Testing Monopoly Tips with Python simulation. Should you really ignore greens? (and much more)
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- čas přidán 2. 06. 2024
- There are dozens, maybe more, articles all over the Internet with tips how to always win in Monopoly. Let's test some of those by simulating hundreds of thousands of games with Python.
Ignoring certain properties, different building stategies, cash reserve - which will have the maximum (positive) effect on the outcome?
This is the second video about Monopoly. In the first one - simiulating Monopoly games to see what is the chance of endless Monopoly and what affects it. Here it is: • What's the probability...
Source code is the same: github.com/gamescomputersplay...
Timecodes:
0:00 Intro
0:59 Psycological tips
2:28 Move order
4:10 Buying property
8:02 Building stuff
10:35 Cash on hand
12:26 Outro
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Autumn 2011 by Loxbeats spoti.fi/34tPBBO
Creative Commons - Attribution 3.0 Unported - CC BY 3.0
Free Download / Stream: bit.ly/autumn-2011
Music promoted by Audio Library • Autumn 2011 - Loxbeats...
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P.S. My channel experiencing absolutely unreal growth in subs and views right now. Thank you everybody for viewing, liking and subscribing! - Hry
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.
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
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.
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?
Wow I managed to find a hidden gem youtuber like this. Ty algorythm
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.
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.
because the ROI on 3 houses is the biggest
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.
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 .
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
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.
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. :)
Fascinating stuff! It's so neat to see how these various things add up to a statistically significant result.
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
This channel deserves a lot more attention! Interesting stuff. :)
I discovered your channel today, you're really underrated. I love how you put the source code in each one of your videos.
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!
This is my favourite video on CZcams now. I love it!
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
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 ;)
Awesome video. Would love to see more tips tested.
Amazing content! Keep it up! Definitely subscribed! :)
Neat analysis! Thanks for uploading!
Such a great video. This deserves more views!!
what started out i thought was a fun meme video turned out to be an increbily interesting research
Bravo!
Awesome video! I don’t play monopoly much but these tips will definitely help next time I do (:
very interesting
I haven't played monopoly in years but i was sure interesting to see the results^^
I discovered your channel today, and you today upload this. Thank you very much!
You're very welcome! Unfortunately I can't promise daily uploads, even weekly. Monthly sounds more realistic... But thanks for sticking around!
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
Really interesting content. Subbed :)
Amazing video as always :)
Just found your channel, its so small, yet so good!
Usually by the time a small channel reaches me its just before it gets an exponentian boost... I forgot to make this call last time it happened, lets see if my prediction is correct again...
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
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
Properties advice and saving cash idea was mind blowing
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!
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.
Your channel is seriously underrated!
Fun video I like the business power point presentation style.
This channel is bound to become massive
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
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.
got this in recommended. loved it. stayed.
Wow, great video!
Thank you algorithm, great channel. 😄
Amazing video! Commenting to boost the algorithm
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
This was awesome!
Monopoly is too situational to really broad brush everything, but this video does a good job of making that clear
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 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.
I would really like to see of certain "house rules" are an advantage or a disadvantage, but they have to apply to all players. common house rules i know of: 1) complete one lap before you can build houses. 2) all taxes are collected in the middle, land on freeparking to collect it. 3) no trading cards until the last card has been sold. 4) no building till the last card has been sold. 5) if you land on a railway you can travel to another railway owned by the same person, by paying the rent due again (and skipping expensive parts of the board) 6) get the houses/hotel from your opponent when he goes bankrupt.
It would be interesting to see the ‘mortgage everything once you hit a monopoly and build build build!’ strategy works in a million games.
Yeah man the algorithm decided it likes you. I got a random minesweeper probability of finding an 8 vid and now you live in my recommended. Their good vids interesting and we'll produced. have a sub.
would love to see a video simulating various house rules at scale, to see which ones make games closer/longer/worse/etc.
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.
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 CZcams 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.
At this point, “no house rules” is practically a house rule
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
Great video my strategy has always been buy orange and build hotels there.
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.
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.
That chart of property color values could be useful in gauging the value of trades, like if a player gets multiple offers for the same property from different players.
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.
Thank you for your sharing
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
This is fantastic. Could you have the player agents procedurally modify their strategy to try to find some hidden master strategies?
Well, that's what I was trying to do, but there is no so many things to change. I mean what are the moments where player actively change anything? When they buys/doesn't buy stuff and when they build stuff. And I'm not sure we can do much here...
(There is also jail and trade that I didn't explore that well - this is true).
another great video
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 czcams.com/video/JBZsLbAF8bc/video.html
This video is decent at explaining the basics...
Great video
One thing I'd be interested to see is how some of these tips perform relative to other players doing the same thing or with some other bits of nuance. Does avoiding greens/utilities still break even if other players do the same? Does saving money only once another player has 3 houses or hotels do any differently than not saving any money (it is almost certainly bad to save money early in the game where penalties are low but the reward of owning a lot of properties is very high. What about extending the 3 houses rule further (building 3 houses is more important than saving money, worth selling properties to other players for, worth mortgaging most other properties)? What about only applying the 4 house rule when you can get reasonably close to all the houses bought out? What about this in combination with the 3 house rule? It is significantly easier to buy out all houses if you start with 3 houses on all your properties. What happens to various strategies when property trade values are weighted according to your "dont buy" graph (i.e. greens are worth face value but blues are worth double). The "dont buy" graph seems to be a good representation of the actual value of each of those property sets *with the current AI playing the game*. How would those values change if the AI performed differently?
If others doing the same - I guess the result should be the same (within the margin of error).
You do have a lot of good tips to test - I think I will have to rewrite the code first, currently it is a bit messy to add such complex ideas.
I once won a game of Monopoly by prioritizing the brown spaces while doing everything I could to prevent anyone from getting all the indigo spaces. My reasoning was that it would be easy getting all the brown spaces because everyone sees them as worthless and that the indigo spaces sucked to land on with buildings. It's pretty cool seeing my strategy actually has a good amount of merit to it!
I wonder about paying to leave jail vs rolling, and whether these strategies might be better or worse at certain stages of the game.
Early in the game you want to buy as much as possible, go into debt if you have to, but the more you have the more leverage you have in the late game.
Keeping a bit of a cushion later in the game when there aren’t as many properties to buy might be wiser, perhaps it’s better to keep a bit of money on hand in case you land on a bad square rather than developing a property for example.
Yes, this one I actually regret to fail to implement in the simulation - I suspect it may have some tangible the result.
I wonder which properties it is best to upgrade first, should all properties stay about even, or focus on 1 set?
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.
I've used the shortage of houses (as my own idea) before if I happen to end up owning the browns and blues because they're really cheap. So that one I think is very contextual. Only do it if the situation makes it worth it. Otherwise I can understand it being detrimental.
The oranges tip I have also persued since going to jail is apparently above average and collecting rent in jail makes it advantageous to stay there by rolling to get out rather than paying. So each roll to get out has a 1 in 18 chance of putting the player on orange, on top of the usual chances for players going round the board. I think that's a worthy boost.
Before these plans I had certain folk strategies of my own that most would not follow. I would collect utilities but I also collect stations so I guess they offset when most people aren't interested in them and it does me well. I always bought browns and purples (indigo) and always wanted the greens but that was never easy and probably formed an unplanned distraction. I have to say yellow would always be a bit of a pain and became worth grabbing as the game went on for some reason.
Thanks for the love. So every roll to get out of jail has a 1 in 18 chance of landing on orange that's about 5% but I didn't clearly make the point that across 3 rolls that multiplies to about 15% of any jail visit resulting in an oranger landing :)
From the jail square, the oranges are also clustered around the higher probabilities of rolling a normal move on 2 dice (around 38%) where on normal movement passing orange round the board they would fluctuate between higher and lower odds by distance (3%-38%). That community chest 7 spaces away is the biggest pain to the plan being the most likely normal 2 dice result!
My strategy never involves swapping to make sets outright though. I'm a bit mathematically minded and try to apply value by benefit to at least demand a big note along with the trade if it's more profitable to the other player than me, even if it's just that they have more spending money to develop. If they hold out they lose out more than me. Can potentially sour straight dealing later.
Great content
Regarding what property to upgrade first. I think it makes sense to upgrade the property that is most likely for an opponent to land on within a the next turn. So if everyone stands on GO dont upgrade your indigo.
Likewise with saving money, if you are about to cross a dangerous area you might wanna save some money, especially if the alternative is upgrading property that opponents likely wont land on.
I've tried that and it's hit or miss. I think long-term you want the big payout like a house on Boardwalk. It's worth simulating though.
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
Great video.
I'd be interested to see how ignoring utilities holds up in two or three player games. I'm guessing that in a four player game, often the utilities are spread out across players, lowering the amount you need to pay when landing on them. If you have less players, it's more likely for a single player to have them all, increasing the price you need to pay when landing on them. Alternatively, perhaps only buying one utility and ignoring the second could help to prevent others from getting both.
I personally never save money, unless I'm in jail at which point I'll save 50, since I'll likely have to pay that amount to get out in a few turns. I'd be interested to see if that actually helps.
The only thing is that property sets are traded in this simulation.
It was hidden by the algorithm, but the channel is amazing!
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.
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 ^-^
You should do a video on Catan next! I want to see if the "No grain = pain" mantra holds water
Are you implementing auctions in your simulations and how is the bidding handled? This would be highly relevant to the "ignore X" strategies as the canonical rules require an auction when a player declines buying a property though many games leave out this rule. (BTW, don't ignore this rule if you play at home. It's one of several popular modifications that just make the game take much longer than necessary.)
That is exactly one thing that I didn't have, cause I have no workable idea about how actions would work, so it still resemble human auctions.
I agree it does affect the game whenever someone refuses to buy a property.
But here's my argument. Removing the aution affect the players, but it affects them in the same way - so whatever error it introduces, it should cancel itself.
Another way of looking at it - normally a player ignores a property and it is auctioned to someone else. In my case it will eventually be bought by someone else, just a bit later in the game. The property ownership result is the same.
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.
Brilliant 😁
I’d like to see you look at game length. It’s common wisdom that house rules like free parking pays out, landing directly on go gets you another £200, ignoring the auction rule, etc, make the game last longer. Would be awesome to prove that that is true!
Going further, are there any house rules that could be added to _minimise_ game length, but without increasing random swingyness?
This is exactly what I look into in my other Monopoly video "Is Monopoly Endless". I didn't do the Prking Lot one, but you can argue that it should have somewhat similar effect to increasing salary - and this si what I did test.
It actually comes down to two things - starting capital and salary. Surprisingly current setting (1500 and 200) produces shortes game, but still result in some potential hangups. Decreasing either one would result in fewer endless games, but slightly longer ones.
Anyway, all that in this video: czcams.com/video/Dx1ofZHGUtI/video.html
You probably want a different game, and that would be _Anti-Monopoly._ The first definition of a Euro-game is that it has a fixed ending so that it doesn't go on for hours like Monopoly and Risk.
Funnily enough, people want _more_ money like on Free Parking not less.
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.
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?
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.
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.
In Monopoly (Pc and Console versions) the turn order is decided by who rolls the highest (if your tied with another player the player who rolled the number first will get the higher place)
Person who gets first pick of the token should go last.
Super interesting! Why would there be such a big difference between Indigo and Green properties? Because of the community chest and chance cards that make you go to the indigos? Or is it because of the Go Directly to Jail region making it harder to land on greens?
I am pretty sure the numbers for Indigo have something to do with teh fact that Indigo only have 2 properties in the set. As for the Greens and their result - mystery to me. I guess Community chest adds to it, but I still have hard time understanding why it is that low.
Lower-hit probability is a factor. But it costs an extra $1000 to get hotels on 3 greens than dark blues. You can win with green, if you can get it built. Others are more frequent hits for less money and less cost.
Subbed!
Just found your channel.
- I noticed you use the default Python editor "IDLE". It works, but if you have some experience you will probably appreciate a proper IDE like Pycharm.
- If your Python version is >=3.6 (which it should) check out fstrings
- I know you mentioned it in another video, but for long running tasks a compiled language might be worth looking into. I have enjoyed looking into Rust. The ecosystem is still small, but it is a modern fast language and really nice to use.
- Thanks, I do agree IDLE is quite limited - I get angry at it all the time, and I know other IDEs help programmer much more. But old habits die hard...
- Yes, I saw mention of fstrings in another comment too. Looked it up - something I dodn't know about, should start using it.
- Not sure if I venture into learning a new language. I mean it is still a hobby thing. Rust, you say? I was always thinking C++ is something I'd be interested in, hypotetically, if it came to learning a compiled language. Is Rust better? I read it is a beginner friendly C++ in a way, maybe you are right.
@@GamesComputersPlay I do programming as a hobby too. After learning Java and Python I wanted to check out something faster.
C always intrigued me due to its low level nature and how precisely you can tell your Computer to do stuff. But I have also heard that is is really hard to write, especially when it comes to memory leaks, buffer overflows and how to prevent them.
C++ was also was an option, however I feel overwhelmed with the different versions there are and what the correct way to do things is. Coming from Java I expect to be able to read code somewhat, but C++ can be so confusing. Obviously this is from a completely outside perspective as I have never used C++. Also whenever you learn a new language the error messages are critical and I have heard bad stuff about C++ compiler errors.
Rust promises to be as fast as C, with the same low level control, but without the hassle of having to manage memory allocations and memory frees yourself. The compiler ensures that you don't have any memory leaks. The main point that brought me to Rust however was the fact that it is a modern programming language. It has god-tier error messages and a really good linter called clippy. Also they have a learning-by-doing tutorial called "rustlings" which I really enjoyed as an alternative to books and videos.
The relevant disadvantage of rust for me is development time. In order to ensure memory safety without a Garbage Collector or Reference Counting the developer has to tread carefully. This means for example you need to explicitly state if your variable is mutable and if you pass that variable to a function if that function may modify the variable of if it only needs to read its value (who has ownership of that variable and who only borrows it).
I can totally understand if learning these peculiarities of rust is too much work for a hobby project. But Rust offers excellent tooling to help you with it and I enjoyed learning it and enjoy using it.
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 thing about not building hotels in order to create a house shortage... Only really works if you already have a controlling amount of properties on which you _can_ build houses. If you don't have enough properties on which you can build houses, it would be better to build hotels as soon as possible, so that you can get enough income to buy up properties from your opponents, preventing them from being able to build houses at all. This strategy has merit, and can much more significantly increase your chances of success, but only if applied intelligently.