Tropico is a city building simulation game like SimCity, but with a dictator theme. You construct your city on an island, and aim to please your citizen’s various expectations. People belong to some kind of ideology like Nationalist, Capitalists, Intellectual, Religious, Miltarian, Environmentalist among others, and it’s (almost) impossible to please everyone; at least in the early game.
Your dictator has a physical presence and he can be moved to buildings to speed construction, or give speeches. He also has some strengths and weaknesses which naturally favour/annoy certain ideologies. You can switch your character between the missions to attempt to pick traits that favour that scenario. There’s a large list of stock characters but you can also create your own.
It’s extremely important to make people happy for many reasons. If you want the population to rise to grow your economy, then you need immigrants to come in, and your current residents to stay. As your population grows, you need to create more jobs, and more housing. Unhappy residents can also become Rebels, who will attack a building (often the mines), or even your palace. If your palace is destroyed, then the mission is failed.
There are elections every 5 years or so, depending on the mission (or depending on if you dictate that there are no elections). You need to have enough popularity, or at least make promises that appeal to your citizens in order for them to vote for an extended stay. You do have the option of fixing the votes by a small margin.
You can click individuals to check on their needs. You can view overall stats in the “almanac”, but it doesn’t seem to show everything, or at least not clearly. I struggled to find where it lists the number of homeless. I often went to the People tab to see the unemployed, but this is on the Economy tab.
You also have to maintain relations with the US or USSR. They will like you if you show capitalist or communist approaches respectively. If your relations become too low, then they can “invade” and the mission is failed. If you raise your relations high enough, you can declare an allegiance in which you are then immune from such invasions.
My general strategy was: lay down some farms and mines to secure future income, and place down houses. Then build clinics, churches, schools, pubs etc to increase happiness. Depending on the “threat” level, I may invest in the police or army, before moving to a more balanced strategy. Higher sums of cash can be brought in by investing in the Factories which add value to your raw materials.
Farms can grow all kinds of products; corn, payapas, tobacco, sugar and a few others; but each requires different levels of humidity and elevation. You need a bit of space in order for the crops to grow.
Some buildings require educated workers which are labelled “High School” or “College”. You can pay a fee to import a skilled immigrant, where the cost increases with each hire. You can build your own High School or College, but the initial employees most likely need to be brought in.
For the more advanced buildings, you need to build a power plant first. There’s also loads of tourism buildings which the prerequisite is either the “Tourist Dock” or the more expensive “Airport”.
There are loads of “Edicts” which are policies that have varying effects. One of them is corrupt where buildings are more expensive, but the extra money goes in your “Swiss Bank Account”. This gives you extra points, and is sometimes used in the mission objective.
With each building, there’s not much scope for micromanagement. Many buildings have an option for focus (usually 2 options) which may tweak efficiency and staff happiness. You can also set the wages, which increase job satisfaction.
You need to place roads to allow efficient transport. Some buildings require roads to function properly, whereas other buildings can be placed away from them. Roads can be straight, or you can place arcing roads if you wish, which is sometimes necessary to get around rocky areas. You can place garages, which in some ways, act like bus stops. It seems that people in Tropico are ferried around in Taxis. All produce needs to be shipped to the docks which is the job of “teamsters”.
People need food, so will visit the farms to collect it. Alternatively, you can build marketplaces, and teamsters will deliver it.
The sound grew tiresome real quick, so I ended up muting it. You get some frequent, silly radio chatter that was mildly entertaining the first few times he spoke, but then it seemed overly comical.
I found that the beginning of each mission is tough, but once you get a fully functioning economy, then it’s usually just a matter of time until you are victorious. The challenge is raising funds to create enough jobs and housing for people. Then the next challenge is to suppress any kind of challenge to your rule; be it from rebels, US/USSR, or via election.
Tropico is one of those games where you end up playing it for hours. Time goes whizzing by and it’s great to see the island develop from a few basic buildings to a sprawling city. I plan on playing the other games in the series to see how the game has progressed.