simply assume it's always like that). Also, all results were the same with straight and diagonal foundation tools.

Foundations, in other words, cost 80% of the catalogue price (i.e., the deprecated price -- what you get back when you tear them down in Live Mode) if you build them on an uninhabited lot. I'd be interested, for purely academic reasons, if this is the same without OfB -- I'm about 90% sure it's not since I've tested this kind of thing before (with NL only) but perhaps I just never noticed.


4. Stage:

For stages, what makes the price go wonky seems to be whether or not there's walls next to it. Catalogue price for a stage is 5$ per tile, actual prices:

-- No walls next to it: 0§ per tile

-- Wall on 1 side: 56§ per tile

-- Wall on 2 sides: 112§ per tile

-- Wall on 3 sides: 168§ per tile

-- Wall on 4 sides: 224§ per tile

Prices were the same regardless of whether the stages were placed on the ground or on top of foundation of whatever height. Also, it makes no difference whether the wall is placed before or after putting down the stage.

This is with standard walls, which cost 56§ per tile. Since the prices were different when I tested with half-walls and fences, but always follow the exact same principle, I'm concluding that the stage itself costs nothing, but it doubles the price of every wall, fence, or half-wall it touches.


After a bit more testing, it also turned out that all walls, half-walls, fences, wallpapers, and floors cost 80% of the catalogue price on uninhabited lots, just like foundations. Everything else (doors, windows etc) costs 100%. Not sure whether or not it's always been like that, if it has I wasn't aware of it. Prices of flooring and wallpapers were not affected by stages in my tests.

All of this is only true for uninhabited lots. I've seen no discrepancies whatsoever on inhabited lots, also the stages cost exactly what it says in the catalogue in that case (5§ per tile, regardless of any walls etc). This also means (I've tested this too) that if you build any kind of stage/wall combination and then move someone in, all they'll get back when they tear it down is the price of each piece of wall x 1 -- the rest (the doublification) is lost in the black void of Maxian arithmetics.


Conclusion: If you're on a budget, avoid stages when there's a wall/halfwall/fence nearby, or build them at runtime.

Wow, interesting report on the pricing issue of levelroom instances... mind if I add the link to the wiki? :D

BTW, does it matter if the stage is built before walls, fences, half-walls, etc...?

"56"... That's the selling price for a wall1 wall segment in live mode too.
I've had tried to calculate the price of a lot in TS2 alone and I never got it right and had extra budget, and the 80% cost given in build mode can explain why now, thanks...

For some reasons, my TS2-NL-OFb copy just crashed when I saved 10 wall1 wall segments along with 2x5 stage blocks... Odd. And, it turned out the lot was actually saved but crashed when entering the neighbourhood mode.

But for the half-wall of S$ 70, is reduced only to S$ 56 as well.
55 -> 44
80 -> 64
1 -> 0
35 -> 28
45 -> 36
They fit the 20% discount!
Yeah, the price for a wall1 wall with a stage wall give off a doubling price of 56 as 112.
However, when the wall1 wall cross (intersect with) the stage but not any side of the stage, the price rises only 56 as usual.
So, the doubling only happens when the wall1 wall and the stage wall are touching each other.
The same for the diagonal ones.
a foundation block only costs 3 out of 4.
a screen deck block costs 2 out of 3
a column deck block costs 1 out of 2.


After all, according to your report, it seems the stage is best pre-built without wall attachment (free for these :D) and then move-in the family and build the wall-attached ones. That should be the best-saving way.

There're still much more benefits to build @ the build mode.
free for modular stairs, elevation tools, water tool and terrain painting, etc... and now unattached stage and 80% cost for all partitions!

No, go ahead



Not from what I found (post #3: "Also, it makes no difference whether the wall is placed before or after putting down the stage") -- the price difference was the same.



If you build only one of them, yes. That's because of a rounding error (the decimal part is cut off); I've always tested with 10 tiles to get the exact figure. Probably if you build all of your foundation tile by tile you can get away with a 66,66% discount ...

Suddenly just wonder,
according to what have been mentioned here so far,
I assume one can still build stage attached to wall1 walls for free @ build mode when both sides of the walls have stages so that the stage wall and wall1 wall don't get together.