Pirates have feelings too. And in Tropico 2: Pirate Cove you'll hear all about them as you run an island haven for sailors enjoying a little R&R from their difficult day job: preying on lucrative Caribbean trade routes. Tropico 2 has borrowed a little more than the engine and tropical setting from PopTop's acclaimed 2001 strategy game, but the management premise has been turned on its head. The feisty pirates bring back booty from their voyages, and it's up to you to manage a captive workforce with the goal of keeping the pirates well-equipped and happy. If you ever wondered what pirates might do in their off-time, then here's your chance to find out.

Keep your job--and your head--by keeping the Angry Muskrat's crew happy.

The easiest way to learn Tropico 2 is to play the single-player campaign, which at first consists of quick tutorial missions that teach the basic elements of the game. There's a loose story presented in the text briefing for each mission: You're a convicted gambler sent to the colonies who's escaped on a ship with Charlotte De Berry, and the two of you divided things up so she captains the ship and you're in charge of building a hideout. The first mission introduces you to the basic elements of an island economy: timber camps and a sawmill for wood, the main building resource, and corn farms and a sea biscuit factory to create food stores for the ships and to keep the local captives feasting on slop. But soon Charlotte will return, and you'll not only have some basic control over the ship, but will have to keep the sailors happy when they're on shore.

Since you're not running a legitimate colony, you don't have the option of making money by time-consuming, ordinary methods. Simply send a well-equipped ship out to cruise the seas, and with some luck it'll come back with gold, pirate recruits, and captives. But equipping a ship is a challenge in itself. The campaign will soon introduce you to weapon-making, which will require you to set up an iron mine, a smelter, and then one of three shops to produce cutlasses, muskets, or cannons. The trick is that you'll need enough captives to keep these labor-intensive operations running, and if you don't have the weapons to go hijacking ships on the open seas, then you'll either have to hope for captives to wash up on shore from sea wrecks (this happens pretty often at the start) or explore the map with your defenseless ship to find an unguarded trading settlement to raid.

Salons, gambling dens, inns, and pirate houses are the sign of a thriving pirate haven.

But even once you have the means to arm your pirates, you might not find much success if your pirates are unhappy. Apparently, pirates get into a funk if they can't get enough drinking, gambling, and companionship while on the island, and they'll turn into cowards when it comes time to do their jobs. The audible cries for more pirate services and the possibility of pirate revolt should keep you plenty motivated to build and staff a chaotic pirate paradise. The basics are fairly cheap and easy to build, but it'll cost you if you want the fancy inns, taverns, and casinos that cater to high-ranking pirates. You can't pick just any sorry captive off the street and expect him to run such establishments, so it'll take a special ship mission to go out and specifically find skilled captives that already have the know-how. Such missions are relatively routine and cost just 250 gold, but they do keep your pirates from the more lucrative cruises.