Yeah, the only way to protect your properties is to coat them in cheap houses. This ups your rent drastically, and you get a ton of Chance cards.

Funny to hear that one of the cards is a coupon; I've gotten some monetary rewards, demolition and bonus buildings, and one card that actually deducted money.

Honestly after logging in like 4 times, I gave up. Seriously there's a crapton of bugs to work out for this to work.

There are a lot of bugs, but the game's still fun enough.

I didn't realize when i started that there were unpurchased streets in the game.

But now i've found a place to set up my own little empire...

Other than wishing it would load a lot faster, I haven't encountered many bugs. I bought a house once and it took my money without actually building it, but it did refund the money when I closed the window and logged in again.

yeah, that and sometimes you can build houses practically right on top of one another. not that i'm complaining about that one.

I probably have to rethink the strategy of buying super-long streets and populating them with little houses. For one, it is tedious. And secondly, I got five chance cards that dinged me 6.2 million, 2.1 million, 1.1 million, 965k, and 920k in fines.

I hate those lousy Monopoly accountants.

Good thing I never follow the strategy advice you keep sending out! I got two Chance cards yesterday, and they both gave me money.

Sorry, won't happen again! No more unsolicited advice from me!

But I must say I only sent something once. The second time was just to give you a list of potential buys :)

My turn to solicit some advice.

What configuration works the best for you folks in terms of squeezing buildings into streets? I've been using a configuration of GreenHouse=Cottage=GreenHouse=Cottage, but it only works optimally on a street that is a straight horizontal line.

I am very conflicted this morning. On the one hand, I work for the Environmental Protection Agency. On the other hand, I got 3 different chance cards this morning that made me pay for "environmental violations".

They've definitely upped the number of negative chance cards. Either that, or it's based on your level (though I've never gotten fines as high as Zergrinch is describing).

Ugh, the EPA dinged me for $7 million. Stupid chance card. Those two entrepreneur of the year awards won't begin to pay that off.

I am intrigued as to how much in fines Slash is ponying up. He is wealthier than any two other GFF players combined - if the fines are based on percentages, then he should be seeing penalties of over 20 million.

So there are some definite problems in this game.

First off, wtf is with the random promo codes off a chance card, seriously. 5 bucks off, whoop de doo...free shipping pretty much.

Second thing, Positive chance cards and negative chance cards need to be balanced. In regular Monopoly, you don't get positive chance cards that say "You won 10 dollars" etc. then have the negative cards all say "You owe the bank 1500 dollars!"

Yes, you are getting Millions of Monopo-dollars every day, but the fact that you can lose a shitton in four cards, while only gaining a million after 5 to 10 cards is kind of fucked up.

Says the guy who managed to get both a bulldozer and a hazard chance card immediately after I sabotaged one of his streets.

Its a problem with the game really, because what I'm doing is not really strategic at all.

Are you sure? Here's a list of financial Community Chest and Chance cards from the Monopoly wiki (I list only US-specific). You can either have fixed rewards, fixed fees, or variable fees.

Community Chest

• Advance to Go (Collect $200)
• Bank error in your favor – collect $200
• Doctor's fees {fee} – Pay $50
• It is your birthday Collect $10 from each player
• Income Tax refund – collect $20
• Life Insurance Matures – collect $100
• Pay Hospital Fees of $100
• Pay School Fees of $50
• Receive $25 Consultancy Fee
• You are assessed for street repairs – $40 per house, $115 per hotel
• You have won second prize in a beauty contest – collect $10
• You inherit $100
• From sale of stock you get $50
• Holiday Fund matures - Receive $100

Chance

• Advance to Go (Collect $200)
• Advance to Illinois Ave. (If owned by another player, you get dinged anywhere from $20 to $1100)
• Advance token to nearest Utility. If unowned, you may buy it from the Bank. If owned, throw dice and pay owner a total ten times the amount thrown. (anywhere from $20 to $120)
• Advance token to the nearest Railroad and pay owner twice the rental to which he/she is otherwise entitled. If Railroad is unowned, you may buy it from the Bank. (anywhere from $50 to $400)
• Advance to St. Charles Place – if you pass Go, collect $200 (If owned by another, you pay from $10 to $750)
• Bank pays you dividend of $50
• Go back 3 spaces. (Depending on your location, you will land on one of three slots)
  • A community chest slot
  • Pay income tax of $200 or 10% of all your holdings (your choice)
  • New York Avenue (If owned by another, you pay from $16 to $1000)
• Make general repairs on all your property – for each house pay $25 – for each hotel $100
• Speeding Fine $15
• Take a trip to Reading Railroad – if you pass Go collect $200 (If owned, you pay anywhere from $25 to $200)
• Advance to Boardwalk (if owned by another, you will pay from $50 to $2000)
• You have been elected chairman of the board – pay each player $50
• Your building loan matures – collect $150

You will notice that all the positive outcomes here, the maximum you can get is $200 (more if you have more players). But for all the negative outcomes, it can go as high as $2000 (more if you have tons of hotels).

Okay, I think this game is broken, apparently I can't sell anything now.

I think it's been about 2 weeks since I did anything other than pop in to collect my rent every night. The loading times made it take way too long building lots of buildings, and it's nearly impossible now to find good, unowned roads. I keep meaning to do more, but never think about it during times when lots of other people aren't on.

Let's put it this way.

It's imposssible now to find any unowned roads of over $5 million in price. I have still seen roads between $1 to $3 million.

I blame the tool called Monopoly Autobot, which has an automated streets scanner. According to the author, they've done a comprehensive scan on the United States, Europe, and Australia and have calculated that virtually all of the streets over 15 million are sold out.

You might just be able to find desirable streets if you try hard enough and scan at obscure locations, but don't bet on it. Other people, like this guy, are also scanning. MCS is serious business, it seems.

Judging by their blog, a bunch of people got fed up with how the game was running, and decided it was more fun to hack the game and come up with all sorts of automated tools instead of just playing the game. At least the slowness has gotten much better, mainly because so many people stopped playing, but like Zerg said, there's no way you'll find new streets worth owning. I've gotten burned on trades (make a trade, it never gets accepted, and the game doesn't refund your money), and hackers had figured out how to accept trades on behalf of other players, literally stealing properties from Mr. Monopoly.

I'm just building up the properties I have, since I'm happy with them, and working to get to the top of the list. Nothing worth cheating over though.

I gave up on it once nutty or Tritoch demolished one of my buildings. :(

(Nah, but it was seriously boring. Routine basically became build stuff, wait 24 hours, repeat.)

I think the funniest thing Autobot could do was place hazard buildings on streets that have protection. The restriction on placing buildings is only enforced on the client-side, not on the server side :)

If anyone's still playing, I bit off more than I can chew by having too many outstanding offers. A bunch of accounts were purged, so the offers were auto-accepted.

Accordingly I want to sell off one of these streets, BRISTOL ROAD SOUTH, BIRMINGHAM UK, at its cost of $43,042,000. Caveat Emptor: although the base price is around 8 million, the street loops around itself, so the buildable area is a little more than half of that. Think of this as a 4 million dollar street.

So I hit level 6...I feel so unaccomplished now...

I may just take that off your hands, Zerg.

Make your offer then, preferably before the next payday :)

Monopoly City Streets

If Dull doesn't take it, I will. He spoke up first, so he can have first crack.