Monopoly City Streets
 

I've been meaning to mention this game on the radio show for the past several weeks, but since it just got reopened yesterday, now is the perfect time to give it a shot. Monopoly City Streets is sort of like the original game, but played with Google Maps around the world. You can't play in teams, but there are friend leaderboards, so it could be fun if a bunch of GFF folks signed up.

Website

How it works:
-Each player starts with $3 million. When you first visit the site, you'll be asked to pick a street. Pick carefully, because the first street you pick is considered your home base. Once you pick a street, you'll be able to register an account.
-You can use your money to purchase additional streets, or build monuments on the streets you own. Occasionally you will receive Chance cards which will let you demolish other people's buildings, place hazards (which prevent rent collection) or build protection on your own streets. You can make offers to other players if they own a street you want.
-Every day you log in, you receive $1 million plus rent for your properties. Rent does not accumulate, you must log in. If you fail to log in for 2 weeks, you forfeit all your property.

The interface is a bit clunky, but it could be fun if we had a group playing. I think Hasbro is still working out the kinks, as the game first launched last week, but they wiped everyone's accounts and started over yesterday because of cheating and glitches.

To add a friend, go into the leaderboards under friends.

Players:
Nutty Turnip (because it thought nuttyturnip was naughty somehow)
Yggdrasilly (Sousuke)
Dullenplain
MrShinra (Dark Nation)
Lithium O2 (Yeldarb)
The Dopefish
Quasinova (Supernova)
Slash5150 (Slash)
Tritoch
Radez29
Rockgamer

Yggdrasilly over there, too. Haven't really played much yet, but working on it!

I signed in as Dullenplain, gonna see if I can take over my neighborhood.

For some reason I can't quite takeover the exact street I live on, but I'm working the area around it. I'm on there as MrShinra.

I'm on as Lithium O2 because the name box thought I was being too revealing. I will own Morganton even though it's the worst place ever!

I'm trying to figure out how Dark Nation is the only one on my list with less than 3 million points. The score seems to be total money earned (not counting any spent), so I'm not sure why you're 17,000 shy of that.

Keep in mind that if you own any more than 5 streets, the game starts assessing you a progressively larger tax. At a certain point (I think the faq says 38) it's no longer possible to turn a profit.

I'm in as "The Dopefish". Bought the street I lived on in New Hampshire. :D

Just signed up as Quasinova and bought the main street in my town. Fucker was worth 2.1 million though to buy.

I'm down. Slash5150 and in Oregon lol.

I'm signed up as Tritoch.

Apparently I've got other people in my area playing. When I went to buy the second half of the main road around here it was already owned, as well as most of the roads around the university. My favorite one was still free though, and it gave me a bonus park too.

Well I owned exactly 5 streets earlier, and when I logged on right now, I got some income in, making my score a little over 4.4 million now, so I dunno

I signed up as Radez29. Bought my street and the next one over.

I'M COMING FOR YOU TURNIP!!!

Signed up a few days ago as Rockgamer, but forgot to post (well, I tried to, but my internet started to get a little screwy and I forgot to come back and post after it was fixed).

Damn you Radez, building a sewer treatment plant on the block where I live. No wonder my asthma has been acting up. Nothing a wrecking ball won't fix.

Maybe so, but I destroyed your pretty little Nori Building first.

OH HELL NAW! That shit don't fly with me!

--Edit--

Oops, My finger slipped heh

It would seem a certain person wants to sabotage me without posting here.

It's on.

I just had to, you know, I had to put it SOMEWHERE. I thought Shinra Corp would have been the best place to sabotage but the bastard has gone and filled his streets will little cottages.

There's a discard button, you know. I would have retaliated against you, but your pitiful score just made me feel sad for you.

I didn't realize filling up a street with cheap housing would protect against hazards. Sounds like a worthwhile exploit until it gets patched.

Actually I got that chance card 3 days ago and clicked discard every time and it STILL pops back up

Sure, this looks fun. Hawkeye was already taken, so i'm Hawkeye42

EDIT: apparently you can only have 9 friends. oh well. I have a grand total of 0 dollars left anyway.

Stiff competition so far. I have discovered that if you build a bonus building on a street that has a hazard, it cancels out the effect (or at least my rent amount is no longer crossed out). That's helpful considering I got at least 10 Chance cards yesterday, and none of them were for demolishing buildings.

I keep hoping that I'll get a hazard to place, but so far I've only gotten two bonus buildings and a code for 10% off at Hasbro Toys' website. You'll get what's coming to you one of these days, Dullenplain!

Haha, well, you were one of the few people who didn't fill their streets entirely with houses to prevent anything else from being built on it.

Tritoch, chance cards are only given out if you buy/build/sell something. So, crank out those $50,000 houses!

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.

So much for first crack, eh? :)

Sorry Dull. I've already accepted Turnip's offer. However, I do have other outstanding offers that I would dearly like to withdraw (since I'm now focusing on streets greater than 8 million). You'll get priority should some of these sub-8 million streets are sold to me.

I suppose I should note that my schedule tends to be 10AM Central when I usually check up on the game. So that will usually be the time I'll do stuff in it.

If you can't beat 'em, join 'em. Scannin' some streets!

List of free streets over 3 million in Ohio:
**Hidden Content**
For obvious reasons, I cannot guarantee their availability once you actually check it.

Oh and here's some more from Michigan:
**Hidden Content**

So who wants free money? I think i'm done with this game. getting bored with it...

The game has ended!

In the end, I stopped building and just kept logging in to increase net worth by $5 billion per day. Turnip and Slash kept at it for a while longer than I did.

These screens aren't up-to-date - they're off by a day. I totally forgot Asia was one day ahead of the U.S.

So, how did everyone do?
**Hidden Content**

I continued logging in every day to collect rent even though I didn't build anything or buy any streets for the last two months or so. It was fun until it became impossible to find any streets and the amazing lag made building houses a pain.