Tropico 3 on sale for $7.50

[Ginaz]

I bought this game a few months ago because I played the 1st one and really enjoyed it.  This one is a nice little city building type sim where you start off as a newly "appointed" dictator of a small island and you build up your country from there. I find it to be a fairly entertaining time waster and $7.50 is an excellent price seeing as how its normally $29.99 on Steam and still sells for $40-$50 in stores.

[Trippy]

I'm playing it right now. I bought it after I saw schild bought it and saw that it was on sale.

[Pennilenko]

Is it more sim city or more rts like?

[rk47]

sim city. its pretty nice with the factions you have to watch forand ways to please them before election.
Of course, you can always declare martial law and ban elections until 'the emergency is resolved'

[Strazos]

I bought this...just because I remember the first one being an amusing idea, and it's cheap.

[Trippy]

Game just crashed on me. Don't rely on the autosave to save your progress -- i.e. save manually regularly.

[Tannhauser]

Thanks for this post, downloading T3 now.  I enjoyed the first one and this price is a no-brainer.

[Fabricated]

I decided to buy it, and I guess they ran out of keys. Ha. Gotta wait until tomorrow/today/whatever I guess to see if they fix it.

[stu]

Maybe try again? Mine's downloading now.

edit: Doh. nvm. I figured I could play if the service would let me download.

Anyways, after seeing the UI screens I decided to get this. The ones on Steam don't seem to do the game justice.

[Tannhauser]

I have built a worker's paradise with schools, papaya farms and electricity.  I have no industry on the island, but have a thriving tourist industry, thanks to my low pollution.  I just wish those peasants would stop building shanty towns beside my luxury hotels on the beach!  So what if they have no liberty, they can trust in me, their glorious people's leader!

[Azazel]

Fuck.
Your post just sold me on this.

[Ginaz]

I have built a worker's paradise with schools, papaya farms and electricity.  I have no industry on the island, but have a thriving tourist industry, thanks to my low pollution.  I just wish those peasants would stop building shanty towns beside my luxury hotels on the beach!  So what if they have no liberty, they can trust in me, their glorious people's leader!

My El Presidente, Jesus De Jesus, prefers the finer things in life so he kisses America's ass while building an industrial base with sweat shop labour.  Viva El Presidente!!!

[Fabricated]

I have discovered I am really bad at this game, like I am at all sim-things. It's awesome how you get a crackerbox for an island but every job-giving building practically requires a tenement house just for it. Also farms just kinda expand whereever the hell they want.

[Trippy]

The feedback about what's going on in the game is pretty poor.

[bhodi]

The feedback about what's going on in the game is pretty poor.

I noticed this as well, and I figured I was just missing something.
As far as I can tell, there's no easy way to tell:

Unemployment / Worker Utilization
Food consumption / starvation / restaurant needs
How many garages you need / Garage Placement
Building / Road placement and requirements - It's not simcity, buildings don't have to be on a road apparently, but how about next to each other? Seems like roads are analogous to sim city subways, and garages are the different stations.
Building queues, and where your workers are going next
Building Radii, how close to tenants have to be to the farms for the people, how close do garages have to be to buildings to be useful


I love the atmosphere, the music, the sounds, and the gameplay. I just wish there was some hidden summary menu and overlay that I'm missing. The overlays for crops are useful, the overlays for building usage / profitability seem pretty useless.

[Trippy]

Unemployment / Worker Utilization

That's actually one of the things you can get useful information about, though it takes some digging. In the Almanac under Lists -> Residents - Jobs you can see the number of unemployed workers there.

[Sjofn]

Last I played this, I was pretty much a terrible dictator, because liberty levels were really high! I kicked ass in my elections, though, so clearly it paid off. The only real problem was the radio announcer guy kept insisting I was a dude. I should've had him killed. >:(

[Tannhauser]

Started on the campaign game, determined to be a good Soviet client.  Can't build tenements fast enough, so I closed down all immigration.  I have two clinics and two churches so they are pretty happy there.  But I have no industry and the capitalists are so upset they have started a rebellion.  Ha!  I'll deal with my rebel friends soon enough. 
  Liberty is almost non-existent but crime is very low.  I'm so sick of the huddled masses yearning to be free!  I did get re-elected so I must be doing something right.  My Swiss account is very low though and my country's income is anemic.  So glad Comrade Khrushchev is subsidizing the Revolution!
  Oh and roads are a pain to create.  Also, I like to click on a person and click the thought bubble to see what needs are/aren't being met, helps me plan my next construction.  Seems to work well for me although I don't know how I learned to read minds.
  Really enjoy the game, remember to save games comrades!

[NiX]

Building queues, and where your workers are going next
Building Radii, how close to tenants have to be to the farms for the people, how close do garages have to be to buildings to be useful

The queue is on the Construction office. Click on it and you'll see "Projects", it also shows you which building they're currently working on by highlighting the workers.

Tenants seem to reside in any building with occupancy, I built 1 tenement and even the people furthest away were moving into it.

[bhodi]

The queue is on the Construction office. Click on it and you'll see "Projects", it also shows you which building they're currently working on by highlighting the workers.

Doesn't work so well; workers wander on and off projects seemingly at random. I want a forced labor button, they aren't allowed to go anywhere until that building's complete! El Presidente has better things to do than sit at a half completed building while you tend to your infants or whatever.

[Trippy]

You can set the construction priority of each building under construction. Doesn't really help all that much, though. Buildings get constructed on "Island" time which means not everybody with a construction job is working all the time.

[Strazos]

Game is great...just wish some concepts were better-explained:

Tourism - Spending Limit: Is this on a per-attraction basis, or total trip overall? Does it include accommodations?
Garages - WTF
Housing - How much do you really need? The portraits - do they represent renters, or just folks actually in the building at that moment?
House selection - Is there any rhyme or reason? I don't want people with actual jobs living in shacks. Best I've figured out is you just keep demolishing them for free...hopefully they eventually move into a house?
Education - double-edged sword? It's nice to get high school or college-educated, however eventually you have a lot of educated people with not enough higher-end jobs. It's my impression that there are just not that many jobs that require an education, and NONE of them actually create money; they're all service support like schools, churches, newspapers, etc...I guess the cannery makes cash, and maybe the botanical gardens, but that's it.
Rent and salary - Anyone find sweet spots for this? I tend to give increases out randomly, on an education-level basis. Not really sure if people get made with stagnant pay. Also, seems people don't like to pay much for housing, even luxury apts.

Still like the game though; been messing with the scenarios.

[Tannhauser]

Game is great...just wish some concepts were better-explained:

Tourism - Spending Limit: Is this on a per-attraction basis, or total trip overall? Does it include accommodations?
Garages - WTF
     Garages let your workers drive to their worksite, say an airport away from the city, and lets them drive back.  Otherwise they walk, which slows down your airport construction.  So put one downtown and one in a far off production zone, crops, mines etc.  They can get overloaded though.

Housing - How much do you really need? The portraits - do they represent renters, or just folks actually in the building at that moment?
    Portraits represent who is renting, they don't have to be there.  Ideally, every citizen should live in at least a tenement, this also boots the Communism faction.
House selection - Is there any rhyme or reason? I don't want people with actual jobs living in shacks. Best I've figured out is you just keep demolishing them for free...hopefully they eventually move into a house?
     If you build a mansion, almost any citizen will move in.  I've had to evict them to make room for professors and other professionals.
Education - double-edged sword? It's nice to get high school or college-educated, however eventually you have a lot of educated people with not enough higher-end jobs. It's my impression that there are just not that many jobs that require an education, and NONE of them actually create money; they're all service support like schools, churches, newspapers, etc...I guess the cannery makes cash, and maybe the botanical gardens, but that's it.
    Not totally sure on this, but I think schools dry up with new students.  Often seen my HS with no students.

Rent and salary - Anyone find sweet spots for this? I tend to give increases out randomly, on an education-level basis. Not really sure if people get made with stagnant pay. Also, seems people don't like to pay much for housing, even luxury apts.
     The Communists hate wealth disparity, so I pay uneducated $1 above Caribbean average and add about $5 for HS education and $5 or so more for college grads.

Still like the game though; been messing with the scenarios.

Played the hell out of this game, great gaming value, but it's a bit easy so I've wandered off to Red Dead Redemption.

[Sjofn]

Education - double-edged sword? It's nice to get high school or college-educated, however eventually you have a lot of educated people with not enough higher-end jobs. It's my impression that there are just not that many jobs that require an education, and NONE of them actually create money; they're all service support like schools, churches, newspapers, etc...I guess the cannery makes cash, and maybe the botanical gardens, but that's it.

Factories, my good man, factories! They all use high school educated people. I believe a fair amount of the touristy shit wants high school or college as well (I haven't played in a while).

[Strazos]

Ah, I'm playing scenarios, so I guess I don't have the full building menu to select from.

[Tannhauser]

If there is a building you want to keep fully staffed, offer a slightly higher wage than jobs of similar education level.  Tobacco farms and factories can bring in a nice amount of pesos!

[Strazos]

Been chugging through the scenarios....shit is great! I can generally make an economic powerhouse with ease; I tend to default to farming either Coffee or Tobacco. Sometimes mining or oil. Jewelery is nice, but Expensive to set up.

But ffs, I cannot really get tourism to work right. Sure, I can get hotels filled, and maybe a gourmet restaurant, but...I can't seem to get much use or cash out of attractions, such as casinos. They start low, but my tourists spending limits are high, so I jack the price up a bit....can't get anyone to go...even at $7-10. Same for Spa, beachsite...

Also, keeping people fed seems kind of vague. Not sure when marketplaces are actually needed...a lot of times, I only build one, and it goes unused.


Still fun.

[Paelos]

Key point about marketplaces: they should be built right next to the garage that's closest to your large housing area. That way when people drop off their cars, they go to get food.

I found tourism to be largely worthless unless the scenario demands it.

[bhodi]

Regarding marketplaces; you need to have an abundance of food for them to be used, since the food has to still be there on the farm when the teamster car arrives. Also, you'll want to build your farms near roads for easy teamster access.

Food is a tricky thing, but it's roughly 1 farm per 50 population, double that with the food for the people edict.

Humanitarian aid and USSR aid is extremely powerful early on and really lets you get your island up to speed. That's why I always take the trait that lets me build a embassy early. That's the first building I create, then I immediately do USSR aid, and humanitarian aid directly after.

That way, I don't have to worry about clinics or food, I get increasing amounts of financial aid yearly, and can build apartment blocks for tenement prices. Make sure you get a church up before you start building housing or you'll take a religious hit.


The expansion is worth it just for smaller garages.

[Teleku]

Is there any difference between taking USSR aid and taking US aid?

[Ard]

Why are you so ready to ally with the Red Menace, Citizen?


(and yes, there are, it comes down to what they'll subsidize building and what they frown up on you building, go check a faq)

[bhodi]

Or you could even mouse over it.

USSR = housing (apartment blocks + something else you'll never use)
USA = Power plant + hospital(?)

It's just a flat discount for life for an up-front fee. The 'frowning upon' or whatever doesn't impact the gameplay and you can have both at the same time.

Basically:

Embassy
<USSR Aid>
Restaurant
Apartment Block
Church
House (for embassy)
House (for church)
Garage
<Humanitarian Aid>
Demolish farms
Garage in farm area
Farm (tobacco/sugar/pineapple) for profitssss
Farm (tobacco/sugar/pineapple) for profitssss
Apartment block in farm area

Something like that is generally my start. Eventually I aim for a wind farm, gormet restaurant and a hospital as the humanitarian aid ends, and I squeeze a high school in there somewhere too. Then a tv station with the learning channel.

Remember El Presidente increases service quality of all places he visits as well as speeding up building, so send him around to your nice service areas and make sure to keep him rotating in the embassy for maximum dough each year.

[Ard]

I thought that if you built stuff they disagreed with, they'd eventually yank the alliance and/or invade?  It's been a while since I've played though.

[bhodi]

Nope. I've never had that happen. Don't go in debt, ever, and your relations with both superpowers can remain very high.

[Ard]

None of this explains why Teleku is so willing to side with the Commie-scum though.   Are you a dirty Red or just a filthy stinking hippie?