Final thoughts on the first ever global monopoly game

by MonopolyHQ on December 8, 2009 · 6 comments

What a crazy game it was!  I don’t think any of us can say it was what we expected.

Some of us found ourselves absurdly addicted as the game made its way into our daily routines, others quickly dropped off the map as they found the game had veered off from the classical board game, still others took time to create tools and sites to help players make the most of the game.  Just about everyone suffered from the games technical issues and limitations.  And of course, plenty of people cheated.

I love the physical monopoly board game, and so being able to play with a massive number of people online was nostalgic and definitely had its moments.  Connecting with many other fans was also a definite plus as we adapted with new strategies as the game progressed.

Would I play the game again, if it was exactly the same? I’m a big fan, but I’d have to say no.

I think most of us stuck it through the last half of the game because we were already highly invested in it.  However, there were far too many glitches, holes, and gaming foundations that were missing in the game this round.

Now if Hasbro made an open commitment to listening to fans, taking everything they’ve learned and redesigning the game from the ground up, I’d definitely be there.  I’d even pay a few bucks.   (A few suggested features for starters)

Below are my stats to date, I can probably squeeze in another 13 billion if I can login tonight.  I tried to implement every tip that I had mentioned on this site.  I missed some days and may a couple glaring mistakes early on, but I’d say it was a fairly above average game.  I didn’t have any special mapping tools to score long streets so I had to pay tens of billions for most of mine.  Every street is maxed out, I probably could’ve went for buying even longer streets rather than a lot of streets in the ten million range.  But that’s what I was stuck with ultimately.

User: monopolyhq

Level: 6
Location: New Zealand
Score: $405,043,795,000
Money: $250,782,925,000

# Name Country Initial Price Current Price Rent Bu
1 Camas Monteview Rd
USA
$11,377,000
 $22,246,927,000
$1,188,037,000
260
2 269th St
USA
$10,172,000
 $20,719,197,000
$1,079,562,000
229
3 United States Highway 34
USA
$12,505,000
 $19,173,180,000
$1,160,185,000
287
4 330th Ave
USA
$13,124,000
 $15,992,424,000
$1,299,962,000
337
5 Tallinn-Pärnu-Ikla mnt
Estonia
$10,860,000
 $9,908,160,000
$800,286,000
276
6 County Road N2500
USA
$13,272,000
 $13,861,272,000
$1,478,127,000
363
7 Ring of Kerry
Republic of Ireland
$25,068,000
 $25,230,543,000
$2,052,001,000
627
8 Pilot Rd
USA
$19,954,000
 $19,959,954,000
$1,386,495,000
314
9 Bunya Highway
Australia
$12,873,000
 $11,574,173,000
$996,737,000
276
10 10th St NE
USA
$21,708,000
 $48,016,158,000
$2,438,070,000
496
11 United States Highway 212
USA
$17,124,000
 $9,251,599,000
$1,259,237,000
430
12 Корниловский тракт
Russian Federation
$17,100,000
 $12,733,100,000
$1,118,210,000
269
13 Ranch Road 674
USA
$14,563,000
 $11,836,563,000
$1,017,456,000
243
14 Laidlaw Park Rd
USA
$12,845,000
 $9,886,845,000
$1,010,384,000
264

Total rent: $18,284,749,000
Taxes: $4,936,882,230 (27%)
Net income: $13,348,866,770

What about you? How’d you end up doing?  What are your final thoughts?

* On another note, here’s a post on how I built this site and the traffic / community on it for those of you who were interested.

6 comments

Breaking News: The Game Ends in One Week

by MonopolyHQ on December 2, 2009 · 9 comments

Breaking News: The Game we’ve loved to the point of complete frustration is ending in one week – December 9th.

Here’s the post from the original blog

We want to thank you, the loyal players, for making MONOPOLY City Streets a huge success. We know it’s been said many times, but it bears repeating – we are surprised, thrilled and honored with your response to this promotional introduction for the MONOPOLY City board game.

However, MONOPOLY City Streets game play will officially end on Wednesday, December 9.

We hope that you will enjoy spending the next several days negotiating, buying, selling and building right up until game play ends on December 9. And after the game ends, check out MONOPOLY City board game where you can continue building industrial complexes, skyscrapers or stadiums and sabotage your friends!

Thank you all for your passion and enthusiasm for MONOPOLY City Streets!

I’ll be posting last week strategies and reflections here shortly.

What’s your response so far?

9 comments

Optimizing Your Game

by MonopolyHQ on November 6, 2009 · 22 comments

optimizeBy now most of you have a decent hang of the game and your own ‘system’ and ‘strategy’.  If not, definitely read up on some of the past posts here on monopoly hq.

This post will list out a few of the finer points to tweaking your game.  Keep in mind these are my own latest personal techniques and if you read through many of the comments and the chat wall on this site you’ll find plenty of other tips as well.

1.  The end date of the game has changed.

Originally the game was to end January 31st 2010, but the latest official FAQ states in December, and the general consensus seems to be the last day of the year.  This means your window for acquiring property with good return has shrunk if you want to have a decent return.  It also means if you plan on flipping streets you probably don’t want to wait till mid December as it won’t be all that valuable to anyone at that time.

2.  There are three new buildings to maximize your street.

spiral luxe $2.5m/1.05m
revolving restaurant $11m/2.1m
stairway to the future $60m/4.5m

The footprint seems smaller than their neighboring buildings, however I’ve got say the sky high towers are still the bulk of my building purchases.  Visit the tools page as some of the bots have been updated to reflect the new buildings.  Also see the building type specifications if you haven’t seen it already (if anyone has official specs on the new buildings let me know and I can update it)

3. Maximize your streets.

The 420 building limit is reportedly gone so you might want to focus on making existing streets more dense than acquiring streets right now.  However I’m still having problems on one of my streets for some reason.

Put your big buildings down first and squeeze in what you can from highest rent down.  This one is up for dispute and may depend on the shape of your street, but I generally fill with sky highs, then squeeze monopoly towers -> stairway to the future -> and for some reason there’s still room for some graduated megastructures.

5.  Examine streets before you buy.

There are some really expensive roads available for purchase that are actually really small.  Also, take note of streets that have duel paths close together.  While it’s great for putting green houses down each path, when you’re looking at the larger buildings with bigger payouts, they’ll generally take the width of both paths.  ie. that $25 million road will only have room for the equivalent of a $12.5 million dollar road generally.

6.  Strategically selling streets.

My gut feel is that it’s generally better to sell virgin undeveloped streets.  Everyone’s got their own way of playing and building up, and probably don’t care to be bothered with building over your junk.  You can possibly trick a few players into buying a street due to the added value of your properties, but for the most part people are looking for long streets, not purchasing buildings they can buy themselves at any point.

If you plan on selling anyways, at least wait till the end of the day for the highest bid, and then accept right before the next day begins, so you don’t need to pay for unnecessary tax on that street.

7.  Stay off the leaderboard.

If you’re at the bottom edge of the leaderboard and you’re sitting on a pile of cash, it’s safest to make some offers on streets you don’t mind owning anyways, as the cash offered up will instantly decrease your score until your offer is rejected.

8.  Avoid chance card bombs.

If you’re not a savvy street broker, and you need to build property to earn rent like me, well you need to take your chances at some point.  It really depends on where you’re at in the game and how much rent you’re taking in, but I generally use all my cash for trades.  I leave myself 1-2 billion for buildings.  For some reason I find when I’ve found that when I have that little cash on hand (while being substantial enough to build out), billion dollar accounting errors are much less likely.

22 comments

Latest Strategies

October 28, 2009

Even with all the cheating and glitches in the game, there’s still plenty of room to play a good game with good clean strategy. There seems to be two major ways people are playing the game right now.  One is probably the more ‘classic’ way of playing through building and earning rent, and the other [...]

43 comments Read the full article →

Can’t Buy or Build Streets?

October 21, 2009

Are you getting error messages like: “oops sorry, some weird error occurred, please try again” “it looks like someone else has beaten you to do this…” Maybe you’re in the monopoly city streets dead zone. I’ve got no fixes for you other than slamming the monopoly city streets development team with this feedback form And [...]

20 comments Read the full article →

Finding Long Streets

October 17, 2009

With an additional 3% of tax per street after five streets, maximizing the amount of property you can have on each street has become critical. Only problem is how on earth do you find these lengthy streets? 1. Discover them manually. At this point in the game the best tip I can give you here [...]

44 comments Read the full article →

An Open Letter from Hasbro

October 15, 2009

Finally an official update. This is a straight copy and paste, I wanted to leave open for the discussion with the community here. AN OPEN LETTER FROM HASBRO First, we want to thank everyone for their open and honest feedback on MONOPOLY City Streets. It has certainly been an eventful few weeks We want you [...]

4 comments Read the full article →

Don’t fear Tax

October 13, 2009

Many Monopoly City Streets players seem to be doing everything they can to avoid tax, or even venturing into their sixth street. My take is if it’s a worthwhile street, go ahead, venture out and buy a bit. What’s worthwhile may vary depending on where you’re at in the game, but I’d ballpark as low [...]

12 comments Read the full article →

Strategizing towards your goal

October 9, 2009

Mindobserver posted a great question in our status check post yesterday: My big question now is: What’s my goal? Do I try to stay atop my local leaderboard? Or do I go for something more flashy? Like buy up all the streets in my hometown. Or try to collect famous streets like Brooklyn Bridge and [...]

26 comments Read the full article →

Status Check

October 7, 2009

It’s been almost a month since Monopoly City Streets launched. Here’s your chance to brag, rant, and share where you’re at in the game right now. The current in-game leaderboard doesn’t exactly reflect the true standings, and some of you I know are also hesitant with revealing your official monopoly city streets name to the [...]

67 comments Read the full article →

Monopoly Here & Now: World Edition

October 5, 2009

While we wait on possible updates from the official Monopoly City Streets Team I thought I’d review Monopoly for iPhone / iPod Touch.  Any other hardcore monopoly fans try this yet? The game is nearly identical to the original board game you know and love.  The new street names and valuations take a bit of [...]

4 comments Read the full article →

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