TROPICO

                    Hints by Bev Truter

Start with the tutorial, or a few of the random maps, using all
the defaults (for background, rise to power, etc) as set. This
starts you off with a medium-sized island, Communist government,
and 4 farms, plus a dock. Whatever you start with, build slowly.
If you put in too many buildings at the beginning of a game you
will rapidly run into debt, so wait until your first cash crop
produces some cash before plonking down any buildings.

You can turn the game speed up to NORMAL or FAST, but first take
time to look around at your island before jumping headlong into
building anything. The very first thing to do is look at your
teamsters' building (teamsters provide the heavy-duty manual
haulage of goods between factories, farms, mines and docks). Since
there is nothing for them to haul around in the first few years,
check most of the boxes with a cross in the 'slots' section of the
teamsters' office - this will ensure that only one or two
teamsters are employed at the start of a game - no point in paying
wages for 8 teamsters to sit around and twiddle their thumbs for
the first couple of years in any game. Just remember to uncheck
the slots as your industries and farming expand, so that there are
enough teamsters to fetch and carry goods 'twixt industries and
dock. Do all the above in PAUSE mode.

Next, still in PAUSE mode and with a zoomed-out view (i.e, so you
can view the whole island on one screen) click on the eye symbol
(info mode) and check out what crops will grow best on your 4
farms. Change at least one of them into a cash crop like sugar,
coffee, bananas or papaya. If this farm is further from the city
centre than the other farms, then up the wages by a few dollars to
attract more workers, and build some cheap housing (2 or 3 country
houses) close to the farm. Check that there's a road running from
the farm to the dock so that your crops will be taken there for
export. It takes a year for crops to be harvested, and possibly a
further year before the packed/processed crop will reach a dock
and be shipped off on a freighter, and you only receive payment
for crops sold when a freighter has been loaded with the crop you
are selling - ie, be prepared to wait 2 years before you see any
profit from crops. Also, don't be tempted to try and squash other
buildings in close to a farm - farms need plenty of open space
around them to grow the maximum acreage of crops.

In the meantime keep a careful eye on your cash flow - you usually
start a 'normal' game with 40 people and $10,000. While you wait
for your crop to be sold, turn up the game speed to normal or even
fast, and think about housing for your people. It's cheaper in the
short term to put in 3 or 4 bunkhouses or country houses (each
holds 2 families); but in the long term a cheap tenement holds 12
families, and it won't be long before your people start moaning
about wanting housing. Whatever housing you choose, place it near
to where you intend expanding your first town and industries, on
flattish ground (hit 'G' to see a grid of ground levels).

While your housing is being built, raise all wages by one or two
dollars (to keep your people happy and attract immigrants).
Remember it will be at least 13 years before any Tropican babies
born are old enough to work, so your workforce can only expand
initially by attracting immigrants. It's extremely important to
raise your palace soldiers' wages from $10 to at least $15 right
at the start of each game - you MUST keep your soldiers happy, or
they tend to disappear from employment, leading to grave troubles
for you in the future. You've got the choice of firing people from
any job; but be careful - a fired worker is an unhappy worker, so
rather let them sort things out jobwise for themselves, or click
on the worker slots in a building BEFORE workers arrive there, if
you want the building to employ less than its full quota of
workers at the start of a game.

So, you've put in some housing, sorted out your teamsters and
soldiers, and are waiting for your first harvests to come in.
While you're waiting, click on info mode again, and check to see
if there are any sites suitable for mining. If you can afford it,
put in a mine (gold is the highest earner, but they're usually
situated quite far from your budding city). Even if a mine is
quite far from town, it will get built if there's a road to it,
and if you first put in another construction office and a couple
of bunkhouses close to the mine. If you can't afford to do this in
the first 2 years when your budget is stretched, try to build a
mine within 4 years, but don't worry about transporting the gold
mined there any further - just let it pile up in the storage area
of the mine. When you finally have enough cash to put in an extra
dock (as close to the mine as possible), with a road between mine
and dock, plus another few bunkhouses for the dockworkers, you'll
be amazed at the sudden influx of wealth that pours into your
coffers as the piled up gold suddenly reaches the new dock and
freighters.

If you decide that a mine is too expensive at this fragile
beginning of your dictatorship, then put in a logging camp on the
fringes of town. Click on your logging camp and choose 'selective
logging' instead of the pre-set 'clear cut', or else you will find
your trees are rapidly cut down in that particular area, forcing
your logging workers to walk miles and miles to find new trees to
log. As soon as you can afford to, upgrade your logging camp with
the two additions available that don't need electricity - a log
debarker and a toolshed. A lumber mill transforms the raw logs
into timber, which fetches a higher price than logs, but costs a
fair amount of money to build. You'll need electricity (a power
station) to make improvements to your lumber mills and mines; so
they will just have to wait until your economy is on its feet and
ticking away smoothly.

Whenever you're warned that an election is due (every 4 years),
choose the 'honest' election - you'll win easily as long as your
people are happy, and for the first few elections there's a
'honeymoon' effect - your people will tolerate quite a lot of
errors on your part, as they realize you're new to the job. If you
choose to make certain of retaining power by a rigged election,
this will have negative repercussions later on in the game, losing
the respect of your people. As soon as various factions let you
know what they want by sending you 'letters' moaning about
something, try to do what they suggest. If your people are dying
(!), make sure there's enough farms producing corn (1 corn farm
feeds approx 30 people), and consider putting in a fishing wharf
if you haven't done so already. Put in a market near the densest
housing, and at least one medical centre as soon as you can.

However, I'd suggest a high school before the market and medical
centre, as many buildings you add now (market, medical centre, the
school itself, and a church) all need at least one high school
graduate to start operating. If your high school hasn't lured an
immigrant to work there 3 months after building it (by raising the
wages by $5-$10), then you'll have to pay a fee (by clicking on
the mortar-board sign above the empty slot in the building's
stats.  menu) to ensure that a foreign graduate does indeed pitch
up to work in the building. Paying a fee to lure in foreign high
school and college graduates to run industries for you is very
expensive in the long run, so first try raising wages for all
skilled labour by a few dollars, and as soon as you can afford to
(after a church, medical centre and high school), build a college.

After a few elections you'll probably receive a message from the
Militarist faction saying that security is a problem and that you
need more soldiers. Immediately raise soldiers' wages by a few
dollars, and change education in your schools and/or college to
'military' instead of 'general'. Build an armoury and one or two
guard posts close to your palace, and remember you need a general
(pay the fee to employ a foreign general) to run the armoury and
any guard posts.

When the economy is running fairly smoothly and you've made some
improvements to industry and built a power station to generate
electricity, you can start thinking about luring tourists to your
island paradise. Click on info mode and see where you can build
tourist accommodation, and what type of accommodation would be
suitable - no point in wasting money building a middle-class hotel
on your island if the only tourists likely to arrive on holiday
are 'slob' tourists. All slob tourists need are a cheap hotel, a
few beach sites, a pub and a restaurant, and they'll arrive in
droves.  Middle-class tourists will also arrive in droves if you
have an archaelogical site on your island, and if you build a
better hotel, some bungalows and beach sites. Tourists are rapidly
put off by a high crime rate in the area, so make sure you have a
police station discreetly tucked away somewhere in the area.
Finally, any tourism sites should be built far away from the
hustle and bustle of your normal town life, and hide any unsightly
buildings - eg mines and sub-stations - behind a handy hill, or
around the corner in another bay. Build a dock close to your
tourist area to service only yachts, and this will ensure your
tourists don't turn up at the wrong dock, miles away from the only
tourist accommodation.

Building an immigration office increases the number of people
immigrating to your island, and if you build a foreign embassy you
can wangle some extra foreign aid each year from the Americans or
Russians, by pushing either pro-American policies, pro- Russian
policies, or alternating between the two.

And finally, to keep the Environmentalist faction happy, issue
laws (click on the EDICTS icon) to clear up litter and minimize
pollution from factories. Change your power stations from coal to
gas, click on the landscape icon to plant trees and shrubs, and
don't log the heck out of your island - always run logging camps
on 'selective clearing' unless you particularly want a chunk of
land cleared of all trees.  Trees naturally regenerate if left in
peace for a few years with no logging in the area.

All you have to do to remain in power is keep about half your
people happy (or easier still, contented) for most of the time -
simple enough, if you keep on checking up on what they want, and
have a thriving economy to support their needs. But as in all
things, money isn't everything, so as well as a booming economy
keep a growing number of soldiers in armouries and guard towers as
well - you never know when they might come in handy. Good luck, el
Presidente - may your reign be long and prosperous.











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