_______ _ ______ (_______) (_) (_____ \ _ ____ ___ ____ _ ____ ___ _____) ) | |/ ___) _ \| _ \| |/ ___) _ \ (_____ ( | | | | |_| | |_| | ( (__| |_| | _____) ) |_|_| \___/| __/|_|\____)___/ (______/ |_| ============================== 1...Introduction...(1TI) ============================== Use control+F to navigate. 1. Introduction..........................(1TI) 2. Controls..............................(2CT) 3. Gameplay..............................(3GP) Economy: How to Make Money...........(EMM) Buildings...........................(BDG) Strategies..........................(STG) People: They Make Money For You......(PMY) Buildings...........................(HOZ) Factions............................(FCZ) Infrastructure: Insures Money is Made(IFM) Buildings...........................(DPZ) Edicts..............................(EDZ) 4. Campaign Guide........................(4GD) 5. Closing...............................(5CL) ==================== Introduction ==================== Hello, and welcome to my guide for Tropico 3. The purpose of this guide is to provide a guide for how to play the game along with some tips to get through some of the harder missions in the game. The guide is organized in to five sections: you're in the introduction, the controls section lists the game’s controls, The Gameplay section provides tips for general combat and how stuff works, and the main guide is the way through the game. The introduction and the closing section have contact information as well as some other information about the guide. If you have any questions, you can contact me at wcrobars@hotmail.com ==================== 2...Controls...(2CT) ==================== Xbox 360 L.Stick..........Move Cursor R.Stick..........Move Map/Zoom LS Click.........Street View RS Click.........Normal View R.Trigger........Menu/Angle control (Press face buttons for menus) L.Trigger........Track Person L/R Bumper.......Change Category in Menu Y................Construct X................Select Person/Other Options A................Confirm B................Cancel Start............Pause Menu Back.............Objectives PC Has fully customizable controls, so use whatever you feel like. =================== 3...Gameplay...(GP3) =================== Congratulations Presidente! You’ve just taken control of a small island in the Caribbean sea! As the ultimate ruler of the country you’ll need to control every aspect of the island: how it makes money, how the government is run, how it treats its citizens, and how it handles other nations in the world. It sounds like a lot to handle, and that’s because it is. Hope you’re up for it, otherwise you can expect a violent uprising and/or a military coup just before your execution! --------------- A. Economy: How to Make Money (EMM) --------------- To put it bluntly, money is the most important resource in all of Tropico. Virtually everything in the game will cost you money to do, and establishing a thriving Economy is the key to keeping the island happy and your pockets lined with cash. There are three primary ways to make money, each discussed below: Farming Farming is the most basic means to make money in the game. Farms can provide food for your people, but the wonderful Caribbean climate will allow you to grow all sorts of things you can export off of the island. You can grow fruit in order to can it and sell it by exporting it off the island. You could also make money by producing a cash crop (Tobacco, Sugar, Coffee) and selling it, which makes more a profit but can’t feed a worker’s stomach. You can then go further and build factories to make more money off of your products. Sugar can be distilled into rum, tobacco can be rolled into Cigars, and Pineapple can be canned. You can also farm from the oceans with a beach side wharf or raise cattle. These can feed your people, but also be sold for profit. The downside of farming is that it requires time to make money. Farms won’t turn a profit for two years while they plant crops. Even then, farms take up a lot of space and require large open areas to grow. Crops can also be fickle and need to grow in certain areas to get the best version. Resources: More often than not your island will have something under the soil that can be exploited for money. This isn’t set in stone though: resources are random on every island, so you need to deal with what you’re given. Mines will let you extract the minerals from the ground and sell them as exports, and oil wells will do the same for oil. These can be sold as is or converted to more valuable items with an oil refinery or a jewelry factory, though not all minerals can be used for these. Resources are a great way to make money, but there is no guarantee what you might have in any given map. To add to this mines and oil wells are pretty damn ugly and will make your island look a bit ugly. Tourism: Rich people will always want to get away from their boring city lives, so let them come to you! By building hotels, along with docks or an airport, tourists can arrive to spend their money and time on your island. Tourists will want to explore the majestic wonders of your island, so that means you need to build them a lot of attractions that they can spend their money on. Beachside resorts, swimming pools, casinos- you name it. You can up the ante with some nice hotels and go for rich tourists, charging exorbitant prices for all goods and services. Tourism can make money, but only if you’re attracting the right kind of tourist. Your average tourist will merely break even with you on the island, so you need to attract the high rollers. This means nice accommodations and high class entertainment, all on the opposite of the island from all of your ugly tenements and mines. --------------- I. Buildings...(BDG) --------------- These are the various buildings related to industry and production, with their ratings a prices. Many buildings can be given upgrades once certain conditions are met. These will increase any number of factors, and many buildings can have numerous contributing factors. Farm-$1500 Rating- N/A You can’t function without farms, so they don’t need a rating. As a cash making venture there are better options out there, but farms are cheap to build and maintain. They also need a lot of land to function, which is the only major downpoint. So don’t overbuild in farms. Ranch-$750 Rating-3/5 Takes up a smaller space but produces a lot less food. It provides meat for the island, and has a lot of possible options for placement. Doesn’t count as a true farm, but build a couple to improve food quality. Fisherman’s wharf-$3000 Rating-4/5 Placed on the coast. It will come with a fleet of boats that venture out to catch fish. It provides a lot of food for the money, but it can be awkward to place and usually requires roads to be built if in an out of the way location. Mines-$3000 Rating-N/A Mines are the easiest and cheapest way to make money early on the game. Unlike farms they start producing early in the game, and they never need advanced workers. They’re dependent on how where mineral deposits are: build them near (not on) the large yellow area for the best effects. Mines are amazing options of you have minerals, but they get an N/A because minerals sometimes don’t show up or appear in hard to reach places. Jewelry Factory- $13,000 Rating-2/5 These are only good if you’re mining a lot of gold, which is the rarest resource in the game by far. Even then this doesn’t really make a whole lot more money than other industry. Oil Well- $8000 Rating- 4/5 Oil wells are cash cows early in the game, and you should snap oil wells fast. They need to be built on top of oil deposits. The only problem with oil wells is that they need educated workers, which you’ll most likely need to hire early in the game. Oil Refinery-$15,000 Rating- 5/5 These have a dual function: they will process crude oil into barrels, dramatically increasing the price of exported oil, and they will also automatically collect off-shore oil fields. They should be built as close as possible to offshore oil fields, which you should take note of at the start of the game. These easily pay for themselves several times over (one can make around $200,000 in ten years on an oil rich island.) Extremely lucrative constructions. Cannery-$15,000 Rating-2/5 This produces canned tobacco, pineapple, and fish for export. This really isn’t worth it: cigar factories can make just as much for cheaper, and farming pineapple and fish for profit usually isn’t that lucrative. If you have all the resources it’s great, but otherwise it’s a pass. Canneries will shuffle food from the people in addition to costing money, which can leave people starving while you ship out all the island’s food. Cigar Factory-$10,000 Rating-5/5 A cheap way to make a lot of money, as long as you have tobacco farms. One of the best ways to make money earlier in the game, though it’s outpaced by other industries later in the game. If you don’t have any oil on the island, this is the next best way to make money. (Or do both and make even more.) Logging Camp-$1500 Rating-1/5 Logging destroys fertile land for very little profit and makes less money than other industries. If you have a lot of trees, farming is a better way to make money. Lumber Mill-$5000 Rating-1/5 Uses logs to make Lumber, which can be exported or... Furniture Factory-$17,000 Rating-2/5 ...used to make furniture at a factory. Though furniture can be lucrative, the other aspects just aren’t worth it. It’s the only industry that needs three buildings to function, which means all sorts of extra work for teamsters and a higher starting price. The environmentalists will hate you for it too. They hate other industries too, but those make a lot more money. Rum Distillery-$22,000 Rating-3/5 Converts sugar into rum for export, which is very valuable. However, it’s also quite a bit more than other industries. Still worth it, but others are better to get first. ---------- Tourism: ---------- These buildings are related to the island’s Tourism industry, and will produce money based off of how many tourists use them. Many of these can also be used by Tropicans, but not all of them. Accommodations: Tourists need somewhere to stay when they’re on the island, otherwise they won’t even come. Bungalow- $400 Rating- 1/5 Bungalows are pointless. They provide about the same quality as Hotels, but can only hold one family. It’s technically cheaper to build a ton of bungalows, but that means time to build all of them separately which is a much larger hassle then the few hundred $$$ you’ll save. Motel- $3000 Rating- 1/5 Pretty much the same story as the Bungalow. These are the “cheap” version of hotels, but hotels are already cheap to begin with. Hotel- $5000 Rating- 4/5 The best accommodations for the price, as long as you aren’t looking to attract the super rich. This provides a lot of rooms for a modes investment, and should be your only accommodations until you build a power plant. Beach Villa- $1500 Rating- 2/5 Upgraded Bungalow, with most of the same problems. Jacking up the price can still bring in some decent cash from wealthy tourists, but the other hotels are better. Requires electricity. Luxury Hotel- $8000 Rating- 4/5 The Motel of electronic hotels. It’s the best hotel next to the Skyscraper, and you can build more than one of them. Skyscraper Hotel- $12,000 Rating- 5/5 The best hotel in the game, but you can only have one of them on the island. Offers the best service and ridiculously high prices, and will attract much richer tourists. If you’re going for a tourism based economy, you need this. Attractions- These are what people come to your island to see. Most of these are pretty much the same thing for different amounts of money. Raising the price and enforcing dress codes will attract different tourists, as will building more ecological buildings. Many Tropicans will visit some of these areas as well, and tourists can also go to some of entertainment buildings for Tropicans. Tour office- $1800 Souvenir shop- $1300 Beach site- $500 Pool-$4000 These will attract cheap tourists, but they are also the cheapest buildings to create and the ones that need the least amount of careful placement. Beach sites are the best tourist building early on when built in a nice area. And pools are nice when placed near hotels Scenic Outlook- $1000 Ethnic Enclave- $10,000 Botanical Garden-$5,000 These buildings will attract the substantially richer eco tourists. They also require careful placement in areas that are naturally beautiful, much more than other tourist attractions. Spa-$5,000 Zoo-$7,000 These will attract higher class tourists to your island with high class entertainment. (Casinos and other electrical entertainment venues do this as well.) You need these if you want rich people, which is the best way to make money off of tourism. ---------- Transport ---------- These are needed to get tourists to your island, which is obviously a requirement if you want tourism at all. Dock-$2000 Airport-$16,000 Both of these have the same function. Docks will bring in cheap tourists, while Airports will bring in rich ones. Airports will also bring in more tourists. Obviously you want to have an airport, and you need one if you’re really going to make any money off of tourism in the game. --------------- II. Strategies...(STG) --------------- Your economy is the first thing that you need to get up and running when you start the game. It matters more than everything else on the island. Though not always advisable, it’s perfectly fine to go into debt the first couple years of the game in order to start producing a lot of money fast. When you start the game you should pull up your overlays. These will tell you what’s on the island. The first thing to check is your mineral deposits. Minerals are the best way to make money early in the game since they provide instant profits. They also tend to provide the best money: Iron and Bauxite mines provide pure cash, but they also have no option for advancement with Industry. Oil wells and Gold deposits give more money and can be upgraded to refineries and Jewelry factories to make even more. The second best option is a couple sugar/tobacco farms with a production factory for cigars or a distillery for rum. This will take a couple of years to start turning a profit, but it’s a decent option for some money. You’ll need high school education (more on that below) for factory jobs, so make a high school one of your early priorities. After your economy gets going you’ll most likely have more money that you know what to deal with. You shouldn’t really change your spending a whole lot though: 2-3 important buildings a year and some houses is good. You want to save up some money for the crash. Your economy tends to reach a “break even” point on a lot of the game’s islands. This happened around the tenth in-game year: your money flow will slow drastically as the island increases in size, and you’ll sort of reach a point where you’re making just enough money to run things. At this point you should introduce a second industry to your island, one of the ones you have not yet picked. Farming something is not a good idea if you’re already farming, you simply need to much space. Building another couple mines or an oil refinery is a good idea, as it adding a tourist dock and trying to attract some tourism. --------------- B. People: They Make Money for you...(PMY) --------------- While money is nice, you need people to make it for you. The citizens of Tropico are willing to work for you, but they have their own needs and desires that need to be met. Pay them too little or repress them a little too much and you could have an uprising on your hands. As a general People have a host of needs to be met. Making them happy will make you happy, since they’ll work harder and make more money for the island: Food: The most basic thing people need to do is eat. Otherwise they starve to death. To increase your people’s food satisfaction you need to provide them with some variety in their diet: they can survive off of corn, but no one wants to eat that all the time. Build a couple of ranches, a fisherman’s wharf, and a fruit farm and their food score will sky rocket. Building a market or issuing the “Food for the People” edict (see below) will increase it even further. As a general rule you’ll want one food producing building for every 50 people on the island. Housing: People need places to live. If you don’t provide them they’ll make them themselves, but they don’t want to live inside shacks. People want good housing: the more expensive it is, the better the quality of life. They also want their homes to be in appropriate areas: living in close quarters or next to a factory will lower their happiness. Health: Staying alive is a good thing, and you need healthcare on your island in order to accomplish that. The only way to increase the health score is to build clinics and hospitals. Hospitals are much better, but are more expensive and need electricity to work. This should be an early priority: people will start dying without proper healthcare in a few years. If possible, build clinics in multiple areas of the island to ensure people don’t have to walk far. Religion: Religion is an important factor in the lives of Tropicans. They need churches to forgive them of their sins and have a solid moral ground. A church should be an early priority, with a Cathedral built in the first ten years of the game. Religious satisfaction is also important: these churches need to be staffed by a full contingent of priests and be near housing in order to make faith a quick endeavor. Religion is, generally speaking, one of the hardest categories to get good at making. Entertainment: After a hard day of back breaking labor, people need to unwind. They do this through entertainment: restaurants, gambling, sports, etc. Though entertainment is not an extremely high priority, people will get depressed if they don’t have anything to spend their money on. Build a few restaurants in residential areas to satisfy this, and eventually move up to higher class buildings and attractions. Liberty: As much as people love and adore you, some basic human privileges are always a nice thing. Liberty determines how many freedoms and opportunities your citizens have to advance. Schools and colleges let your people learn and grow, as well as letting them take better jobs to make more money. Liberty is also governed by the press: have a newspaper or TV station and you’ll be on the way to freedom. Crime Safety: Getting shot is a bad thing, and no one wants to live in the bad part of town. People want nice, safe areas to raise their families in. Build a police station to increase the safety rate. You can also build an armory and an army base. These lower the liberty in the area, but no one’s going to rob a person when there’s a base across the street. Environmental Beauty: Look at an empty concrete lot. Ugly isn’t it? People don’t want their island looking like a dystopic wasteland. They want pretty trees and lakes, not oil wells and factories. Take care in how you place your buildings and place some decorations to spice up the look of the island. Job Satisfaction: If you hate your job, you won’t be very happy. People will be satisfied with their jobs by a couple factors, but the largest one is pay. Pay people enough and you’ll find they’re a lot happier. You can also upgrade their working conditions with nicer accommodations or reduce the time of their workday, but that depends on the building. Try to keep this high, as a high satisfaction will greatly increase the amount of goods produced. --------------- A. Buildings...(HOZ) --------------- These buildings are all related to satisfying the needs of your people. I. Housing Shacks- Rating- 2/5 Islanders build them for free. They’re ugly and people hate them, but they’re free. As a special note: they get destroyed if you build too close to them without letting you know, so keep an eye out. The easiest way to get people to move out of shacks is to build nicer homes on top of them. Shanty- $250 Rating- 1/5 Completely pointless, don’t even use these. Bunkhouse- $500 Rating- 3/5 Cheap, holds three families, is a lot better than a shack. Use these for cheap housing before upgrading to apartment blocks Tenement- $4000 Rating- 2/5 It costs almost as much as the Apartment block, which is a way better building. Mostly pointless. Apartment Block- $5000 Rating-5/5 Your best option for large scale housing in the game, and probably the best housing unit overall. Before you start building these, try as hard as possible to get the USSR Development Aid Edict, which reduces the price by half. This makes it one of the most useful buildings in the game. Country House-$1000 Rating-1/5 Pointless really. House-$2000 Rating- 3/5 Decent enough house that most people on the island will enjoy. Place them near advanced factories early in the game if you hire experts: it will give them incentive to stay working there. Mansion (Needs PP)-$4000 Rating- N/A In the vast Majority of the games you’ll never get to the point where these are feasible to build. The main reason for building these is to satiate angry Capitalists, they aren’t useful as general housing. Utterly worthless as actual housing, don’t even both with them unless you need to increase your housing score or appease factions. Condominiums (needs PP)-$6000 Rating- 4/5 See Mansion. Same thing on a larger scale, only useful. If you need to increase people’s housing score, this is the best way to do it. If you have enough electricity, these are a great way to satisfy people on a large scale. II. Services These Buildings are related to satisfying the needs of your people, and you should have one in each category for every 50 or so people. Eg: for every 50 people you need one entertainment building, one church, one clinic, etc. Each of these buildings also has a second level, which offers more satisfaction. For those one building can cover around 75 people EG: Two hospitals will do the work of three clinics. With 150 people you’d need three clinics or two hospitals. A Hospital and two clinics can adequately cover 175 people. High quality service (level 2 buildings) are better in the long run, but a lot more expensive short term. So the formula for service success is: Level 1=50 people, low quality service Level 2=75 People, high quality service Entertainment: These buildings provide entertainment for Tropicans in different ways. Many of these can also be used to entertain tourists, and some of the tourist buildsing can provide entertainment for islanders. Pub-$800 Rating- 3/5 You get what you pay for. Ugly and detracts from the island’s atmosphere, but a few edicts are only possible with one of these so they’re a necessity. Restaurant-$2,000 Rating-4/5 The best value for your money for entertainment at the island, at least for your people. Extremely cheap and surprisingly satisfying for the low cost, but there are better options available. Gourmet Restaurant-$3,000 Rating-3/5 Provides a good bit of entertainment, but takes a lot of resources to create and keep going compared to a regular restaurant. This is mostly for tourists on the island, not your citizens. Childhood Museum-$2,000 Rating-3/5 Different than other entertainment buildings, this has an option of contributing to your Swiss bank or even brainwashing the people of Tropico. It’s a useful building, but not necessary. Casino-$10,000 Rating- 5/5 The best entertainment building in the game. You can make a lot of money off of this with the right settings. It’s best to build at least two: a low class one for your people and cheap tourists, and a high class one to cater to the rich and privileged. Night Club-$4,000 Rating-2/5 There’s much better options out there for entertainment, but this does let you issue a great edict when built. Cabaret-$3000 Rating-3/5 It’s okay. A decent entertainment option, but not fantastic. Movie Theater-$3000 Rating- 4/5 The cheapest form of “high quality” entertainment on the island and a great way to please capitalists early on. Provides a ton of different options for what it shows, so you might want to build a few of them. Sports complex-$25,000 Rating- 4/5 The most expensive building in the game, but it will get used a ton by tourists and Tropicans alike. It opens up a great new edict as well. The only negative is that it isn’t really considered a “high class” building, and that it’s extremely large and difficult to place. High School-$8,000 Rating- N/A No question: you need a school if your game is more than 10 years long. High schools educate citizens, allowing them to take more complex jobs at factories and other buildings. This makes you a lot more money, and it means they get a hgiher job quality. Raises liberty. College-$12,000 Rating-N/A Colleges are the next level above High schools, offering education for the highest level jobs on the island. This building is needed if you have oil refineries or other high class buildings, which is most likely going to happen in games longer than 10-15 years. In that case they're mandatory, but if you don't need college workers they're pointless. Clinic-$3000 Rating-N/A This building is the basic healthcare facility, and should be an early priority in order to have your citizens not die from the flu. Hospital-$12000 Rating-N/A Hospitals are a step up from Clinics, and should be the first building you make as soon as you have electricity. They improve healthcare by quite a bit and offer some interesting options based on how your island is running. Marketplace-$500 Rating-5/5 While not necessary to build, Marketplaces greatly increase the quality of food and transport goods all across the island insread of forcing people to visit farms themselves to pick them up. You should build one early on. Church-$6000 Rating-N/A Extremely important in Tropico, churches will offer people religious salvation for a relatively low cost. They're needed to improve happiness and increase the religious satisfaction of the people. Cathedral-$20,000 Rating-N/A A much larger church, Tropicans will get angry if you don;t build one of these a few years after the church is built, which pretty much means you need at least one of them. Newspaper-$7000 Radio-$10,000 TV station-$15,000 These all have the same basic function: they increase liberty on the island. They also have a side effect of offering you a wealth of different bonuses for the island and the immediate are: issuing coupons provides revenue, airing propaganda makes people love you, etc. These buildings are useful, but none of them are completely necessary and are often hard to fully staff. They often provide access to special edicts which can increase tourism profits greatly, so keep that in mind if you want a tourist based economy. ---------- Factions ---------- Each citizen on the island is a member of one of the various factions. Factions can best be seen as different ideas about how to run the country: different policies will have a different effect on each factions, and they are often mutually exclusive. While different factions need different things to be happy, the easiest way to please them is to simply have a high quality of life. If people live in good houses, make a lot of money, and don’t have to worry about medicine or food then they’ll be a lot more positive. Capitalists: Capitalists like money more than all of the other factions, and their primary concern is how the economy is going. Capitalists are pleased when the economy is growing, a lot more than anything else. They also want high class entertainment and enjoy economic disparity (skilled workers get paid substantially more.) The easiest way to please them is to have a good economy: do so and you have a guaranteed score of 60-70. Are opposed to the communists Communists: Communists put the people first. Communists are concerned with the happiness of the people on the island first and foremost. They want good food supplies, good healthcare, and above all good housing quality. This is a relatively easy faction to please, since all three of those tenets are important to improving the quality of life and production on the island. The only possible difficulty is in their desire for low economic disparity, which the capitalists love the opposite of. This means giving the similar wages to all workers, which can make skilled jobs hard to fill. Intellectuals: The learned citizens of Tropico make up the intellectual faction. Well educated, these people want the rest of Tropico to live up to their standards. Intellectuals want schools and high liberty to express themselves in your government. They're mostly easy to please since they tend to like things that you're going to need anyway on the island. The big things intellectuals don;t like are what they see as corrupt actions: unlike the rest of the island, Intellectuals are going to realize when you try to pull a fast one with unfair elections or shady bribe tactics. Religious: God is the most important thing for these Tropicans. Their unique combination of traits makes them a difficult group to please: the religious will demand a church early in the game and a cathedral not long after. They also want a high religious satisfaction (keeping your churches full of priests and having enough of them, and what they consider to be a moral island. For the religious, a moral island is an island without vice: no booze, cigars, or immoral entertainment. This group is notoriously hard to please, so it's best to just resign the fact that you won;t make them happy until later in any given game. Environmentalists: The Environmentalists really care about nature on your island. They want the island to look beautiful and be free of any harmful industries: they hate logging with a passion, and aren't a whole lot nicer to oil wells or mines. However, they are still an easy group to please: build some random decorations and a botanical garden and they'll be perfectly happy. There are also edicts that reduce your pollution, which will really get them on your side. Militarists: Your island's security is the main concern of the militarists. They want to the island to be free of rebels, with a nice upstanding army to make sure that nothing goes wrong even if there isn't a single rebel army. They also want soldiers to be paid a fair wage and have decent accommodations, otherwise they might start getting uppity and revolt. Overall a relatively easy faction to please since, much like the intellectuals, most of the things they want should be done anyway. Nationalists: Nationalists want Tropico to come first before anything else. This means fostering a Tropican workforce and limiting immigration: they don't want no smelly foreigners in the country/ Nationalists also want a limit on foreign involvement, and hate it when you get too friendly with the US or the USSR. You can try to keep them happy, but that tends to be pretty hard due to their xenophobia. Mostly they should just be ignored, as they tend to get a lot happier with some money in the bank. --------------- C. Infrastructure...(IFM) --------------- So not you've managed to get an economy up and running and the people on your island don't want to kill you, what is there to do? Well, as a nation there are always things to do. You need to manage your relations with other countries as well as the various factions on the island to ensure you stay in power. You'll need to react to various world events and navigate through elections to stay in power. Elections are one of the most basic things that happen on the island. Every 5 years or so the citizens will want elections for a new ruler. You'll be given the option to allow them and make a speech, not make any speech and allow them, or outlaw them. Making a speech will sway people to your cause: you can promise to improve the island over the next couple of years, and people might be swayed to vote for you. However, if you don't fulfill these promises the people will get angry. If you decide not to hold elections at all they might revolt against you. However, this is not the end of the story. More enterprising presidents will make sure that they can win elections with a little fraud. Intellectuals will see through this and you'll lose a lot of respect, but you'll most likely win the election. Even so, it's pretty hard to lose an election unless you're wildly hated among the people of your island. As long as you have a happiness above 45% and make a decent speech, you should come in way ahead of your opponent. The aspect of diplomacy involves monitoring your relationships with other countries in the world, mostly the US and the USSR. You need to keep your relations with these countries as high as possible: each one will give you specific bonuses depending on your relationship with them. The most obvious one is development aid: each year you'll receive some money from each country depending on how much they like you. The more they like you, the more money you get. This is very important in the early years of the game, and will make up a substantial amount of your early income. Maintaining a decent relationship with both nations is easy: they ascribe to the same views as the Capitalists and the Communists respectively. Americans want you to make a lot of money and give them concessions, while the Soviets want you to provide good healthcare and housing for the people of the island. If the respective factions are happy, then the countries will most likely be happy as well. Another factor when dealing with foreign powers is random events. Every so often something will happen and you'll need to make a decision. This could be internal only or external, and any number of factors are possible. An assassin could try to kill you for instance: you could blame a foreign power, declare martial law, or do nothing. Having a secret police will often give you additional options for these situations. This covers the three main ways you can lose the game: lose an election, get overthrown by rebels/citizens, or piss off a foreign power enough to get them to invade you. ---------- A. Buildings...(DPZ) ---------- There are two kinds of buildings related to infrastructure: those that run the island and those thatgive you different abilities related to foreign powers. Roads-$20 Rating-N/A Roads are needed to connect your buildings on the island. They are cheap and extremely important, and major buildings should be connected to roads so teamsters can access them easier. It's virtually impossible to do well without roads. Teamster’s Office-$2000 Rating-N/A Teamsters move goods around your island. This mostly means they'll move goods to the dock in order for them to be exported, but they'll also move food to markets and do some other odd jobs around the island. You will always have a teamster’s office built at the start of the game, and building another one doesn't really seem to have a whole lot of an effect on how efficient movement is. Construction Office-$2000 Rating-I hate them with a burning passion. To put it nicely, Construction workers are the most annoying citizens on the island. Construction workers will construct buildings on the island, but they're pretty lazy about doing it. Like the Teamsters, you'll get one of these buildings for free at the start of each game. Even more frustrating, these guys don't seem to increase their working speed if you build more offices. The best strategy is to up their pay a bit and only have a few buildings awaiting construction at once. Dock-$2000 Rating-N/A You get one for free at the start of the game, and that should be the only one you'll ever need. It's possible to build a second one, but I've never done it and don't really see a reason to unless the one you get is in a bad spot to export things from. You literally cannot make any real money without one of these, so you need to have one at all times. Garage-$2500 Rating-4/5 Garages will allow the people on the island to use cars, which lets them move a lot faster on roads. While this sounds great, garages work more as a taxi service than as a storage facility: citizens take a one way ride and get off at their jobs, which means they still have to walk half way. Build garages in pairs when possible to make up for this. Power Planet-$17,000 Rating-3/5 Huge, hard to place, expensive, pollutes the environment, and needs a lot of people to function properly. Power plants are annoying, but they're the only way to gain electricity for the island. If you want electricity you need to have one. You might think this means you need one all the time, but you really don't. If your game is going to be under 20 years it's perfectly possible to survive without one. Electric substations are a subset of this: they'll increase the area electricity can cover and are otherwise useless on their own. Government: These buildings are related to maintaining the flow of the government on the island. Immigration Office-$2500 Rating- 4/5 A useful little building that will let you dictate the type and amount of immigrants that come to your island. You can open them to everyone, which can get you 20+ immigrants per boat, cut it off completely, or try to attract educated people to the island. They're useful buildings to have, but not necessary to the running of the island. Diplomatic ministry-$5000 Rating-4/5 Diplomatic ministries are pointless by themselves. You don't really need the building for anything, you want the stuff that comes along with it. The only major thing they do is open up the foreign policy edicts, which are extremely useful. Try to build one early on to gain access to foreign policy edicts, which are some of the best in the game and can save you a lot of money. Bank-$8000 Rating-2/5 Banks offer you a couple of different options for how to handle money. None of them are really all that important: you can decrease building costs a small amount, make money off tourists, or get some cash in your Swedish account. While nice, the bank is pretty much one of your last priorities. Police Station-$5000 Rating-3/5 Police Stations dramatically lower the crime rate in any given area, making it much safer and friendly to tourists and citizens alike. That seems really good, but a lot of the time crime rates don't get high enough for them to really matter a whole lot. Building better buildings will do just the same a serves a double purpose, but the police station isn't that much so it's a good quick fix. Prison-$3000 Rating-1/5 Prisons are basically pointless. The goal of prisons is to reeducate people after the become subversives, but the whole point of the game is to make people naturally happy. To add to that, imprisoning people requires you to monitor individual citizens which is a huge pain. If you get to the point where you need a prison, you need reforms other than a place to throw malcontents. Guard Station-$1500 Rating-2/5 Guard stations increase the safety of a given area and make your response time to rebel be a lot faster. On most islands these will never be needed, since a military base and a garage increase happiness of soldiers a lot more and do the same. The garage lets them move a lot faster that the rebels, which sort of makes this building pointless. Armory-$3000 Rating-3/5 Armories are where soldiers are trained by generals to defend the island. The whole relationship between these buildings is a bit conplicated, so let me explain it in detail: Soldiers need to be high school educated. Anyone who is can be a soldier. They can be recruited through your mansion (this is where SOLDIERS are trained. Armories and Bases are where GENERALS work). It's important to pay soldiers a lot so they don't revolt, so make sure you pay them a little more than other workers on average. Armories train soldiers and make them more effective. Army bases do the same, but they also provide nice houses for soldiers and their families. Armories will also increase the skill of soldiers. Army Base-$10000 Rating-4/5 Makes soldiers really happy and trains them at the same time. You'll want one of these at some point: it makes soldiers really happy, as well as the militarists. Build an armory first, but make sure to plan for one of these down the line. Decorations-$30 Rating-3/5 Improves your environmental score. Easy to place, but doesn't really do a whole lot unless there's a tone of them Statues-$200 Rating-2/5 Improves safety but lowers liberty. Could be useful, but I've never been in a situation where they were needed. ---------- B. Edicts...(EDZ) ---------- Edicts are special commands that can be enacted during the game. They can have a really wide range of effects, and there are four categories: Social: Social Security- $500, X amount per month Rating-5/5 Provides 2/3 of the normal wage for all unemployed workers. This greatly increases the happiness of citizens all over the island and is extremely cheap. Food for the People-$500 Rating- 3/5 Doubles the food people eat and dramatically raises the happiness on the island. This is a really great edict that you should aim to have on at all times. However, you need a lot of food in order to keep this running. Make sure you have a few farms and enough food. Prohibition-$500 Rating-1/5 Bans alcohol. Increases religious respect and instantly closes down all buildings associated with alcohol. Moronic if you're producing rum, and not really that smart in any other situation. This also raises crime due to illegal smuggling. Literacy Program-$500, $100 annually Rating-5/5 Increases the rate students learn and workers gain experience. Cheap, and speeds up the whole education process. You need a high school, but you should have one anyway. Contraception ban-$500 Rating-3/5 You need a church and a good standing with the religious. The intellectuals will lose respect with you and the population will increase. This can be good if you're trying to raise the nationalists respect without getting immigrants in or trying to raise the respect of the religious, but it's not a huge priority. Anti-Litter Ordinance-$500 Rating-3/5 Reduces Pollution but lowers liberty. Can either be good or bad depending on your situation. Sensitivty Training $500, $200 annually Rating-4/5 Needs a college. This doesn't have any negatives to it, but it takes a bit of resources to get. Bribe-$7000 Rating-2/5 Raises the target family's happiness. Needs a bank to work and it doesn't do a whole lot overall. Might be worth it, but I never use it. Wiretapping-$200 monthly Rating-3/5 Raises the effect of your secret police. You basically need this in order to make your secret police work at all, since they hover at around 50% without it. Slightly expensive ($2400 yearly) Same Sec Marriage-$500 Rating-4/5 This requires a high liberty score. It allows same sex couples to marry, which has the side effect of increasing happiness and immigration. The religious don;t like it though, which is the only real problem. Foreign Policy: These edicts can only be issued if you have a Diplomatic Ministry. Most of these are just the same thing with one country or the other. You can only issue one of these every 24 months, and you should do one as soon as possible since most of them are great. There's no point in sitting on them. Praise US/USSR-$500 Rating-2/5 Raises respect with one nation and lowers the respect with the other one. Not really all that effective, but it could save you if someone tries to invade when you have abysmal relations. US/USSR Development Aid-$2000 Rating-5/5 The main reasons you want a diplomatic ministry are so you can have these ASAP. These reduce the cost of certain buildings by 50%. Us Aide reduces the cost of Airports and Power planets by half (Saving around $10,000), while USSR lowers the cost of Apartments and tenements by 50%. Both are really useful, so try as hard as possible to get both of them as soon as you can. Trade Mission-$1000 Rating-3/5 Requires an airport. Sends a delegation the US/USSR, which returns a few months later with a random bonus. I've never seen this come out bad, but there are other foreign policy decisions you should make first. The positives mostly consist of getting random buildings for free or getting some money. Alliance-$6000 Rating-N/A This is sort of an odd one in that it can either be completely useless or great. This builds a US/USSR military base on the island, which prevents invasion from the other faction and gives you $2000 a year. This also lowers the respect of the nationalists permanently. If you're facing invasion from someone this is a game-saver, but otherwise it's sort of pointless and unnecessary. Nuclear Testing-Free Rating-2/5 Gives you $10,000 in exchange for testing a nuclear weapon on the island. This lowers the respect of environmentalists permanently. If you desperately, desperately need the money then you might take this. Otherwise it's not enough to really be worth it, since any good export haul should beat that. Humanitarian Aide-Free Rating-5/5 Lowers the respect of nationalists, but provides free food and medical care for five years. This is a great addition to the island, especially early on the in the game. It isn't a solution, but taking this early in the game can let you focus on getting your economy working and preventing the people from starving. Economy: Building permit- $5000 Rating- N/A This increases building costs by %20, and depostis $%10 of that into your swiss account. This is the main way to make money for the Swiss Tax Cut- Random Rating-3/5 This will cost a lot of money, but greatly raises the respect of all citizens for three years. This is great to use if you're going to lose an election, but you can't keep this up constantly due to the high cost unless you're absolutely raking in the dough. Pollution Standards- $500 Rating- 5/5 Raises factory costs and reduces pollution. A great way to get the environmentalists happier on an ugly island. Industry AD Campaign- $8000 Rating 3/5 Requires 2 factories and a TV station. Raises the price of factory goods for three years. Costs a lot of money, and you need to have a factory based economy for it to do anything, Tourism Ad Campaign- $5000 Pan Caribbean Games-$7500 Mardi Gras-$3000 Spring Break Package-$4000 Geographic Special-$7000 Headliner-$5000 Overall rating-4/5 These all do essentially the same thing: raise tourism and entertainment in exchange for lowering something else. For all of the, you'll need a specific building and and tourist accommodations. Each one will attract a specific type of tourist depending on which you pick (young for spring break, eco-tourist for geographic special) so pick the correct one for your economy. Ot just pikc them all, they aren't exclusive. These are needed if you're going for a lot of tourism, but otherwise they're mostly not that important. Domestic Edicts: In addition to building requirements, many of these edicts require good standing with one of the island's factions. Early Elections- $20000 Rating- N/A Have elections one year from the announcement. I honestly don't see a use for this since you'll be prompted to have elections in most games anyway. Inquisition-$500 Rating-1/5 Requires a Cathedral. Why you would need this is a mystery: everyone becomes super religious, and the number of protests and uprisings drops along with tourism and liberty. It will increase rebel activity. The only real point of this is that the religious faction becomes a lot larger, which could make it easier to please them if they weren't the hardest group in the game to please already. Book BBQ-$500 Rating-2/5 Requires a church. Halves the intellectual factual and lowers new intellectuals joining. Students gain experience 50% slower. Again, this is sort of completely stupid. Martial Law-$5000 Rating-2/5 No elections, No crime, No economy, final destination. This Edict lowers crime, production, tourism, and liberty. It also has the side effect of pissing everyone off a whole lot. Elections are not allowed with martial law, so if you're going to lose this might be okay to activate in order to stay in power. There is no other reason to use this. Secret Police-$4000 Rating-3/5 Requires a police station. This sets up a secret police in one of your buildings, which will allow you to make “covert” choices regarding events. These are usually the best choices to make, but they have about a 50/50 chance of actually working. They're useful, but they're risky. Military Modernization- $100/soldier (I think...it's a bit random.) Rating-5/5 Requires an Army base. This is a cheap way to have a better military and gain some respect with the militarists. Go for once you have the cash. Conscription-$2500 Rating-1/5 Uneducated people join the military, but fight a lot worse. To add to this, people hate this and rebels will incerease. There's no real reason to go for this unless your island is overrun by rebels. Papal Visit-$10,000 Rating-5/5 Requires a cathedral and a good standing with the religious. This increases the respect of everyone and increases the quality of the church. It's expensive, but you should keep this active as much as possible to help appease the religious faction. Off to Florida-$500 Rating-1/5 Sends all prisoners to Florida and really pisses off the US. Considering that prisons are mostly useless, that sort of makes this mostly useless by default. This Edict is basically just paying money to piss off the US. Amnesty-$500 Rating-3/5 Rebels will return to their normal lives, but only if happiness has increased considerably since they became rebels. This can be useful to issue 10-15 years after the game starts and your economy is up and running, since happiness will have most likely improved. ==================== 4. The Guide...(4GD) ==================== There are three kinds of game types in Tropico: --------------- Campaign --------------- These missions sort of act like an extended tutorial for the game's mechanics. Each one focuses on one aspect of running your island and getting you used to how the game works. Games have a couple of a different methods for victory: some seek to have you complete a specific goal, like exporting a certain amount of Iron or attracting enough tourists. Other missions focus on staying in power on an island for a certain amount of time: you'll need to deal with various factors on the island during this time, and mishandling them could oust you from power. For the most part these can be completed by following the guidelines as they're written in the above sections. Though the levels have specific goals, they're ultimately all about setting up a stable economy and assuring that the people on your island don't want to kill you. That's enough, with some minor tweaking to complete almost all of the missions in the game. The main “rogue element” of the missions are the choices you'll be forced to take during them, which are exclusive to each mission. There is really no “wrong” way to handle these, but certain choices will often change ones later on in the game. (Piss off the communists and they won't help you, etc.) Providing a point by point way to win each mission is pointless, since the method to beat them is usually extremely obvious. The hard part about the missions is to avoid going into debt to a debilitating degree, which halts production. This is occasionally possible to do in missions that can be won quickly, but for most missions you should avoid going into debt at all costs after year five or so. Here's a few general rules: -Ignore whatever the game says to do at the start and try to get an economy going ASAP, either with farming/factories or mining. -Ignore Tourism unless the island mentions that it would be important or gives you bonuses for Tourism. -For longer missions getting a school/college up and running early should be a high priority. Hire workers from abroad if you have to in order to run it. -Similarly, get a diplomatic ministry and an immigration office early on for long games. -Save often. Saving every year might be a little overkill, but saving every 2-3 can let you restart from a close point if an earthquake destroys an important building like a factory or a power plant. -Check the overlays and the happiness for the people often. Raising pay is the best way to increase happiness on the cheap, and it's always important to make sure your buildings are being used. -If a building is not being used, STAFF IT ASAP. It will simply burn money in your pocket otherwise. -Perhaps most importantly, but the hardest to judge: unless something seems like a good idea in your current situation, don't do what the game says. The game will often propose business plans and ideas that sound good, but aren't really worth it or good in the end. For example, a pop-up might say that the island would be a great place to make some rum. However, you don't have any sugar farms built and there isn't a whole lot of arable land for farms. Go ahead and ignore that. -Learn to build roads. It will often seem like you can't build a road along a certain path or trail, but it's almost always possible with some careful planning. Your best bet is usually to make a small section in the middle of a hill, then attach road to either end to complete it. -Have a foreign policy edict active as much as you can. -Use a custom character every single time, and alter your stats to fit the game. Your bonuses should always reflect what you want to make money on (if you can't tell what's on the island from the description, enter into it and check the overlays. Then return to the main menu and start with a new game.) -The best minuses to take are cheapskate and gambler/womanizer. Womanizer lowers respect of a relatively small number of people, while cheapskate actually gives you a bonus by reducing the cost of buildings. Gambler is only an issue early in the game, but after your economy is running it should barely have an effect. -Play the game at full speed. The games take a while to play anyway, and there's no reason to play on the slow mode unless you're trying to look at a single person. Playing the game at slow or medium would take hours and hours longer. -Keep your people happy. After you have an economy, this should be your main goal for the rest of the game. ---------- Tips for specific missions ---------- These tips are for completing specific missions in the main game. More can be added when people request them. The ones included now are for what are generally seen as the “hard” missions. ----- Viva Tropico ----- This is the most asked about mission, so I'm putting this first. You need an overall happiness of 65 to win this mission. The way to get this is to try for it all in one go: there are two events that raise happiness by 10 points, take both of them. Realistically these will not raise your happiness by 10 (it will increase that much and then lower by a few points instantly), so you need to get your happiness as high as possible before that occurs. Take bonuses that raise your respect with various factions, it doesn't matter what they are. Religious should definitely be one though, as should nationalist. Take negatives that increase bonuses too: you don't want to care about the US or the USSR in this scenario, so screw them. Once the game starts, build a few tobacco/sugar farms. (Ignore the oil deposits, an in game event leaves them dry a few years in.) Once they start making money, build a factory to capitalize on them. Then build a school and a college, as well as a immigration office. Set the immigration policy to open, but cap it off once it gets to 150 people total. You should be able to win the game before you get that many though. Try to build a diplomatic ministry early on to get the development aide bonuses. You really want a power plant bonus, and you should try and build one as soon as possible. (Even if you go into debt.) This will allow you to start replacing the poor housing with Mansions ans condominiums, which will sharply increase the happiness and housing quality. It will also let you go into the second generation of electric buildings- hospitals, casinos, night clubs, etc. Around this point you should build a fisherman’s wharf and a ranch. This will increase food quality. Finally, build a police office. From this point on, build as many positive buildings as you can- cathedrals to appease the religious, a botanical garden for the environmentalists, etc. Save the game every year. The happiness bonus occurs around 15 years in, and you're waiting for that. Once you know when it occurs (sorry, I forgot what year) reload the game from the previous year. Issue every single positive edict you can (regardless of going into debt), then increase every citizen's pay to the absolute maximum. This should, when combined with the bonus, increase your happiness by about 15 points in a single year. If your happiness was at 50, which should have easily been possible in the time given, you should win the game. ----- Industry titan ----- The game presents this island to you as a genuine challenge: export prices for the base version of everything are lowered by %50 so you need industry to succeed. This is an incredibly easy mission: you should be using industry to make money anyway. 10 years into this game you’ll be making more money that you know what to do with and can issue building orders faster than people can construct them. Start the game by switching your two farms to tobacco. Build a couple more farms in the “good” area for growing tobacco, as well as a couple of corn farms to supple food to your citizens. Next build a mine on top of the gold deposit out on the small peninsula and build a road to it. As soon as you have enough money, build a cigar factory and pay the employees there a lot of money. Build one even if you have to go into debt. This thing can make insane amounts of money, and will be one of your main sources of income. After that build a Jewelry factory to process the gold you collect, and then an oil refinery on the beach near the docks. You’ll now be making three different industrial items. At this point you'll be rolling in cash for the rest of the game. Make your people happy and wait out the clock. ----- The Great Game ----- You'll need to pick between two goals here: make $600,000 on exports or get a happiness rating of 60. You have to pick one to succeed, but getting both at the same time isn't all that hard. Money is the easier option since you're going to have to make money to please people anyway, so go with that if you're having a hard time choosing. Build a road network to the island's different mining sites along with mines/oil wells on each one. From here build an oil well as soon as possible on the coast near the the oil deposits. After year 5 or so, keep a lot of money in the bank at all times: a lot of the random events can cost a lot of money to deal with. You can also build some sugar farms and a distillery in the middle of the island. Those combined are enough to export all the goods needed far earlier than the end of the time line. Focus on making your people happy for the rest of the game as you made huge wads of cash. --------------- Challenges --------------- I could provide information on challenges, but that would defeat the purpose. The goal of challenges is to make it through a scenario, much like campaign mode. However, these are a lot more competitive and designed with the idea of finding out ways to get the highest score on the online leaderboards. Tackle these after you've conquered the campaign, and think of them as puzzles instead of open ended games. --------------- Sandbox mode --------------- Sandbox mode allows to st up the parameters for any given game and play it out. You can choose which island to play on (or use a randomized one), pick your avatar, and start out. You can also choose god mode for this section, which gives you a ton of money to start with and all manner of positive bonuses for the game. Play this mode according to the gameplay section a few sections above. ============================== 5. Closing...(5CL) ============================== This guide is my property, and you are only being allowed to use it. As such, I must insist that you not use this guide for any personal gain or profit off of it in any way. You are free to use this guide as you see fit as long as it comes within those confines: you may print it, make a hat out of the pages, or create some pleasant origami. I don't care as long as I maintain ownership of this guide. Do not distribute it without my permission, but if you would like it on your website feel free to contact me at wcrobars@hotmail.com and I will more than likely allow it. I hope this guide has been useful, and I thank you for reading it. This guide, like all of my guides, is dedicated to cats. Copyright Woody Crobar, August 4 2010.