Four Hours!?

I played a single player game in easy mode just to give it a go. The map was set to reach 6000G, and I finished it in 45 mins. I took my time and did not speed things up. The AI makes little comments during their turn if you feel like reading them. Hard to say how much time it would have taken with the speed cranked and the stock market enabled, but a sub one hour game seems possible. I would have actually finished in around 30 mins, but made a bonehead move that sunk me about 2k, and had to recover.

There are a lot of curious unlocks besides characters. The Out For Lunch mode appears to put your character in AI mode, which you can setup (and unlock more it seems?) different strategies. Which seems nice if you are in an online game and need to go do something for a few mins. No need to hold everyone up. There is also a quick save, at least in single player mode, which is nice to see.

AI

I also picked up a few things from the AI, for example as they noticed late in the TNT, if you get a straight sequence in the Ventures you get 30G after four which increases 10G with each step. So six in a row gives you 50G (my numbers may be off). This makes for a little bit of a mini-game of trying to string together big combinations while blocking opponents.

Getting the four suits and getting back to the bank as quickly as possible is pretty much the entire game in terms of introducing large gobs of new money into the pool. The quicker everyone levels up the more money is available to start undercutting, improving, and investing.

SO the size of the map and the amount of money required to win directly feeds into how long the game is going to take as if it takes 15-20 turns for people to make one loop, to introduce 1000G into the pool, and someone needs to reach 15,000G it is going to take A LOT of turns to finish. Compared to if the map takes 3-5 turns to do a loop, even if you need to reach 20,000G it will not take nearly as long. In short, looking at just how much money is needed to win is not the only indicator of how long a game will take.

This is Max. Capital, come in!

They never really figured out Max. Capital [MC] in the TNT, which was a big part of their grind. This number is the maximum amount you can invest into a property. When you land on your own property and get the opportunity to improve it? The maximum you can invest to improve it is your... MC. The more you improve a property the better its value and the more money you get when someone lands on it. Think Houses/Hotels in Monopoly with a cap.

The amount of properties you own in a district dictates how much your MC is. Example time. There are probably hard formulas here, so work with my vague examples and values.

You own the Sushi Shop in District A (REPRESENT!). Say your MC is 500G. You land on one of your properties, invest the full 500G to improve it and the worth of your shop goes up to 200G. That shop is now the best it is going to get, unless you get a good Venture card or someone invests (stock market) the worth of the shop is now maxed out. So you go around the board a few times and land on the spot next to it and purchase it. The MC for this shop and the Sushi shop goes up to 1000G, because you own two properties in the district, allowing you to improve them further and increasing how much you get when someone lands on it even more.

THIS is where the buyout starts to become really harsh. If you own two shops in a district and someone owns the third and will not sell it to you the game gives you the option to buy it out for 5x its worth. The only catch is you have to land on the spot.

MONOPOLY

These sorts of rules pique my interest as it addresses some of the bigger problems I have with Monopoly. In Monopoly a maxed out Boardwalk and Park Place is it. These are the best spots on the board. In Fortune Street any district has the capability of becoming the swank spot. The ways you can dick people and force buyouts throws some big swings, as we saw with Distract A in the TNT. You won't see this sort of thing happen in Monopoly unless the player themselves hits some bad luck where they need to mortgage their properties. You have some control in dismantling the big cheese in the game.

yes I agree monopoly quickly loses it strategy if it ever had any to begin with. The stock buying makes things extra interesting I think because you can essentially bet for another player's success and end up winning overall. I think a great strategy that I saw oppurtunities for in the TnT for stocks is when you own the last property before another player gets a monopoly. You then dump as much as you possibly can into stocks in that district. You then sell that last property for a hefty profit. Suddenly you've got massive capital to work with to continue to buy stocks in that district or buy up other districts. They may end up controlling one monopoly but you're in a better position over all. I love economic games btw.

@VisariLoyalist: I really like strategy games, and economy is usually little more than resource management so it is nice to see an economic focused game, agreed.

Stock is definitely a way to drive and lower the value of districts and can even be the source of some dirty play. If everyone has a ton of stock in a district you could buyout a property from it with the intent of destroying its worth. Buy it out, then immediately put it up for auction. Everyone has a lot invested so they will naturally want to bring the value back up, and also be in control of it. May be too expensive to be an effective strategy.

I skimmed through the manual, which is surprisingly informative for 2011, and read about an interesting other feature. Some maps have Vacant Plots that allow you to build specific building types with special things for when a player lands on them. Some examples..

• Check Point (must pay a toll)
• Circus Tent, Balloonport (must pay a ticket price)
• Tax office (Pay 10% of own net worth)

And a few others.

Had a bit of free time this evening so played another game. I had to pause in the middle, but I think the total play time was about an hour. 48 turns total. It is looking like around 1 min per turn is a fair average, give or take. Anyway, shut up about that, we gotta talk about some things...

BOARDS

There are some crazy boards. The one I just played had switches all over the place that if you land on, moves an entire district around the map (picture this district like a small circle, that rotates around the outside edge of the bigger center board like a clock). When it rotates south there are no connected squares so anyone in the circle when it rotates south gets stuck on there indefinitely until it rotates again (when someone lands on a switch again). So I gobbled up all the spots in there, maxed them out, and trapped people as long as I could. And it worked!

This may sound annoying, but there is a switch in the circle so you can free yourself, and a square that warps you out to a square in the inner part, so chances of being stuck on there for many turns are slim.

The single player consists of a tour where you play all the DQ themed boards, then the Mario themed boards followed by a third tour that is unlockable. I am going to assume things get at least a little bat shit insane, and will be very disappointed if there is not some sort of rainbow road board.

VENTURES

There are some things going on in the venture cards too. If you make an entire line edge to edge (of 8, I think) you get a 200G bonus. There are cards that introduce guest adventurers. This is an AI player that does not buy or pay for things and who affects the board in interesting ways. One closed the shops of any they passed over for a turn, and the other gave a random suit to anyone they encountered. There is a gallery to look at all the cards you've gotten and I have a ton of empty spots so no telling what else is in there.

I'll probably start contributing this stuff to the wiki, but instead I've been rambling here until I've figured things out.

I also got a killer suit. You gotta look good when you are running the world.

Oh man, this sounds like fun even if you're playing single player.

Played my first game with the stock market enabled tonight. It started off with some really rotten rolls where everyone was able to get around the board, buy properties and level up, while I was bouncing around missing suits due to unfortunate warps. That asshole Platypunk lead by a large margin the entire game and hit the goal of 10000G while I was still at 6000G.

At this point I said screw it, my next turn took me to the bank so I dumped ALL of my money into my district. This turned out to be an extremely good idea when my 200 stocks increased the price a lot and bump my worth up a few hundred. Turns out if you know a district is stable (e.g. you are in control of it), then it doesn't matter how much the stock costs.. INVEST IN IT!

And like magic alignment of planet luck everyone landed on every single one of my properties over the course of the next few turns. Bringing my total worth to just under 8000 and giving me a good amount of cash to invest in my district again. It was at this point I realized I still had a chance. I was 8 or 9 spaces from the bank and Platypunk was about the same!

I rolled a 6 (fuck YES) and landed on the mini game square where I got 25 stocks in District D gaining me another 1000+ G, putting me at 9000 G (holy shit)! I had 3 spaces to the bank and Platypunk had 4. At this point he was upwards around 12000 G so 4, 5 or 6 and it was game over.

He rolled a 2.

I rolled a 4. Leveled up earning an additional 1000 G. Game over. I win.

Eat a dick, Platypunk.