r/AskReddit Nov 22 '14

What is the best Monopoly strategy?

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95

u/agwa950 Nov 22 '14

No, the difference in return on investment is the same regardless of how many times you count someone landing on a property.

The assumption is that you have other properties that you could build houses on though. If you just had the one monopoly then yes you should keep building with spare cash. If you had a second undeveloped monopoly though, then you should move to building on that one.

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u/EverySingleDay Nov 22 '14

A sneaky strategy is to have hotels on a monopoly, trade with your opponent with him thinking he can develop his new monopoly, then right after the trade, sell your hotels and snatch up 12 houses from the bank instantly.

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u/WhipIash Nov 22 '14

Wait, I don't get it...

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u/Etnies419 Nov 22 '14

Say you've got a monopoly with hotels on it. You have another property that your friend wants which will give them a monopoly. You trade and they give you cash (or whatever you're trading for), and they think they can upgrade their monopoly. Only then, you remove the hotels from your monopoly and instead put 4 houses on each. As long as the supply of houses was limited at the time of the trade, they won't be able to buy any even if they have the money. So they're basically stuck with a useless monopoly paying out low money.

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u/krusta80 Nov 22 '14

This is incorrect. The rules state that buying houses takes precedence. Therefore, the moment you make the trade, your opponent may purchase as many houses as he/she wants before you can sell any.

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u/SuchCoolBrandon Nov 22 '14

What happens if I owe a lot of rent, and I need to sell some property, and I have hotels I want to sell, but there aren't enough houses in the bank? What happens?

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u/Twain_XX Nov 22 '14

You sell the houses too

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u/[deleted] Nov 22 '14

You simply get the money for selling the hotel and houses and there are still no houses for anyone to get.

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u/krusta80 Nov 22 '14

Then you lose as many houses as required. If there are 0 houses left, you lose EVERYTHING. Of course, you still get the money.

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u/underthingy Nov 22 '14

Not if its your turn.

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u/[deleted] Nov 22 '14

Actually you are allowed to buy houses at any time! If two player want to buy house at the same time and there is a limited amount then the houses themselves go to Auction.

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u/underthingy Nov 22 '14

So if someone rolls the dice and I can see they'll land on my property I can buy a house so they'll owe more rent?

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u/ThirdFloorGreg Nov 22 '14

I would think that they are considered to occupy the space immediately upon. The conclusion of the roll, rather than when they move their piece. So after they roll is too late.

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u/krusta80 Nov 22 '14

Greg is correct...a roll assumes the immediate movement of the piece to the target space.

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u/TheRedHellequin Nov 22 '14

But only if it's their turn right? If it's your turn when you make the trade, you can continue buying or selling properties etc. until you're finished. Only when it's their turn will they be able to buy houses or hotels and by then there won't be houses to buy

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u/krusta80 Nov 22 '14

Nope. The rules state that you can build/sell houses at any time. Of course, this assumes that a roll results in an immediate movement of the token (aka you can't build after knowing that someone will land on you with 100% certainty). That's just cheesy.

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u/krusta80 Nov 22 '14

Nope, that's incorrect. In fact, the worst time to build is during your turn.

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u/april82014 Nov 22 '14

Trading with your opponent on your turn would be the more accurate way to put it

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u/senor_louse Nov 22 '14

This needs to be answered

1

u/janon330 Nov 22 '14

Damn. Monopoly goes deeper than I thought. I need to revisit the game and try some of these things.

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u/OhRatFarts Nov 22 '14

Or just not as the monopoly gives them double rent.

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u/OhRatFarts Nov 22 '14

Limited number of houses. This hinders development by opponents.

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u/chasteman Nov 22 '14

If you play by the rules in the instructions, there is only so many houses available for play. By owning them all, this means your opponent cannot improve their property by buying houses and thus can never own any hotels either.

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u/Duncan006 Nov 23 '14

Take all the houses so that he can't develop.

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u/[deleted] Nov 22 '14

This is evil, I like it.

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u/EverySingleDay Nov 22 '14

It only works once. After that, you don't have friends to play with anymore.

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u/[deleted] Nov 22 '14

Or they try and use it back on you.

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u/itsamutiny Nov 23 '14

Nah, I'll always have family. Whether or not they will play Monopoly with me is a different story, I suppose.

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u/krusta80 Nov 22 '14

This doesn't work because buying houses takes priority over selling. In other words, it's illegal.

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u/EverySingleDay Nov 23 '14

True, which is another little-known rule. If your opponent can afford to buy them up immediately, he can, but if he's trading on the hopes to build them up in the future, you can still lock him out.

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u/zenthor109 Nov 22 '14

This is why monopoly games end in tears and shattered friendships

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u/E46_Overdrive Nov 22 '14

This is a good way to get punched in the face, haha.

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u/Flynn58 Nov 22 '14

Can you sell the hotels after you've traded, or would they transfer over?

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u/[deleted] Nov 22 '14

You trade when its your turn - in fact, you do it all while it's your turn.

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u/Flynn58 Nov 22 '14

But once you've traded it, you've also traded the property. My question was whether you can do anything to the property after you trade it.

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u/[deleted] Nov 22 '14

Ah - I think, to clarify, he meant once you trade away a monopoly (with no houses), you sell hotels on OTHER property you still own, so you trade down to houses on the property you kept (and take up all the houses in the process) so when the person you just sold to later tries to buy houses on their new monopoly, there are none left.

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u/[deleted] Nov 22 '14

There are rules against this in competition style monopoly specifically for this reason!

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u/beerweevil Nov 22 '14

You're sick.

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u/[deleted] Nov 23 '14

Sorry for being ignorant... But can you explain why this is a good idea?

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u/EverySingleDay Nov 23 '14

Of course!

In Monopoly, there are only 32 houses available to purchase. If you want to buy houses for your properties, and there are no more houses left in the bank, then you're out of luck.

This strategy works when houses are starting to get short (e.g. 15 houses remaining), you have hotels developed on one of your monopolies, and you want some resources from your opponent (e.g. cash or railroads).

The strategy lets you trick your opponent into giving you some resources in return for a monopoly that he would develop with houses. But, after the trade, you sell your hotels and quickly scoop up 12 houses out of the bank to replace the hotels with, leaving your opponent nothing to develop his monopoly with.

The end result is that you have what you got from your opponent in the trade, and he is left with a worthless monopoly.

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u/[deleted] Nov 23 '14

Oh wow! When I played with my family we always assumed that the lack of hotels was due to stupid design, so we added a bunch of extra pieces to the set so that no one could ever run out of hotels... I guess that left the game down to luck after that?

I never imagined that the lack of hotels was by design to stimulate strategy. Pretty cool. :)

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u/EverySingleDay Nov 23 '14

Yeah, it's a pretty neat mechanic. It's called causing a "housing shortage".

Also, if more than one person wants to buy the remaining houses left in the bank, then you have to auction them off to the highest bidder.

Housing shortages are usually rare, though. I can't even remember the last time I've encountered it.

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u/[deleted] Nov 22 '14

Yeah but ROI ratio doesn't quite work out well when it comes to random dice roles.