Mine, at least until people cotton onto it, is to be a "Slum Landlord." I buy and trade for the cheapest sets I can find, and then I put four houses on each property. Remember, they're slums, so you don't expect hotels. If I can corner the market on houses[1], no matter what the other players do, they can't bankrupt me with rents because they can't improve their properties.
This doesn't work in a game where people ignore the housing shortage rule, of course. But If you toss that rule out, I don't think you're playing Monopoly any more.
[1]: There are 32 houses, so if you own 21 houses, it is impossible for anyone else to upgrade a three property group to hotels. If you own 25 houses, no other player can upgrade any group. It's fairly easy for two players to control the property market and kill the other players off.
The limitation on housing is the key to the game's structure. Most people don't seem to play it this way (letting players build hotels if they have the money, regardless of the number of actual plastic houses remaining), and it screws the game up. Not to mention house rules like "free parking" artificially adding money to the game.
I think they play it that way because the houses always get lost, so you never know how many there really are supposed to be. So you use stand-in pieces, with no limit.
When I read your comment I started tinking about Settlers of Catan. I think SoC is more interesting than Monopoly, but there is still way too much luck involved for my taste. I have been trying to come up with a way to take the luck out of SoC, but haven't come up with a good way yet. Of course, one might need to stray quite a bit from the original design. Any ideas?
Mine, at least until people cotton onto it, is to be a "Slum Landlord." I buy and trade for the cheapest sets I can find, and then I put four houses on each property. Remember, they're slums, so you don't expect hotels. If I can corner the market on houses[1], no matter what the other players do, they can't bankrupt me with rents because they can't improve their properties.
This doesn't work in a game where people ignore the housing shortage rule, of course. But If you toss that rule out, I don't think you're playing Monopoly any more.
[1]: There are 32 houses, so if you own 21 houses, it is impossible for anyone else to upgrade a three property group to hotels. If you own 25 houses, no other player can upgrade any group. It's fairly easy for two players to control the property market and kill the other players off.