For random map games, you can customize your presidenté with a few unique character attributes. Most give bonuses to respect from a certain faction or relations with a foreign power, but many have unique bonuses that can be quite powerful.

In general, when you're selecting your traits, you want to keep in mind your playing style, both in terms of boosting your strengths and covering your weak areas. If you consistently find yourself running an agrarian society with consistent elections, you'll want to choose something that gives you bonuses to farming productivity, but you might also want to boost your respect with intellectuals, since they will be alienated by your emphasis on a lower-crust economy. This balancing game should be in the back of your head when you select your attributes.

Also, you should keep in mind the contrary nature of the attributes themselves. You can either choose a few that will work in symphony to create large gains in small areas of expertise or attempt to address the weaknesses introduced through your flaws with your earlier choices. A poor choice of attributes won't make the game unplayable, but you'll find yourself enjoying yourself quite a bit more if you take a bit of time to read through the options carefully and select those that you feel suit your playing strengths. If you just want to get on with the damn game, head straight to our Suites section. We've put together a few attribute packages that will let you jump right in with a dictator suited to your playing style.

Background

Each player gets to choose one background.

Moscow U.

• +10 percent respect from the communist faction
  
• +30 percent to Russian relations
  
• +10 percent to education
  
• -15 percent to US relations
  

Something of the weak sister to the Harvard U. attribute, selecting this will put you in good position for an early-game alliance with Russia, but the benefits are fairly tenuous, with only the 10 percent education bonus being anything truly worthwhile. The Russian relation bonus is nice as well, but is largely offset by the penalty to US relations.

Harvard U.

• +10 percent respect from the capitalist faction
  
• +30 percent to US relations
  
• +20 percent to education
  
• -15 percent to Russian relations
  

A more high-powered version of Moscow U., this doubles the education bonus and gives you a bit more respect with the capitalist faction, which is generally a bit more difficult (and more expensive) to please than the communist faction, especially in the early game.

Miner

• +10 percent respect from the communist faction
  
• +10 percent respect from the capitalist faction
  
• +50 percent increase in miner productivity
  
• -20 percent respect from the environmental faction
  

This is an excellent choice for early-game profitability, if you happen to have mines nearby. Like many of the attributes that offer productivity bonuses, you might wind up sitting on a gold mine (literally) or, if your island is lacking in mineral deposits, sitting on nothing at all. If you turn up the mineral setting on a random map, though, this attribute could put you in the black permanently. The environmentalist faction is difficult to please, though, so you may find the 20 percent hit a bit difficult to balance out.

Farmer

• +10 percent respect from the communist faction
  
• +50 percent increase to farmer productivity
  
• -10 percent respect from the intellectual faction
  

This is a gold-star ability for those of us who like to build our islands slowly. Getting a 50 percent farming bonus will reap you plenty of benefits in the early going and will make it easier to feed your expanding population with fewer farms later on. This will also let you sustain more cigar factories and rum distilleries without having to build more farms to supply them with raw materials.

Biblical Scholar

• +10 percent respect from the religious faction
  
• +5 percent respect from the intellectual faction
  
• +10 percent increase in education
  
• -15 percent decrease in crime rate
  

This is more a group of small bonuses than any one powerhouse skill. The respect bonuses are nothing you can't make up with a couple of newspapers, though the crime rate bonus is nice. The educational effects will be useful, but aren't as big as with leftist author or Harvard U.

Man of the People

• +20 percent respect from the communist faction
  
• -5 percent respect from the religious faction
  

This skill is essentially worthless. While the bonus to communists is fairly sizable, it's nothing you can't recreate if you build inexpensive housing and ensure that everyone has a job. Farmer is generally a better choice for aspiring Chairman Maos.

Booze Baron

• +100 percent in rum revenue
  
• -5 percent respect from the religious faction
  

While you won't be seeing any benefits from this skill until 15 to 20 years into your reign, when you finally start setting up rum distilleries, you should be making enough profits to start a wide-spread happification program in which you lower rents and raise salaries all around the island. Rum provides quite a bit of money already, and you'll double your income with this skill. Of course, you must ensure that you have land where sugar will actually grow; if you're playing with an extremely low elevation or a poor environment, you'd be better off with another attribute.

Leftist Author

• +10 percent respect from the communist faction
  
• +15 percent respect from the intellectual faction
  
• +20 percent increase in education
  

A nice little bonus to education here will have widespread effects for your people throughout the game, while the 15 percent intellectual respect bonus will tide you over until you can build a high school and college.