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 Ahhhh…Tropico. My Tropico. Even as the United States government grinds to a halt, Tropico endures. When the city of Sims crashed and burned, Tropico expanded and modernized! Truly, nobody knows better than El Presidente how to build a city and create a masterpiece of civics from shacks and bananas! What's this all about? Tropico, fool! The greatest Caribbean nation in the world, and by extension, the greatest city-building simulator to ever exist! This is not propaganda! Aside from Tropico 2, which was a pirate simulator, the series has mostly been unchanged, refining itself into perfection. We are a newly-elected dictator wielding total power over the island. We can't control the individual actions of the people, the foolish, foolish people, but we can read their minds and by catering to their whims, control the prosperity of the island--maybe even make us a little retirement money in the process, heh heh. Tropico 4 changes a few subtle but important things. We need to have a fully-staffed ministry with qualified officials in order to deliver world-changing edicts. There are multiple powers in the world beyond merely the US and USSR, and their attitudes towards us will influence trade. Goods can be imported at a cost if necessary, and double the money can be spent on construction projects to finish them quickly. There are also many recurring characters, including our own staff and speakers for the political factions. These and other touches make Tropico 4 the "perfected" version of this game. The promised upcoming Tropico 5 is apparently going to change up a ton of stuff, so this is probably going to be the final, and best, version of this type of Tropico. We will be examining everything we can in this LP, from the base campaign, to Modern Times, to the DLC missions and their buildings if (that is, if Feral Interactive ever gets around to releasing those on my platform!) How big is this game? This is a long game. Each campaign mission may take several hours to complete and there are 20 in total, plus more for all the extras. Bobbin Threadbare's LP of Tropico 3 was many updates and that was just covering the sandbox version of this. So I'm not going to slow things down by asking for reader input on every single little thing that happens, there's too much ground to cover. There will be polls for certain things, such as which branching mission objective the people want to pursue. Elections will not be held for which man becomes the next Presidente. El Presidente decides his own destiny, and his own history! He is and has always been whatever his latest autobiography says he is!!! Updates Mission 1-1: Tutorial for Tyrants Mission 1-2 Mission 2-1: It's All Mine! Mission 2-2 Mission 3-1: Into the Spotlight Mission 3-2 Mission 3-3 Mission 4-1: IMPORTant Business Mission 4-2 Mission 4-3 Mission 5-1: Tropico Above All Mission 5-2 Mission 5-3 Mission 6-1: Bickering Factions Mission 6-2 Mission 6-3 Mission 7-1: Crisis Mission 7-2 Part 2: Exile Mission 8-1: Survival Mission 8-2 Mission 9-1: No One Left Behind Mission 9-2 Mission 9-3 Mission 10-1: Independence Day Mission 10-2 Mission 11-1: Fruity Business Mission 11-2 Mission 12-1: Olympic Heist Mission 12-2 Mission 13-1: The Blind Revolution Mission 13-2 Mission 13-3 Speedball fucked around with this message at 21:50 on May 9, 2014 |
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Oct 12, 2013 00:23
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Mission 1-1: Tutorial For Tyrants El Prez narrates this introduction. We are going to be developing the barest of bare bones island to a half-decent one as a way of jumpstarting the Tropican economy and thus rule the world! Hmm… it's time to update El Presidente's autobiography.  We are no mere cookie-cutter imitation of other world leaders! We are our own man! Except for the times we feel like being a woman!  The basic Presidente costume. Doesn't matter much because we won't be looking too closely at it, but hey, it's a nice option. Now for the real fun part of customization: our past!  This consists of our Background, our Rise to Power, and three Traits.  Our Background is the most important. El Presidente is sort of a Fisher King, by which I mean, what we are good at is what all our citizens are good at. A miner makes all Tropicans better at mining.  Second most important is the Rise to Power. These usually have strong political influences but can also affect productivity and so on. Between the two of these, our focus for the mission will become quite clear.  Third most important, but most fun of all, are the Traits. Past Tropico games gave El Presidente two virtues and two flaws. Here, they've been merged into one category. Every negative trait usually carries a positive bonus to balance it. Even things like Flatulence and being Ugly have positive sides now! Traits also act as a prestige system now. Initially they are all quite weak, but every mission we complete with a trait selected will make that trait's positive side more and more powerful, up to five stars. None of them ever get game-breakingly powerful but they're all nice, quite nice. I might grind up a few traits between chapters just so that we get a little more mileage out of them; we'll see. I'd like to at least show off as many as I can. Now, as I am the administrator of this Let's Play, I'll be deciding the traits we get for this mission. Maybe you think that's cheap, but too bad: I am in power now! Pay attention and maybe you'll all learn something.    This is a farming mission, so now El Presidente is idealized for farming output, with a little education on the side, and buildings are a little cheaper. Perfect for a tutorial mission!  Ah, our friend, Generalissimo Santana, who is in charge of the tutorial, but also our guide through this mission. He is gracious enough to let us know what's going on and how to do stuff.  Penultimo, our loyal (if dim) second-in-command speaks for himself, and all the most loyal citizens, the Loyalist Faction. Do not worry: he is not a complete incompetent, just dumb enough so that he knows better than to betray us. Two farms, you say?  St. Clara isn't much to look at. We shall soon fix this. We have one port, one tenement (which is cheap mass-housing, kinda dirty but better than nothing, and very space efficient), one garage which gets people to their destination faster (they have to borrow the car, though; nobody owns their own car in Tropico!) one teamster office (these guys just wheel items around, like finished crops) and one construction office (the lazy worthless peons upon whom this entire game depends!) Also one palace. That is where we live. It's good to be presidente! These are the basics of the basics, the most bare-bones starting position we could possibly be in. Time to fix that. Now, let's get some farms out!  Bah! I need to build a farm, you fools! Take your suggestions and stuff it! The people can build their own filthy shacks to live in for all I care! No, really. If people can't find a place to sleep, they build their own horrible shantytown around your city. It's disgusting and ruins the appeal of the place. We'll get them a place to live soon, no worries...  Here's us, dropping down a farm in the land. The fertility overlay opens up automatically when it's time to drop a farm. Corn grows almost anywhere, so it's no problem. Other crops are more picky, but more economically valuable (and the food diversity is appreciated by our people). Note that tobacco, sugar and coffee are cash crops, and they can't be eaten, although I am told that certain people certainly try to live off of nothing but sugar. No, they exist only to be sold. Plopping down a couple of farms doesn't immediately give us any cash or product, either; we need to wait many months for the unemployed losers to join the farm, start tilling the soil, and begin growing the crops, and that's after we get the lazy construction workers off their butts to build the drat things. Yes, I am using the fast-forward function a lot, aren't I? Hee hee.  Work faster, fool! I'm sending El Prez over there personally to yell at you and get you to work harder! That's the point of having an avatar, in fact. You can send him around to make facilities work harder and better, and to yell at construction workers to finish their jobs faster. However, before I could get you a humorous screenshot of it happening this time, they actually built it in a timely manner, for once!  Well done indeed! Even this is not a hard and fast rule. If the citizens can't get food, they'll eventually starve. This means we either have farms everywhere or a marketplace to sell food near their homes. Either works.  Oho, what's this? A TASK! Tasks are new to Tropico 4. They are optional objectives that occur within missions and give rewards. Usually the objectives are really easy to fulfill. There are blue tasks, too, which are non-mission-specific and appear randomly. Let's see what this one is about!  Aaah, someone wants cash crops already, huh? Certainly! Mr. Lopez here is the speaker for the Capitalist Faction of Tropico. They like it when we make money and have a sophisticated economy. They also love income disparity, but that's a good way to piss off everyone else, so we won't go to overboard with that. We can't, really: we're a Cheapskate in this mission, after all! That means we can't pay anyone more than $25 monthly!  Man, people are just lining up to give us money this mission, aren't they? How long do you think we can make that last? Heh-heh. Tropicans are neither precisely Catholic nor Protestant. They're not really educated enough to know what the difference is. So we have a Reverend, yet can build cathedrals and hire priests. The spirit of ecumenicism lives and breathes in Tropico! That's what makes us superior to every other country in the galaxy!  Here are our three new farms. One's set for corn, another for pineapple, and a third for tobacco. It'll be a bit before they get down to business and actually grow crops (randomly around their farm plot). We need to build a church, and make sure all our high-school-educated guys are filling up all its slots to become priests. This will all take more time. Appropriately, I think now is a good time to leave you all hanging. Until next episode, dear Tropicans!
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Oct 12, 2013 00:24
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Hola Presidente! This is such a great game! I'm eagerly awaiting updates. Only thing missing from this game is Betty Boom.
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Oct 12, 2013 00:45
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Ah, I was waiting for this LP to pop up. Tropico 3 and 4 had some great campaigns, and they're definitely worth looking at.
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Oct 12, 2013 00:50
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How low are the settings you're running this at?
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Oct 12, 2013 01:54
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I love this friggin game so much.  I'm glad you've decided to play the campaign rather than a sandbox game. The missions can be really amusing and actually offer some challenge from time to time, whereas the sandbox games are pretty much "suffer for ten years or so, then pile all of the money in the world on top of your head and snooze to the finish line."I dislike a lot of the Modern Times content, but the campaign redeems it for being particularly entertaining.
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Oct 12, 2013 02:04
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The Nozzle posted:How low are the settings you're running this at? I have no idea why the graphics aren't better because I'm running this sucker at the highest settings it's got. My X-Box 360 version of the game looks better. (Yes, I double-dipped for this LP, I'm insaaaane)
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Oct 12, 2013 02:10
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I think you should take a look around for improving the settings.
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Oct 12, 2013 04:51
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What resolution are you playing this at? Some images look ok but the 3d is annoyingly bad.
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Oct 12, 2013 05:04
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Does it look the same when you're playing as it comes out in the screenshots? It's really strange how the 3D has a noticeably lower resolution than the interface boxes on top. If it doesn't look like that when you're playing, it could be whatever you're using to capture images.
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Oct 12, 2013 05:15
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Bobbin Threadbare posted:Does it look the same when you're playing as it comes out in the screenshots? It's really strange how the 3D has a noticeably lower resolution than the interface boxes on top. If it doesn't look like that when you're playing, it could be whatever you're using to capture images. I was running it at a low resolution but windowed, at least partly so I didn't have to mess around quite so much with resizing everything to fit the tables, and also so I could just grab screens, pop 'em into the folder and immediately update the text file. This doesn't mess up the interface boxes or dialogue windows but apparently doing this also makes everything else extremely lovely-looking. Even El Pres during the customization screen. Bizarre. Running it at a higher resolution windowed seems to be doing the trick, it'll just add an extra step to the process...resizing everything twice after I've already captured it. Fff. This may slow things down a bit. Annoying, but necessary, I guess. Sorry guys, I suppose I should have tested this a bit more first.
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Oct 12, 2013 05:35
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Speedball posted:I was running it at a low resolution but windowed, at least partly so I didn't have to mess around quite so much with resizing everything to fit the tables, and also so I could just grab screens, pop 'em into the folder and immediately update the text file. This doesn't mess up the interface boxes or dialogue windows but apparently doing this also makes everything else extremely lovely-looking. Even El Pres during the customization screen. Bizarre. Irfanview does batch resize/resample quite well. takes about 10 seconds for 100 photos.
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Oct 12, 2013 05:37
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Alaan posted:Irfanview does batch resize/resample quite well. takes about 10 seconds for 100 photos. Mac user. Fff. I really should get myself a gaming PC one of these days...once I have the money to blow. I do have a script that can automatically resize images using Photoshop, though. EDIT:  Ahaah, this works, this works quite well! Good. Good. Speedball fucked around with this message at 05:55 on Oct 12, 2013 |
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Oct 12, 2013 05:47
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Speedball posted:I was running it at a low resolution but windowed, at least partly so I didn't have to mess around quite so much with resizing everything to fit the tables, and also so I could just grab screens, pop 'em into the folder and immediately update the text file. This doesn't mess up the interface boxes or dialogue windows but apparently doing this also makes everything else extremely lovely-looking. Even El Pres during the customization screen. Bizarre. When I did Tropico 3 I just ran it at full screen, took screenshots of whatever looked interesting, and then cropped the hell out of everything since you rarely need to consider the entire interface at once. Only had to do a few resizes throughout the whole thing, but then I also had a 4:3 monitor at the time so I didn't have to shrink everything too much to hit the right width.
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Oct 12, 2013 05:56
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Thanks. That's a really good idea. We don't need to clutter up every screenshot with the map in the corner. Okay, POLL: Tropico Veterans, what is your favorite background/rise to power/trait? Either a single one or a combination.
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Oct 12, 2013 06:08
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Speedball posted:Mac user. Fff. I really should get myself a gaming PC one of these days...once I have the money to blow. Okay, the perspective on this screenshot is really messing with my head, it almost looks like presidente's palace and that tenement in the background are about to fall over. Which isn't unrealistic, I suppose. Also, has the texture in the background of the building menus always been that obnoxious? It seems a lot more subtle when I run the game. Anyway, looking forward to the LP; this is easily one of my favorite games for the PC. It's the only city-builder game I'm aware of that has a campaign which is actually worth playing. It doesn't hurt that it runs much better than 3 did. Edit: My favorite background is Silver Spoon, my favored trait is anything that's not religious fanatic or hypochondriac. I find tourette syndrome the most helpful, but by a slim margin. Trick Question fucked around with this message at 06:32 on Oct 12, 2013 |
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Oct 12, 2013 06:18
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Yeah. in the SS LPs I've done I crop the hell out of images. And throw UI elements about the place when I want to make a specific point. Having a quick skim, Secret Agent is amazing, Rise to Power varies depending what I'm trying to achieve. If I'm going into tourism, Hotel Corp buyout is very nice. Hardworking and uh Entrepenurial are good picks for traits too.
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Oct 12, 2013 06:24
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If I'm going early tourism, 420 Hotel Corp. Buyout erryday. The free hotel is huge. The traits that reduce crime and Green Thumb are really good for tourism too. For industry, I like Silver Spoon or Self-Made Man or Hardworking. Also I really like the trait that gives you a free cement plant and makes your goddamn lazy builders move their asses, but I think that came with some of the micro DLC. For everything, Cheapskate is really good, also the ones that increase skill/education speed (Professor and whatever else). Never ever the one that makes people go to church more. loving churches. 
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Oct 12, 2013 07:40
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I actually tend to go double-down with Background Professor, Trait Scholarly. I don't even know if they stack, but I do know I enjoy having educated and highly-trained citizens. For Rise to Power I usually just go with whatever non-Fascist 'Elected' (or Velvet Revolution) I feel like that mission, since the important aspect is the +20% liberty so I don't have to worry about putting a few military bases downtown without having electrity to balance it out with free news If anyone does know if various +xx% faster skill-training/graduation stack, that'd be nice to know. Often I even stuff in a few news-bonuses to training on top of the traits, and at least once I've combined Scholarly with other traits that give more specific bonuses (such as just to Constructors) And I don't know if I'm actually accomplishing anything with all the extra bonuses, all I know is that I think it worth the investment to get better workers (especially in service-buildings like entertainment and health. I can only realistically have so many of them 'downtown', and increased efficiency there helps me in all parts of the island)
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Oct 12, 2013 08:45
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Generalissimo Military Coup Alcoholic Charismatic Corrupt
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Oct 12, 2013 12:44
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aerion111 posted:I actually tend to go double-down with Background Professor, Trait Scholarly. You can check if traits stack (they usually do) in the "Presidente Profile" tab of the almanac.
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Oct 12, 2013 14:31
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Biblical Scholar Capitalist Rebellion Alcoholic Charismatic Cheapskate
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Oct 12, 2013 17:27
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Developer Communist Rebellion Administrator Cheapskate Plantador (which I believe is DLC, so alternatively just Hardworking) Cheap buildings everywhere, and a ton of farming is my general way of approaching the missions.
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Oct 12, 2013 17:33
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Also FYI, if you hold the Tab button the UI goes away for nice and easy screenshots. Just finished the main campaign myself and am starting into the Modern Times one.
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Oct 12, 2013 22:18
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EphemeralToast posted:If I'm going early tourism, 420 Hotel Corp. Buyout erryday. The free hotel is huge. The traits that reduce crime and Green Thumb are really good for tourism too. Churches are always my one weakness in my cities. I usually have enough medical and entertainment. But never enough churches! The best is when I have insufficient churches, and then it turns out they're not even fully manned. Also, Tropico is Catholic and probably an ex-Spanish colony. (you can request Papal visits, which aren't going to be so thrilling for Protestants or the like.)
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Oct 12, 2013 22:24
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Veloxyll posted:Churches are always my one weakness in my cities. I usually have enough medical and entertainment. But never enough churches! I like the Tropico 3 intro, where apparently they scheduled a Papal visit with an A-Bomb test on the next island over.
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Oct 12, 2013 23:12
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Yvonmukluk posted:I like the Tropico 3 intro, where apparently they scheduled a Papal visit with an A-Bomb test on the next island over. That's definitely one thing Tropico 3 did better, its intro is way more interesting.
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Oct 13, 2013 00:10
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Having just gone on holidays to Cuba I can say that the Tropico series was remarkably accurate in their visual representation of a Caribbean island. Obviously Cuba's a bit bigger than the few square miles that any of the tropicos provide, but some of the farms do look like those in Tropico, Havana really does have building that look like the game's tenements, and the cars usually are those old-timers from the 1950s-40s-30s-20s... The biggest inaccuracy is that tropico has a LOT more traffic jams than Cuba does.
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Oct 13, 2013 00:25
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Man, this made me start Tropico 4 back up. It really is a fun game, though I do wish the modern times content was a bit more interesting though. Way too much of it are just +1 versions of the base structures, and the new money making buildings are usually meaningless since by the time you get them you tend to be swimming in money. It would have really helped if they had added in new money sinks or disasters or such as you advance. Part of the fun of the campaign are the wonderful goofy voices, so I was wondering if you could upload some of the better bits to tindeck. It really adds a lot to the characters. Also, any chance you could play some of the easier missions with a handicap, like requiring you to have inquisition or some of the other bad edicts active?
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Oct 13, 2013 02:53
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Speedball posted:Thanks. That's a really good idea. We don't need to clutter up every screenshot with the map in the corner. I roll with the following: Background: Developer Rise to power: Elected as Capitalist Traits: Administrator, Bureaucrat, Financial Genius You might realize that this is ideal for the slingshot strategy I illustrated to you in the sandcastle. 
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Oct 13, 2013 03:02
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Hee hee. I can handicap some of my own missions for spite. Sure. That was the entire premise of Bobbin Threadbare's Tropico 3 LP wasn't it? Recording the voice clips...I'll see what I can do, but I make no promises Every page that pops up only has voice acting for the first sentence or two (they kinda skimped on this part of the game) and the radio conversations that pop up do so randomly. They are pretty funny, though. I've never actually tried to record audio on this machine before, I need to get software for that too. Sorry. I'm kind of a baby when it comes to this stuff.
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Oct 13, 2013 03:07
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Speedball posted:Hee hee. I can handicap some of my own missions for spite. Sure. That was the entire premise of Bobbin Threadbare's Tropico 3 LP wasn't it? Audacity is pretty simple and free if you want to mess with that. Not a big deal either way.
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Oct 13, 2013 03:13
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You should put up a list of people willing to be Tropicanized. I wish to continue being a doctor, foreign if possible.
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Oct 13, 2013 05:14
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I don't remember what traits I used to use(aside from a general tendency to grab anything with productivity or training bonuses), but I do remember abusing Booze Baron for everything it was worth.
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Oct 13, 2013 06:21
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Scalding Coffee posted:You should put up a list of people willing to be Tropicanized. I wish to continue being a doctor, foreign if possible. That may be impractical since Speedball's planning on going through campaign mode. Nothing carries over between islands except El Presidente, and even then you can switch out everything about him (and then her, and then back to him) between missions.
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Oct 13, 2013 06:25
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Bobbin Threadbare posted:That may be impractical since Speedball's planning on going through campaign mode. Nothing carries over between islands except El Presidente, and even then you can switch out everything about him (and then her, and then back to him) between missions. Yeah, exactly. It's fun to hunt down individuals and follow their lives but I'm going a bit more macro-scale than that. Which is not to say that I don't issue the kill order in the next update. Because I totally do. Don't worry, they totally deserved it!
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Oct 13, 2013 08:27
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Bobbin Threadbare posted:That may be impractical since Speedball's planning on going through campaign mode. Nothing carries over between islands except El Presidente, and even then you can switch out everything about him (and then her, and then back to him) between missions. Not true! El Presidente's Swiss Bank Account total carries across between levels. At least for the purposes of the stats screen at the end.
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Oct 13, 2013 08:51
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Mission 1-2: Tornados are not fun! Let us examine the building that we'll be seeing most of. The shack!  Tropicans have needs and when it comes time to fulfill their need for rest, if they don't have a home, they go to a shack. Shacks have the worst housing quality possible, lower the beauty of their surroundings, generate crime like crazy and just plain suck. They are, however, fully equipped with a clothesline for doing laundry. So it's not all bad.  See, Tropican islands have very beautiful landscapes, and the filth of human existence inherently sullies them. We need to moderate all things in order to keep our island from becoming a trash pile.  Our church is built! All we need to do now is staff it. Some citizens with high school education will automatically change jobs to go to it, because it pays better. Others will have to be persuaded by being fired from their jobs--for example, if we see in the almanac that a farmer has high-school education and he's wasting his life, we pass him the pink slip and tell him to get a new job. Sometimes when you build a new building, the radio announcers will give a news bite about it. The radio is manned by Penultimo, our second-in-command, and co-hosted by Sunny Flowers, the hippy leader of the environmentalists. Other characters chime in as well. Sunny Flowers: Violence broke in Tropico as the army tried to remove Reverend Esteban from the pub to start the first service in the church. Several soldiers are missing; presumed drunk. The Reverend had this to say... Reverend Esteban: Get me another one, and make a big one.  The farms are taking too long to give us the good stuff. I want income now, dammit! There's a sweet little iron deposit right next to our city and building a mine there will let us give hammers to whoever is foolish enough to chip at rocks for a living. Mines tend to give a much more immediate return on investment than farms.  With the church fully staffed, our little island of 54 people should have no problems satisfying their religious needs. But now we need to get to the next step of the basics! Healthcare! The United States Government may have crumbled over the war for affordable healthcare, but Tropico has no such issues! El Presidente has graciously decided that he will personally pay all the doctors on the island for their services out of the treasury. The real trick is getting enough highly-educated people to the island to staff the clinics. We may need to issue bribe money to coax some from overseas.  We're not doing so hot on income either. Early in each game, the United States and the USSR will send us money. They're both trying to sweeten our disposition for them since Tropico is a pawn in the Cold War…or so they think! Muahahahaha!  A rebel! Zounds! Yes, sometimes the ingrates living on this hellhole think that the solution to all their problems is to stop working for me and run off to the jungle with a homemade gun. One rebel is nothing to worry about because we have a whole four soldiers in our palace. If they grow in size we'll need more troops, though. Let's see what that optional task is…  Bah! Fishing! Sure, why not. As soon as I have enough extra money to blow on building a fishing pier, I'll go for it. Swiss Bank Accounts are this game's bonus feature. Until Modern Times, it has absolutely no effect on the gameplay other than making our end-of-mission score higher. The tasks in this mission tend to hand out Swiss Bank Account money like candy on Halloween. Generalissimo Santana has another Task for us that happens to coincide with our goal of improving healthcare, though.  Fine, fine, I'll do it, if only to get these whiners to stop asking for basics like aspirin and bandages.  The tobacco is finally growing and the teamsters are shipping it off to the docks. When the next freighter appears, it'll load all the nicotine-rich leaves and pass out a cartload of money for our troubles. Finally!  Miss Pineapple here is the disturbingly large-headed speaker for the Intellectual Faction, who like things like schools, colleges, and high liberty. Also, pornography. Well, you need liberty to have the right to enjoy porn anyway, so… We don't have a lot of call for high school jobs yet, but we will need to think about addressing this complaint soon, because all the best jobs require people who can read, write and do basic arithmetic. Factory workers, diplomats, bureaucrats, policemen, priests, shopkeepers, the list goes on. Stay in school, kids! Otherwise the dictator who runs your island might have to imprison you in a labor camp!  Antonio Lopez here can hire a college-educated guy to be a doctor for us, at a price. The price goes down if we're friends with Europe, but it goes up every time we use it. We'll take a couple just to get the ball rolling.  Ahh, good! Only one more clinic and two more doctors to go!  Mua-ha-ha-ha-ha! This is pretty sweet income for just some iron and tobacco. It's nothing compared to what we'd get for even better stuff like hand-rolled cigars and weapons forged from our own iron, but we are off to a great start for a tutorial mission. Sunny: Relations between Tropico and the Middle East have hit an all-time low. Penultimo: As long as the Upper and Lower Easts remain on our side, we should have no problem! Sunny: Riiiiight. In any case, we shouldn't be receiving any more gifts of camels any time soon. Penultimo: Aaahhh! Camels?! Where!? Hmm. I think we need to build a foreign relations office soon. Oh, and that camel-gift thing: that is not a joke! One of the best benefits you can get from a high Middle East relationship is the ambassador gives us a free camel randomly. Along with $30,000 as a small bonus.  There's quite a lot of seagulls circling over our fishing docks. This is intentional, as we rely upon them to dispose of the fish guts!  Mr. Lopez has paid us $20,000 just for making money selling tobacco. No doubt he's expecting to profit from this himself; he probably has a hand-rolling factory on some other island so he can make money coming and going for this.  GAAAH! The TEETH! Stop smiling! Here's Sunny in her non-Radio capacity, where she mostly just complains about us not hugging enough trees and practicing yoga. The hippies on this island are opposed to the more direct forms of profit, like digging in the earth and chopping up lumber. We can placate them by putting a few trees and tiny gardens around the city, maybe put a dump nearby to collect all the garbage.  Say hello to our new Immigration Office! The two highschool-educated ladies running it will greatly increase the number of people coming in. We can also order them to encourage more educated workers to come but leave the overall rate the same, or we can just close the borders altogether and keep Tropico for the Tropicans. Going too crazy on immigration is not a good thing. While we will always need more workers, getting too many at once will make our unemployment rate skyrocket, and Tropicans are slowly but surely producing babies on their own.  Comrade Vasquez, the speaker of the Communist faction! Whatever the Capitalists hate, they love. Low income disparity. A roof over every head. Affordable (and by affordable, I mean free) healthcare. Food for the masses. Russia loves it when we're in tight with these guys. Since the majority of Tropicans are uneducated working-class schmoes quite a lot of them subscribe to the Communist Faction, so we don't want to anger them too much…unless we think we can get away with it.  This is a new gameplay gimmick for Tropico 4. Before you can build a building, you have to pay a fee to unlock its blueprint first…and then still pay the normal fee for building the building. I don't know, it's kind of a weird speed bump. But hey, Apartment Blocks. They're worse than Tenements for squeezing a large amount of people into a tiny space, but the quality is much higher and the rent can be adjusted accordingly, so it'll be a place for our educated workers to live.  Daaamn! This is what I was talking about. With the Immigration set to Open Doors, they're just flooding in now. I need to be careful!  A ministry, you say? Well, it's time to get around to that too! Ministries are new to Tropico 4. There are upsides and downsides to them. Hmm. Let's check out what the overlays are saying of our situation!  EGADS! Look at all that crime! Time to build a police station, I think!  That tobacco is pretty good, but cigars are even better! Official Tropican hand-rolled cigars are much more profitable. This also gives our increased number of educated citizens something to do with their worthless lives. I get another task notification…from the United States Ambassador!  Wow. He really puts the "rear end" in "ambassador" doesn't he? I should note that everyone in the game calls us "Presidente" except for him. He insists on calling us "President" in English. Just a subtle way of showing us how little he thinks of us.  Just a short time later and our cops have almost totally cleaned up the crime on the streets…and we're making a lot of money now! Don't worry, we'll have plenty of things to blow it on, soon.  The Ministry! Qualified personnel from our own island can now be selected to fill its five slots: Ministers of Defense, Finances, Interior, Education, and Foreign Affairs. If nobody from Tropico is qualified, we can just pay Lopez to hire someone from overseas.  The better they are at the job, the more likely that some good random event will occur related to their job, such as the Minister of Defense warding off the next rebel attack or the Education Minister getting us a free high school or something. But if we go cheap and hire an incompetent to do the job, something bad might happen and we'd have to fire the fool. I have money to spare, and no patience, so I'm just bribe-hiring three of the five positions.  Good, good! With a full staff of ministers, we can start issuing edicts. Like "Literacy Program" or "Anti-Litter." Or book-burning, and martial law! While I'm contemplating how best to run my island into the ground with this newfound power, a new face appears to yell at me.  El Diablo, the vicious leader of the Nationalists! Nationalists love their country and hate every other country. They hate immigrants. They hate the US. They hate the USSR. They hate it when other Caribbean nations have more money. They especially hate foreign immigrants who have no jobs, as well as foreign immigrants who have taken their jobs. They might ask you to fire or straight-up execute foreigners on the island, and if they get really riled up they may riot in the streets killing every immigrant they see. Yeah, they're kinda jerks, aren't they? So let's set our immigration policy to "skilled workers" to cut back on the immigrants for a while. We have plenty of room to grow.  Haw! I've got this one in the bag, everyone's already 44% happy! Happiness is tricky. You need to satisfy everyone's needs, not merely what their faction asks of you. You need the best entertainment, the best healthcare, the best religious services, the best food, the best housing, the best anything you can provide, to get it to go up. You're doing very well if you ever get it over 60%.  Bah! Housing? You think that would have come sooner, wouldn't you, Penultimo?! This is why you are an incompetent fool and I am in charge! Tenements are good enough for these wretches. Let's build two of them and call it a day.  There. Much better. Such a pretty rainstorm… I am also building a garbage dump right behind the high school, and a college next to the mine. If the intellectuals dare complain about pollution I'll remind them I could always dynamite their facilities to the ground!  This happens from time to time as well. We have to decide who in the world we can afford to tick off the most. In this case…suck it China!  You were the ones clamoring for a dump in the first place, Environmentalists! Stop complaining!  Well, well, well. Of course I can put this money to good use. In a special bank account. That nobody can access but me. Yes. Thank you, Mr. Richards.  Our people get smarter, and I get a little richer. A fair deal, no?  I foolishly overspend a bit on the next few big buildings, and General Santana graciously bails me out--this time. He won't do it in future missions. Going over budget is bad, it hurts your international relationships. And God help you if your government decides to default on the national debt!  What?  AAAAAAHHH!  Penultimo, you idiot, they're unhappy because there's a tornado destroying everything around us!!!  It just keeps going! It won't stop until we all dieeeee!!! Mama! Save meeeee!  Whew. That wasn't so bad. General Rodriguez here is the speaker for the Militarist faction. He's good at letting us know if there are any threats to our nation. If only bullets worked on tornados!  To satisfy my loyal sycophants and also boost the entertainment rating, I built a Childhood Museum dedicated to my own childhood. Also, pubs and cabarets and other crap, but it's the Childhood Museum that's the real star of the show! There's only two buildings the Loyalists want you to build: the Childhood Museum, and El Presidente's future Mausoleum. Basically, they just like it when you worship yourself the same way they do. Because they're so easy to please the Loyalists are certainly the best faction on the island, and we should take steps to make sure they have as many members as possible.  A professional criminal, on my island!? I order him shot on sight. Who needs prisons?  No worries, Sunny! I've got a much better idea. I'll hire scientists from Airzone to convert us all to pollution-breathing fish-people who thrive on the black fumes of progress!  THERE! A zoo! Maybe seeing funny animals in tiny cages will make you stop complaining about how your own monkey lives are unfulfilled. Now, with our entertainment needs satisfied, it's time for the final hurdle of this mission: getting reelected!  Haw! If it weren't looking like such a landslide I'd bother making a speech, but who cares? I've got this in the bag!  Ahh, a dirty foreigner wishes to use bribery to force the outcome of the election! I spit on your "generosity" and shall take gasoline to this block of dollar bills! … … …okay, El Diablo isn't listening now. Sure, I'll take this money and issue a "tax cut," no problem. Nick's not making it up, either, the polls have suddenly shifted to about 80-60 in favor of us. Crap! Time to bribe like crazy!  I'm pulling out all the stops. National holidays. Free housing. Food for the people. Social security. Sensitivity training for the cops. Faction leader bribery. Every single edict that can make me more popular in the short run. GO!  83% is far too low an approval rating. I want a landslide, I paid for one!  Haw! If they don't like it, they can join the loser rebels hiding in the hills! (Actually, that's exactly what they'll do if you're too much of a fraud.)  We have WON! Da-da-DAAA! One mission down, nineteen to go. And it only gets zanier from here, folks. One last look at St. Clara before we leave:  It's got a little bit of everything. Thanks to the very generous seed money I received at the start of the mission, I was able to get the whole thing very nicely developed in just over ten years. Another ten and it'd be a sprawling metropolis..but we're not here to solely develop one island. We're here to rule the world one island at a time. Poll What's your favorite mineral, folks? Useful iron, rare gold, fancy bauxite, or dependable salt?
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Oct 13, 2013 16:49
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Usually, my favorite is gold, because money for a small amount of buildings is the best.
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Oct 13, 2013 16:59
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Iron. You can't build landmines without it.
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Oct 13, 2013 17:01
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