If you can't imagine trading with another player in a way that would give that player a Monopoly, you haven't exhausted the strategy space of Monopoly, a seminal game in the history of board games that all 3M/German/Euro-style strategy games of today owe a debt to.
I'm going to stop because I feel like I'm falling into a bizarre habit of only commenting on HN when Monopoly is brought up negatively:)
edit: if there's an obvious, unstoppable winner at any point in any game, you are allowed to stop playing.
No, I wouldn't, except if it gives a (more valuable) monopoly to me.
You talk a lot about strategy, but what strategy is that? Afaict any strategy in Monopoly is "static", i.e. prefer orange properties, then the second set in each street, etc. That is, the boring sort x)
Play by the rules and the game is very fun with a lot of strategies.
It forces every property on the board to be owned with just a few times around the board.
If you're new to Euro-style games and enjoy games with some luck and rolling of the dice, check out The Settlers of Catan (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Catan).
But if you want a game showing the evils of international politics, give War On Terror a try. You can fight the other players by funding terrorists to fight them, but if everybody does that, the terrorists win and everybody loses.
Nominative determinism strikes again?
Monopoly's pretty short if you play by the rules and everyone knows how to play and isn't screwing around. I don't really like it, but I don't think elimination is the main problem. It's not like world-conquest risk where it typically drags on forever, well after the first player elimination.
[EDIT] economy-building games with low interaction between players and a significant randomness component seem especially prone to "well that player happened to go first and got the only good thing available to buy this round so has its benefit the rest of the game, and will proceed to stomp everyone else, obviously". There's a particular cards-based game with an age-of-sail trading vessel theme I've played several times that's my (least) favorite example of this: I've won, I've lost, both are fucking boring because you spend most of the game knowing where you're going to place and you can't even rage-harm other players out of boredom. Drawing a blank on the name. Anyway, I'd much rather be eliminated in a game like that.
Settlers of Catan has a few "dead man walking" situations, but they're somewhat rare.... Especially because the optimal strategy in Catan is to trade with players weaker than you. So all "dead men walking" get boosted by the stronger players. The 1st place player never wants to trade with the 2nd place player, or vice versa.
"Ticket to Ride" has more dead-man walking situations, where you know you've messed up but nothing can be done until the game is over. And because the game is elimination free, you feel like a jerk to leave before the game is over.
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The goal is to find a game that strikes the balance. Keep everyone playing, but make everyone feel like their contributions (even if they're behind) are noteworthy.
Carcassonne is probably the best.
The optimal strategy is to trade with players weaker than you who have something worth trading.
I've had many games where the "dead man walking" comes into effect because a player generates too few resources or not in demand resources (usually by bad initial placement) and therefore is only useful to squeeze for the occasional resource. They can't engage in constant trades because they literally have nothing, potentially not even as a space blocker. So optimal strategy becomes mostly ignore them except for kingmaker.
The situation where you have a clear "dead man walking", even when you did everything correctly, is when opposing players block you in with roads, preventing your expansion.
Once one of your initial 2 villages are blocked, the 2nd village becomes a target for blockage, because everyone knows that blocking your 2nd village will effectively eliminate you from the game.
Not "really eliminate", you're still a player and are kinda forced to play. But you can't make a 3rd village, and basically have no pathway to victory. A few unlucky rolls, or an opponent's lucky "Road Building" card, can bring up the road-block strategy extremely quickly.
A lot of people also play with the houserule no trading because there is too much kingmaking in trading. It's too easy to place aggressively for ore if you know you can trade for whatever you're missing of the settlement. If you have to 4:1 it's a bit more of a tradeoff.
Otherwise you're all sitting around a board that randomly generates resources for you to spend and sorta get in each other's way with road and settlement placements. If you want semi-solo Euro games, play something with way less dice variance!
The trades and dynamic that arises from the mechanic are pretty much the only reason to play imo. Otherwise the dice mechanics are way too strong as you point out.
But as you can see, the idea quickly became way too complicated and we never implemented it.
Removing trading sounds like a terrible idea. Being able to monopolise a resource just to trade it for what you really need, is a feature, not a bug. Some resources are rare, and you need to take that into account during placement.
People play games to have fun. Eliminating them from a game is the worst thing you can do as a game designer, because its the only guaranteed way of them not having fun. This is the same issue that Mafia/Werewolf suffers from.
There's a nice blog post from the designer of Guillotine[1], where he mentions how one of the cards in the game (which stops players from playing any action cards) was "the biggest mistake I ever made as a game designer in my life".
Can't find the presentation anymore, but the other issues in Monopoly:
- Runaway leader (leading players get luckier)
- Starting few rolls can end up deciding too much of the game.
- Chances of landing in various properties is skewed enough to be a game-breaker (Primarily Transports and Orange) if not everyone is aware of it.
- Too much dependence on luck, overall.
[1]: https://danielsolisblog.blogspot.com/2015/07/one-thing-to-av...
1. All players play to the end.
2. Implicit alliances are setup similar to the stock market. If the "Saxon" company does better, ALL players who own Saxon benefit.
3. Implicit rivalries are setup similar to the stock market. If "Saxon" company is the strongest in the game, the players you have to worry about are the fellow "Saxon" shareholders. Especially the intense fight over who is majority shareholder (and therefore gets the majority bonus at endgame)
4. It is easier to screw opponents over by buying the last share (or holding tiles they need), rather than win the game outright. Implicitly, Acquire relies upon playing well in a social aspect. Generally speaking, scratch the back of weaker players (ex: If a weaker player a minority shareholder in "Worldwide" company, grant them the majority), they might return the favor (ex: the weaker play may make an acquisition play, benefiting all shareholders of "Worldwide". Its better to be minority in "Worldwide" through an acquisition than to be majority in Worldwide but the company doesn't go anywhere).
Note: All companies only have 25 shares. Once the 25 shares are sold, there are no more. You can only purchase 3 shares per turn (maximum, across all companies), meaning the fight for "majority shareholder" is quite intense. You can win vs players with more money by being the first one to buy 13 shares, as an example.
5. You can't sell until a company is acquired. Reaching monopoly status (11-tiles large) means that a company CANNOT be acquired, which means your wealth is now trapped in the monopoly, unable to influence other companies aside from acquiring them. The wealth counts for endgame of course, but small companies grow faster, so its usually better to leave your wealth in the small 1 to 3-tile companies instead. I have lost games because my wealth was trapped in monopolies before, despite being majority shareholder in the largest endgame companies.
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Whenever my friends want to play Monopoly, I show them Acquire instead. Its strictly superior. Better tactics, better social interactions, better interactivity for "losing" players (they stay in the game, and often make the final acquisition plays that determine the winner).
"Comeback victories" aren't really a thing, due to the exponential growth of money in acquire. If you fall behind, you fall behind exponentially. But its still nice that everyone still has something to do at the board throughout the game, especially compared to Monopoly. At a minimum, your tiles determine who you can help or hurt, while your shares you own form your rivalries and alliances. You're never "alone" per se, someone else always tries to become at least "minority" shareholder in those other companies with you. So you can rely upon your alliances to advance in the late stages of the game, even if you're behind.
There's still a degree in fun trying to maximize your earnings, even in a losing position IMO.
But Chess is OK because game ends when one player is eliminated. Therefore, no lingering players eliminated and standing on the sidelines while the rest play.
I think adding in secret information or hidden objectives can help prevent this.
It happens at every Pandemic game, but there are ways around it. Even something as simple as a total-game-timer helps. Another rule that helps is enforcing the "consent" part of the rules (for 2-player interactions, including the one where you're allowed to move other players), and ensuring autonomy is respected in the game, even if its a sub-optimal move.
+1 to secret information/hidden objectives. I guess Pandemic:Legacy uses that?
Other games solve this via real-time constraints. Thinking Escape from the Cursed Temple and Space Alert. There's not enough time for on person to coordinate everyone, so everyone needs to communicate and take initiative.
2) Set duration (usually in rounds played).
Usually wins determined, in either case, either by "you were the first to do X so you win" or a scored resolution.
It's usually possible to be de facto eliminated in these games (anyone who's played much Catan has been there, to pick a familiar example) but the best of them keep that from happening until late in the game. Quite a few, frankly, do not do a good job of that but do make it hard to tell who's winning so at least you don't know you've effectively already lost by the halfway point of the game.
[EDIT] for an easy example many might be familiar with: look at most trick-taking card games, like Spades, Hearts, or Bridge. No elimination (unlike, say, poker), but you still get a winner or winning partnership at the end.
"Dominion", "Settlers of Catan", "Splendor" are great games of this nature.
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Acquire has "When all companies are monopolies (11 tiles or larger) or when one company is of size 42, the game is over". So the game is on an implicit clock.
All players keep playing until the end condition.
I also disagree that Catan is deeply flawed. Of course no game is perfect, but Catan does what it does very well. Kingmaking can be an issue in any multiplayer game with any sort of interaction, but in Catan, it's pretty clear how to get points. If people are throwing the game just to spite someone, then you just need to play with better people. Dice are absolutely central to the game, but that's not necessarily bad. Luck being a factor does not make a game deeply flawed. If you prefer chess, you just need to play chess instead.
When the banker gets up to pee, you snatch some bills from the drawer? Or every X turns, roll for chance to hit vault-armor class 0?
(I guess this comment could apply to either the boardgame, or to capitalism.)