Chance Penalty IS NOT BASED ON WHAT YOU HAVE!! LOL

I continue to read over and over that the chance penalty is based on a percentage of the money you have on hand with no reason given as to why people think this, I have posted on this before but lets try and go through it again for that one random person who might read this blog :-).


If the chance penalty was based on a percentage of the money you had on hand there would be no possible way you could be taxed into a negative balance, in less the tax was completely random with no set value allowing it to exceed 100%. Otherwise if you have $10 and your fined 100% you now have $0 if you have $10 and your fined 50% you now have $5 if your fined again lets say 50% you now have $2.50 but once you reach a balance of zero any percentage you are fined will equal zero (100% of $0 = $0)


Now that we have covered why you ARE NOT fined based on the money on hand let explain the 2 basic reason we should all know this by now.

1.) If all your streets are sabotaged and their rental value is Zero all chance penalties will also equal zero, thats right if you have no income value the penalty percentage reflexes that and the zeros cancel each other out and you are fined no money. Remember even 200% of Zero is still Zero (I Have experienced this first hand on more then one occasion)

2.) If that chance card penalty is based on your total rental income and not the money you have on hand it becomes much easier to explain the high fine values, if you setting on only $10 of the $100 you made but the percentage taken still reflects you having $100 then even small fine % appear to be bigger and can result in being fined into a Negative balance. Because we all know if you are fined 100% of $100 but you only have $10 on you well now your $90 short.

From the Official FAQ Section-

Q:       I have a negative bank balance. What do I do?

A:        If you receive a Chance Card that fines you more cash than you have in the bank, you will find your balance fall below zero. The quickest way to get back into the positive is to sell some of your streets to the bank! Unfortunately, for half their total value, but beggars can’t be choosers.

Please let me know if you have anymore question about chance card penalties, I can only hope that one day I will stop seeing uninformed post regarding how this work or that someone will provide some kind of proof that I am wrong ;-) :-) 

Farm Chance Cards to protect you bigger income streets

   The more bonus buildings you have the better protected your street is, but getting those cards is few and far between and so I suggest the following. Buy a 4-10million dollar long street but nothing you would keep forever build nothing but green houses on it and whenever you get a bonus building place it on your highest income street. Once your little street is full, wait one full day to recoup 100% of your cost and then sell everything on it and start building over again to farm more bonus cards and continue to place them on your high income street.

If you street is worth over 200million you want to have 20+ bonus buildings on it to make it a hard target for anyone single player to take out and to also even make multi account players think of picking on someone a little easier.

Dealing With Cheaters!!!

I think by now most of us have had a run in with a cheater or a person playing from more then one account, you sign in only to find that all your bonus buildings have been bulldozed and your street has been sabotaged by people with strangely similar names all located in the same place. What can you do, how can you play against a person who has a multiple account advantage against you, they simply have more chance cards coming in...

I suggest this, if your using twitter as many of us are and tired of cheaters and sick of reporting them to hasbro and not seeing anything done or having them take so long that your account is destroyed. Start reaching out to your fellow City Streeters who like you are tired of it. Hashtag #CityStreetCheater and #MonopolyCityStreets with the account name and one of the accounts Streets and location (Ex. Bedwards- Canyon Rd Salt Lake, UT USA) and lets start dealing with cheaters ourselves with bulldozers and sewers etc.

It might take more then one tweet to make this happen but I think we will all be surprised by the amount of people who are glad to use some of their bulldoze cards on people who are taking the fun out of the game.

If you agree Tweet #MonopolyCityStreets and #CityStreetCheater and lets make it clear we no longer going to put up with peoples bs :-)

So you decided to Sell

So you have been playing for awhile now and your raking in the millions, you want to keep expanding buying bigger streets but your trying to stay under 5 to prevent being taxed. Here's three simple tips to help you expand your empire but maintain and expand your income at the same time.

1.) Buy big!!!- The bigger the street the more you can build and the more money you will make, don't be afraid to spend 40+Million on a street, you should be taking in more then enough to cover that cost and have money left to build and in the long run its going to pay off having the longer more expensive street vs a 2-5 million dollar short one.

2.) Don't sell more then one street at a time, when you sell a street you only receive 50% of the value so no need to sell more then one per day. If you buy a street and put all of your money into building it up it will be easier to recoup the 50% loss on your next turn, if you sell more then one street in a turn chances are you rental income will take a dramatic drop and you will be waiting multiple turns to recoup from the sell of the street.

3.) Sell your street last- You log in and receive your rent money for the day, go ahead and buy your next potential street but don't sell your small straight right away. If you sell your street right at the start of your turn you risk having that income taxed away through random chance cards, since the tax from having 6 streets is not going to impact you until the next day buy your new street build as much as you can on it and then sell your small street and use the cash to continue building.


As always remember to finish what you start by maxing out one street before you move on and buy another one, its much easier to build up and protect one street at a time then trying to spread rental income across several streets in a single turn.

Chance Cards, the good, the bad, and the suggestion

If your like me then you have gotten paid only to be slapped with a few bad chance cards that have taken 70-80% of your cash. Ouch I know, the chance tax is random based on the total rental value of all your streets (not the money you have at the time) this is in a way stated in the Hasbro faq when they cover being taxed into a negative number.

So what should you do to minimize the impact of being chance taxed? Buy big, but stick to the 500k rule the only way you can minimize the amount of chance cards you receive is to make fewer purchases since it based entirely on your buy/sell/construction activity. Building 500k structures still offers a 90% return investment in a single turn but also allows you to go through you cash more quickly which means less chance cards, of course you have to take the good with the bad because less chance cards also means you have less of a "Chance" to get the bonus building cards which are vital in protecting your buildings (at least 5 bonus buildings should be placed on any street with an income of 20Million or more).

Remember when your building 500k structures on your street that there will most likely be room between the streets that you can fill in with either "Green Houses" or "City Centre Cottage".

Well thats the rub, the chance tax cards suck and should have a lower percentage closer related to the board game but hey what can we do at least we are not forced to pay every player 1 Million dollars if we draw the wrong card ;-)

New Rental Calculator, Estimator, and Maximizer (Crazy I know!! lol)

I just finished part one of my rental calculator and estimator, this is the first step in what I hope will become a very comprehensive tool for everyone to use. I plan on adding more to the sheet as I find time including the ability to enter your streets length(millage) and receive an estimate of how many of each type of structure you will have room to build on the street.

In the mean time here is something I find very useful and that I wanted to share (Currently it saved in Open Office format because for some reason my open office is not letting me save it in excel 2003 format sorry I'm working on it)

Please let me know here or via twitter if you have any question or suggestion.

http://www.mediafire.com/download.php?jyjuhjtne2m <-- Download link  (Open Office Format)

http://www.mediafire.com/?ivrymnjjndj (Excel 97/2000/XP Format) Read instruction below as they did not save properly when converted to excel format

Important- All Street at a cost above 1 Million are equal to 1 and all street costing less then 1 Million must be divided by 100, at the top of the sheet and to the right of the Capital Cell there is a place that will do this for you. Just remember that for any building costing more then 1 Million you must still only enter 1 Million dollars or the calculations for you rent will be wrong. Anything below 1 Million dollars and simply enter the amount as its listed on the game, everything else will be filled in for you.    

Out of Room? Are you Sure?

The amount of space you have to build on a street is indicated by the cones that show up when your building, but the amount of cones you see is relative to the building you have selected at the time(since each building is a different size). This means that if you have been building bigger more expensive buildings non stop and you run out of room there might actually be space left for smaller structures between them.

Before you write a street off as finished click on a "Green House" or another small building and make sure you are truly out of room. I find in most cases you will be surprised at the amount of space left between buildings that you can still build on, the more structures you have the greater the rent will be on the street.

So always double check, once you are truly out of space the card will let you know that there is no more room to build and then its time to move on :-)