Acquire - Tips & Strategies

You definitely want to be on the “absorbed” side of the initial few mergers, but only if you can be first or second. The biggest win is by successfully rolling over a majority stake several times in small chains. The trick is to judge when the best time is to take shares or cash instead of keeping the shares in the absorbed chain. Trading lots of shares into a bigger chain is called “suckage”.

Don’t engage in share-buying wars over control. You may win, but if you’ve spent too much money in one place, you’re probably doomed.

A common counter tactic is to deliberately re-form absorbed chains in an isolated part of the board, where the chain will not have the opportunity to merge again.

This is called “bansihment”

Another counter tactic is to deliberately enlarge chains that someone else controls, preventing them from becoming the absorbee, and eventually preventing them from being merged at all. It’s true this gives your opponent a guaranteed payout, but only at the end of the game. The key in acquire is turnover. Having all your money locked in a big chain (too early in the game) is death.

Once you merge one of your hotel chains that got swallowed up by another, the temptation is to cash out right away or trade in for stock of the new hotel chain. I almost never trade in for the new corporation unless it gets me closer to majority ownership. You have to realize that part the game is not just about owning the most stock in a chain, but also about turn over with merges for big payouts.

Holding back the stock of the defunct hotel chain gives you an opportunity to bring it back for another payout as the game progresses and draws closer to the end. It also works great if everyone else has dumped their shares.

As the game progresses, you begin to see which hotel chains dominate the board. Place the defunct chain back onto the board close to one of those dominant chains, so it can get gobbled up again in another merger. Maybe not too close, unless you’re looking for another quick buyout, then you can grow it a little before the next merger to increase the buyout.

If you bring the defunct chain back into the game and you’re the only one holding stock, you’re automatically the majority stockholder. Plus, placing the defunct chain back onto the board gives you an opportunity to ensure your primary shareholder stake, because you can buy up more stock in that new chain.

Basically, you’re taking your initial investment and turning it over for another payout. You are increasing your return on investment (ROI) ratio. If you can do this 3 or 4 times during a game with a single chain, then you’ve made a good investment on a single hotel chain.

Remember that for each type of stock, there are only 25 cards, so there is really no need to go crazy and buy up all of the stock you can from 1 company. As soon as you have 13 stocks from 1 company, you are the majority shareholder.

Keeping a stock early in the game can be very beneficial. The factors you will want to consider are

1st The most important thing to consider is your current level of cash. You will always want to have cash on hand. If you do not keep cash on hand it will put you at a distinct disadvantage as the rest of the players will continue to purchase stock. Additionally, it will feel like you are not really playing as there is nothing for you to do other than lay tiles.

2nd What are the chances of this stock coming back out? The game may have progressed to the point where it is no longer possible or highly unlikely that this hotel will come back again. In this case sell or trade, but if you get stuck with a stock in your hand that is not on the board, you’ve just lost money.

3rd It may not be necessary for you to keep all the stock you have acquired. Try to figure out who is also keeping some of the stock back and who is selling. Keep only what you need to be the majority and sell the rest for the extra cash. This is especially helpful when you can bring this hotel back onto the board on your next turn. 3B It is even more so helpful when you know this stock will go up in price from its current position.

To speed things up and to add some randomness, place a random tile after each turn. You don’t place a new hotel/business if the random tile ends up adjacent to a lone tile. If the random tile ends up causing a merger, you follow the normal merger rules, except that if the sizes of the hotels/businesses are equal, you pick the buyer randomly.

When to Trade vs Sell

I’ve explained below when you should keep your stock so here I’ll dive into the other half. I’ve seen this concept cause some mental strain on players so I will try to explain in simply here.

Once your hotel is acquired by a larger chain you have the option to keep, sell, or trade your stock. You can trde your stock 2:1 for stock in the hotel it has been acquired by. I think people get caught up strategically as to what they should do, but for the most part it is a simple math problem.

Lets say you have two shares and $200 each. If the hotel you’ve been acquired by stock is over $400 then you will be making money. This is a safe trade. If it the hotel you’ve been acquired by is under $400 then it is a bad trade and you would be losing money.

The only exceptions I could see to this would be if you were willing to lose a few hundred dollars if you saw something looming on the horizon where you could trade your stock 2:1 and become a majority or minority just before an oncoming acquire.

If you have tiles in an area of a company, then you should buy a lot of stocks from that company. Then you place the tiles so that the stocks you bought are worth way more. This could be the game clincher for you. Then if that company merges you can trade them in to a bigger company. You get rich fast!

Ian

Before you buy stock cards from the bank, take a look at your tiles to determine what companies you are able to enlarge yourself. Even if you don’t see any big growth in a foreseeable future, the other players will see you looking, thinking, and then buying. Thus you may use this technique also as a bluff and make your opponents to counteract inappropriately.

Under standard rules if a player has only tiles that may not be played legally, he can discard all those tiles and draw a new set. Alternatively the following rule can be used:

At the beginning of a turn, before playing a tile the active player may decide to discard a tile that may not be legally played any more. If he does he draws two tiles at the end of the turn. Each discarded tile counts as a small penalty at the end of the game: -$90 per tile.

Using this ruling reduces luck involved and causes the game to end in a draw less likely.