While each of the missions has its own set of objectives there are general tips that allow you to really reap the benefits of your efforts - so we thought we would share them with you here. Use It or Lose It As you progress through each your success will generate a large treasury balance - the thing is that balance does not transfer forward to the next mission or the next mission for that island! So if you allow the mission to end with a large balance, you basically lose that money. To get the most out of it you should build as many of the expensive structures as you can or at least pay for them and get the building started BEFORE the ends - that way you get to reap the benefits of your hard work when you return for the next mission.
Exploration at First When you are nearing the end of the first on each island be sure to spend some of the extra money you have on exploration. Your objective should be to end the first mission for each island with the full island explored and revealed. Transportation Challenges Probably the most annoying and disturbing symbol to appear above your industry and raw resource supply is the no resources and full storage icons.
Both are actually caused by the lack of Teamsters to move the resources one way in order to create the finished goods and, if you fail to address the situation, an inability to move the finished goods once created. Simply creating a Teamsters Office once these icons appear is not enough - where you create it and how many you create can have a significant impact on the game. Generally speaking though, if you see two full storage icons your problem is too big to be solved by one new Teamsters Office.
The most effective solution is to place a Teamsters Office on the road between supplier and consumer, and then one additional office in the area where the largest concentration of suppliers is located. Enough Supply In preparation to launch a new industry you should ensure that the supply side will be larger than the manufacture side so that there is always more produced than the industry can use. Simple really. When the resources is food, what the industry does not use is used by the people as a food source. When it is material what does not get manufactured is sold as a raw goods export. Either way your industry is fully supplied and you are gaining extra value from the resource. Be Wary of Upgrades The upgrade button is awesome - it appears to allow the near instant upgrade of, say, an Apartment to a Modern Apartment which, in theory anyway, should be a good thing, right?
There is a price to that convenience though. When you use the Upgrade - or for that matter the Change Crop - buttons you basically empty out the existing building - which means throwing all those families out of their home and all those workers out of a job - before they can re-enter or re-hire. While doing that to one building is not going to cause trouble, doing it to multiple buildings will massively damage your approval rating. NEVER do it to an entire group of buildings at one time, especially when those are housing.
At least never do that when an election is coming. The Critical Issue of Trade One of the remarks that was made by a mate was how I made the game look way easier than it was. I did not quite get what they were saying until they explained that, in their game, unlike mine, the economy often experienced downturns in which they did not make money or worse, went into the red. 'An otherwise excellent ecinomy just suddenly goes south!) they said. My response to that was that what they did not realize is that their trade routes had ended. Trade routes are critical to a healthy and even flow of income.
If you miss the notice that a route has been completed and you fail to put a new one in play, of course your income will suffer. A Mind is A Terrible Thing to Waste One of the first issues that will cause undue pressure on you and your economy is that of maintaining an adequate labor pool. You will quickly find that there are NEVER enough High School educated workers in your population, and there are NEVER enough College Educated workers. The best way for you to ensure that this is not a crippling issue for you is to observe the following formula for your nation: If I have one College I should have TWO High Schools. Every Industry that requires College Educated employees should be supported by a College. What that means - in simple terms - is that BEFORE you contemplate creating an industry or support business (TV is an example) you should already have the education supply line built.
So if you plan to add to your nation any sort of business that requires educated workers, make sure that the supply source FOR those workers already exists. Otherwise you are asking for trouble. Minding the Environment Have you ever wondered what causes the Environmental Faction to grow more and more angry with you? Do you think it might be something you did?
I bet it was! But I know something you do not - you had NO idea that you were harming the environment when you did what you did, and the game is not going to tell you or warn you! What you did wrong? If you look at your island where the Environmental Faction is upset, chances are 100% that you built a lot of Ranches, close together. Why, you might be wondering, is that a bad thing to do? After all it makes them easier to keep track of, and you can build Teamsters to carry their production so that, by placing them close together the supply-side is more uniform!
All of that is true. But it is also the worse thing you can possibly do for the environment. The reason for this is simple: Ranches (ALL of them) have a significantly negative impact on the soil near them. As long as you have not built them too close together this is eased by the other activities around them and by nature - but if you did build a bunch of ranches right next to each other, nature cannot fix the problems that creates.
Only YOU can. The accepted wisdom in this case is to build Waste Processing plants to offset the negative impact of the ranches. While you CAN do that, it does NOT work 100%.
You are much better off spreading the ranches out over distance. Keep them AWAY from other soil-damaging operations too.
Ranches should NEVER be placed near mines, or near Tobacco Plantations, because both of those industries ALSO damage soil. It should go without saying that you also do not place ranches near Power Plants, right? Not Too Many Ships Failing to add new Trade Routes is almost as bad a move as assigning too many ships to a single Trade Route. Unless you actually mean to complete that Trade Route as fast as possible - that is to say you are working n the China Achievement - it is actually in your best interest to have just a few ships assigned so that they are both going out FULL.
Plus it allows you to engage in more Routes, which translates to building better relations with more governments. In the Modern Era just exactly how do you suppose you are meant to get all of your relations with the five governments above 90 for that Achievement WITHOUT using Trade?! Adequate and Managed Housing is Key The single most often stated complaint that I have fielded while working on this guide was from players who were looking to better understand why ALL of their farms, ranches, and many of their Industry was simply not fully staffed even when they had loads of unemployed?? The answer to that has everything to do with both WHERE You build the housing, and HOW you build the housing! Where you Build: Believe it or not, unless you have created a very extensive urban AND rural Metro network, your employees are only willing to work so far from where they live.
Look at the rural area where you build your farms for a moment - see all those shacks that have been errected near and along the side of the fields? THAT is your workforce! Now try this as an alternative: build housing - housing that they can afford 0 in clumps nearby the farms, and you will quickly discover that you have no trouble attracting a full workforce! Price them INTO the Market: When you build, and this is especially true for support of your farms and ranches - make sure that you lower the quality levels of the housing for some so that the field hands can actually afford to live there. Otherwise you are just building housing that will not get used. Here is a clue: if there are still Shacks near the housing and farms, you need to lower costs. If you have opted to go with Tenements over Country Houses, you are going to have trouble getting them to lower to the Broke level because generally they don't do that.
To get a Tenement to drop to Broke Level - which is where you NEED it to be for farm hand housing - simply lower its quality funding to the bottom then wait at least a month for that to take effect and issue the Mortgage Edict. THAT will cause the Tenements that you lowered to drop to Broke Level! Call the Cops Jim! Police in Tropico play a far more impressive and larger role than you may think, and so too does the Police Station. In addition to serving as the general crime fighting element in your society, the Police ALSO serve as your Internal Intelligence agency - keeping track of Factions, their Heads, and what passes for Mafia on your island as well as keeping track of the Rebel threat. More significant still, in the world of Tropico the Police serve ALL elements of Public Safety.
That means that when and if a building catches fire, as long as you have activated the capability, the Police Station is where the Fire Trucks will roll from. Whenever you are planning an urban and inner-city environment you should ALWAYS be sure to reserve room for the following buildings: Police Station, Church, and Market/Supermarket. The reason for this is not as clear as you may think - even though there is nothing in the game to indicate this, a Police Station will actually function better when there is a Market/Supermarket AND a Church nearby it. When placing Police Stations always bear in mind that they are far more effective when placed on the edges of housing clusters rather than in the midst of them. Managing Foreign Relations It may sound odd to you but even though your nation is an island, and it is largely independent in means and resources, the relations you have with the rest of the world are strategically and economically crucial to your success.
The better the terms are between you and other nations, the more favorable the trade situation is. In point of fact, the better your relations, the more likely you are to not only find good and favorable trade routes, but trade routes at all! Once you get relations above 70 you should find that you can export to that nation a quality of resource or finished goods that is very valuable to your economy. For that reason when you CAN have an Embassy for a given foreign power, you SHOULD.
What I mean by that is simple - during the Cold War the only nations you can build relations with are the US and USSR. That means you only need to (or can) have two Embassies. But during the Modern Era you can have relations with all five of them and you should. By building all five of the embassies and then tending to your relations with each, you basically ensure that at any given moment at least three trade routes are available that can literally mean the difference between a struggling economy and a prosperous one. Enough said on that.
Tend your global fences mates. Corn is King - Sort of One final tip that it far more important than you might think relates to Corn Farms. Among the Plantations the Corn Plantation is the most productive of them all, with a relatively short growing time and a large production, it can easily overwhelm the capacity of your Teamsters early in a game.
While Corn is a valuable resource in terms of feeding the population, it is not until the Modern Era when it becomes important for the economy - since that is when you will start to create Factory Farms that require a large influx of Corn. That being so, until you reach the Modern Era you should consider ONE Corn Plantation to have the value of any THREE others. What we mean by that is simple: when you are contemplating, for example, creating the Cloth Industry, you will want to have Three (3) Cotton Plantations and perhaps three (3) Llama Ranches for your Textile Mill. The same goes for Sugar and Rum. But that does NOT apply to Corn! Remember that ONE (1) Corn Plantation generally equals the output of THREE (3) of any other type, and build your Teamsters with that formula in mind.
Conclusions This wraps up nicely the Strategic Tips for game play. If you take each and every one of the above to heart, you will find that success simply falls in your lap while playing this game.
The only remaining issue that needs to be covered is that of higher education, and only in so far as the Constitution applies. Remember that any changes you make via the Constitution will have instant impact on your work force and nation. If/when you require the military to be educated, make damn sure you have the High Schools and Colleges in place to support that decision. That lesson is a significant one that applies to practically everything you do in this game.
Remember to always build the supply side BEFORE you activate the manufacturing or industry side. If we think of anything else to add we will add it - if you think of anything we missed, please add it as a comment using the comment system below!
Each subsection will contain a summary, if you don't want to read up on the details (TL;DR essentially), you can just head town to the summary and read it. I split this guide up a bit in 3 parts; you have a general section with more general information about the game, then the 4 eras and those contain a walkthough for the eras essentially (if you don't want more details you might just want read that first) and lastly a FAQ for some questions I've commonly seen. If you have any notes or improvements let me know. This guide is actively WIP, so it will be worked on, screenshots/images and more detailed descriptions in sections where those are missing will be added later. Budget effect is seen in the effectiveness tab. Up to +25 with max budget, with the appropinate constituion option you can get even +50 with max budget.
(similarily, with minimum budget it is -25 or -50 respectively. It also increases the wealth of the workers and the job quality, you see the efect right away when increasing/lowering the quality. I think there are primarily two ways to use the budget, to ensure a building works at higher effieceny and is always fully staffed.
Often you want both of that, I recommend increasing budgets on infrastructure buildings, that means Docks, Teamsters, Construction Offices, Power Plants. Science buildings can also benefit greatly from increased budget, as their effectivness increase the graduation speed (for high schools, college) and research points. Increasing Effectiveness There are many influencing factors for effectiveness and it often varies a lot on the building type. Many buildings have their own effectiveness modifiers (often noted in the description of the building), so for example a farm's effectiveness gets modified by fertality (and pollution), but not beauty. Summary:. Citizens will prefer a job with high job happiness over a job with poor job happiness.
Job happiness is a part of the overall happiness of Tropicans. Things affecting job happiness:. Garages improve job happiness by 10 of nearby buildings (up to 15 at max budget). Budget adjusts job happiness (up to +25), for details see 'Building Budget' section. Changing the constituion can increase or decrease job happiness. Adding a manager can increase/decrease job happiness (also see Dynasty/Manager section).
Some building upgrades can also increase or decrease job happiness. General Summary:. Service Quality determains how 'happy' people with the service received are when visiting the building; higher is better. Getting service quality as high as possible to maximize happiness is important.
Modern and high wealth buildings usually have a higher service quality then other buildings (ex. A Hospital has a higher SQ then a Clinic). Replace low service quality buildings with buildings that have higher quality when they become available. Can be improved by increasing building effectiveness. Maximum Service Quality - Food. Reachable with Grocery or Supermarket. Supermarket vs Grocery: less maintenance, more customers server per worker, 30 extra quality (10 compared to upgraded grocery).
6 Food types will reach 100 quality on grocery with either Farmers Fair upgrade or Extra Rations. Food are Bananas, Corn, Fish, Milk, Meat and Pineapple. Each type will increase the Service Quality by 5 'It seems you don't actualy have to have the food - building a farm and stopping it will increase food quality (bug?). Maximum Service Quality - Housing. Use Mortage Subsidaries to lower the wealth requirement of houses by 1 level, setting budget to minimum also lowers it by one level. Troops. Place military unit buildings next to each other so units arive roughly at the same time.
Replace Military Fort with Barracks later (more powerful). Military Bases offer good troops for more space and initial cost then Barracks, but require significantly less staffx. Always have a sufficent military to repel attacks (see below for details). Increase damage of troops by increasing building Effectivness, with 'Military Drills' and 'Right to Arms' edicts. Professional Army constitution requires High School workers making it harder to staff military buildings. Staying in power Staying in power should be quite simple. Just do whatever the crown asks you to do; if you play a bunch of games you may notive there are certain quest lines that the crown will offer, and I recommend picking 12 month mandate extension as reward as for any task the crown offers.
I suggest doing tasks along the way. If you are running low on time and your task proves difficult, you may want to ensure it gets fuitfilled - for example, if you are tasked to export 3000 Logs, you may want to max the budget on the logging camp so it produces extra and is full staffed - or even build a second one (but usually this is not needed). Once you'll also get a free 12 month mandate extension when you run low on mandate (6 months), sometimes also the option to pay for mandate extension for 10k if you're running low. Summary:.
Do the crown tasks and choose 12 month mandate extension. If you run low on time, focus on fuitfilling taks. You get a free 12 month extension once. Making Money Since money is vital for success, it's important to build a strong economy early on - all those building will carry over to the next era, and serve as your backbone on the island.
I recommend focusing on farms and ranches; I prefer to build different types as you can take advantage of different deals (and diffrent industry) later on, as well as fuitfilling food diversity quite easily (and getting to 100 statisfaction easily). As for the placement look for a patch of land that can serve as many types of farms decently (at least yellow, preferablely dark green), try to place 2-3 Sugar farms and 2-3 Cattle Ranches centrally and other farms around them; other type of ranches can be placed whereever you have suitable terrain. Otherwise 1 of each type should suffice. The reason for placing sugar and cattle ranches rather central is that with the upgrades they'll provide extra effiency for other farm buildings, essentially boosting them by up to 50. To maximize your economy and exports I suggest buildings one or two extra docks, and extra teamsters.
Also put docks, construction offices and teamsters at maximum budget to ensure they are always fully staffed and working properly. You should also initiate the most profitable traderoutes, but I suggest not to anger the king too much (so often a +5 route may actually be favorable over a -10 route) To get a more steady income you can also issue Paid Food once you've enough groceries for your current population or build some entertainment buildings. I suggest to avoid mines, as they tend to deplete rather quickly and you need them in the later eras (so you can avoid imports). If you need them for a task, build them and do the exports, then just fire the workers (and stop it from hiring new ones).
Summary:. Put your Construction Offices, Teamsters and Docks. Build 2-3 Sugar Farms, 2-3 Cattle Ranches and other Farms around them. Upgrade your Farms, Ranches. Build some extra Construction Offices, Teamsters and Docks. Initiate some Trade routes for larger export profits. Issue Paid Food and build entertainment buildings.
Revolutionary Support & Research I suggest you start rather early with Research - i.e. After the fist farms have been build and you've received the 'Build a Library' task from the Revolutionaries; focus on getting the Farm, Ranch upgrades first, Mines; then the other tiers.
Adjust your research if necessary (sometimes you'll receive a task to research something particular like the Trigger or Planks). As for revolutionary support, I suggest focusing on this once you've setup your economy (unless of course you can do the task along the way without issues). Do all the revolutionary tasks and simply import the revolutionaries all the time, that should get you a nice basis. It is not necessary to choose the revolutionary option from the king tasks, just the revolutionary taks should suffice. The next step would be to take care of your people's need which would also help with your approval, that means build Groceries (1 per 150 pop), Missions (1 per 100 pop) and Entertainment buildings; if you've followed the previous section you should get the food support to 100 easily - also may want to issue 'Extra Rations'.
If you don't have 50% yet, you may want to wait for more tasks - if you're running low on tasks, you may want to consider issuing 'tax cut' edict which can easily be a 5-15 percent point improvement or bribing individuals. You don't have to build houses (I never do, unless tasked to) - tenements in the later areas are a more viaable option and they should not be needed. Note that if you've reached 51% approval the task will stay, so it's just required to hit that mark once. Summary:. Build Library when you have some farms and the task.
Start research early, adjust for tasks if required. Choose +3 Revolutonaries for every revolutionary task.
Statisfy your people's needs and build Groceries, Catholic Missions and entertainment buildings. Issue edict 'Tax Cut' and eventually bribe people if you are stuggling with support. Houses are usually not required for statisfaction. Military & Pirates I personally avoid military confontation so early on; Forts take a lot of place and the units are inefficent in later eras. If you need defense I simply suggest building a bunch of guard towers in bulks at choke points, they are usually strong enough to hold off pirates with the support of your palace troops.
Often troops also appear in the same places, like the initial dock. Pirates come in packs between 1-3, but as long you're low on treasury they can't steal anything. Also pirate attacks tend to be more common with high treasury it seems. Summary:.
Avoid Forts as they become obsolete easily (and require research). Build guard towers in bulk (3+) at choke points (i.e. Your initial dock). Spend your money if you still have anything to do, to avoid pirates stealing money c. Advancement Before advacement make sure to check that you've done everything yon can in this era. Make sure everything is build & upgraded. Secondly I suggest saving a lot of money for the next area, so you can start building the new buildings (like High Schools) right away.
As for the time of advancement unless you a reason to advance early, I suggest you just use your remaining mandate time to make money. Once you run low (6m or so), you just advance to the next era. This time you have two options, paying the crown or having them attack.
I suggest simply paying them off (10k usually, 20k if you have 'bad' standing), if you choose the attack, make sure you have a bunch of guard towers (and possibly even forts). Summary:.
Double-check that you've done anything you can in the era. Amass some money; use remaining mandate time to increase your amount of money (suggest 50k+). Advance to the next era (pay 10k). Modernizing Industry Summary:. Construct Oil Buildings; Offshore is good for long term (you can import Coal to turn into oil). Construct new industry, such as Pharmacy Company, Vehicle Factory.
Modernize Mines. (Optional) Modernize Farms to Factory Farms; make sure you construct additional Corn farms or import Corn to feed them. Increase your oil & ore deposits; issue Geological Survery and Hydraulic Frakking, upgrade Mines. Construct Uranium Power Plant & Uranium Mine for extra power; alternatively additional Coal Plant.
Upgrade Industry Buildings if you have the spare power. Tourism Summary:. Focus on getting 'Tourism' area - high beauty, low polution areas, specialize them. Culture: Build goceries and prevent them from getting workers; build Haciendas around them for 150 effiencyc. Slob: Place hotels close to many entertainment buildings for maximum effiency. Eco: A far away place with just a few buildings should do.
Family: Can be pretty much placed in any beautiful place, construct police station only if necessary. Construct Airport for some extra tourists, better rating and a bit of income. I have a question about something not mentioned in the guide, the easiest had been to add a chapter answering the question.
What I want to know is how export trade functions. Export has a export price, a normal price, a quantity and a foreign relations adjustment. This is how I think it functions. Normal price is price without a trade route. Export price is the trade deal export price and quantity the maksimum export volume, if normal price is x1 and a trade route gives x2 and a quantity of 30 000, if you export less than 30 000 do you get money x2 for all quantity you actually trade or do you get normal pay until you reach 30 000 and then all the extra money. I think the first one is correct which means if you have a free trade ship and an export resource a (positive) trade deal will always pay you more money. Foreign relations in trade do the foreign relations increase and or decrease when you start a trade or if you complete the trade.
Hopefully this will help me out in sandbox! I do have a couple questions though, in one play through I had a steel mill, rum factory, and a textile factory. And in the World War era everything was running perfectly! All my farms and mines were all filled with people and whatever extra I needed I imported. But soon as I hit the Cold War era employees were quitting left and right! How do I fix that because those industries were the back bone of my economy and without them I had rebels and military coups all the time!