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Questions on Monopoly
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Post by
Squishalot
Ok, so most people will have come across the Hasbro board game MONOPOLY. Once upon a time ago, in a stats course far away, I put together a comprehensive probability matrix modelling all the potential movements from one square to another (because I knew that the ones publically available online were flawed and stupid :P).
Anyway, that's not the point of this post. Here, I wanted to float a couple of potential 'house rules' or other ideas and see whether anyone would be interested.
Starting the game
- instead of rolling to see who goes first:
1) Would you be prepared to pay to roll first? If so, how much?
2) Would you be prepared to pay to roll 2nd/3rd/etc? If so, how much?
3) How much would you need to be paid to be willing to roll last?
Playing the game
:
4) Would you be willing to purchase a property, pre-mortgaged? (i.e. pay 50% of the cost price, it starts off mortgaged, and pay the mortgage amount + 10% to unmortgage it, as usual)
Post by
393249
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Post by
Squishalot
Spot on :) Monopoly money definitely!
I'm assuming a 'standard' 4 player game - my model goes up to 6 players, but I haven't run it through yet.
Presumably though, whoever's going last will receive the money that the ones going before are willing to 'pay'. So, for example:
Player Start Cash Cost
1st $1100 $400
2nd $1300 $200
3rd $1500 $0
4th $2100 Paid $600
Something along those lines. I'm sort of imagining a bidding system to auction off who goes 1st, 2nd, 3rd, etc.
4) Alternative purchase option. I'm thinking it would be useful for when you land on Mayfair / Boardwalk with only $250 in cash, for example, or if you're saving up cash for houses, but land on a free property, etc.
Perhaps with a bigger mortgage penalty, it could be more balanced.
Post by
393249
This post was from a user who has deleted their account.
Post by
Squishalot
What do you think would be a suitable penalty for purchasing a mortgaged property then?
The principle behind it is, you're still paying the high startup cost before you get any profit - you still need to unmortgage it! But you're essentially paying a 'booking' fee (or a call option, more specifically) for the right to unmortgage it and use it. That would (currently) be the 10% unmortgaging cost, which is probably too small.
What if, say, you needed to pay 75% up front, and still had to unmortgage 50%? Or vice versa - 50% up front, and a much more significant unmortgaging cost?
---
Reverse auction idea is right in principle, but still doable within the framework of a conventional auction. In this case, there is $600 up for grabs, with $300 going each to players 3 and 4. Then, player 3 is willing to pay $100 to go before player 4.
So what you could do is auction off 1st place, then pay up the cash equally to everyone else. Then auction off 2nd place, and pay up the cash equally to everyone else. And so on.
Post by
393249
This post was from a user who has deleted their account.
Post by
393249
This post was from a user who has deleted their account.
Post by
Squishalot
We are, by the looks of it, unfortunately. Either that, or adding new house rules is a bit much for people.
Ok, here's another thought. Take two boards, and join them at Go. You now essentially have an 80 square Monopoly board with 2 jails, 2 Gos, etc.
1) How would you deal with money? Can money be exchanged between boards? For example, we were using a Here and Now edition, and a Nintendo edition, which have vastly different money scales, but everything still matches up roughly once you convert it.
Or would you start off with a set amount of money for each board, and players could trade in either currency if they wished?
2) If you keep separate currencies, and you go bankrupt on one board, does that mean you go bankrupt entirely? Or would you be forced to trade with other players to stump up some of that currency?
3) How would you deal with 'Advance to Kings Cross Station' cards? Would you advance 40+ squares to the actual Kings Cross Station, or would you advance to the next 'Kings Cross Station' on the next board? (Mario Kart, I believe, on the Nintendo one)
4) Similarly, pay $40 per house and $110 per hotel. Would you include only the ones on the board you're on, or would you include all?
5) Utilities - would you provide extra bonuses for having 3/4 utilities? Or 5-8 railroads? (Our rules stipulated 15/20x dice roll for 3/4 utilities, and $200 for 4 stations, +$200 for each additional station, because we thought that $3200 for 8 stations was just a bit OP)
Post by
393249
This post was from a user who has deleted their account.
Post by
Squishalot
1) Fair enough. That's what we did initially, but we only started off with the standard $1500, making it quite difficult to build up enough cash to buy things. However, it did make the game 'fairer', because people rolling last had more items to purchase once the first guys ran out.
2) n/a
3) If you're going to the actual Kings Cross Station, then I suppose you'd have to pass by Go twice and collect $400?
And using two boards would be confusin. I had that Park Lane!
Combined chance cards would be interesting. I'm not sure that it'd change very much though - I don't think 'damaging' cards are more or less likely to appear in clusters. But it does make it a bit more predictable as to what card you'll get next though.
4) Again, fair enough.
5) All things considered, paying for 8 railroads is $1600, not including the costs of bartering from other players. Paying for Hotels on dark blue is $2750, but your bargaining cost is only to purchase the $750 properties.
I know that generally, in the games that I've played, purchasing Park Lane is about $500-600, to give you the monopoly, at an 'early' stage game where you won't have much money left to build houses straight away. The last railroad can fetch prices of around $800+ easily though.
Even if you make the railroad prices 200-400-600-800-1000, it's still not linear. The thing is, the extra railroad increases the price of all the railroads around, making your 'cash per round' significantly higher with each additional railroad, it's still exponential. In fact, 4 railroads provides the best return on investment as is. Even at $1000, a player is likely to land on 1-2 railroads per 80 step round, whereas they're still fairly unlikely to land on Boardwalk for a $2000 stay.
I see nothing wrong with having dual monopolies though :)
Post by
393249
This post was from a user who has deleted their account.
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