Settlers of Monopoly

Andrew here, with a disclaimer that this post is nerdy, full of economics, programming, and just plain fun.

We have a history of taking board games a little too seriously sometimes. Over Christmas break, I was discussing with my brother-in-law Jason the imperfections of Settlers of Catan and Monopoly. We had been playing them both excessively during our first week in the States until all hours of the night. But we were increasingly dissatisfied with the game experience.

For those who don't know, Settlers of Catan is a game where the goal is to build settlements, roads, and cities using rural resources: wheat, sheep, brick, wood, and ore. As you gather resources, you sometimes need to trade and barter with other players for what you need. But a barter system doesn't really reflect the realities of a modern economy: what do you do if you need to trade 1.5 sheep for one ton of bricks? When there is a surplus of a good, why can you not get a better price from the trading ports? In short, market prices are not at equilibrium and there is not an adequate medium for exchange.

There are problems with Monopoly as well. Although Monopoly has money (of course), which acts as a perfect medium for exchange and property trades are easily facilitated, the economic foundations for the land of Monopoly are never entirely clear. Why is everyone living in cities? Where did they get their money in the first place? All developed economies have important agricultural and manufacturing sectors in addition to their services sector, but Monopoly seems entirely focused on the services sector. The response that Monopoly is just a game for the 1% (who inherited their money, live off investment income, or just won the lottery or something) seemed entirely unsatisfactory to us 99% folks.

And then it hit us: let's combine the best of both games! Doing so enables us to simulate a market economy with relevant agricultural, manufacturing, and service sectors. Money now functions as the medium of exchange, but it is based on the actual productive capacity within the economy. Most importantly, the game now lasts about four hours!

After hours and hours of computer programming, debating, debugging, and testing/playing our game, we bring you "Settlers of Monopoly."

Setup
For four players, though you can play with five if you must.

• First, put out the Monopoly board like normal, but do not hand out any money.
• Second, place 20 Settlers octagons (4 of each resource) in the middle of the Monopoly board. You will need to modify the shape somewhat, but it fits pretty well with 20 octagons. Remove Chance and Community Chest, and don't use the desert from Catan. The robber can start off in Jail.
• To speed up the game (and trust me, you will need to speed up the game), shuffle all the Monopoly properties and divide them to the players evenly.
• Players roll to see who goes first. Initial setup in the Settlers portion of the board proceeds as normal—settlements are placed and resources picked up to begin the game. (We refer to the Settlers board as the rural economy.)
• Once the rural economy is set up as needed, use this spreadsheet that Jason created to calculate initial commodities prices. This is the tricky part as the spreadsheet attempts to adjust prices in the market based on supply and demand of various commodities (wood, sheep, wheat, brick, and ore). Green cells in the spreadsheet need to be edited at the start of the game based on the setup and your desired parameters. The Payout column must also be updated when a new settlement or city is built—how many bricks are given out when a 3 is rolled, for example. We have set the base price constant and depreciation constant at the levels that worked best for us, but feel free to play with those if you want.
• Do not roll dice, but instead use the dice roller on the spreadsheet. This will automatically adjust prices based on what new resources are added to the game.

Play

• When each player "rolls" using the spreadsheet, all players receive their resources in the rural economy, as is the case with Settlers of Catan. The player whose turn it is must also move the required spaces on the Monopoly board. The player can both build in the rural economy and purchase a property in the city if he or she desires.
• During each turn, players may build, trade, and move according to the rules of Monopoly in the urban economy and the rules of Catan in the rural economy. However, there is rarely any bartering and all transactions take place through the bank, which now also functions as the commodities market as well. (Bartering between players for commodities usually only happens when you know that the price for a commodity will plummet when the dice button is pressed after the turn, so it's worth it to trade for less than the price at the bank before it changes on the next turn. In that sense you're rather playing the stock market as well, attempting to guess how supply and demand will affect the prices at the bank.)
• All commodities transactions are input by the designated "banker" into the spreadsheet at the end of each turn.
• Official commodity prices offered by the market change between each turn, as resources enter the market or are purchased and used. Again, you may sell commodities at lower or higher prices to other players when it is your turn.
• At the end of each turn where roads, settlements, and/or cities are built in the rural market, the spreadsheet must be updated to reflect the increase in resources in play (the "Payout" column).
• Play ends when the first person goes bankrupt. The winner is the person with the most money. All commodities in hand except property can be liquidated when counting end-of-game money.

The game is still a work in progress, and we debated (and are still debating) a number of issues. We debated if it is right to start directly into the urban market of Monopoly without having any money or an established presence in the rural market. (I like the idea of playing in both simultaneously from the beginning because it forces the players to decide where they will get a greater return on their investment.) The role of Free Parking, Jail, the Longest Road in Catan, and the robber of Catan were discussed too. We also prepared, but never used, a commodities futures market (listed as the insurance column on the spreadsheet) where players could lock in a price for their commodity, after paying a modest fee to the bank, of course. Feel free to add your own house rules too if you are crazy enough to play this game. After all, we are following in the great footsteps of Calvin and Hobbes and have yet to play this game the same way twice.

A couple final thoughts:

• Hats off to Jason for his programming work on the spreadsheet! He has a script running in the background that is doing all the work, and I appreciate his willingness to sit down and debate economics and programming for hours.
• If anyone is seriously thinking of playing this game with the spreadsheet, feel free to email me if you have questions about the spreadsheet. I recognize that it may not be entirely clear to the uninitiated.
• Making this game was almost as much fun as playing it. And we had a number of intense and interesting discussions about economics and the modern world. Who knew a board game could be both entertaining and educational?
• All in all, I would say Settlers of Monopoly will be one of the great memories from our relaxing 2011 Christmas break.

 Board at the beginning of a very long game. In this version we passed out money at the beginning.

 Board near the end of the game (at 3:30 am or something ridiculous like that). It was epic.