![]() So that is the basic setup of Tropico 4 – you need to take an island with problems from destitution to prosperity while balancing your budget, meeting your citizens' needs, and playing the political factions off against each other. Become unpopular enough with a few factions and you are looking at revolts again. Each faction wants different things and every choice you make can potentially help (or harm) your standing with several. Each citizen belongs to a particular political faction: environmentalists, capitalists, communists, militarists, or some others. Other side-quests involve pacifying various factions in your society. Export a bunch and receive a bonus.” These goals are often things you would like to do anyway and getting a bonus for them can pull you out of some tight spots. A popular variant is “A foreign country wants more llama wool. Little icons will pop up next to various buildings offering incentives for particular actions. Each island has a primary goal that you will be required to meet in order to win the scenario (have X citizens or Y dollars in the bank or whatever) but there are also an abundant number of side-quests to take part in. Much of your career as president will in fact be spent doing just this – identifying needs, finding some money, and creating a building to satisfy that need.Īt this point you have some money rolling in and a reasonably stable political scene. In this case, building a church, a restaurant and a clinic will keep everybody happy. As dictator/president you can address problems by building the appropriate buildings. The first problems the inhabitants have concern religion, entertainment and health care. Keep them happy or there will be revolts, or you could even lose an election. The engine keeps track of who wants what and presents a summary of the overall mood on the island broken down by need so you will always have a good idea of what is on your subjects' minds. Each citizen has a list of needs (religion, housing, entertainment, liberty, etc.) and a ranking of how important each is. A drop in the banana market can sink a fledgling economy.Īfter the money starts flowing in your people will get restless about some quality-of-life issues. As an island, your primary source of income will be exports (with some tourism thrown in) so you'll constantly be at the mercy of international forces. ![]() ![]() First off, find something to export – a mine, farms or ranches all can provide resources that can make you a few bucks when shipped from your docks. Your first job is to to just stabilize the island. Each scenario opens up on a new island with a new problem: perhaps it has no natural resources, or the natives are unhappy, or there are monetary troubles. The campaign is built around the idea of the gamer as a banana republic-style dictator who moves from island to island solving problems on each and building them into stable, prosperous little city states. You can say a lot of things about Tropico, but you can't say it isn't an attractively presented, humorous, easy-to-play game about being the dictator of your own Caribbean island. It is a good thing the Tropico franchise is here to inject some life (and humor and color) into the genre. While there are gamers for whom poring over every detail is the fun part, they are a niche market - a somewhat under served niche market in this age of first-person shooter epics and real-time strategy extravaganzas. Constant worries over zoning minutiae and travel distances can turn the fun of building a city into a micro-management nightmare. ![]()
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