[cosarara97]

Even without house rules, it depends on the way people play. In my family, monopoly is played in a very anti-social way, where the main goal seems to be preventing other's victory or advantage.

The strategy everybody follows is basically "buy everything you can, and decline all bad trades". Buy everything, of course, to prevent others from making full property groups. Since there is no such thing as an equal trade, no trades are made.

As you can imagine, since nobody has full property groups, the game takes forever, it's terribly boring, and pretty much boils down to luck.

[doeu]

The inability to get an equal trade shouldn’t stop you from trading anyways, as it misses that there is huge relative advantage of having a monopoly, even if it means you have to give someone else a “better” monopoly.

This is because if two players complete two monopolies first, they are basically guaranteed to be among the final two at a 4+ person table, as their early monopolies will quickly drain the other two or more players who refuse to make these trades and are therefore wasting time walking around, during which they’ll grow weaker and weaker due to your monopolies.

Knowing this, it almost doesn’t matter if the trade is equal, so long as you’re trading for a post-jail monopoly (pre-jail tends to be low value), because the winner, once you and your opponent have your improvements, will be decided by chance, as one of the two monopolists will bankrupt one of the other, more behind players first, and then take all their money and property, almost certainly netting themselves several more monopolies and funds for improvements.