{"id":663,"date":"2009-09-13T01:09:30","date_gmt":"2009-09-13T06:09:30","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.jasonmorrison.net\/content\/?p=663"},"modified":"2009-09-24T01:26:48","modified_gmt":"2009-09-24T06:26:48","slug":"monopoly-city-streets-gaming-on-google-maps","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.jasonmorrison.net\/content\/2009\/monopoly-city-streets-gaming-on-google-maps\/","title":{"rendered":"Monopoly City Streets – Gaming on Google Maps"},"content":{"rendered":"

I’m a bit of a map geek, and in my youth I spent many hours playing Sim City, so it’s no surprise I was excited to play Monopoly City Streets<\/a>. The game is a heavily-modified version of the classic board game, played out across the map of the world. You compete with players from all over the planet to buy streets, build properties, and amass as much cash as possible.<\/p>\n

\"monopoly<\/a><\/p>\n

The first thing I noticed was that the map display uses Google Maps, but the site actually uses OpenStreetMap<\/a> data for gameplay. Actually, the first thing I noticed was that their servers were being absolutely crushed by all the people rushing in the play the game, but I digress. OpenStreetMap is a really cool project to build mapping data using the same model as Wikipedia – interested volunteers add and verify data and everything is covered by a Creative Commons License<\/a>. <\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Building a game with this data is so obvious in retrospect that I’m surprised I haven’t seen it done before (if you’ve seen any other games played across a real world map like this, let me know in the comments below). Now that they have their servers sorted out, it’s a relatively fun game, though more simplistic than I had hoped. It’s so simplistic, in fact, that I’m going to tell you two ways to make tons of cash quickly.<\/p>\n

Tactic #1: Do the math <\/strong><\/p>\n

The basic way to make money is by buying streets, which generate rent every turn, and building properties on those streets, which also generate rent. For now, I’m going to ignore making money speculatively by buying desirable streets and selling them for a profit later.<\/p>\n

Streets always generate 10% of their cost in rent, but the rent of each building is determined by the building cost, the cost of the street, and a static multiplier for each building. You can see a full list of list of building costs and rents here<\/a>, but the main thing to look at is return on investment. The more expensive the building, the lower the multiplier – so there’s no reason to buy anything but the cheapest buildings. <\/p>\n

If you buy the cheapest property, the Green House, for $50,000, and place it on a street that cost $100,000, you will earn a total of ($100,000 * 10%) + ($50,000 * 10%) = $15,000. If you build that same house on a million-dollar street, you’ll earn ($1,000,000 * 10%) + ($50,000 * 100%) = $150,000. In the first case you get about 10% return while in the latter case you get about 14%. What’s more, since houses on million-dollar streets return 100% each turn, and streets only return 10%, it makes sense to buy houses rather than streets.<\/p>\n

Here’s a spreadsheet with more numbers to illustrate:<\/p>\n