Prison Empire Tycoon Guide: Tips & Cheats To Run The Best Prison

You are in charge of a newly opened prison in Prison Empire Tycoon, so you must oversee all of the financial and security aspects of the prison. Balance between having tight security and a welcoming environment to ensure that your prisoners are happy, which leads to more rehabilitated prisoners. Will your prison succeed?

In Touch Tap Play’s Prison Empire Tycoon tips and tricks guide, we will go over the basics of infrastructure for your prison. Balancing facilities, income, and employee wages is the key to understanding the flow of Prison Empire Tycoon, so let’s get started with our Prison Empire Tycoon cheats, tips, and tricks strategy guide to run the best prison!

Watching Prisoners’ Stress Levels

The main objective of Prison Empire Tycoon is to process and take care of your prisoners so that they remain stress-free. The smoother their time is in prison, the quicker and more money you will get when they are rehabilitated and released back into society.

To check how your prison is doing in terms of living conditions for the prisoners, tap on prisoners button at the bottom right corner of the screen.

Here you will see various stats and icons, each representing a different aspect of prison life. If one gets too low, it must be addressed otherwise prisoners will become unruly, increasing the chance of riots.

• The bread icon is how well-fed your prisoners are.
• The shower icon is how clean your prisoners feel.
• The happy face is how entertained your prisoners feel.
• The red cross shows how healthy your prisoners are. When they get into fights, their health decreases.
• The badge shows how safe your prisoners feel.
• The feather shows how well-rested and comfortable your prisoners are.

If you notice a particular area is lacking, do your best to rectify it before it is too late!

Outfitting your Cells

The heart of your prison complex are the cells. These are where your prisoners stay for the majority of their time at the prison, so you have to make sure that their lodging is good enough for them to not get stressed out.

When you build a new cell, it will start out with the bare minimum: a bed and a cheap toilet, if you can even call it that. This works well enough to keep the prisoner sustained, but you will need to decorate the cells out if you want to keep them happy.

There are eight different parts of a cell: bed, toilet, desk, ventilator, radio, television, books, and lights.

The bed, desk, lights, and ventilator will help with comfort and rest. The toilet helps with hygiene. The radio, television, and books help keep the prisoners entertained.

You want to try to have every cell outfitted with at least the basic version of each facility. This means that every cell will need to have desks, ventilators, radios, televisions, books, and lights added.

With the first level of each item, that should be enough to keep your prisoners happy for a longer time. You can start to upgrade them whenever you feel that you are lacking in an area – for example, if your overall comfort is low, upgrade the beds, desks, etc.

Energy and Water

Whenever you upgrade a facility or appliance or whatever – whether it is in a cell or around the prison – your prison’s value will increase, meaning your hourly wages will increase. However, most facilities also require power and/or water.

When you are building or upgrading a new facility, you will see the increase in water or energy usage at the top of the info panel. If you do not have enough of the respective resource, you will not be allow to build it.

To increase your energy and water, you will need to upgrade the power generator and water pump in the back of the prison respectively.

Take note – these upgrades are not cheap, and so make sure you have some idea of what you are going to build next and decide when it is appropriate to upgrade your resource generators.

Balance your Wages

Your hourly wages are dependent on four main factors: state subsidy, cell bonus, prisoner subsidy, and employee wages.

State subsidy is a flat bonus that is given to you no matter the current condition and performance of your prisoner. Consider it the “baseline” of your hourly wages, and every other factor adds or subtracts from this.

Cell bonus is the wage bonus you get from the condition of your cells. The more facilities you have installed and the higher they are upgraded, the bigger this bonus will be.

Prisoner subsidy is given to you when you are currently housing prisoners. This is the main chunk of your income flow, so you want to make sure you are constantly getting more prisoners.

Employee wages is the total amount of wages that you pay to your prison’s managers, which includes the builders, guards, cooks, and janitors.

With proper care of your prisoners and smart spending, you should be able keep your wages in the positive. As long as they are in the green, you will earn money every in-game hour.

If you are in the red, you will lose money and the game will warn you about this. When this happens, take a look at your expenses and see if there is any action that can be taken.

For example, you may have hired a bunch of cooks to deal with a surge of prisoners, but now you are only getting a few prisoners. In this case, it might be worth it to let go some of your cooks.

Prison Employees

Builders construct new cells and facilities for you. For the beginning of the game, you really only need one so do not bother hiring any more. Later on, when building times get really long, a few extra builders will help.

Guards are the backbone of your facility and keep your prisoners in check. If you do not have enough guards, prisoners have a higher chance of escaping the prison and getting into fights. Even worse, if a riot breaks out, a small force of guards will easily be eaten up. You should have a lot of guards at all times!

Cooks are in charge of preparing and serving food to hungry prisoners. If you notice that you are constantly falling behind in the amount of food you need, you may have to hire more cooks or purchase new kitchen facilities.

Janitors are in charge of laundry and keeping the prison free from trash. Without enough janitors, trash will start to pile up around the prison, which makes your prisoners unhappy and uncomfortable.

There is no ultimate, all-encompassing strategy here; pay attention to how your prison is doing and hire more or less employees as needed.

Dealing with Riots

If your prisoners are left unhappy for too long, there is a chance they may riot. When a riot occurs, you will be alerted immediately and your guards will spring into action. In order for a riot to be quelled, your guards need to physically weaken the prisoners until they submit.

It is better to not let it get to this point, but until you get a firm grasp on how the game’s core mechanics work, you may find yourself in the middle of a lot of riots.

When a riot happens, your guards will engage the prisoners in battle. Guards will fight and take down prisoners, but they can be taken out too and this will happen. When your prison starts to grow and you house a lot of prisoners, a riot can be very dangerous.

You can spend money on upgrading your guards in the locker room. Guards are four stats: health, movement speed, surveillance, and attack power.

The first thing you can buy in the guard room are lockers. These add a small amount of health to your guards, but it also allows them to store security equipment.

The second item is reinforced security equipment. This upgrade adds a moderate amount of health to your guards, and it is absolutely vital to ensure your guards do not get taken down easily.

The third item is security equipment, which increases your guards’ movement speed. Useful for chasing fleeing prisoners trying to escape.

The fourth, fifth, and sixth items are all surveillance items that help your guards keep a closer eye on the prisoners. Guards will be alerted of shady business quicker than usual, which can help prevent a bad situation from getting worse.

It is best to invest in at least the minimum upgrades for your guards, because no matter how well run your prison is, there is always a chance for riot.

If you fail to contain a riot, you will lose ALL of your guards, and all of your current prisoners will be transported to a different prison. Needless to say this is a huge hit to your wages and your prison’s performance, so be careful!

Follow the Missions

If you are ever unsure of what to work towards next – and this will happen a lot as you are getting your bearings – simply take a look at your missions.

This is a preset list of missions that are supposed to guide you down the general progression route of the prison. Not only do they point you in the right direction, but completing them rewards you with money and also gems, the premium currency of the game!

That’s all for Prison Empire Tycoon! If you have any other tips or tricks to add to Touch Tap Play’s guide, let us know in the comments below!