Almost unrelated, but I also learned what was capital efficiency and payback period after playing Monopoly for the first time in years.
Long story short, when the properties were eventually sold out, I burned my cash flow to buy more of them to other players, at a high price, when they needed money (it would also allow them to play longer)
My logic was that by owning the most properties and by building houses and hotels, I would have the most revenue on the long run. And had the game been endless, I would have won.
However, the chances of someone going on your property isn't even high in this game ! You can sometimes wait for several rounds before this happens.
Unluckily, I stumbled on a rent I couldn't pay, mortgaged some properties. It happened again, and other players would only buy my properties at a price to cover the rent.
And my empire (i had the most properties by far) was on the verge of collapse when I had to run to go to the station.
So yeah, consider the payback period, even in the simplest models of the economy. Monopoly is economy taught to children, yet we adults can overlook its lessons.
There's one monopoly that matters in Monopoly: the houses themselves.
The game only has 32 houses. If you get two 3-property monopolies and build four houses on each one, forgoing hotels, you have 24 houses and everyone else is fighting over the remaining 8. If you get max out houses on two 3-property monopolies and a 2-property one, the game is yours regardless of what anyone else has.
That’s also part of the logic of locking down Baltic and Mediterranean. It’s cheaper to get the set, it’s cheaper to get the houses. You’re not going to make a ton of money off them but now at least 25% of the houses in the game are friendly.
I usually did better playing this strategy. Even though winning with houses on park Place is more fun, houses on Mediterranean ave are more certain.
They also make it harder for your opponents to keep their $200 when they pass Go, especially when you throw in the income tax space. Anyone who's on the ropes has a harder time coming off of them this way.
That, and if they're all built and someone has to sell one, it gets auctioned off. If you're building on green where houses are $200 anyway, you're willing to pay more for them than someone building on light blue where they're normally $50.
It's also there to convince people to switch to a land tax, but it's really not successful at it. I think because there's no land owners separate from building developers
The game has those rules. Can't build a hotel until you have 5 houses. In real life can't get a permit to build a hotel until you marry your first daughter off or can influence someone.
Long story short, when the properties were eventually sold out, I burned my cash flow to buy more of them to other players, at a high price, when they needed money (it would also allow them to play longer)
My logic was that by owning the most properties and by building houses and hotels, I would have the most revenue on the long run. And had the game been endless, I would have won.
However, the chances of someone going on your property isn't even high in this game ! You can sometimes wait for several rounds before this happens.
Unluckily, I stumbled on a rent I couldn't pay, mortgaged some properties. It happened again, and other players would only buy my properties at a price to cover the rent.
And my empire (i had the most properties by far) was on the verge of collapse when I had to run to go to the station.
So yeah, consider the payback period, even in the simplest models of the economy. Monopoly is economy taught to children, yet we adults can overlook its lessons.