How time works[edit]
Days work in a straightforward manner: there are 24 game hours in a day. However, a 'day' also represents five years. So after the first day, it's suddenly five years later. This is totally screwy, but the model works well this way, so why change it? So, supposing the game starts in 1930, after the first day it's 1935, after the second, it's 1940 (the start of a new decade and new shops become available), and so on.
Now, every game day, supposing you don't use the speed-up function, is about 10 minutes real time. So at midnight, beginning of 1935, you've been playing ten minutes if you didn't click speed-up. If you spend an entire game day in speed-up, it's only 2.5 minutes, because it's four times as fast.
NOTE: Do not adjust prices (or anything else in the Business Adjustment Panel) while the game is in speed-up. Unfortunately, the adjustment of prices is also sped up, meaning the prices are adjusted four times as fast, meaning you are quite likely to overshoot several times while trying to set the price you want, which wastes time. Not to mention, wasted time in speed-up mode goes four times as fast, so you waste four times as much time!
Economics 101[edit]
'Economy' is a word that's often kicked around in strategy and sim games, and Monopoly Tycoon is based very heavily on economics, so pay attention! While the word 'economy' is generally used to refer to a whole country, the truth is a business, like the kind you run in the game, has its own miniature economy. To prosper, you must use the resources given to you in order to generate more resources, which you can use to generate even more.
What this means is the key to a healthy economy is to use all the resources you have. This seems obvious, but it isn't as obvious as it sounds: watch a newbie play the game and you might see him sit around while money is rolling in. Since you can't print the money out and use it as legal tender, this money just sitting in the bank is useless to the player if he does nothing with it. Money in the bank is money not being used, and money not being used means a weak economy. This doesn't mean it's always a great idea to stay in the red in order to try to maximize your use of money, but also you shouldn't fear being in the red as long as you can recover in time to avoid bankruptcy. That's investment. Just remember that if you are in the red at midnight two nights in a row, you're out of the game.
The way they walk[edit]
You can actually monitor individual people as they walk through the city. There are two ways to do this: target a particular individual by shift-clicking on him or her, or cycle through all of the people currently walking about in the city by pressing the 'G' key on the keyboard.
You can learn quite a lot by doing this.
For instance, did you know Monopoly City has subways? You may have noticed them, but they actually function. What's more is they work instantaneously, so the moment a guy walks in a subway, he pops out the other end. (Don't you wish it really worked this way?)
This means somebody could shop at one of your stores, pop into the subway, and shop at the "far away" competition at the other end. So don't think you're ever far enough away from your opponent if you're isolationist, because you'll never be far enough away. It's time to face the competition!