You have 3 resources in the game.

• Drugs

• Weapons

• Alcohol

For earning Steem only Drugs are relevant. There are 2 ways to earn drugs. By producing them and by stealing them from other players.
There are also 2 ways to earn Steem via drugs.

1. The daily payout based on your total drug production

2. The heist based how much % of drugs you put into the heist.

To upgrade your buildings you need all 3 resources and after every upgrade you need more.

To defend yourself from getting your drugs stolen you need to hire defenese in form of units. Those require of course resources as well.

The daily payout is afaik based what people are buying directly with Steem as it is free to play but you can also boost your progress by buying upgrades for your buildings and pass the requirments and the time it would take to build.

So you create an endless cycle of resources you need to upgrade the next building to upgrade the others etc.

The Steem rewards atm seem to be almost to good to be true tbh and I am curious to see if it will stay like this.