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A couple days ago, I got Tropico 4, and I must say, it it amazing. It's like a combination of Emperor and The Sims. As a bonus, it even runs under Wine (I'm running Linux Mint 12), with perfect graphics, audio, and all, which saves me the trouble of having to run Windows in Virtualbox.

The only annoying thing is the controls. I hate how you can't use the arrow keys to move around the map, as that's what I'm used to doing in Emperor and Age of Empires. Is there any way to change this?

Did they at all improve how information is presented?

Is it still trivially easy to win and get infinite monies?

They added more things you have to do to avoid losing elections, that's for sure. elections were useless in 3, but now you have to do side quests to avoid instant death.

And I like moving the camera with left stick. :v

It took me all of two tries to figure out 3 and I never lost an election ever after that, because infinite money = ability to cater to everyone, so it would be good if free elections caused more headaches to El Presidente

Instantly failing is still shit. The structure of the game just doesn't lend itself toward losing states; you're either winning, or you're winning slowly, or you instantly die.

And the manual is absolutely terrible; written in random order by someone who has never played.

...

So it's literally instant death, instead of making you spend monies on opression and abuse to stay in power?

Well, yeah, this sucks.

Well yeah if you lose an election it's game over. In T3 it was impossible to lose unless you were an idiot. I think they tried t add difficulty a stupid way instead door fixing the economy and social mechanics.

Yeah...I liked what they were trying to do with 3 (different social groups having different demands, the possibility to fuck with election results in different, gradually more and more blatant ways...). It would've been great if it wasn't so easy to just placate everyone.

How does it compare to the original Tropico? Can you still simply not hold elections at all and keep the people under your boot like a good dictator?

Purple wrote:How does it compare to the original Tropico? Can you still simply not hold elections at all and keep the people under your boot like a good dictator?

Yes, though people run off to the jungle and rebel. It depends on the traits you take for your avatar though, certain bonuses come with high democracy expectations.

I've never played any of the earlier Tropicos, so I can't compare. And speaking of infinite money, I haven't used Cheat Engine (GameConqueror, actually) in quite a while...

Nobody's talking about cheating, dumbass; Tropico 3 was just amazingly easy to break the economy and have endless money (and thus no problems ever). Tropico 4 introduces more mechanics to try to make it harder to make money and forcing you to spend money on more things, but it only really impacts early on (where people in 1951 in a third-world country of 30 people will complain about living too close to a fucking farm) and later you still have infinite money.

They've slightly changed how information is presented, but it still sucks. I have no idea (for instance) why the thousands of units of smoked beef produced by my ranches is all consumed locally instead of exported, and there appears to be no way to find out/stop it.

Tropico 4 campaign is much improved, though. But once you played one Island to fullness it is pretty much it. Not much replay value.

I'm in 1972 in a 50 year sandbox and I'm pretty much done with the game too. I have unlimited money, win elections with 90%, etc. The only problems are from Tropico 3; things like 'construction guys totally useless' and 'teamsters can't pathfind for shit' and 'tourism is utterly broken and too profitable'.

I don't know about tourism being broken....I find my hotels are not getting full enough despite me building all attractions. I think rum and cigars are far more profitable (and diamond cutting jewelry IS insanely broken).

ITA on the other problems though.

I routinely have to quick-build anything time-critical because it can take literally years for a farm to be built by the four construction teams I have running. A massive network of roads, garages, marketplaces etc doesn't improve this much.

And yeah, cigars are hells broken. One factory + 3 farms = 100k a boat. I've had two events for 'free factory' so I'm running 3 factories with 10 tobacco farms and its just ridiculous.

I'm kind of sad that the game seems more politicised than the first one; Moscow University is significantly inferior to Harvard, Intellectuals are all democratic, manufacturing arms is bad, etc. Lame.

Manufacturing arms is pretty profitable though and no big power really seams to give a damn.

And I quick built everything except corn farms and stuff at the beginning of the game. It just is not worth it once you got your first factory up as the cash starts flowing and you (IMO) lose more by construction workers inaction than by shelling out for quick build. What good is my rum destillery when it takes it two years to build? I lose more by lost earnings in that period.

When I set up my huge tourism thing I quickbuilt everything. Once you're above 80-100k a boat in exports it might even be worth destroying the construction guys entirely, since they're so useless. Most of the buildings you need a lot of aren't expensive anyway (like apartments, substations, basic amenities).

Yeah, but I keep them around just to keep the uneducated proles in work and happy.

Speaking of which, all of my education structures are almost totally unused. I keep a few teachers and professors employed, but almost nobody goes there anymore. That said, I'm pretty sure 75% of the populaton is working uneducated jobs. :V

Hmmm. I got a similar problem once all factory spots are filled. But then again the overpopulation gets pretty lol in later stages.

In about year 3 or 4 I had some massive immigration spike (I think I went from 90 guys to 210 guys in two years) and early on with all the added costs for pollution etc it was a bit of a stretch trying to build enough housing and give everyone jobs (because god knows governments only work with cash on hand :V)... but of course after all the farms and factories were onstream by year 6-7 it was time to waste money buying shit for acheivements. Giant theme park that will take about 10 years to repay its cost? HELL YES WHY NOT!

Adding in the visible stock areas to buildings was a nice idea, but it just highlights how fucked up their person AI is. Oh look, every teamster in the country has gone to the pub/church/hospital at the same time! NO EXPORTS FOR LIKE 3 MONTHS. :V

Another ridiculous things is that at some times, important buildings like churches and hospitals seem a bit empty once demand is met.

But who cares, money is so easy to get that the last 10 years of building activity is usually reserved for plastering the island with parks and building a Giant El-Presidente memorial ground with Mausoleum, statue etc that takes a quarter of the map. Because there is nothing else to do in the last thirty years of the sandbox.

I usually just build 30 pubs or cabaret for shits and giggles and then have my character visit everything because I am so utterly bored.

I think each little man's needs decay over time, so when guys 'religion' bar is low they get cross if there's no church, but churches just act to 'fill up' their 'religion' bar, which then decays again over time.

The net result seems to be what you say - you build a church/pub/hospital/whatever and everyone in the fucking country files through to fill up their relevant bar and then doesn't need to go back for several years, making the buildings pretty useless much of the time. I turned all my churches etc down to half-staff to save money... even though its unnecessary.

And garbage dumps are a really crap way to work with pollution. I'd say 'garbage truck base' instead but they'd probably forget to ever drive around and pick up garbage, being stuck in the casino instead.

PeZook wrote:So it's literally instant death, instead of making you spend monies on opression and abuse to stay in power?

Well, yeah, this sucks.

Or even more amusingly, getting thrown out of power; and then being able to fight/murder your way back in via a guerilla campaign.

Or...how about this for a shocking gameplay mechanic for Tropico 5. You...are not El Presidente at the start. You are Fidel Shroomstro in the jungles. Something like JA2, but less FN SCAR-L+NVGs but more about the dynamics of running a guerilla campaign than headshotting peeps.