ON The Insider: The Dark Knight Sets Another Record
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Introduction
Structures
General Strategies
Random Map Tips
Creating Your Dictator
Scenario Tips
Guide Contents

Human Services

Even more important to the happiness of your citizens than the entertainment category is the human services group. People complain if they don't have enough entertainment, but they tend to die if they don't have health care. This is about the only category from which you must have at least one of each structure to be successful.

Health Clinic

You should build a health clinic at your earliest convenience. It will bring your citizens' health care rating from flat zero much closer to 50, which will make them perfectly happy in the early game. You can choose to have your doctors focus on preventative medicine, decreasing their need for return visits; obstetrics, increasing birth rate among adult females; or gerontology, extending your residents' average lifespan. The need for a health clinic early on cannot be overstated--build one, or you will regret it.

Hospital

Once you have a decent economy and a power grid running through your city, you'll likely have enough people that a health clinic will no longer meet your citizens' healthcare needs. Hospitals carry a base health care rating of 90, meaning your residents will be extremely happy after visiting a hospital. These structures cost four times as much as health clinics and, in addition, require 15Mw of electricity. But their capacity to service 50 percent more citizens, combined with a stellar base health care rating, make the extra cost worthwhile.

Church

Just as your people won't accept less than adequate healthcare, they won't deal with substandard places of worship. A church will soothe your people for awhile, but eventually, you must build a cathedral to keep them happy.

Cathedral

Like a bigger, better church, the cathedral is... well, a bigger, better church. Cathedrals can hold 33 percent more visitors and have a base religious quality rating of 95, compared to the church's 60. Essentially, once you can afford it, a cathedral is always a good investment. Putting a cathedral in every densely populated area of your island should go a long way to making Tropico a religious utopia for your residents.

High School

This is yet another building that should be constructed as soon as possible. As you expand your inhabited area, the need for more and more educated workers will grow. Importing them all from offshore will quickly become costly. You can select general education, parochial education (for more religious supporters and priests), or military education (for more militarists and soldiers).

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Building a high school as soon as is feasible will save you a fortune on imported labor in the long run.
College

As with the high school, building a college quickly will save you money that would have been spent importing workers from abroad. Wait until you're sure that you'll shortly need college-educated workers before beginning construction, however. The same options available for a high school are available with colleges.

Marketplace

When your people need food, they'll walk to the nearest crop-bearing farm to get it (most of the time; occasionally they'll visit a restaurant instead). Farms, however, are only in season part of the time, and often, your people may have to walk quite a ways to get food in their bellies. Strategically placing marketplaces in all your larger housing centers will save your people tons of time, as Teamsters will bring food to the marketplaces, and your people can then simply make the short walk there to get their food.

Beautification

The last two tabs on the building section let you bulldoze existing structures or build plants, fountains, or statues to increase the beauty of your island. Keep an eye on your peoples' happiness, and if they begin to complain that the place is ugly, be sure to step in and help out. Statues have the added benefit of slightly extending your governmental control.
 

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