Bloon eco vs farms (includes income table)

Choose your economy: bloon eco or banana farms? Pros and cons of each are given in this guide. So are some strategies.

Introduction

This guide is more for newer players. You have to choose what economy you want: bloon eco or farms. If you don't pick any, it is near impossible to win games against good players. Read on to see the pros and cons of each economy.

Bloon eco

Ah, yes. Bloon eco. You see that green income thing at the bottom of your screen? Yeah, that thing. You start at 250 income, which is not bad. But you can get it much higher by using bloon eco. Bloon eco is sending bloons to raise that income.

Strategy

At the start of a match, I like to place down a tower that I want and get certain upgrades for it. Then, at round 2, I start sending red bloons and maybe some blue. On round 4, I start sending some grouped blue and spaced pink bloons. I will put more spaced bloons if they seem to struggle with them. What you want to do is keep your opponent busy. Make him place towers. Make him upgrade them. If he is a farm user, make his farm count low. If he is a eco user, make him place more towers instead of him sending you eco. The best eco bloons are the top row. The grouped red bloons to the grouped pinks. Grouped pinks are the best, then is yellow, green and so on. Now, you don't want an overkill defense at the start of a game. A small grouped yellow rush on round 8 can be easily defended by a few 0-3 dart monkeys. You don't need a whole 3-2 wizard to defend it. A 2-0 ninja and a 0-2 mortar can easily defend the yellow rush. By round 10, you should have at least 500 eco. Once you get 500 eco, you can start upgrading your defenses and time to time send some bloons. You should keep getting eco as long as you know your defense is good. That is the early game to medium game strategy. If you are going late game, just get more eco to a point where you can keep placing towers (shift + click) and then upgrade them. After you filled the whole screen with stuff and fully upgraded them, just spam the top row pinks (grouped pinks).

Weaknesses

When going eco, you normally don't have much money in the early rounds and it is hard to make more towers if an enemy is rushing you because you don't have much money. You also can't rush the enemy that much. You don't have a thing you can sell to get more towers temporarily. With farms, it is the farm. You also won't get that much money in the early rounds as you would with farms.

How much income bloons give

Bloon Type	Bloon Cost	Income Increase
Grouped Red Bloons	$25	$1.0
Spaced Blue Bloons	$25	$1.0
Grouped Blue Bloons	$42	$1.7
Spaced Pink Bloons	$42	$1.7
Grouped Green Bloons	$60	$2.4
Spaced Black Bloons	$60	$2.4
Grouped Yellow Bloons	$75	$3.0
Spaced White Bloons	$90	$3.0
Grouped Pink Bloons	$90	$3.6
Spaced Lead Bloons	$90	$3.6
Grouped White Bloons	$125	$5.0
Spaced Zebra Bloons	$125	$5.0
Grouped Black Bloons	$150	$6.0
Spaced Rainbow Bloons	$150	$6.0
Grouped Zebra Bloons	$220	$6.0
Grouped Rainbow Bloons	$550	$3.0
Grouped Lead Bloons	$200	$6.0
Spaced Ceramic Bloons	$300	$0.0
Fast Cooldown Ceramic	$450	-$5.0
MOAB	$1500	-$24.0
Fast Cooldown MOAB	$1500	-$56.0
BFB	$2500	-$140.0
Fast Cooldown BFB	$2500	-$140.0
ZOMG	$9000	-$600.0
Fast Cooldown ZOMG	$10000	-$900.0

Spaced bloons are normally on the bottom row while grouped bloons are normally on the top. Grouped pinks are the best bloons for eco.

Banana farms

Banana farms give you bananas for monkeys. Upgrade them to get more bananas. You should almost never use the right side upgrades cos they are near useless. The best farm you can get is a 4-2 farm. The worst farm you could ever get is a 0-1 farm. Don't do it.

Strategy

With farms, you never want to go late game. Farms are all about early game. Invest in them and sell them later for better defense of a big rush. Farms are useless if you don't sell them. At the start, don't place any towers but the banana farm. Make it 1-0. Then you can place a dart monkey or something. You can get another 1-0 farm but then upgrade at least one of them to plantation. In the end, you want to get four or five farms with most of them being 2-0 already. Slowly upgrade the remaining to 2-0. Then upgrade only one farm to 3-0. Wait until you have 4000 cash and sell all of the farms but the 3-0. Then buy the 4-0 farm. The best farm you can get is the 4-2 and you might want to have a few of those. On a good round, say 22 or 13, sell your farms and rush the enemy. Note that you can have less farms or more farms depending on when you want to sell them. Some good combos with the farm are: farm, ninja and farm, dart monkey. You don't have to just do farms the whole game. It is good to send some bloons to get eco too (after you got some good farms).

The strategy I normally use though, is get a good amount of 2-0 farms and sell them all on round 13. I send some zebras to make the enemy boost and wait till it expires. Then I do a huge regen zebra rush.

You need to keep your enemy busy, even with farms. Send him some camo bloons if he is low on camo detection. Send him some spaced blacks or pinks at the start of a game to make him leak some lives. Send some lead bloons if he has no lead popping power. Keep him busy. You don't want him to have a good amount of farms or eco.

Weaknesses

It is hard to use farms as a new player. It is also not good in the late game. In the late game, you need a big income and space. Farms take up a lot of space. On some maps, it is hard to find space to place your farm. For example, battle river. You also are more busy with farms if you don't have banana farmers.



Farms are hard to get good at but they can be really good. If you are new to the game, I suggest you use bloon eco first and then try farms. This is because your opponent might be an eco player and he might constantly send bloons your way. It is very hard at first but once you get good at it, it is amazing.

Conclusion

Bloon eco and farms are essential for playing against a decent player. Without them, you probably won't win (unless you are playing with someone who just picked up the game). I hope you enjoyed reading the guide. It was fun to make and I hope at least someone found it useful. Have a nice day.

Maycrom did the table, I added the pictures and did everything else.

[EvRock]

Let me guess you are a math whiz

[Dex]

I know this is a really late reply but

The guide is very nice and it's great to have a table to look at, but you say that grouped pink balloons are best for eco, and I have to disagree.

If you divide the cost of the ballon by the income increase, you can see how much money you're paying per $1 per 6 seconds in game. Going through the entire table in order, these quotients come out to

25, 25
24.71 (grouped blue balloons)
24.71 (spaced pink balloons)
25, 25, 25, 30
25 (grouped pink balloons)
25, 25, 25, 25, 25
36.67 (Grouped Zebra balloons)
183.33 (grouped rainbow balloons)
33.33 (grouped lead balloons)

then from there down it's either 0 or negative,

So going through the game, starting at round 4, spaced black balloons and spaced pink balloons both give the most eco per dollar, then hitting round 16 grouped zebra balloons give the most, and then at round 18 grouped lead give the most.

So grouped pink balloons are only average for eco.
Correct me if I'm wrong about this?

[hunterjd]

I use eco up to about 350 income then start spamming cobras with wired funds as income.

[Martin Harris]

Heres a guide : If your enemy is going farms FORCE ECO on them, Do not give them a second to breath and then DEFEND ROUND 13, If you are able to choak them enough their push will be horribal and you will be able to couter easily

[PickyPigOink]

Thanks, gamerman. I don't play that much farms so your advice is useful to me and, my guess, a lot of other people.

[Enemy Spy]

I like using eco, it's a challenge against good players since if you're to greedy they will rush you on round 20 or 22, if you're not greedy enough you'll die to round 32 rushes even if you are playing perfectly a good oponent will keep a note on how many bloons you've sent to determine your eco and decide when to rush, as for farms it's a bad idea to get more then 2 1-0 farms but we all know the 0-2 farm is the best in the game, followed closely by the 0-1 farm