Not to nitpick, but it seems like what you did would have been much more suited for an IPython (Jupyter) notebook directly outputting with matplotlib rather than writing Python code to generate data for R?
Monopoly as a Markov Chain
21–30 of 37 posts
Re: Monopoly as a Markov Chain
#22Earlier quoted context omitted.
Monopoly requires player elimination. That's seen as "mean", whereas winning isn't seen as mean. That's the main reason Monopoly isn't a good game. The other reason is that people have house rules, which often have the effect of reducing the risk of player elimination, which then increases the playtime to stupid lengths. There are a bunch of great, easy to understand, easy to play games that are much better. (HN sear…
> Monopoly requires player elimination. Absolutely. I love Monopoly, and when I mention this, people always say "but it lasts so long!" It only lasts so long because just as someone is about to get knocked out, someone else loans them money to stay in the game... > There are a bunch of great, easy to understand, easy to play games > that are much better. My favorite with family is either Carcassonne (I even have a ta…
Carcassonne and Ticket to Ride are brilliant games!
Re: Monopoly as a Markov Chain
#23I was playing around with this Java simulation recently that does include Chance and Community Chest cards http://tesuji.org/monopoly.html
Re: Monopoly as a Markov Chain
#24Another cool article from this website: http://koaning.io/canvas-trees-and-communities.html
Re: Monopoly as a Markov Chain
#25A very interesting little experiment! Based off this, the author notes that the orange streets will provide a steady stream of income, and this is useful information. But the trick in Monopoly is to get hotels on your properties as quickly as possible, because this not only provides you with a revenue stream (and fastest return on investment), but also takes money away from your competitors, who would have used it to…
Instead of hotels, put 4 houses as quickly as possible so there are no houses left for other people to build. Only upgrade to hotels when you can afford to put the houses that will become available onto another of your properties. Other people's sets are worthless to them if you own all the houses. Combine this strategy with the fact that the highest ROI on most properties is 3 houses, and you have a winning strategy…
Another thing is to note is that the highest ROI generating properties are the stations, if you can get a monopoly on them. The surest way to win is to just get the orange and the transport monopoly, and the game breaks down because you are earning far more than any other player can.
I try to focus on one of these groups at the early game, and add the other one as soon as I can. Unless I'm playing with good players, in which case I need to hedge bets and maybe go for a Red. I rarely, if ever, go for anything above Red (So anything on the second half of the board).
Re: Monopoly as a Markov Chain
#26Earlier quoted context omitted.
That last line is the rub here. I used to play Monopoly as if my life depended on it. Now I don't, because no one will play Monopoly against me anymore.
Monopoly requires player elimination. That's seen as "mean", whereas winning isn't seen as mean. That's the main reason Monopoly isn't a good game. The other reason is that people have house rules, which often have the effect of reducing the risk of player elimination, which then increases the playtime to stupid lengths. There are a bunch of great, easy to understand, easy to play games that are much better. (HN sear…
I'd utterly forgotten about house rules, but you're right, they're infuriating. The combination of not auctioning off properties when passed up and free parking make games go on forever.
Re: Monopoly as a Markov Chain
#27Earlier quoted context omitted.
Monopoly requires player elimination. That's seen as "mean", whereas winning isn't seen as mean. That's the main reason Monopoly isn't a good game. The other reason is that people have house rules, which often have the effect of reducing the risk of player elimination, which then increases the playtime to stupid lengths. There are a bunch of great, easy to understand, easy to play games that are much better. (HN sear…
I'd utterly forgotten about house rules, but you're right, they're infuriating. The combination of not auctioning off properties when passed up and free parking make games go on forever .
Those are the two house rules that drive me nuts too. To the point I insisted when I started playing again that those can't be in play. Once the few people I started playing with realized how much it changed the game from a 4 hour marathon into something far better balanced in an hour they've not brought it up again.
Re: Monopoly as a Markov Chain
#28Earlier quoted context omitted.
Monopoly requires player elimination. That's seen as "mean", whereas winning isn't seen as mean. That's the main reason Monopoly isn't a good game. The other reason is that people have house rules, which often have the effect of reducing the risk of player elimination, which then increases the playtime to stupid lengths. There are a bunch of great, easy to understand, easy to play games that are much better. (HN sear…
I'd utterly forgotten about house rules, but you're right, they're infuriating. The combination of not auctioning off properties when passed up and free parking make games go on forever .
Hm, "Free Parking" - do you mean something like?:
https://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Monopoly/House_Rules#Free_park...
It's been a long time since I played, but I can't remember "mandatory auction" was part of the core rules. Then again, who knows what changes may have been made to the Norwegian version.
Re: Monopoly as a Markov Chain
#29Not to nitpick, but it seems like what you did would have been much more suited for an IPython (Jupyter) notebook directly outputting with matplotlib rather than writing Python code to generate data for R?
out of curiosity, how many lines of code do you need in matplotlib to generate http://koaning.io/theme/images/monopoly_plot3.png? in R, you'll only need one. also i have done this work in a python notebook, you can specify R cells to take pandas dataframes allowing you to still use ggplot2 for plotting. see old video of mine: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZW8Aei2wlsM
Re: Monopoly as a Markov Chain
#30A comment on the display of the data: more decimals don't make your results look better. Only show a relevant number of decimal places. In the case of this data most of it needed 0 to 2 decimal places.
fair enough. the reason why there were so many numbers was lazyness, i just copied the R output directly.