TROPICO
                     by Poptop Software

                   Reviewed by Bev Truter

I recently discovered the delights of bidding for games from all
over the world via E-Bay, and Tropico is the latest addition to my
growing collection of city-building games. Well, ummm, I use that
term loosely, as Tropico is more island-managing than city-
building, and in some ways more fun to play than Pharaoh et al.
The blurb on the box-cover of Tropico sums it up very nicely -
You, the newly installed dictator of an obscure Caribbean island,
must create a life of prosperity and happiness for your people.
Build farms to feed them, tenements to house them, pubs to lift
their spirits and churches to save their souls. Follow a socialist
path of factories, mines, logging and fishing; or chase capitalist
dollars by building resorts to lure Yanqui tourists. Tropico takes
addictive building orientated gameplay, combined with a healthy
dose of Latin American political intrigue, and bundles it up in an
easy-to-learn but hard to master package.

The graphics in Tropico are exquisite, giving you the options of
zooming in or out several times. At the most zoomed-out level you
can view your island as a small green blur with its various
buildings all visible on one screen, with weather (clouds, rain,
lightning) scudding across at regular intervals. The most
zoomed-in level lets you see what is inside the storage areas of
each building, and shows close-up details like individual planks
on the dock's gangway, and seagulls preening themselves on nearby
bollards. By zooming-in on your people you can track each person
individually (follow the down-pointing arrow), 'see' their
thoughts, get information on their jobs, family, happiness, etc.
Keeping track of any tourists on your island this way provides
great entertainment - see where they are staying, what attractions
they intend visiting, what they think of your island, and what
rating they're likely to give it as a tourist destination.
Tourists come in 3 types by the way - slob tourists, middle-class,
and high class.

In playing Tropico you can select from a huge number of
randomly-generated maps, and choose your own level of difficulty
for each map by altering options like size of island (the larger,
the easier), size of starting population (ditto - a 'normal' size
to begin with is about 35 or 40 people), elevation (more
mountainous areas means fewer places suitable for buildings), and
a few other geographical details. Also, how you came to power is
very important to the gameplay - for example, if you choose to be
a leftist author, arriving at the position of 'El Presidente' by a
populist rebellion, the game will be easier to manage than if you
start off as a Generalissimo who bought the election.  However,
depending on your choice of strategy, there are many ways to mix
and match the 17 backgrounds (eg, miner, self-made man, pop
singer) and 12 ways of rising to power (eg, capitalist rebellion,
installed by KGB) to suit your style of dictatorship. For each
game you must also choose two positive character traits and two
flaws, and these too have various effects on how the several
factions on your island view you.

Reading the accompanying manual is a must. It not only explains
the aims and strategy behind Tropico beautifully and concisely;
it's also a hoot to read. The manual is written in the style of
several 'documents', presented to you by various people in your
administration, all of them dead keen to flatter you outrageously
and obviously nervous of upsetting you with any home truths.  For
those wanting to start play immediately, at least browse through
Fast Frederico's Quick Start Guide - "Psssst! Wake up, Presidente!
You want riches? I have a map..."

Each time you begin a new game it will be on a different island,
and the aims will be different for the 8 missions. The random maps
all have the same aim - survive as dictator for 50 years. It
doesn't matter how well you run things, or how corrupt you are,
ultimately the people will decide (by election or coup) the length
of your reign as dictator. So a basic strategy is to make sure
your people are happy by providing them with well-paid jobs,
housing, medical care, schooling and entertainment venues. Make
sure crime remains low and liberty high. Unfortunately you and
your people start off with none of the above (except your
presidential palace, inherited from your predecessor), and to
build the island paradise your people crave, you'll need money.

Tropico is a small, underdeveloped, relatively impoverished
Caribbean island quite remote from anywhere else. Each game begins
with 4 farms which provide basic food for your 40 people plus a
small trickle of cash from agricultural exports. However, to
accumulate vast sums of money for your island (and yourself - see
Swiss Bank Account) you will need to build your economy slowly but
steadily from cash crops like sugar and tobacco to the export of
goods like rum, jewellery and lumber made in factories. I found
the economic goals fairly simple and straightforward to achieve,
but dealing with the political side of things is a nightmare of
juggling and balancing different factions - you certainly can't
please all of your people all of the time!

Basically, once you have a reasonably steady flow of cash coming
in from logging, mining and cash crops, you will have to check up
on your people's happiness by consulting a very handy 'book'
called the almanac, by clicking on the white book symbol. This
lists all you need to know about Tropico in several sections -
overview, score, politics, economy, factions. You may very well be
feeding your people, giving them well-paid jobs and excellent work
conditions, pleasing the environmentalists, intellectuals and
capitalists; but all this means nothing to the militarist faction
- forget about building up your police, soldiers and guard towers
and you'll soon face a coup out of the blue - the militant faction
are NOT impressed by wonderful workplace conditions, they just
regard you as spineless and weak if you haven't built up a strong
military (ie, at least 4 soldiers in your palace, a few generals
in an armoury and guard tower, plus a few soldiers wandering
around your island from a high school with 'military' education).

If you neglect to build a church or later on a cathedral, you risk
alienating the religious faction; forget about medical clinics and
a hospital and the socialists will whinge. Ignore beginning a
tourist industry and the capitalists become disgruntled; become
too 'friendly' with America and your relations with Russia turn
decidedly cool. Oh dear...life wasn't meant to be easy as a
dictator. However, through thick and thin, you can always stash
away money in your own personal Swiss Bank account, for a rainy
day. Your hold on power is always rather tenuous in Tropico, and
if your people don't appreciate your true worth and toss you out
on your ear, you'll find yourself rowing slowly away from your
island paradise surrounded by a few over-full suitcases of your
ill- gotten gains, ready to fight another day on another island
somewhere else....

The maximum time you have to rule any island in Tropico is 50
years; and in all the random games you simply rule in any style
you wish - tyrant or benefactor - build as much or as little as
you please, cater for tourists or remain a small rural community,
it's entirely up to you. At the end of 50 years the game ends with
you taking a bow on your balcony to the cheering crowds below, and
a short commentary runs in the background telling you how well you
did, which factions are happy with you and which aren't, and ends
with the ambiguous phrase "although in some areas your talents
sparkle like a diamond, in other areas the people did not
appreciate your lustre quite so much..." Lovely! Of course if you
rule *really* badly you might be tossed out of power by a coup or
election long before the 50 years are up, but this didn't seem to
happen too often as long as you keep your people's levels of
happiness, respect and liberty above 40% or thereabouts.

The 8 missions are very much the same, but different goals are
set, and levels of difficulty vary. So far I've completed the two
'moderate' missions - in the first you have to take over a former
penal colony and build it up into a thriving island of 200 people
and an economy of $250,000. In the second mission you start with a
completely deforested island, thanks to a previous dictator's
enthusiasm for heavy logging, and you have to build up a balanced
economy with other exports and return the island to its former
treed state - sounded easier than the first mission, but crikey,
those militants insist on you building up the army as well - not
my style at all, really.

Tropico gives you the chance to spread your wings as a dictator,
choosing one or several different paths to follow to success.
Funnily enough I always chose the same style of dictatorship (the
goody-goody way) - benevolent, good to my people, neglecting the
military and trying not to be too corrupt. But I can see that this
particular benevolent style is not suited to all missions, and to
win some missions you might have to behave quite out of character,
ie, become a very ruthless tyrant and govern by having strong
military rather than economic power.

It's easy enough to grasp the basics of playing Tropico, but I
suspect I'll need more than the basics to complete all 8 missions,
which range from Moderate to Ridiculously Hard. Each mission so
far has taken about 2-4 hours to complete, so I estimate a month's
worth of playing will get me through about 20 of the random maps,
and possibly 5 or 6 of the 8 mission games. Although very
addictive to begin with, Tropico has not got quite the depth of
play or range of possibilities found in other city-building games
in the Sierra range. But hey! It's FUN!






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