Tropico

Sorry for the thread necromancy...but I desperately searched for a place to reupload a small fix (via the event scripting system) to a bug the PI expansion introduced - Hotel revenues from visiting guests are doubled, so that Tourism becomes insanely profitable. The discusion about this bug can be found here on Cafe Tropico (I would have uploaded there, but uploads are defunct there):

http://www.the-nextlevel.com/tropico/cafe/index.php?topic=7824.50

Maybe some people here play Tropico 1 still, too and never have heard of this bug. I can only recommend playing with the script, as it makes Tourism better balanced and allows are more challenging game when using it.

The attached script simply calculates what you get too much each month and deducts it automatically together with the other costs monthly.

Resurrecting this thread in honor of the Steam sale that's going on until 3/15. I can't link to it from this computer (I don't know how to spoof DNS requests), but if you're interested just go to the store at steampowered.com

I picked up the Collector's Bundle for US$10 (a steal, I'd say ), and have just started a campaign.

I played through the tutorial first, and got a feeling for how to manage different aspects - international relations, citizen happiness, trade, food, etc.

One thing I haven't been able to figure out is the meaning of a floating 'sun' icon above certain buildings. At first I thought it was marking the local of my El Presidente avatar, but when I moved him to a different building the icon didn't disappear over the first building.

I'm hoping to get into tourism pretty quickly, I'm growing tobacco and coffee in order to finance it. Right now - 1954 or so - I'm still suffering from a lack of construction. I have 3 construction offices, but 2 of them aren't assigning themselves projects even though there are several waiting to be built. I have garages adjacent to each, so I don't think that's the problem.

I bought this game too last weekend and it is a lot of fun.

The sun is in fact above buildings your avatar has visited recently. Those get a boost for some time after his visit not just when he (or she) is there.
For the constructions try increasing the priority of single construction sites. It seems to work for me that idle construction offices then will send constructors there.

Ahh, that makes sense for the sun.

I've tried ghetto priority button with seemingly no effect. Reading around the interwebs suggests that I should be patient - and follow the construction workers for a while. They may not be working due to fulfilling other needs.

peter grimes said:

I'm hoping to get into tourism pretty quickly, I'm growing tobacco and coffee in order to finance it. Right now - 1954 or so - I'm still suffering from a lack of construction. I have 3 construction offices, but 2 of them aren't assigning themselves projects even though there are several waiting to be built. I have garages adjacent to each, so I don't think that's the problem.

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IIRC construction offices have garages built into them, so extra ones are unnecessary. This also goes for mines and other such buildings that require a road connection (I didn't realize this until like halfway through my campaign ).

Changing priority tends to help, but I prefer just to insta-build most things. Construction workers are usually really slow on the get-go.

Those built-in garages can only be used by the workers of the specific building and teamsters, can't they? Or could a construction worker having finished a building out in the nowhere near a mine get a car there to get back?

Garages are usable by everyone, they provide one-way transportation to a target location. Build in garages are only useable for the workers.

There are usually two reasons for slow building rate:
(1) Lack of workers (build more construction offices or get more people)
(2) Long ways to the construction side (build a prioritized garage nearby)

A few more things to speed construction:

Select your construction yard and then look at where all your workers are (they'll have arrows over their heads) - this will really help diagnose your major problems. Probably half of them are walking halfway across the map for some fool reason (they're not very smart).

Give construction workers slightly higher wages than other uneducated jobs; this will ensure that they're always full of workers (and then fire people and lock the slots if you've got too few workers and nothing you need built)

Make sure your services are efficient for your construction workers - so that they're near their houses/a market/a church/a pub etc so they don't spend too long pissing around instead of working.

When you're building a few buildings a long way from your main city (eg a mining or farming hub) - ALWAYS build the garage there first. Construction workers drive to a site, but for some reason they always walk back (if there's no garage), and this can cost huge amounts of time.

Try and build tenements/apartments ahead of time - preferably in the downtime when you don't really need anything else built, because those things are murderously slow to build.

See, instead of spending money on that garage that's only going to be used once by the mines, just save that money and quick build it instead.

Its a lot more efficient, by mid game I just quick build everything.

Joecoolyo said:

See, instead of spending money on that garage that's only going to be used once by the mines, just save that money and quick build it instead.

Its a lot more efficient, by mid game I just quick build everything.

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Depends how you run your city, I guess. I prefer to build a secondary labourer hub with tenements and the basic services around a cluster of mines/farms/logging camps/etc. The garage lets them get back to the city quickly if needed but mostly they don't need to leave their own little enclave and can pretty much walk everywhere. I find it decreases overall travel time of workers and decreases congestion both in the city itself and on those really important roads to the factories/docks.

Yeah, that's probably the more efficient way of doing things actually. I usually just build a massive downtown in the center, and then have farms and such spread out around that. By late game though traffic tends to kill just about everything, that is, until you get Metro's in Modern Times. Those are real traffic lifesavers.

I spent some time following the workers - they were travelling from one end of town all the way to the other just to go to the church. Second church erected, both running at half staff, and the problem was solved.

I have to say, I'm really really impressed with the depth and complexity of this game. Here are a couple of tips pages I found useful:
http://www.dadsgamingaddiction.com/tropico-4-general-strategies/
http://www.dadsgamingaddiction.com/tropico-4-wages-housing/

There's some meat about the mathematic controls of the game that are helpful - for example, citizens must earn at least 3 times the rent in order to move into housing. So if your rent is set at 3, only people earning 9 and above can afford to live there.

Joecoolyo said:

See, instead of spending money on that garage that's only going to be used once by the mines, just save that money and quick build it instead.

Its a lot more efficient, by mid game I just quick build everything.

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To clarify, you mean save the money you'd normally spend on a garage that won't be used much and quick build the mine, right?

peter grimes said:

To clarify, you mean save the money you'd normally spend on a garage that won't be used much and quick build the mine, right?

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Yes, sorry for my unclear sentence.

Also, for rent, I took a tip from my friend and always went free housing. Saves you a lot of trouble, especially since rents don't add up to much in terms of income.

Plus, El Presidente is a giving leader! Love him! Or else!

I don't know if this is sound policy, but I've been building tenements and setting rent to zero in an effort to get people out of shacks. It's 1955 and I still have about 10 shacks (in fact, the Soviets are spreading false rumors about El Presidente! :grr, but the bleeding heart leftist in me won't let the cool calculating revolutionary throw the bums out on the street. Total population is around 120, I think.

Also, there are several homeless people - I really don't understand that one. I mean, why sleep under the palm trees when you can climb 8 flights of stairs to a room with peeling paint and rusty water?

I took some screen shots - I truly enjoy just looking at my little island from different perspectives. The humidity is very well rendered.

I've got the game running on max graphics settings, but things still seem a bit flat - as if not all the textures or shading is being rendered. Another reason I took the screen shots, so you all can let me know if the game is actually displaying correctly. But, alas, I forgot to upload them before I left for work this morning.

I enjoy the game. Tropico 3 was the first Tropico game I played, but 4 is like a standalone expansion to that.

The only thing I don't like is not being able to charge for food. The Food for the People Edict just doubles the amount the people eat. If you could charge for food, it would offset some of the marketplace costs of importing food. Being able to charge for healthcare would be nice too.

Sonereal said:

I enjoy the game. Tropico 3 was the first Tropico game I played, but 4 is like a standalone expansion to that.

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I'd been holding off buying Tropico 4 because it seemed just that, an expansion to Tropico 3.

The pricetag seemed absurd at launch, but now it's quite cheap for the whole package on Steam, I might just cave in and get it.

Uberfrog said:

I'd been holding off buying Tropico 4 because it seemed just that, an expansion to Tropico 3.

The pricetag seemed absurd at launch, but now it's quite cheap for the whole package on Steam, I might just cave in and get it.

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It's very much an expansion pack, but for $10 it's a pretty good expansion pack.
There's a bunch of extra buildings (most of which are pretty superfluous) and a whole heap of new missions of varying quality.
The economy has been made a little more robust, and tourism isn't as bugged out as in Tropico 3 (although a tourist economy is still hard mode - industry is ludicrously profitable now). The poor difficulty balance hasn't been fixed unfortunately; if anything it's a slight step backwards from Absolute Power in that regard.
The Modern Times expansion is a bit of a double-edged sword - there's a whole heap of new buildings of very varying quality and varying thematic appropriateness that appear at certain years and replace more basic buildings; but once you can build them you can't build the old versions any more, which is really rather annoying. And a lot of the new buildings are pretty much cheat mode anyway (although I'm prepared to look the other way in the case of the subway). Anyway the new stuff only applies to the expansion missions and it's optional in sandbox, but yeah it's a bit unfortunate.

I haven't played with most of the Modern Times stuff quite yet. Tropico 4, for $10 (including DLC and Modern Times) is still a rather good deal. Even if it is Tropico 3+, so was Mount and Blade Warband, so I'm not really complaining. Imports is a nice new feature.

peter grimes said:

I don't know if this is sound policy, but I've been building tenements and setting rent to zero in an effort to get people out of shacks. It's 1955 and I still have about 10 shacks (in fact, the Soviets are spreading false rumors about El Presidente! :grr, but the bleeding heart leftist in me won't let the cool calculating revolutionary throw the bums out on the street. Total population is around 120, I think.

Also, there are several homeless people - I really don't understand that one. I mean, why sleep under the palm trees when you can climb 8 flights of stairs to a room with peeling paint and rusty water?

Click to expand...

I've always found that rents and wages account for such small amounts of money in the scheme of things that it's not usually worth getting too worried about from a financial perspective - they're more useful as a tool for fine-tuning how your people behave.

But yeah, always try to make sure everyone is housed in at least tenements - apart from starvation, housing unhappiness is the #1 thing that will make people hate you.
I'm not certain, but I think people will sometimes move into shacks if there's no housing close enough to their work, so either build tenements close to the workplaces or make sure you've got garages so they can drive back and forth. By the way, Soviet development aid will save you a lot in the long run with cheap tenements and apartments.

You can use rent to segregate people a bit - you can have a couple of nicer buildings (ie apartments) close to good services with high rent, so your generals and well-paid soldiers will always have good housing etc available until you can afford army bases (you do NOT want these guys homeless). Keep the rent for the housing closest to your industries to at least 1 so that they're full of workers rather than slackers, and just have zero-rent housing for the unemployed somewhere more out of the way.