Well, I think this video ended up being more of a "debunking what doesn't work". But if you do go first and invest all your cash while your opponents sit on their money, I'd say you can be up to 50% more likely not to go bankrupt. Which, if think about it, is not that high. Unless players do something stupid, Monopoly is a big part a game of chance.
@@dablob4491 Is your friend one of those people who has one favorite property set and only ever buys that? That would explain it. Is your friend bad at bargaining and constantly giving you good trade deals? That would explain it.
This happens to me, every single board game, of if we are playing jackbox games, everyone will collectively target me. People will not vote for my answers on jackbox cause they don't want me to win, they refuse to trade with me, they will actively trade things with each other that mainly handicap me. Welp, can't do much about it now I guess.
Wow, my family has always been baffled at how I always blow all of my money on houses and hotels and still win most of the time. I never would have guessed that you're statistically more likely to win if you do what I do.
It is nice to have a real life proof of matematical simulation! To be honest, going in, I thought having some unspendable amount would be the best strategy - 200$ or so. I was genuinly surprised when numbers came back that it is not.
@@vlc-cosplayer Great that there is a confirmation of that. Because, frankly, I was dead certain there is some perfect amount of cash to keep untouched - and that would be the best strategy. My guess was $200. Was genuinely surprise when those numbers came back.
@@GamesComputersPlay tbh, the best strategy is to keep some amount, depending on the situation, for example: if you have around 90% chance to not lose or gain money in the next turn, spend it all, if you have a high chance of losing money, you may want to keep some of it, because buying and selling wastes money completely, yet in most cases u want to spend it because that gains more money. Also, if you are playing with more people, investments make more money.
@@GamesComputersPlay What about simulating saving money during the first X turns of the game to be spent on specific valuable properties that you're about to pass by, like Railroads, the Blues, or the remaining part of a monopoly?
FAQ: How does trading work in this simulation? Basically, each player has two lists: one of the things they want (missing pieces to complete a monopolly) and things they offer (stray one-of-a-color property). Every move proran search a match between pairs and trios of players - to match what they wish for and offer. If such a match found - property is excahnged, whoever gets the expensive one, pays the price difference to ehoever had a cheaper one. I agree it is quite basic - and it is a little unfair to whoever trades a cheaper item. But my question is: what it is like in real life? When you trade a 100 plot for 200 plot - what do people do in this situation? How come the sum of winners are more than 100%? It is actually a "survival rate", that is player is not banlkrupt within 1000 turns. As there are "endless" games that have 2,3,4 players at 1000 turn-mark (see my other monopoly video for details on that), the sum is greater than 100%. You should always trade up! Interestingly, I ran a simulation where Steve refused all deals where he would receive a cheaper property. Guess what - he ended up with seriously lower chances of survival. It gives you 50% opportunities to build a monopoly than your opponents, which is more important than a few bucks you are alledgedly losing on the deal. More on that in future monopoly video, someday.
In my experience, people never trade with me if it means I complete a colour group and they don't. If both of us complete a colour group (with mine being a more expensive one), then they will ask for the difference in value, but they might ask for a little more as my colour is has higher income. Also I figured that players with more money are more likely to accept trades where they have to pay a little extra.
In my experience people tend to only trade if it means they also get a monopoly. Although I do tend to play also another version of monopoly where that effect is lessened. It's the best version of monopoly I know, but it seems to be rare. It's a stock market edition where you can invest in properties. So instead of outright owning the property, there's 9 shares in each property that you can build houses/hotels on, and whoever holds the most shares, owns the property (they can build on it if they own the majority on the whole color group). The shares increase in value when there is more demand and also when properties are build. Also when someone lands on it, all shareholders get paid (but only once they pass start, so payments are delayed). If you land on a property you are a majority shareholder in, you don't pay, but if you have only a minority share, you just get a discount
There are other factors that play a role in real games. Stuff like "yeah, fair trade, but you have money to build houses left" => pay extra for the threat YOUR monopoly poses to me. Blocking the housing market (buy them all) can be done by an alliance of two or more players, hence marking the others for near certain doom. And games aren't decided by average incomes alone, streaks happen all the time. Having bad dice for 2-3 rounds can very much bankrupt someone. This gets more or less nasty depending on who own what colors (landing on green twice can bankrupt, on brown the unlucky player wouldn't even be seen as unlucky). Like in most games: Players have to survive AND find a way to get rid of others.
The data's actually really interesting. One thing I've learned is that spending it all really is more valuable than saving. I followed basically all the other advice anyway (though I still think that the greens are tactically viable against players who know what they're doing, since most will ignore them entirely), but I would've thought having at least a small safety net would be a good idea. Definitely going to remember this video next time I play. Great content, though, man! New subscriber here, watched a few of your vids already, recommended you to a few friends. Hope the growth continues!
I think the human aspect is a really important part of this that the data, by necessity, doesn’t capture. When I play people are very reluctant to trade other players monopolies, so going for a known bad color like green can pay off big.
@@jacksonletts3724 Yeah, exactly. The light blues are cripplingly underrated, too. Sure, the profit TOTAL is small, but the profit MARGIN is huge. Going for bad colours can often net you success in skilled, casual games.
I always try to buy everything and use all money,believe me if the other player dont do the same is easy win, the problem is that my friends plays the same, to say this the player that have more colors win except 1 time, 1 player had just 1 color and put entire hotels, and rest got just colors ,bt we cannot put houses because we stuck at negociate, and lost terrain, he made after some loops sufficient to take all of the colors we had ,we tryed to make a deal and put some houses but was to late, I dont just spend because is good to spend I spend because I can stop other players from taking any colors and put hotels and utilities(he sayd that is 1.5 lost change but depends, you will never make utility so will take you down but if somebody make that his change is high at the begging ,but dont buy first)even if you buy everything is still a change to lose,in a game I had houses colors,and I saw other2 players planing to change cards to make both houses ,and they taked money only from me. spending all money can make you best player ,but be prepared because the higher you are the more target you are .
So many holes... let's start with the one that applies to just about all of these: mortgages. Optimal play basically requires mortgaging non-monopolies in order to reach the magic "3 house" monopoly as soon as possible. If you're not mortgaging most of your properties to get those houses out ASAP, you're throwing away any advantage you have by getting a monopoly. Greens may not make for a good monopoly, but *any* monopoly is better than no monopoly, and you can trade other players a monopoly they want for a lot of their cash, which you can then use to build houses before them. If you can't get all three greens anymore, those are the first properties to mortgage because they're such a bad value in general. Doing this, buying green should still be worthwhile as long as it's a four player game (two player games have more limited capital, so greens are dangerous to spend that money on). Even utilities are probably worth buying and later mortgaging with this in mind (unless you're already in the monopoly phase). This mortgage hole also applies to "savings". If you're not counting every single unmortgaged non-monopoly as part of savings, you're ignoring a critical piece of funding for houses, and it's no wonder $0 wins. Someone that aggressively mortgages their properties after they and another person gets a monopoly will be far more likely to win than if they wait until later to get 1, 2, 3 houses. With that in mind, you do still want a small buffer, but it's dependent on where you and your opponents are on the map. If no one's going to land on your monopoly next turn anyway (ignoring doubles), and you're coming up to someone else's housed monopoly, it makes more sense to hold on to your cash/unmortgaged properties until the situation changes, even if it's several hundred dollars. As for the "3 house" rule itself, your goal in the game is to get a single monopoly and build it up to 3 houses before your opponents (hotel for the first two sets). More often than not, the first person to do this will win in short order as anyone landing on a 3 house monopoly will pay an enormous amount that funds both more houses *and* a larger safety buffer. At this point, a second monopoly can be brought up to 3 houses as well if you have it, but unless you've gotten very lucky, you shouldn't have a second monopoly in the first place. Whether you do or don't, the game is all but over if one person has 3 houses on their monopoly and enough money to land on any property on the board without selling any houses. While I like the idea of running simulations, you really need to improve the AI if you want meaningful data. All this is showing is certain strategies do or don't work if everyone's playing a very specific, suboptimal way.
Thanks for the comments and insights. As I said. I have next to nothing experience and relied on those tips and tested them the way I understood them. Now to your points. Mortgages I think you might be right, but it just shows that my simulation is incomplete. I showed that spending up to 0 is better than spending up to 100, 200 - any positive amount. What you are saying is that spending up to -100, -200 etc is even better than spending to 0. I suspect this is might very well be true. With one caveat. Is it possible, that by going too much into negatives you increase the risk of sudden bankrupcy? And there is indeed some optimal amount (like mortgage all, but 200 worth of property) that produces the best result. A matter to settle with further simulations. Greens I am not sure about this one. So in the experiment all other players used greens for exactly that - building monopoly, using as a bagraning chip, mortgaging if they were low on cash. And in the end they were no better of than the guy sho just ignored greens altogether. I have hard time rationalizing it myself - but this is what data showed. 3 houses Maybe I misundertood the original advice, but this was thee only interpretation that made sense to me. If you have only 1 monopoly - then yes, you need to build 3 houses asap, but also you need to build 2 houses asap, 4 houses, hotel. You need to build everything as soon as possible - this is the way to win the game. Any pause there is bad. Or am I missing something. What would be the opposite of that advice? Take your sweet time and not build 3rd house even if you have the money? Thanks for the comment, great discussion.
@@GamesComputersPlay Yeah, it's strange that someone with almost no monopoly experience is doing this, but what better way to learn? :) For the mortgages, as others have pointed out, you shouldn't view them as negatives. An unmortgaged property is little more than cash that has a small chance to grow in value (i.e. collect rent) every once in a while. This amount is peanuts compared to even a single house monopoly, so for practical purposes any unmortgaged property that isn't part of a monopoly should just be treated as cash. As far as the risk of bankruptcy is concerned, it's more a risk of having to sell houses unless someone else has already reached 3 houses. Since you only get back half what you paid when you sell a house, it's a huge loss if you have to do this, effectively paying double what you would've lost otherwise. For the greens, as we just established, they weren't being mortgaged to build houses on other monopolies, so any advantage you might get from the small chance of a monopoly on greens is being counterbalanced by having less houses on your monopoly. For 3 houses, it's an inflection point, and involves how casual players approach the game. Yes, you want to build 1 house, 2 houses, 3, 4, as fast as possible. But if you have two monopolies, some people spread out their resources on both monopolies at the same time. Having 1-2 houses each on two monopolies is significantly worse than 3 houses on a single monopoly, which is the point of the advice. 3 houses in particular is "game ending". That is, if someone lands on it, more than likely they lose, and whoever owns it wins. This applies to all monopolies in the second and third row, with the first row needing a hotel for the same effect, plus either a second monopoly or for everyone else to land on them to prevent building 3 houses on their own monopoly. The 4th row just needs two houses to have about the same effect, although boardwalk is the only location in that row that's notably likely to be landed on due to the chance card.
@@GamesComputersPlay 3 House strat could also mean the intentional limit of the house supply. With a finite amount of houses available, upgrading to Hotels is heavily discouraged, since you are limiting opponents ability to gather cash from other players. With 32 houses, only 3 1/2 sets are possible to have houses in total, which should be counted in as a strategy.
@@lollakasfamilianimi3246 Any strategy can be effective when you're playing against bad players. It's called pub stomping, and it doesn't make it a winning strategy against players that know what they're doing.
It's crazy coming across such a criminally underrated channel. I get the feeling that the algorithm will bless you in the near future good sir. Best of luck with your youtube journey, I love your videos.
These videos are so good, that when I misread your sub count as 3.9M I was like "Yeah that sounds about right". Absolutely floored when I realized my mistake...
Interesting. The first-player advantage is significant, but in theory, giving the other players more starting money (first blush, an extra $65 per position) might make up for that.
Different starting cash would be a good variant of Monopoly if we can quantify it. The other question is what's the optimal starting sale price of properties? some may be worth more than their starting price, others like the utilities, less. They said they changed the prices and rents for the game _Anti-Monopoly,_ which I only played once.
I had never heard of the "buy only 3 houses" tip, usually it's "buy 4 houses so that no houses are left and no one (except you) can buy hotels" Edit: bad habit of commenting before seeing all the video The tip I created myself was "buy everything except utilities because they don't give enough money back" and I'm glad I was right
There were times when we put property up for bid and paid half price (mortgage value) + $1. There must be some value for the greens and utilities to make them worth buying for the player AI that didn't want them at all. Likewise if you're short of cash, when is it worth mortgaging to buy more property?
I think auctions are very important to consider, as is other players playing with the same strategy. E.g. if you're the only player willing to buy green and it goes to auction, it's almost certainly worthwhile to buy it for $1
Just wanna say first of all, I really love this type of content. I thought your video was very cool. Definitely be conscious of the strategies that the opposing AIs are using, since it's not easy to statistically "prove" that one strategy is better than another. Playing against sub-optimal opponents definitely could affect your results. I tried building a chess AI based on a random opponent, and it ended up wanting to capture protected pieces because it didn't think the opponent would capture back. Nevertheless, I'll definitely try some of these strategies out. Wish me luck. :)
Go for it, that would be great. I do feel a bit bad that I didn't clean up the code much. I tried to leave some comments, but some of my programming habits are quite terrible (like obscurely naming variables). So if you are up for a challenge, might need some untangling of logic to do. Also, should have used GitHub like an adult.
@@justingolden21 Depends on your player amount. 2 player for example it's nearly impossible to not auction. (Assuming you use official rules where any time you refuse to buy from the bank an auction happens on that property)
@@walugusgrudenburg3068 that's a good point. Almost every game I've played has been 3,4, or 5 players. I have no idea how 2 players plays other than 2 players when the others have been eliminated
Thanks! Looking back at the video I think it turned out to be more of "debunking monopooly tips". Most of them don't work, and those that do, bring only small advantage. Only thing that can make a difference is "go first and put everything in".
Man, I just typed out a long ramble/rant about my childhood strategy before watching this video to see how it holds up to math. Then TH-cam stopped responding, so here's the rundown. In essence treat the board not as individual properties, but as sets. Any set will out-value any individual property. We played highest dice roll goes first but no buying properties until you've passed go once. For the first 1-2 (big early rolls do 3) buying times round, trade nothing, if you have none of the color you land on, buy. If you have 1, don't buy, unless you also have at least 1 property in the next two colors in front of you, then buy. Trade utilities away, they're worthless to own, and hold way more trading power than you'd expect to make from them. Prioritise trading for orange, light blue, brown, and red or yellow but not both, in that order. Never make or accept a trade that would complete someone else's color set. Trade higher valued individual properties or a similar value + cash to complete your own sets. This makes people think they're gaining value, and they are, but long term your set will outweigh the investment you made trading at a loss. Build a hotel on your highest value set first, then houses the rest, then hotel them all. I haven't played in probably 8 years, being 10-11 when we played often and hating the luck factor. I've never had a real reason for why this was my strategy other than 'it feels intuitive for minimising the luck', but I only remember losing a handful of games with it - always down to luck of the rolls. I mean there's more to it than just what I've put here, over time I realised monopoly is just as much about psycology and manipulating people as it is about properties and sets. But that's the run down.
Thanks. Personally I agree with having one lap without buying things, but this is not canon. I am not sure what to do with, say advice "prioretise trading for Orange". If you have 1 orange - you trade it for something else, if you have 2 - yes, you want the 3rd one of course. But same goes for all sets, no? Never accept the trade that complete someone else's set. I have the biggest problem with this one. In my simulation the base line for trade is: trade completes both traders' sets. Otherwise there is no point in trading. If everybody doesn't agree to trades that complete oppponents' sets - no monopolies will ever be completes by trade. Might as well not trade a all. I maybe looking at it from adult perspective and it's different when kids play, but I think hoping to get a deal when you get a monopoly, but the other person doesn't is wishfull thinking. Or this is something happening regularly with younger players?
@@GamesComputersPlay I'm glad you agree with the first lap thing, though not canon it feels like it it removes some of the "whoever rolls first is most likely to win". As with trading I couldn't tell you why I liked going for those colors, I just kind of did. Never trading to complete other's sets does introduce more of a challange when it comes to trading, but (in my younger experience anyway) people usually are willing to give you something that'll complete your set if you can give them the second color in one of their sets, and usually cash on top too. Meaning value wise I would almost always trade at a loss. After watching the video money in hand is a great factor I hadn't thought of beforehand, I would try to have as little cash money as possible and put it all into properties. Looking back at it I think I started playing Monopoly with my family at around 8 years old, but being almost 22 now and not having played a game in years now I'd like to believe I could come up with a more optimised trading pattern - or at least bargain better than I could back then to get better deals. But in general as long as you're overpaying for a property you can complete your sets pretty easily. I'd love to see/find the most optimal strategy and chances it gives, though with the differences in how everybody plays I suppose there couldn't just be one across the board strat.
Shocked you only have so few subscribers, so commenting for the algorithm. Very interesting video, I'll be using these tips if I ever play Monopoly with my family again ;)
Very interesting! Real surprise to me to notice how bad the green colour actually is. I always knew deep blue is a killer set. The last point is difficult: I still believe that in certain situations you would be a total jerk to invest ALL your money - say, if nobody is coming to your place during the next two turns and you are facing a jungle of dangerous squares with your very next throw. But these nuances are of course next to impossible to computerize. Great stuff - keep it up!
You should run a simulation where Steve mortgages individual properties to fund house buying (once they have a monopoly). I've always been curious if the houses outweigh the lost properties or not. Also, is it better to put houses on cheap or expensive properties first (if you have multiple monopolies), as well as whether you should do hotels on one set before you start houses on a second. Great video!
I'm 1 year late, but this is a bit of a no brainer imo. Individual properties earn you such little money, you absolutely make more money by mortgaging them to buy houses
Thanks guys! Probably not gonna be so fast for the next one though. I am in the middle of coding my next project, and usually making a video is even more time-consuming. Hope it is going to be worth the wait.
11:27 Did you account for mortgages on this one? In general, I suspect that your simulation might create fewer monopolies than actual over-the-board trade between Human players tends to generate. This would, besides other things, make saving money less important and significantly increase the chances of an endless game.
The thing with mortgaging property is that a lot of advanced guides _should_ frame non-monopoly properties as mortgage capital, and include them in your savings. So if you want to build houses, saving 0 would mean that you would mortgage everything that isn't one of your monopolies or maybe railroads. Likewise, saving 0 would also mean that you would mortgage all of your properties to buy 1 more property, which yes you can mortgage so you inadvertently have _some_ emergency funds, but if your opponents have a monopoly built up that might be risky. Also, what if you only start to apply this "save X" rule once someone on the table (including yourself) has a monopoly? And what if that X depends on the most expensive 3-house property you could have to pay, or luxury tax if there are no monopolies?
I also think that the "bankruptcy is handled by the bank" house rule overly stabilizes games of 4-8 players even if a player manages to run out of money. If the player causing the bankruptcy received all of the properties, they would have a high chance of finding a new monopoly or at least some good trade options, leading to a higher chance for a decisive game.
Accounting for Mortgages: no, I didn't. Which is a good point for testing: if 0 is better than any positive number, it is not impossible than a negative number would be better than 0. Number of Monopolies: I have actual zero life experience with Monopoly, but I suspect my simulation produces more monopolies than humans: Simulation allowed for some lopsided trades - pink for indigo, brown for green etc. (with compensation, but still) I suspect in real life players would avoid such deals. Unless people do something that I am totally missing.
Bankrupcy handled by bank Yes, agree, it does not produce extra inequality, while normal rules do - which prolongs the game. In my defence, the rules of it were bit too complex - with recepient having to pay interest immediately and mortgage sum later, if they so desire. I was a bit disheartened by it and just gave up.
Solid video. However, one thing that simulating these situations never accounts for is nuance. For example, you don't want to get obsessed with the blues, but given the chance to buy them you should if you have the money.
Not buying hotels advice seems like it might work better if thought of as "don't buy hotels if there is an opponent that won't be able to buy all the houses he can accomodate thanks to that". Also, "don't buy hotels if you can still buy more houses" to keep with the spirit of "don't save money" advice.
Part of the problem with unwavering strategies is that each game is dynamic. Some actions are powerful early in the game and some are better later. If only one player controls any color group that allows them to play differently than if other players also had groups. Following proven strategies is good, but circumstances can cause a person to play more aggressively to try and force other players to be weakened.
Yeah, like if two players are avid traders, and believe the first two who can trade for monopolies can eliminate the other two before both or either can get a monopoly. If it's a tournament, there may be some value in coming in 2nd place, too.
I think it would be worth testing the 4 house system again seeing if odds go up if exactly two players always try to hoard all the houses. Do the overall chances for the two players go up relative to the other two? And then what about if three out of four hoard the houses? Do they hurt the chances of the one player who didn't hoard houses?
This is an excellent question as 1 player can't monopolise the houses but two can go very close and would make getting to a hotel very difficult for other players.
i've heard the point of getting hotels is that the physical pieces have a limit, and keeping the houses makes sure no one else can buy those until someone buys the first hotel. you didn't seem to mention it at all (and neither did i ever play the actual game with anyone), so it would be cool to see what would happen if you implement a rule on limited pieces.
Wait, I do have limited pieces there (32 houses and 12 hotels, if I remember correctly). What I didn't do is to implement any nuances in this strategy - just a hard stop at 4 houses, no matter what player's/opponents' situation. Which may make a difference, I admit.
Ideas for future games: is it possible you change the buy prices of props to test the win rate? E.g. Greens cost 20 more dollars and compute win rate, it's super useful stuff for auctions. Additionally, can you compute some of these for two players? Railroads are definitely not worth buying w 2 players.
Funny, I used to always go for the Expensive properties and while it was good when someone hit Mayfair with 4 houses, I'd usually get hit by those orange properties, coz you keep going to jail and then you have to run the gauntlet when you get out! I always liked railroads because they are a consistent pay-out, maybe those 3 are the ones, maybe the pinks if I can get them too, imagine someone having a railroad, 3 pinks and 3 oranges all developed as soon as you leave jail and hoping that you don't get a chance or community chest sending you to jail, or land on that damn go to jail square!
I think the money saving advice is for auctions along with not buying out property's like green and utility's(railroads advice is simply sabotage though). i don't think your program can account for that if you have 0 dollars you are essentially locked out of auctions(you can mortgage but that is not always possible or advantageous). the variable i think would be interesting to test for is if mortgaging immediately after purchasing a property to finance other property purchases is beneficial or not.
The official rules are not silent regarding who goes first. It's determined by a dice roll. Highest roller goes first and then it goes in clockwise rotation.
i play with the house rule that a house turned upside down counts as 2 so we never run out of houses house = 1 house house upside down = 2 houses upside down + regular = 3 houses 2 upside down = 4 houses (in some variants where that's a thing) hotel = hotel hotel upside down = double hotel (again, only in some variants)
On the one hand, it is one of the more criticized house rules, as far as I know - ignoring house limit by any tricks. On the otehr hand - I had a test to see if it makes any signinficant difference to remome the limit. Turns out it doesn't.
We played a game called eurobussiness :) And we modified it: - you could build houses / hotels immediately at any property (no monopoly required) - you could have 1 hotel and 4 houses - when you buy houses / hotels you had to pay renting price (not building price) - you could buy houses / hotels in cheap locations and then move to expensive locations (there were a kind of tax for it) It was our version of wild capitalism. And apart from it it was cheating (extra money transfers) :) Because of it game was much shorter.
Totally. I remember as a kid, you don't really care about those "official rules". Whatever seems like a good idea - let's do it. (And now, looking back from the game design perspective most of them were really bad ideas).
There's certainly a lot of nuance to all of this. With spending your money, if there are no opponents close to landing on your properties, and you're close to landing on something with a big payout, then there is simply no reason to spend all your money. But of course, if you live by a hard rule of "my money cannot go below this amount", then you're going to be in a world of hurt. There's other strategies here relative to how much you are winning the game by. If you are losing, then desperation plays of throwing all your money are are obviously the only choice. Play to your outs. But if you're winning, you can slowly squeeze your opponents out of the game rather than opening yourself to additional risk
Between this video examining first player advantage and last video examining house rules for player's starting capital and its effect on game length and chance of stalemates, I find myself wondering if the odds of winning could be evened out, and simultaneously reduce the odds of stalemates, by holding an auction for the turn order at the start, or else allowing players to trade money to each other for their place in the turn order if we're trying to keep the starting capital evenly distributed. (really depends on how it works out within the full ruleset) At the very least, it feels having such a house rule would be pretty in theme for the game. What could be more in appropriate for a game about would be monopolists than paying for a starting advantage?
Intetesting idea. Mine was to actually figure out, how much money should be redistributed between players, so the chance would even out. Say, have players start with 1000, 1200, 1400, 1600 - will it result in equal chances? Something to test in some future video.
Great concept! One thing I’m curious about is how the results would change if the simulations were run on games with 30-40 turns instead of 1,000 turns. I would suspect that it could change some of the results, particularly if the benefit increases the longer the game. For example, buying the “blue” properties may be somewhat advantageous in a shorter game, but may be more advantageous in a game the runs longer. If the break even point is turn 25 a 1000 turn game will have different results then a 30 turn game.
I'm afraid 30-40 turns is where most of the games are still going - there are no clear winner. Median length is around 50 or so - don't remember the exact number, it is in my other video. Different case is when you hard stop the game after a certain tuen and count the number of assets and declare one who has the most a winner. This will definetily change a lot of strategies, I imagine.
“Don’t build hotels” definitely works if you have multiple of the cheapest sets, you can keep all the houses for relatively low money, nearly impossible to lose
It's very interesting how browns came right after oranges for effect on ignoring them. It seems that everyone values oranges in the top 3 color sets and browns in the bottom 3.
Its not because browns are actually secretly good, but because you only need 2 of them to make a set. The same goes for the dark blues. It really skews the data for the method he used due to the lack of trading implemented and makes them appear much better than they actually are. In reality the blues are still decent but the browns are still one of the worst property sets to have on the board
Regarding the 3-house and hotel tests - were ALL players playing by that, or just one? It might be interesting to see if more advantage is seen by players using that strategy if only 3, 2 or 1 player is using that strategy.
With regard to move order, I do recall one friend who suggested a rule where on the first lap around the board, all actions are frozen - no buying of property, no viewing of chance cards, no going to jail or paying luxury taxi etc., no collecting $200 after passing Go. Sort of a stress free tour of the neighborhoods as you roll around the board once, presumably to prevent the likelihood of the 2nd, 3rd or fourth player rolling the same number as player 1, or any previous player, and immediately paying rent instead of an opportunity to acquire property, a fate that no doubt contributes to the vast disparity in success for player A v B v C v D discovered in the analysis. I never liked my friend’s idea, despite its apparent nobility, and I wonder if it really affects the player success rates, other than marginally, in the long run.
Interesting idea to simulate. My guess is it evens out the inequality, but not completely. Another idea I like is to auction off places - you pay extra (or, rather start with less money) - and you can go first. I actually simlated how much money should be redistributed between places to make it even. Should make another video with the result. It's about 150$ or so for the first place, don't have the exact results in front of me now.
@@GamesComputersPlay I think one of the official alternate rules suggests doling out the properties like cards to each player and you go from there. Because it is random, that does seem fair, but there is something exciting about rolling the dice and seeing where you will land.
Right. That is because in certain portion of games there is no winner - sometimes 2, 3, and quite often all 4 are alive at the turn 1000 (this is where simulation ends). So it is not a chance to win (total of which would be less than 100% for that reason), but a survival chance.
It would seem to me that the -1.2% result for utilities indicates not that they should be ignored, but that they are slightly overpriced and should be allowed to go to auction. However, this would be only for the first one landed on. Once one utility is already owned, it behooves the player landing on the other to buy it, if only to keep it out of the hands of the player who has the first one.
Re: don't buy X property According to the official rules, which no one seems to use, if you land on a property and don't buy it, it is put up for auction. *All* players bid on it, until only one person is either willing or able to pay the bid. Interestingly, this is a valid strategy, as if no other player can afford the property, but you don't want to pay full price, just put it up for auction and get it for cheap. TL;DR: You can't just "ignore a property" if you land on it, because you guarantee a different player will buy it instead.
I agree it's a bit of a stretch. But for the sake of determining relative worth of different groups - I should be good enough. Wwhatever error it introduces, it should cancel out - as it will be exactly the same for all colors.
I thought the Monopoly rules were quite clear on player order - players roll two dice and the player with the highest total goes first; then play proceeds clockwise from there. Therefore, there's no strategy available in "trying to go first" - it's effectively random.
So in practical play ignoring greens is stronger because the real advice is to not buy houses on them or build a monopoly for them in general. IDK how your simulation handled this but if you do the "no houses on greens don't trade for greens" I think you'll find a small increase in win%
Wait, so the advice shouild be - Do buy greens but don't build houses on them? Just use them as a barganing chip you mean? Hmmm... It might be true, but I don't think it will shift the balance much.
Another possible nuance to this is, some of these strategies could show as positive effects against your baseline player, but could have negative effects while other good strategies are applied to the other players. Put differently, some strategies can be more punishing to other specific strategies. Like a Rock Paper Scissors dynamic
The second is worthy of simulation like the "money to 0" strategy. Obviously the first depends on the situation. I like the table that shows number of opponents' rolls for payback. I presume that if it's not a railroad or monopoly then it's not going to pay for itself any time soon. Like a green pays $26, but interest on unmortgaging it is $15 so I don't think you should unmortgage property until your monopoly is at all hotels.
if buying green gives no net benefit then Absolutely Avoid buying them. You're tying up funds that you could have spent on more expensive properties and upgrades instead.
The greens do well in a long game if you get hotels on them. I think buying greens at half-price might be better than at full price or ignoring them. Of course you only need to buy 1 to block them.
I don't know what I did (actually I know - nothing), but suddenly youtube algorythm fell in love with me. I hope I can be worthy of this honor. Really appreciate it! As for discord, to be honest, I am barely keeping up with YT comments. :)
@@GamesComputersPlay I'm happy the algorithm picked you up! considering the amount of effort you put into your videos you're definately worth it! keep up the good work but make sure you don't get burnt out :) your health is more important than TH-cam.
Probably not going to work in this simulation. Because if a player had a ready-to-built monopoly, and the money to build on it - they should have dont it already (these players build as soon as they have an opportunity). It leaves a small chance that the player didn't build becase there were no houses on the market (meaning someone already have a few monopolies on top on this player's 2 monopolies) not impossible, but very-very-very unlikely.
To be fair, I might have built a straw man out of this one. If the advice went something like: "if you have 2 monopolies or more and your opponents haven't built their houses yet, (maybe couple more clarifications when it is a good idea to do so) - then stop at 4 houses" - I expect it might have some positive effect, but still very small because the scenario is too rare to begin with. But as the advice goes "Don't build hotels", this is exactlly what I have tested. And I don't feel guilty for this bout of intellectual dishonesty on my side. :)
I'd be interested to see the "Don't Buy Hotels" strategy statistics when the player only does so under the conditions they are in first (or a close second) and no other player has the potential to build a hotel.
I went into this in depth in a different thread, but assuming all of your programming is accurate- since a housing shortage locks the board state, if you have less than a 25% chance of winning from that point (or, indeed, less than half of the average between the top two players), not buying hotels is just increasing your chance of losing. Similarly, if another person can break the shortage, whoever does so first, all else equal, has a huge advantage. So statistics which fail to factor these variables will be misleading.
Actually, assuming you programmed it just that 1 bot never bought hotels regardless of situation, and the others did, the fact that the simulation only saw a 7.4% decrease is weak evidence that the strategy is phenomenal while ahead, since if you are in projected 3rd or 4th place, either you never corner the market, so you're just playing with a handicap from behind, or you do, and in the simplified board state, you almost guarantee your loss. So if, statistically, half of the time not buying hotels almost guarantees a loss, that's 25% loss in games relative to playing blindly. So for the overall model to show only a -7.4% difference (I assume from 25? So an average showing of 23% victory?), the average of the remaining two must be almost 50% to win, which is an insane advantage.
I agree I might have intentianally oversimplified the "no hotels" strategy, and given the right conditions, it may bring some positive results. (Personally, I doubt that, but I am not the source of truth, simulation is). In my defence, all those Monopoly tips didn't elaborate when one should follow the "no hotels" strategy - they were just blunt about it: don't buy hotels. So I just took it at the face value.
A few months ago, I had found a good video that explains many tips and how to use them, they were all actually logical and worked, I wonder what the results would be, yet, they may be difficult to implement... Idk though, amma try to properly list all of it first, might take a few days cause I dont have a clue on where to find that video... If it gives enough cool tips would u consider a part 3 ?
I think I collected 4-5 really interesting ideas for experiments through the comment section - so yes, bring it on! I am not giving any particular timeline tho, these things take forever to code and make a video of.
Auctions probably increases and decreases the value of certain properties. Specifically greens are are worth more since the investment into them is usually lower thanks to the auction. Assumption is that the player who lands on green knows about the advice of ignoring them and decides to not buy them, giving the opportunity for another player to get it at marked value or less thanks to the auction. There is also the chance that some properties might be too expensive to be bought by the player landing on them for the first time (happens with indigo a lot if you buy everything in your first round the table), further skewing data. The general trend might remain the same though
Nice baseline stats. Next you could test synergies and metas. For instance, what happens if you use combinations of strategies--would they result in more than the sum of their parts? Second, what if all the players are Steves? Which strategies--if ignored--lower your chances of winning in such a meta? Also, another strategy to include: prioritize building houses on spaces ahead of other players--and prioritize players that are closer to 7 spaces away.
I think the reason the blues are positive is because, most of the bots already had good or, lots of monopoly's so buying the blues was only positive. So, if you are getting it as your first set it's bad but if you have other monopoly's its pretty good
I'm having some trouble believing the indigo are approaching double the value of orange. Has this factored in jail, cards, number of players, etc? Indigo usually bankrupt a player if developed, but unless no other players have a monopoly, you often lag behind in development (As indigo costs ~200$ per house. And if you are up against a house hoarder you might not be able to.), and another reason orange is valued is because it's in the sweet spot for dice rolls after a player gets out of jail. There is also the cards, far more of which seem to favor orange. Advance to Boardwalk, favors indigo obviously. Advance to Illinois Ave, skips orange, but you still need to pass the go to jail, and 2 card spaces before reaching the indigo properties. Advance to St. Charles Place, favors orange, it puts you in the sweet spot range to land on them. Advance to Reading Railroad, favors orange by skipping indigo and putting you ~2 turns away from orange. Advance to utility, favors orange for 4 or the card spaces, and indigo for 2 (and like Illinois ave, you still need to pass go to jail and 2 card spaces.) Advance to the nearest railroad favors orange half the time. Go back 3 spaces, favors orange since you can actually land on an orange with it, but not an indigo, only the right side chance space favors indigo while the rest favor orange. x2 Go to jail, favors orange for the reasons jail does of course. x2 Advance to Go, favors orange since it skips the indigo wherever you are on the board. I have played monopoly probably a few hundred times, usually with x4 players, and admittedly not 100k, and see orange get landed on far more frequently than indigo, mostly due to jail and cards. The raidroads and purple/brown, being valuable doesn't surprise me though. I will say I can see the indigo's value skyrocketing in an 8-player game though.
My friends do the thing where any money that should go to the bank goes to free parking and then whoever lands there gets it. Can you see how much longer this makes games take? Or the results of other house rules?
II think what will happen is will add some more randomness, and also overall the game will lengthen, but not by too much. How much money would usually be generated this way on average - 50-60$ per player per lap? So macroeconomically it is the same thing as raise the salary by the same amount (as everybody has about the same chance of getting it).
@@GamesComputersPlay The problem with looking at that rule macroeconomically is the fact that a 1-2k cash injection can often make it so a player can go from nothing straight to hotels. In a number of scenarios, this pretty much hands that player a free win significantly quicker than would otherwise have happened. In my experience, free parking money almost always goes into houses/hotels which invariably actually accelerates the game.
Posting this before watching the vid. Here's the essential Monopoly strategy: - Buy everything you can (i.e. never allow a property go to auction early on in the game; if you land on it, buy it) - Trade with other players in order to gain "monopolies" (i.e. usually 3 properties of the same color group), so you can put houses/hotels on them - Late game, stay in jail in order to avoid paying rent (or paying anything else) - Because of the frequency of which people land in jail, the orange/red properties give you the most bang for your buck (i.e. they have good rental income and are situated at likely dice roll values from jail) - Late game, since only a finite number of houses can be purchased, it may be wise to use houses instead of hotels in order to block opponents - Trade, trade, trade, as without expressing skill via negotiations with others, the game is all luck; Monopoly is really a game of trading
- You got it quite right with the buying and trading. - I didn't test jaiil strategy, so can't say. - Orange and Red: this one turns out is where everybody missed an important thing. Brown and Dark Blue are easiest monopolies to complete - making them more valuable statistically speaking than Red and Orange. - Houses inseatd of hotel. I tested the most straightforward implementation of this, that is, plainly refuse build hotels, in all situations - and it is a very bad strategy. I admit it can be more beneficial if you use more nuanced aproach. And again: totally correct about trading.
I've died to so many got dam misfortunes at St. James Place that I can assure you - Greens are NOT to be ignored. They're extremely strategically relevant given their high relative value and location. Strategically speaking; because "Go To Jail" is the one corner you can't safely land on; and high-frequency rolls (5s-9s) from the preceding Red section before them will nearly always land you on one.
@@GamesComputersPlay I have no idea ^^ It reminds of a video from Matt Parker, just a bit more playful. And that one went viral i believe. Everyone should see your video and think: man, finally some hard facts what works in this stupid game i cant make sense of. ^^ I dont know maybe someone else has an idea? :)
@@GamesComputersPlay I would probably go with somethin a bit more specific like "How I computed the secret Monopoly strategy" or "Should you actually buy Roads in Monopoly?", "The Secret Monopoly Strategys that actually work" ...
I have a question about the don't buy hotels strategy, what if it's changed to don't buy hotels unless you can buy more houses to keep the house shortage? will that make any differance?
Have you thought about simulating Settlers of Catan ? It will probably be very challenging since trading with other players is at the core of the gameplay.
My question, for the graph showing what property sets are best, with dark blue being best and etc. We're the games that were simulated similar to an actual human version of monopoly? We're trades made, We're houses and hotels places? Or were the properties just bought and then players went around the board until one remained, because housing cost and trades play a big part in a property sets intrinsic value, i would love to know so that I know this order of importance graph can be applied to my games :)
Trades, houses, hotels, chance cards and community chest - all yes, were there. Things that were not there or were different/simplified: - auctions were nto there - bankruptcy handled by the bank - only default jail behavior (wait for doubles, pay fine on 3rd attempt). I thought about this result in property groups value. The most reasonable explanation I have is that Dark Blue and Browns are monopolies that are easiest to get (only 2 to have it) - which makes it far more likely to end up being a monoopoly in the game - and way more detrimental if you choose to ignore them.
@@GamesComputersPlay Okay, thank you dude! I really appreciate the reply, I guess in real games your values for what properties are better would be even larger, dark blues for example being WAY better than it is now, because bankrupting a player gets you all their stuff in traditional rules, which is practically a guaranteed win, places with lower rent wouldn't do this as easily, but thank you :) your channel is very informative and I'm glad to see a TH-camr who is active with his viewers, you deserve many more subscribers than you have, well done :)
it also depends what kind of board you are playing on and other rules like rent, i play alot of rento with my friends and its rent is for some reason set up to be useless until you have 3 housed on it after which it becomes op. knowing that you start with 2000 and want to go for the most expensive set you need 1200 in housing and 750 in buying the property, thats 1950 thatd way too much. plus you are most likely to throw 7 and jail is 7 places in front of the first one rendering it even more useless so nobody goes for that street when we play TL;DR rules differ
Pro Tips: 1.Browns are worthless. 500 you could have spent on houses on your main. 3 players coming up on Yellows 2 vs. 3 houses a piece. 500 gets 5 houses on Purples & Go money added. 2. Oranges with 3 houses wins so everyone blocks this. 3. 1000 3rd house on Boardwalk bankrupts more than anything mid-game. 4. Light Blues + another monopoly is OPed so no one stupid enough to give you the game. 5. Greens + 3 Railroads off sets cost to build making them powerful. 6. Railroad Monopoly can bankrupt you. You have Oranges and you land on Yellows survive then land my railroad go bankrupt now I have your Oranges and will win game. No one gives 4 Railroads yet 3 is easy and now I will out build you. 7. Purples ok yet weak late game. 8. Boardwalk 3 houses, Greens 2 houses a piece + 3 railroads let someone land on it for 3rd houses. Rest colors do hotels max rent. My favs:1.Yellows easy to get, highest rent before jail, landed on a lot, end game good, easy rebuild. 2. Reds same. Tie 2. Greens & Railroads 3. Boardwalk 3rd house. It all comes down to building the fastest which is mostly luck. Pros games are very close no advantages. Any questions or comments on these tips?
I'm now really curious about how big would be the advantage if a player used all the strategies that worked
Well, I think this video ended up being more of a "debunking what doesn't work". But if you do go first and invest all your cash while your opponents sit on their money, I'd say you can be up to 50% more likely not to go bankrupt.
Which, if think about it, is not that high. Unless players do something stupid, Monopoly is a big part a game of chance.
@@GamesComputersPlay then how do I win against my friend 80% of the time.., I think I might be an anomally
@@dablob4491 Is your friend one of those people who has one favorite property set and only ever buys that? That would explain it.
Is your friend bad at bargaining and constantly giving you good trade deals? That would explain it.
@@Tzizenorec nope, he is actually a decent monopoly player
@@dablob4491 clearly he isnt
Best advice on monopoly, don't become the common enemy of the group
Nobody is gonna trade with you lol
So House shortage strat may be even worse as all players will try to force you to sell houses
Unless you got the first houses
@@TunaBear64 they can't tho
This happens to me, every single board game, of if we are playing jackbox games, everyone will collectively target me. People will not vote for my answers on jackbox cause they don't want me to win, they refuse to trade with me, they will actively trade things with each other that mainly handicap me. Welp, can't do much about it now I guess.
Wow, my family has always been baffled at how I always blow all of my money on houses and hotels and still win most of the time. I never would have guessed that you're statistically more likely to win if you do what I do.
It is nice to have a real life proof of matematical simulation!
To be honest, going in, I thought having some unspendable amount would be the best strategy - 200$ or so. I was genuinly surprised when numbers came back that it is not.
@@vlc-cosplayer Great that there is a confirmation of that. Because, frankly, I was dead certain there is some perfect amount of cash to keep untouched - and that would be the best strategy. My guess was $200. Was genuinely surprise when those numbers came back.
@@GamesComputersPlay tbh, the best strategy is to keep some amount, depending on the situation, for example: if you have around 90% chance to not lose or gain money in the next turn, spend it all, if you have a high chance of losing money, you may want to keep some of it, because buying and selling
wastes money completely, yet in most cases u want to spend it because that gains more money. Also, if you are playing with more people, investments make more money.
@@GamesComputersPlay What about simulating saving money during the first X turns of the game to be spent on specific valuable properties that you're about to pass by, like Railroads, the Blues, or the remaining part of a monopoly?
That's actually something businesses do in real life. Unspent money is actually a liability, especially since unspent money is taxed.
Shame you didn't run a final simulation with all strategies that proved advantageous... Great content, keep it up!
Good idea. Could be worth doing :)
Pro tip: Not playing Monopoly cuts loss rates by 100% and gives you an extra 4 hours of your life.
True, this is all simulated for 4 players.
Not sure what you mean "last property/set"?
Negative: you lose 4 hours of pure fun
A curious game. The only winning move is not to play.
Added bonus of keeping your friends/family as well!
And 1 less table to flip back over.
Wow I managed to find a hidden gem youtuber like this. Ty algorythm
FAQ:
How does trading work in this simulation?
Basically, each player has two lists: one of the things they want (missing pieces to complete a monopolly) and things they offer (stray one-of-a-color property). Every move proran search a match between pairs and trios of players - to match what they wish for and offer. If such a match found - property is excahnged, whoever gets the expensive one, pays the price difference to ehoever had a cheaper one.
I agree it is quite basic - and it is a little unfair to whoever trades a cheaper item. But my question is: what it is like in real life? When you trade a 100 plot for 200 plot - what do people do in this situation?
How come the sum of winners are more than 100%?
It is actually a "survival rate", that is player is not banlkrupt within 1000 turns. As there are "endless" games that have 2,3,4 players at 1000 turn-mark (see my other monopoly video for details on that), the sum is greater than 100%.
You should always trade up!
Interestingly, I ran a simulation where Steve refused all deals where he would receive a cheaper property. Guess what - he ended up with seriously lower chances of survival. It gives you 50% opportunities to build a monopoly than your opponents, which is more important than a few bucks you are alledgedly losing on the deal. More on that in future monopoly video, someday.
In my experience, people never trade with me if it means I complete a colour group and they don't. If both of us complete a colour group (with mine being a more expensive one), then they will ask for the difference in value, but they might ask for a little more as my colour is has higher income. Also I figured that players with more money are more likely to accept trades where they have to pay a little extra.
Can't you do a basic reinforcement training to get an intrinsic value of each set?
In my experience people tend to only trade if it means they also get a monopoly. Although I do tend to play also another version of monopoly where that effect is lessened.
It's the best version of monopoly I know, but it seems to be rare. It's a stock market edition where you can invest in properties. So instead of outright owning the property, there's 9 shares in each property that you can build houses/hotels on, and whoever holds the most shares, owns the property (they can build on it if they own the majority on the whole color group). The shares increase in value when there is more demand and also when properties are build. Also when someone lands on it, all shareholders get paid (but only once they pass start, so payments are delayed). If you land on a property you are a majority shareholder in, you don't pay, but if you have only a minority share, you just get a discount
There are other factors that play a role in real games.
Stuff like "yeah, fair trade, but you have money to build houses left" => pay extra for the threat YOUR monopoly poses to me.
Blocking the housing market (buy them all) can be done by an alliance of two or more players, hence marking the others for near certain doom.
And games aren't decided by average incomes alone, streaks happen all the time.
Having bad dice for 2-3 rounds can very much bankrupt someone. This gets more or less nasty depending on who own what colors (landing on green twice can bankrupt, on brown the unlucky player wouldn't even be seen as unlucky).
Like in most games:
Players have to survive AND find a way to get rid of others.
Can please answer. How long took you in time to run 100k and 1m experiments to gain data?
The data's actually really interesting.
One thing I've learned is that spending it all really is more valuable than saving. I followed basically all the other advice anyway (though I still think that the greens are tactically viable against players who know what they're doing, since most will ignore them entirely), but I would've thought having at least a small safety net would be a good idea. Definitely going to remember this video next time I play.
Great content, though, man! New subscriber here, watched a few of your vids already, recommended you to a few friends. Hope the growth continues!
I think the human aspect is a really important part of this that the data, by necessity, doesn’t capture. When I play people are very reluctant to trade other players monopolies, so going for a known bad color like green can pay off big.
@@jacksonletts3724 Yeah, exactly. The light blues are cripplingly underrated, too. Sure, the profit TOTAL is small, but the profit MARGIN is huge. Going for bad colours can often net you success in skilled, casual games.
I always try to buy everything and use all money,believe me if the other player dont do the same is easy win, the problem is that my friends plays the same, to say this the player that have more colors win except 1 time, 1 player had just 1 color and put entire hotels, and rest got just colors ,bt we cannot put houses because we stuck at negociate, and lost terrain, he made after some loops sufficient to take all of the colors we had ,we tryed to make a deal and put some houses but was to late,
I dont just spend because is good to spend I spend because I can stop other players from taking any colors and put hotels and utilities(he sayd that is 1.5 lost change but depends, you will never make utility so will take you down but if somebody make that his change is high at the begging ,but dont buy first)even if you buy everything is still a change to lose,in a game I had houses colors,and I saw other2 players planing to change cards to make both houses ,and they taked money only from me.
spending all money can make you best player ,but be prepared because the higher you are the more target you are .
So many holes... let's start with the one that applies to just about all of these: mortgages.
Optimal play basically requires mortgaging non-monopolies in order to reach the magic "3 house" monopoly as soon as possible. If you're not mortgaging most of your properties to get those houses out ASAP, you're throwing away any advantage you have by getting a monopoly. Greens may not make for a good monopoly, but *any* monopoly is better than no monopoly, and you can trade other players a monopoly they want for a lot of their cash, which you can then use to build houses before them. If you can't get all three greens anymore, those are the first properties to mortgage because they're such a bad value in general. Doing this, buying green should still be worthwhile as long as it's a four player game (two player games have more limited capital, so greens are dangerous to spend that money on). Even utilities are probably worth buying and later mortgaging with this in mind (unless you're already in the monopoly phase).
This mortgage hole also applies to "savings". If you're not counting every single unmortgaged non-monopoly as part of savings, you're ignoring a critical piece of funding for houses, and it's no wonder $0 wins. Someone that aggressively mortgages their properties after they and another person gets a monopoly will be far more likely to win than if they wait until later to get 1, 2, 3 houses. With that in mind, you do still want a small buffer, but it's dependent on where you and your opponents are on the map. If no one's going to land on your monopoly next turn anyway (ignoring doubles), and you're coming up to someone else's housed monopoly, it makes more sense to hold on to your cash/unmortgaged properties until the situation changes, even if it's several hundred dollars.
As for the "3 house" rule itself, your goal in the game is to get a single monopoly and build it up to 3 houses before your opponents (hotel for the first two sets). More often than not, the first person to do this will win in short order as anyone landing on a 3 house monopoly will pay an enormous amount that funds both more houses *and* a larger safety buffer. At this point, a second monopoly can be brought up to 3 houses as well if you have it, but unless you've gotten very lucky, you shouldn't have a second monopoly in the first place. Whether you do or don't, the game is all but over if one person has 3 houses on their monopoly and enough money to land on any property on the board without selling any houses.
While I like the idea of running simulations, you really need to improve the AI if you want meaningful data. All this is showing is certain strategies do or don't work if everyone's playing a very specific, suboptimal way.
Thanks for the comments and insights. As I said. I have next to nothing experience and relied on those tips and tested them the way I understood them.
Now to your points.
Mortgages
I think you might be right, but it just shows that my simulation is incomplete. I showed that spending up to 0 is better than spending up to 100, 200 - any positive amount.
What you are saying is that spending up to -100, -200 etc is even better than spending to 0. I suspect this is might very well be true. With one caveat. Is it possible, that by going too much into negatives you increase the risk of sudden bankrupcy? And there is indeed some optimal amount (like mortgage all, but 200 worth of property) that produces the best result.
A matter to settle with further simulations.
Greens
I am not sure about this one. So in the experiment all other players used greens for exactly that - building monopoly, using as a bagraning chip, mortgaging if they were low on cash. And in the end they were no better of than the guy sho just ignored greens altogether. I have hard time rationalizing it myself - but this is what data showed.
3 houses
Maybe I misundertood the original advice, but this was thee only interpretation that made sense to me. If you have only 1 monopoly - then yes, you need to build 3 houses asap, but also you need to build 2 houses asap, 4 houses, hotel. You need to build everything as soon as possible - this is the way to win the game. Any pause there is bad. Or am I missing something.
What would be the opposite of that advice? Take your sweet time and not build 3rd house even if you have the money?
Thanks for the comment, great discussion.
@@GamesComputersPlay Yeah, it's strange that someone with almost no monopoly experience is doing this, but what better way to learn? :)
For the mortgages, as others have pointed out, you shouldn't view them as negatives. An unmortgaged property is little more than cash that has a small chance to grow in value (i.e. collect rent) every once in a while. This amount is peanuts compared to even a single house monopoly, so for practical purposes any unmortgaged property that isn't part of a monopoly should just be treated as cash. As far as the risk of bankruptcy is concerned, it's more a risk of having to sell houses unless someone else has already reached 3 houses. Since you only get back half what you paid when you sell a house, it's a huge loss if you have to do this, effectively paying double what you would've lost otherwise.
For the greens, as we just established, they weren't being mortgaged to build houses on other monopolies, so any advantage you might get from the small chance of a monopoly on greens is being counterbalanced by having less houses on your monopoly.
For 3 houses, it's an inflection point, and involves how casual players approach the game. Yes, you want to build 1 house, 2 houses, 3, 4, as fast as possible. But if you have two monopolies, some people spread out their resources on both monopolies at the same time. Having 1-2 houses each on two monopolies is significantly worse than 3 houses on a single monopoly, which is the point of the advice. 3 houses in particular is "game ending". That is, if someone lands on it, more than likely they lose, and whoever owns it wins. This applies to all monopolies in the second and third row, with the first row needing a hotel for the same effect, plus either a second monopoly or for everyone else to land on them to prevent building 3 houses on their own monopoly. The 4th row just needs two houses to have about the same effect, although boardwalk is the only location in that row that's notably likely to be landed on due to the chance card.
@@GamesComputersPlay 3 House strat could also mean the intentional limit of the house supply. With a finite amount of houses available, upgrading to Hotels is heavily discouraged, since you are limiting opponents ability to gather cash from other players.
With 32 houses, only 3 1/2 sets are possible to have houses in total, which should be counted in as a strategy.
I have never seen anyone play in they way you described and therefore this video is more valuable by not including your mortaging exploit
@@lollakasfamilianimi3246 Any strategy can be effective when you're playing against bad players.
It's called pub stomping, and it doesn't make it a winning strategy against players that know what they're doing.
It's crazy coming across such a criminally underrated channel. I get the feeling that the algorithm will bless you in the near future good sir. Best of luck with your youtube journey, I love your videos.
These videos are so good, that when I misread your sub count as 3.9M I was like "Yeah that sounds about right". Absolutely floored when I realized my mistake...
Interesting. The first-player advantage is significant, but in theory, giving the other players more starting money (first blush, an extra $65 per position) might make up for that.
That's a great idea for a test: how much money would it be enough to make it equal again?
@@GamesComputersPlay finally, a house rule I might use! lol
Or, change the order upside down a couple of times at the beginning of the game - I mean the last starter gets the second go first.
Different starting cash would be a good variant of Monopoly if we can quantify it. The other question is what's the optimal starting sale price of properties? some may be worth more than their starting price, others like the utilities, less. They said they changed the prices and rents for the game _Anti-Monopoly,_ which I only played once.
Other idea is bidding/ blind bidding who goes first
I had never heard of the "buy only 3 houses" tip, usually it's "buy 4 houses so that no houses are left and no one (except you) can buy hotels"
Edit: bad habit of commenting before seeing all the video
The tip I created myself was "buy everything except utilities because they don't give enough money back" and I'm glad I was right
Buy 3 houses is for rent value. Buy 4 houses is to use up all the houses so no one else can buy them.
Buy 4 if you have the spare cash. But if you have teh choice of buying 4th houses or investing money elsewhere, the other option is likely better
There were times when we put property up for bid and paid half price (mortgage value) + $1. There must be some value for the greens and utilities to make them worth buying for the player AI that didn't want them at all. Likewise if you're short of cash, when is it worth mortgaging to buy more property?
@@sandal_thong8631 I thought when you land on an unowned space you can only decide to buy it or let it go to auction, not mortgage in order to buy it.
I think auctions are very important to consider, as is other players playing with the same strategy.
E.g. if you're the only player willing to buy green and it goes to auction, it's almost certainly worthwhile to buy it for $1
I don't think anyone buys it for $1. Usually the bid for unwanted property is mortgage price +$1.
Just wanna say first of all, I really love this type of content. I thought your video was very cool.
Definitely be conscious of the strategies that the opposing AIs are using, since it's not easy to statistically "prove" that one strategy is better than another. Playing against sub-optimal opponents definitely could affect your results. I tried building a chess AI based on a random opponent, and it ended up wanting to capture protected pieces because it didn't think the opponent would capture back.
Nevertheless, I'll definitely try some of these strategies out. Wish me luck. :)
I feel like move order is heavily effected by auctions. Sucks that it's hard to simulate objectively, since I bet it would equalize quite a fair bit.
Since it is open source project, someone could code a reasonable auction AI and slap it on top of it. I might give it a shot
Go for it, that would be great.
I do feel a bit bad that I didn't clean up the code much. I tried to leave some comments, but some of my programming habits are quite terrible (like obscurely naming variables). So if you are up for a challenge, might need some untangling of logic to do.
Also, should have used GitHub like an adult.
Honestly there aren't that many auctions, nor important ones per game. Unless you're playing with a group that has absolutely no idea how to play...
@@justingolden21 Depends on your player amount. 2 player for example it's nearly impossible to not auction.
(Assuming you use official rules where any time you refuse to buy from the bank an auction happens on that property)
@@walugusgrudenburg3068 that's a good point. Almost every game I've played has been 3,4, or 5 players. I have no idea how 2 players plays other than 2 players when the others have been eliminated
so shocked when i saw that you only had just under 2.5k subs, insane, you deserve so much more, keep up the good work
Commenting for the algorithm. I can't wait to use these tips in the next game of Monopoly I play.
Thanks!
Looking back at the video I think it turned out to be more of "debunking monopooly tips". Most of them don't work, and those that do, bring only small advantage.
Only thing that can make a difference is "go first and put everything in".
@@GamesComputersPlay I mean, I appreciate the debunking on my strat of ignoring browns :D
Man, I just typed out a long ramble/rant about my childhood strategy before watching this video to see how it holds up to math. Then TH-cam stopped responding, so here's the rundown.
In essence treat the board not as individual properties, but as sets. Any set will out-value any individual property.
We played highest dice roll goes first but no buying properties until you've passed go once.
For the first 1-2 (big early rolls do 3) buying times round, trade nothing, if you have none of the color you land on, buy. If you have 1, don't buy, unless you also have at least 1 property in the next two colors in front of you, then buy.
Trade utilities away, they're worthless to own, and hold way more trading power than you'd expect to make from them.
Prioritise trading for orange, light blue, brown, and red or yellow but not both, in that order.
Never make or accept a trade that would complete someone else's color set. Trade higher valued individual properties or a similar value + cash to complete your own sets. This makes people think they're gaining value, and they are, but long term your set will outweigh the investment you made trading at a loss.
Build a hotel on your highest value set first, then houses the rest, then hotel them all.
I haven't played in probably 8 years, being 10-11 when we played often and hating the luck factor.
I've never had a real reason for why this was my strategy other than 'it feels intuitive for minimising the luck', but I only remember losing a handful of games with it - always down to luck of the rolls.
I mean there's more to it than just what I've put here, over time I realised monopoly is just as much about psycology and manipulating people as it is about properties and sets.
But that's the run down.
Thanks.
Personally I agree with having one lap without buying things, but this is not canon.
I am not sure what to do with, say advice "prioretise trading for Orange". If you have 1 orange - you trade it for something else, if you have 2 - yes, you want the 3rd one of course. But same goes for all sets, no?
Never accept the trade that complete someone else's set. I have the biggest problem with this one. In my simulation the base line for trade is: trade completes both traders' sets. Otherwise there is no point in trading. If everybody doesn't agree to trades that complete oppponents' sets - no monopolies will ever be completes by trade. Might as well not trade a all.
I maybe looking at it from adult perspective and it's different when kids play, but I think hoping to get a deal when you get a monopoly, but the other person doesn't is wishfull thinking. Or this is something happening regularly with younger players?
@@GamesComputersPlay I'm glad you agree with the first lap thing, though not canon it feels like it it removes some of the "whoever rolls first is most likely to win".
As with trading I couldn't tell you why I liked going for those colors, I just kind of did.
Never trading to complete other's sets does introduce more of a challange when it comes to trading, but (in my younger experience anyway) people usually are willing to give you something that'll complete your set if you can give them the second color in one of their sets, and usually cash on top too.
Meaning value wise I would almost always trade at a loss. After watching the video money in hand is a great factor I hadn't thought of beforehand, I would try to have as little cash money as possible and put it all into properties.
Looking back at it I think I started playing Monopoly with my family at around 8 years old, but being almost 22 now and not having played a game in years now I'd like to believe I could come up with a more optimised trading pattern - or at least bargain better than I could back then to get better deals. But in general as long as you're overpaying for a property you can complete your sets pretty easily.
I'd love to see/find the most optimal strategy and chances it gives, though with the differences in how everybody plays I suppose there couldn't just be one across the board strat.
Shocked you only have so few subscribers, so commenting for the algorithm. Very interesting video, I'll be using these tips if I ever play Monopoly with my family again ;)
Very interesting! Real surprise to me to notice how bad the green colour actually is. I always knew deep blue is a killer set.
The last point is difficult: I still believe that in certain situations you would be a total jerk to invest ALL your money - say, if nobody is coming to your place during the next two turns and you are facing a jungle of dangerous squares with your very next throw. But these nuances are of course next to impossible to computerize.
Great stuff - keep it up!
You should run a simulation where Steve mortgages individual properties to fund house buying (once they have a monopoly). I've always been curious if the houses outweigh the lost properties or not.
Also, is it better to put houses on cheap or expensive properties first (if you have multiple monopolies), as well as whether you should do hotels on one set before you start houses on a second.
Great video!
I'm 1 year late, but this is a bit of a no brainer imo. Individual properties earn you such little money, you absolutely make more money by mortgaging them to buy houses
It would be interesting to see the ‘mortgage everything once you hit a monopoly and build build build!’ strategy works in a million games.
man i am glad i subscribed, didn't know we were getting part 2 so soon
Same
Thanks guys! Probably not gonna be so fast for the next one though. I am in the middle of coding my next project, and usually making a video is even more time-consuming. Hope it is going to be worth the wait.
@@GamesComputersPlay i hope so too
11:27 Did you account for mortgages on this one?
In general, I suspect that your simulation might create fewer monopolies than actual over-the-board trade between Human players tends to generate. This would, besides other things, make saving money less important and significantly increase the chances of an endless game.
The thing with mortgaging property is that a lot of advanced guides _should_ frame non-monopoly properties as mortgage capital, and include them in your savings. So if you want to build houses, saving 0 would mean that you would mortgage everything that isn't one of your monopolies or maybe railroads. Likewise, saving 0 would also mean that you would mortgage all of your properties to buy 1 more property, which yes you can mortgage so you inadvertently have _some_ emergency funds, but if your opponents have a monopoly built up that might be risky.
Also, what if you only start to apply this "save X" rule once someone on the table (including yourself) has a monopoly? And what if that X depends on the most expensive 3-house property you could have to pay, or luxury tax if there are no monopolies?
I also think that the "bankruptcy is handled by the bank" house rule overly stabilizes games of 4-8 players even if a player manages to run out of money. If the player causing the bankruptcy received all of the properties, they would have a high chance of finding a new monopoly or at least some good trade options, leading to a higher chance for a decisive game.
My problem is that trading to create sets. Normally in games I play we have 1 to 4 sets created and that is from 0 to 3 trades.
Accounting for Mortgages:
no, I didn't. Which is a good point for testing: if 0 is better than any positive number, it is not impossible than a negative number would be better than 0.
Number of Monopolies:
I have actual zero life experience with Monopoly, but I suspect my simulation produces more monopolies than humans: Simulation allowed for some lopsided trades - pink for indigo, brown for green etc. (with compensation, but still) I suspect in real life players would avoid such deals. Unless people do something that I am totally missing.
Bankrupcy handled by bank
Yes, agree, it does not produce extra inequality, while normal rules do - which prolongs the game.
In my defence, the rules of it were bit too complex - with recepient having to pay interest immediately and mortgage sum later, if they so desire. I was a bit disheartened by it and just gave up.
This channel deserves a lot more attention! Interesting stuff. :)
I thought the entire point of the "build houses, not hotels" strategy was to deny your opponents house pieces, as houses are finite.
That's a good point
I always used to buy the brown properties and build houses on them, since they were so cheap.
Good to see I did a lot right.
Great video!
Solid video. However, one thing that simulating these situations never accounts for is nuance. For example, you don't want to get obsessed with the blues, but given the chance to buy them you should if you have the money.
Not buying hotels advice seems like it might work better if thought of as "don't buy hotels if there is an opponent that won't be able to buy all the houses he can accomodate thanks to that". Also, "don't buy hotels if you can still buy more houses" to keep with the spirit of "don't save money" advice.
Part of the problem with unwavering strategies is that each game is dynamic. Some actions are powerful early in the game and some are better later. If only one player controls any color group that allows them to play differently than if other players also had groups. Following proven strategies is good, but circumstances can cause a person to play more aggressively to try and force other players to be weakened.
Yeah, like if two players are avid traders, and believe the first two who can trade for monopolies can eliminate the other two before both or either can get a monopoly. If it's a tournament, there may be some value in coming in 2nd place, too.
Neat analysis! Thanks for uploading!
I think it would be worth testing the 4 house system again seeing if odds go up if exactly two players always try to hoard all the houses. Do the overall chances for the two players go up relative to the other two? And then what about if three out of four hoard the houses? Do they hurt the chances of the one player who didn't hoard houses?
This is an excellent question as 1 player can't monopolise the houses but two can go very close and would make getting to a hotel very difficult for other players.
Fun video I like the business power point presentation style.
i've heard the point of getting hotels is that the physical pieces have a limit, and keeping the houses makes sure no one else can buy those until someone buys the first hotel. you didn't seem to mention it at all (and neither did i ever play the actual game with anyone), so it would be cool to see what would happen if you implement a rule on limited pieces.
Wait, I do have limited pieces there (32 houses and 12 hotels, if I remember correctly). What I didn't do is to implement any nuances in this strategy - just a hard stop at 4 houses, no matter what player's/opponents' situation. Which may make a difference, I admit.
@@GamesComputersPlay i see. thank you for letting me know ^-^
Thanks going to look at your code for interest on how you go it running so fast. I'm your second only follower on GitHub. Good Luck with the channel
It would be awesome to see a monopoly AI based on your program
I mean technically it is a Monopoly AI... Just playing agains itself fully inside of a program.
Awesome video! I don’t play monopoly much but these tips will definitely help next time I do (:
Ideas for future games: is it possible you change the buy prices of props to test the win rate? E.g. Greens cost 20 more dollars and compute win rate, it's super useful stuff for auctions. Additionally, can you compute some of these for two players? Railroads are definitely not worth buying w 2 players.
Funny, I used to always go for the Expensive properties and while it was good when someone hit Mayfair with 4 houses, I'd usually get hit by those orange properties, coz you keep going to jail and then you have to run the gauntlet when you get out! I always liked railroads because they are a consistent pay-out, maybe those 3 are the ones, maybe the pinks if I can get them too, imagine someone having a railroad, 3 pinks and 3 oranges all developed as soon as you leave jail and hoping that you don't get a chance or community chest sending you to jail, or land on that damn go to jail square!
Also me: builds a bunch of houses and hotels: spends all my money: street repairs
Should've simulated the "perfect player" at the end
I think the money saving advice is for auctions along with not buying out property's like green and utility's(railroads advice is simply sabotage though). i don't think your program can account for that if you have 0 dollars you are essentially locked out of auctions(you can mortgage but that is not always possible or advantageous). the variable i think would be interesting to test for is if mortgaging immediately after purchasing a property to finance other property purchases is beneficial or not.
Amazing content! Keep it up! Definitely subscribed! :)
Really interesting content. Subbed :)
My number 1 tip for Monopoly. Be the person to take the box out of the cupboard, and slip yourself a few 100's.
At this point, “no house rules” is practically a house rule
The official rules are not silent regarding who goes first. It's determined by a dice roll. Highest roller goes first and then it goes in clockwise rotation.
Checked Hasbro manual, you seem to be right.
So it is a combination of dice throw and pre-existing sitting arrangements.
i play with the house rule that a house turned upside down counts as 2 so we never run out of houses
house = 1 house
house upside down = 2 houses
upside down + regular = 3 houses
2 upside down = 4 houses (in some variants where that's a thing)
hotel = hotel
hotel upside down = double hotel (again, only in some variants)
On the one hand, it is one of the more criticized house rules, as far as I know - ignoring house limit by any tricks.
On the otehr hand - I had a test to see if it makes any signinficant difference to remome the limit. Turns out it doesn't.
We played a game called eurobussiness :) And we modified it:
- you could build houses / hotels immediately at any property (no monopoly required)
- you could have 1 hotel and 4 houses
- when you buy houses / hotels you had to pay renting price (not building price)
- you could buy houses / hotels in cheap locations and then move to expensive locations (there were a kind of tax for it)
It was our version of wild capitalism. And apart from it it was cheating (extra money transfers) :)
Because of it game was much shorter.
Totally. I remember as a kid, you don't really care about those "official rules". Whatever seems like a good idea - let's do it. (And now, looking back from the game design perspective most of them were really bad ideas).
There's certainly a lot of nuance to all of this. With spending your money, if there are no opponents close to landing on your properties, and you're close to landing on something with a big payout, then there is simply no reason to spend all your money.
But of course, if you live by a hard rule of "my money cannot go below this amount", then you're going to be in a world of hurt.
There's other strategies here relative to how much you are winning the game by. If you are losing, then desperation plays of throwing all your money are are obviously the only choice. Play to your outs.
But if you're winning, you can slowly squeeze your opponents out of the game rather than opening yourself to additional risk
Number 1 piece of advice
BUY EVERYTHING YOU LAND ON
Between this video examining first player advantage and last video examining house rules for player's starting capital and its effect on game length and chance of stalemates, I find myself wondering if the odds of winning could be evened out, and simultaneously reduce the odds of stalemates, by holding an auction for the turn order at the start, or else allowing players to trade money to each other for their place in the turn order if we're trying to keep the starting capital evenly distributed. (really depends on how it works out within the full ruleset)
At the very least, it feels having such a house rule would be pretty in theme for the game. What could be more in appropriate for a game about would be monopolists than paying for a starting advantage?
Intetesting idea. Mine was to actually figure out, how much money should be redistributed between players, so the chance would even out. Say, have players start with 1000, 1200, 1400, 1600 - will it result in equal chances? Something to test in some future video.
You might want to try the game _Anti-Monopoly_ if you want to change things so there's no stalemate.
you can't not allow for auctions, it's a core mechanic that has a large impact on the decision making process within the game.
Great concept! One thing I’m curious about is how the results would change if the simulations were run on games with 30-40 turns instead of 1,000 turns. I would suspect that it could change some of the results, particularly if the benefit increases the longer the game.
For example, buying the “blue” properties may be somewhat advantageous in a shorter game, but may be more advantageous in a game the runs longer.
If the break even point is turn 25 a 1000 turn game will have different results then a 30 turn game.
I'm afraid 30-40 turns is where most of the games are still going - there are no clear winner. Median length is around 50 or so - don't remember the exact number, it is in my other video.
Different case is when you hard stop the game after a certain tuen and count the number of assets and declare one who has the most a winner. This will definetily change a lot of strategies, I imagine.
That makes sense, thanks for the reply.
“Don’t build hotels” definitely works if you have multiple of the cheapest sets, you can keep all the houses for relatively low money, nearly impossible to lose
Varying the amount of players could make a huge difference. Perhaps indigo is worse if you have less players
It's very interesting how browns came right after oranges for effect on ignoring them. It seems that everyone values oranges in the top 3 color sets and browns in the bottom 3.
Its not because browns are actually secretly good, but because you only need 2 of them to make a set. The same goes for the dark blues. It really skews the data for the method he used due to the lack of trading implemented and makes them appear much better than they actually are. In reality the blues are still decent but the browns are still one of the worst property sets to have on the board
Could you make a simulation to play the board game catan and find the best method to win?
Regarding the 3-house and hotel tests - were ALL players playing by that, or just one? It might be interesting to see if more advantage is seen by players using that strategy if only 3, 2 or 1 player is using that strategy.
With regard to move order, I do recall one friend who suggested a rule where on the first lap around the board, all actions are frozen - no buying of property, no viewing of chance cards, no going to jail or paying luxury taxi etc., no collecting $200 after passing Go. Sort of a stress free tour of the neighborhoods as you roll around the board once, presumably to prevent the likelihood of the 2nd, 3rd or fourth player rolling the same number as player 1, or any previous player, and immediately paying rent instead of an opportunity to acquire property, a fate that no doubt contributes to the vast disparity in success for player A v B v C v D discovered in the analysis. I never liked my friend’s idea, despite its apparent nobility, and I wonder if it really affects the player success rates, other than marginally, in the long run.
Interesting idea to simulate. My guess is it evens out the inequality, but not completely.
Another idea I like is to auction off places - you pay extra (or, rather start with less money) - and you can go first.
I actually simlated how much money should be redistributed between places to make it even. Should make another video with the result. It's about 150$ or so for the first place, don't have the exact results in front of me now.
@@GamesComputersPlay I think one of the official alternate rules suggests doling out the properties like cards to each player and you go from there. Because it is random, that does seem fair, but there is something exciting about rolling the dice and seeing where you will land.
Tldr; Go first, buy everything except utilities, upgrade to hotels, don't save money
Yep, pretty much that's it
How can every player have 30% chance to win? That doesn't make any sense
He is measuring percentage to survive more than 1000 turns or win, which is why the percentages add to more than 100.
Right. That is because in certain portion of games there is no winner - sometimes 2, 3, and quite often all 4 are alive at the turn 1000 (this is where simulation ends).
So it is not a chance to win (total of which would be less than 100% for that reason), but a survival chance.
I wonder which properties it is best to upgrade first, should all properties stay about even, or focus on 1 set?
very interesting
I haven't played monopoly in years but i was sure interesting to see the results^^
It would seem to me that the -1.2% result for utilities indicates not that they should be ignored, but that they are slightly overpriced and should be allowed to go to auction. However, this would be only for the first one landed on. Once one utility is already owned, it behooves the player landing on the other to buy it, if only to keep it out of the hands of the player who has the first one.
Sometimes someone puts it up for auction to make the other players bid it up to get/block a monopoly.
Not buying dark blue and railroads having the most impact is not suprising, given there are cards forcing you to move to those locations
Pro tip: getting monopolies with no houses available are worthless, house control is key to minimize threat and dominate the game
Re: don't buy X property
According to the official rules, which no one seems to use, if you land on a property and don't buy it, it is put up for auction. *All* players bid on it, until only one person is either willing or able to pay the bid.
Interestingly, this is a valid strategy, as if no other player can afford the property, but you don't want to pay full price, just put it up for auction and get it for cheap.
TL;DR: You can't just "ignore a property" if you land on it, because you guarantee a different player will buy it instead.
I agree it's a bit of a stretch.
But for the sake of determining relative worth of different groups - I should be good enough. Wwhatever error it introduces, it should cancel out - as it will be exactly the same for all colors.
Ive played a lot of monopoly and i can tell you most of these statistics were expected, although i did believe greens were worse than they really are
I thought the Monopoly rules were quite clear on player order - players roll two dice and the player with the highest total goes first; then play proceeds clockwise from there. Therefore, there's no strategy available in "trying to go first" - it's effectively random.
I re-read the official Hasbro manual after making this video - and yes, you are right. It's basically random. It still offers huge advantage though.
@@GamesComputersPlay In that case there should be a difference in starting money like other games. But how much?
@@sandal_thong8631 I happen to have the exact answer to that question: 1386, 1458, 1534, 1622
It evens out the chances of all 4 players to within 0.1%
@@GamesComputersPlay Nice. I'll have to copy it down for when it comes up next in conversation. Thanks.
So in practical play ignoring greens is stronger because the real advice is to not buy houses on them or build a monopoly for them in general.
IDK how your simulation handled this but if you do the "no houses on greens don't trade for greens" I think you'll find a small increase in win%
Wait, so the advice shouild be - Do buy greens but don't build houses on them? Just use them as a barganing chip you mean? Hmmm... It might be true, but I don't think it will shift the balance much.
Another possible nuance to this is, some of these strategies could show as positive effects against your baseline player, but could have negative effects while other good strategies are applied to the other players.
Put differently, some strategies can be more punishing to other specific strategies. Like a Rock Paper Scissors dynamic
GIVE ME MAYFAIR YOU CAN HAVE ALL MY PROPERTIES 😭😭😭
didn't expect this to have less than 6M views
Here's an interesting question: should you mortgage property to buy property or houses?
The second is worthy of simulation like the "money to 0" strategy. Obviously the first depends on the situation. I like the table that shows number of opponents' rolls for payback. I presume that if it's not a railroad or monopoly then it's not going to pay for itself any time soon. Like a green pays $26, but interest on unmortgaging it is $15 so I don't think you should unmortgage property until your monopoly is at all hotels.
if buying green gives no net benefit then Absolutely Avoid buying them. You're tying up funds that you could have spent on more expensive properties and upgrades instead.
The greens do well in a long game if you get hotels on them. I think buying greens at half-price might be better than at full price or ignoring them. Of course you only need to buy 1 to block them.
1K mark lessgooo! discord when?
I don't know what I did (actually I know - nothing), but suddenly youtube algorythm fell in love with me.
I hope I can be worthy of this honor. Really appreciate it!
As for discord, to be honest, I am barely keeping up with YT comments. :)
@@GamesComputersPlay I'm happy the algorithm picked you up! considering the amount of effort you put into your videos you're definately worth it! keep up the good work but make sure you don't get burnt out :) your health is more important than TH-cam.
Great video my strategy has always been buy orange and build hotels there.
Don't build hotels is bad advice... But what about "build hotel only when you can immediately use at least 3 houses somewhere else on your properties"
Probably not going to work in this simulation. Because if a player had a ready-to-built monopoly, and the money to build on it - they should have dont it already (these players build as soon as they have an opportunity).
It leaves a small chance that the player didn't build becase there were no houses on the market (meaning someone already have a few monopolies on top on this player's 2 monopolies) not impossible, but very-very-very unlikely.
Wow, great video!
This is my favourite video on TH-cam now. I love it!
I have been really surprised by the fact that causing house scarcity isnt that successful.
To be fair, I might have built a straw man out of this one.
If the advice went something like: "if you have 2 monopolies or more and your opponents haven't built their houses yet, (maybe couple more clarifications when it is a good idea to do so) - then stop at 4 houses" - I expect it might have some positive effect, but still very small because the scenario is too rare to begin with.
But as the advice goes "Don't build hotels", this is exactlly what I have tested. And I don't feel guilty for this bout of intellectual dishonesty on my side. :)
I'd be interested to see the "Don't Buy Hotels" strategy statistics when the player only does so under the conditions they are in first (or a close second) and no other player has the potential to build a hotel.
I went into this in depth in a different thread, but assuming all of your programming is accurate- since a housing shortage locks the board state, if you have less than a 25% chance of winning from that point (or, indeed, less than half of the average between the top two players), not buying hotels is just increasing your chance of losing. Similarly, if another person can break the shortage, whoever does so first, all else equal, has a huge advantage. So statistics which fail to factor these variables will be misleading.
Actually, assuming you programmed it just that 1 bot never bought hotels regardless of situation, and the others did, the fact that the simulation only saw a 7.4% decrease is weak evidence that the strategy is phenomenal while ahead, since if you are in projected 3rd or 4th place, either you never corner the market, so you're just playing with a handicap from behind, or you do, and in the simplified board state, you almost guarantee your loss. So if, statistically, half of the time not buying hotels almost guarantees a loss, that's 25% loss in games relative to playing blindly. So for the overall model to show only a -7.4% difference (I assume from 25? So an average showing of 23% victory?), the average of the remaining two must be almost 50% to win, which is an insane advantage.
I agree I might have intentianally oversimplified the "no hotels" strategy, and given the right conditions, it may bring some positive results. (Personally, I doubt that, but I am not the source of truth, simulation is).
In my defence, all those Monopoly tips didn't elaborate when one should follow the "no hotels" strategy - they were just blunt about it: don't buy hotels. So I just took it at the face value.
A few months ago, I had found a good video that explains many tips and how to use them, they were all actually logical and worked, I wonder what the results would be, yet, they may be difficult to implement...
Idk though, amma try to properly list all of it first, might take a few days cause I dont have a clue on where to find that video...
If it gives enough cool tips would u consider a part 3 ?
I think I collected 4-5 really interesting ideas for experiments through the comment section - so yes, bring it on!
I am not giving any particular timeline tho, these things take forever to code and make a video of.
@@GamesComputersPlay th-cam.com/video/JBZsLbAF8bc/w-d-xo.html
This video is decent at explaining the basics...
Auctions probably increases and decreases the value of certain properties. Specifically greens are are worth more since the investment into them is usually lower thanks to the auction. Assumption is that the player who lands on green knows about the advice of ignoring them and decides to not buy them, giving the opportunity for another player to get it at marked value or less thanks to the auction.
There is also the chance that some properties might be too expensive to be bought by the player landing on them for the first time (happens with indigo a lot if you buy everything in your first round the table), further skewing data. The general trend might remain the same though
I am working on my own monopoly simulator now, *in JavaScript*. I will post it on CodePen when I am done.
Sounds awesome! Yes, share the link somewhere here when you are done - I am curious (especially, if you don't cut the corners that I cut).
Nice baseline stats. Next you could test synergies and metas. For instance, what happens if you use combinations of strategies--would they result in more than the sum of their parts? Second, what if all the players are Steves? Which strategies--if ignored--lower your chances of winning in such a meta? Also, another strategy to include: prioritize building houses on spaces ahead of other players--and prioritize players that are closer to 7 spaces away.
I think the reason the blues are positive is because, most of the bots already had good or, lots of monopoly's so buying the blues was only positive. So, if you are getting it as your first set it's bad but if you have other monopoly's its pretty good
I'm having some trouble believing the indigo are approaching double the value of orange. Has this factored in jail, cards, number of players, etc? Indigo usually bankrupt a player if developed, but unless no other players have a monopoly, you often lag behind in development (As indigo costs ~200$ per house. And if you are up against a house hoarder you might not be able to.), and another reason orange is valued is because it's in the sweet spot for dice rolls after a player gets out of jail. There is also the cards, far more of which seem to favor orange.
Advance to Boardwalk, favors indigo obviously.
Advance to Illinois Ave, skips orange, but you still need to pass the go to jail, and 2 card spaces before reaching the indigo properties.
Advance to St. Charles Place, favors orange, it puts you in the sweet spot range to land on them.
Advance to Reading Railroad, favors orange by skipping indigo and putting you ~2 turns away from orange.
Advance to utility, favors orange for 4 or the card spaces, and indigo for 2 (and like Illinois ave, you still need to pass go to jail and 2 card spaces.)
Advance to the nearest railroad favors orange half the time.
Go back 3 spaces, favors orange since you can actually land on an orange with it, but not an indigo, only the right side chance space favors indigo while the rest favor orange.
x2 Go to jail, favors orange for the reasons jail does of course.
x2 Advance to Go, favors orange since it skips the indigo wherever you are on the board.
I have played monopoly probably a few hundred times, usually with x4 players, and admittedly not 100k, and see orange get landed on far more frequently than indigo, mostly due to jail and cards. The raidroads and purple/brown, being valuable doesn't surprise me though. I will say I can see the indigo's value skyrocketing in an 8-player game though.
My friends do the thing where any money that should go to the bank goes to free parking and then whoever lands there gets it. Can you see how much longer this makes games take? Or the results of other house rules?
II think what will happen is will add some more randomness, and also overall the game will lengthen, but not by too much. How much money would usually be generated this way on average - 50-60$ per player per lap? So macroeconomically it is the same thing as raise the salary by the same amount (as everybody has about the same chance of getting it).
@@GamesComputersPlay that kind of thing can generate thousands and decide the game
@@GamesComputersPlay The problem with looking at that rule macroeconomically is the fact that a 1-2k cash injection can often make it so a player can go from nothing straight to hotels. In a number of scenarios, this pretty much hands that player a free win significantly quicker than would otherwise have happened. In my experience, free parking money almost always goes into houses/hotels which invariably actually accelerates the game.
Posting this before watching the vid. Here's the essential Monopoly strategy:
- Buy everything you can (i.e. never allow a property go to auction early on in the game; if you land on it, buy it)
- Trade with other players in order to gain "monopolies" (i.e. usually 3 properties of the same color group), so you can put houses/hotels on them
- Late game, stay in jail in order to avoid paying rent (or paying anything else)
- Because of the frequency of which people land in jail, the orange/red properties give you the most bang for your buck (i.e. they have good rental income and are situated at likely dice roll values from jail)
- Late game, since only a finite number of houses can be purchased, it may be wise to use houses instead of hotels in order to block opponents
- Trade, trade, trade, as without expressing skill via negotiations with others, the game is all luck; Monopoly is really a game of trading
- You got it quite right with the buying and trading.
- I didn't test jaiil strategy, so can't say.
- Orange and Red: this one turns out is where everybody missed an important thing. Brown and Dark Blue are easiest monopolies to complete - making them more valuable statistically speaking than Red and Orange.
- Houses inseatd of hotel. I tested the most straightforward implementation of this, that is, plainly refuse build hotels, in all situations - and it is a very bad strategy. I admit it can be more beneficial if you use more nuanced aproach.
And again: totally correct about trading.
@@GamesComputersPlay Thanks for the reply!
I've died to so many got dam misfortunes at St. James Place that I can assure you - Greens are NOT to be ignored. They're extremely strategically relevant given their high relative value and location.
Strategically speaking; because "Go To Jail" is the one corner you can't safely land on; and high-frequency rolls (5s-9s) from the preceding Red section before them will nearly always land you on one.
Man, better Title and thumbnail and this could have gone viral for sure
No, not the masterpiece of my life I spent the whole 40 minutes to create.
Just kidding, I am actually open to good ideas. What would you change?
@@GamesComputersPlay I have no idea ^^ It reminds of a video from Matt Parker, just a bit more playful. And that one went viral i believe. Everyone should see your video and think: man, finally some hard facts what works in this stupid game i cant make sense of. ^^
I dont know maybe someone else has an idea? :)
@@GamesComputersPlay I would probably go with somethin a bit more specific like "How I computed the secret Monopoly strategy" or "Should you actually buy Roads in Monopoly?", "The Secret Monopoly Strategys that actually work" ...
I have a question about the don't buy hotels strategy, what if it's changed to don't buy hotels unless you can buy more houses to keep the house shortage? will that make any differance?
Have you thought about simulating Settlers of Catan ? It will probably be very challenging since trading with other players is at the core of the gameplay.
My question, for the graph showing what property sets are best, with dark blue being best and etc. We're the games that were simulated similar to an actual human version of monopoly? We're trades made, We're houses and hotels places? Or were the properties just bought and then players went around the board until one remained, because housing cost and trades play a big part in a property sets intrinsic value, i would love to know so that I know this order of importance graph can be applied to my games :)
Trades, houses, hotels, chance cards and community chest - all yes, were there.
Things that were not there or were different/simplified:
- auctions were nto there
- bankruptcy handled by the bank
- only default jail behavior (wait for doubles, pay fine on 3rd attempt).
I thought about this result in property groups value. The most reasonable explanation I have is that Dark Blue and Browns are monopolies that are easiest to get (only 2 to have it) - which makes it far more likely to end up being a monoopoly in the game - and way more detrimental if you choose to ignore them.
@@GamesComputersPlay Okay, thank you dude! I really appreciate the reply, I guess in real games your values for what properties are better would be even larger, dark blues for example being WAY better than it is now, because bankrupting a player gets you all their stuff in traditional rules, which is practically a guaranteed win, places with lower rent wouldn't do this as easily, but thank you :) your channel is very informative and I'm glad to see a TH-camr who is active with his viewers, you deserve many more subscribers than you have, well done :)
it also depends what kind of board you are playing on and other rules like rent, i play alot of rento with my friends and its rent is for some reason set up to be useless until you have 3 housed on it after which it becomes op. knowing that you start with 2000 and want to go for the most expensive set you need 1200 in housing and 750 in buying the property, thats 1950 thatd way too much. plus you are most likely to throw 7 and jail is 7 places in front of the first one rendering it even more useless
so nobody goes for that street when we play
TL;DR rules differ
yeah when i was young I liked to always buy green cause I like green a lot
Needless to say it was incredibly rare for me to win
I do agree green is a very nice color. Not as nice as purple, but up there.
Pro Tips: 1.Browns are worthless. 500 you could have spent on houses on your main. 3 players coming up on Yellows 2 vs. 3 houses a piece. 500 gets 5 houses on Purples & Go money added. 2. Oranges with 3 houses wins so everyone blocks this. 3. 1000 3rd house on Boardwalk bankrupts more than anything mid-game. 4. Light Blues + another monopoly is OPed so no one stupid enough to give you the game. 5. Greens + 3 Railroads off sets cost to build making them powerful. 6. Railroad Monopoly can bankrupt you. You have Oranges and you land on Yellows survive then land my railroad go bankrupt now I have your Oranges and will win game. No one gives 4 Railroads yet 3 is easy and now I will out build you. 7. Purples ok yet weak late game. 8. Boardwalk 3 houses, Greens 2 houses a piece + 3 railroads let someone land on it for 3rd houses. Rest colors do hotels max rent. My favs:1.Yellows easy to get, highest rent before jail, landed on a lot, end game good, easy rebuild. 2. Reds same. Tie 2. Greens & Railroads 3. Boardwalk 3rd house. It all comes down to building the fastest which is mostly luck. Pros games are very close no advantages. Any questions or comments on these tips?
I always buy everything I land on, save no money and build as many houses as I can. Seems like that is the approved approach.