Tropico 3 Hands On

Sep 11, 2009

Gamers are, in general, a power hungry group. What other segment of our society spends so much time contemplating and even rehearsing elaborate scenarios to gain control over the people and circumstances in their lives? Without getting too deep into the psychological implications, we've decided to simply celebrate the new opportunity to make a grab for real power with the recently released Tropico 3 demo.

Though the series started out strong, the first sequel seemed to take things in an unpleasant new direction. We're happy to say that the upcoming version returns to many of the things that made the first game so enjoyable. To find out more about how it all fits together, we've been playing through a nearly complete build of the final game and dreaming of life as a Caribbean overlord.

When you first start your life in Tropico 3, you'll have to decide what kind of ruler you are. You can go ahead and pick from several historical leaders, from Castro or Noriega to Peron or Pinochet. It's more interesting though to create your own unique dictator. The game allows you to select a unique appearance by choosing from different outfits, complexions and varying styles of facial hair (just for the male leaders, of course).

More significant are the background characteristics you choose, because they have a profound impact on how well or poorly parts of your society will run. If you choose to be a biblical scholar, for instance, you get more respect from religious and intellectual factions, faster skill training and lower crime. If you choose to be a former chief of police, you'll have much less crime and an improved standing with the military. The downside is that people's sense of liberty will be reduced.

Your path to power is equally important. If you were installed by the KGB or CIA, for example, you'll have lots of sympathy from the corresponding capitalist or communist factions and improved relations with either the Soviet Union or the US. The only difference is that the KGB allows you to recruit soldiers without worrying about whether they have a high school education, while the CIA will give you a cool $2000 every year.

From there you'll have to pick two strengths and two flaws. You might be a financial whiz, generating extra production and lower costs for your infrastructure. Or you might just be charismatic, which gives you a slight bonus to all factions and a huge advantage when using radio or TV to spread your message. On the downside, you might choose to be short tempered, which will reduce your reputation among intellectuals and the military. With several options for each category, you can create a really unique character.

After getting your persona straightened out, you'll have the chance to see how well you can lead, either in a structured island-by-island campaign, or in a number of open-ended sandbox modes. The first campaign mission, Bananas, will put you in charge of a relatively small but fertile island and task you with exporting a sufficient quantity of your goods to the Fruit Ltd. Corporation.

The first step in getting things up and running is creating a number of farms. Some will have to be dedicated to feeding your people, while others can be used to create good for export. Each crop is suited to grow in a certain area, so you won't have much luck growing pineapples in the same area where you're growing tobacco. Once the foundations of the farms are placed, you'll have to wait for them to be constructed. You can speed this up by placing a construction site nearby. But since this costs money, you might do better to just walk your dictator over to inspire the workers to greater efforts.

Mmerely having a farm and a dock isn't enough to get things running. You'll also need to build a road to connect the two and then add a garage so that people can use cars to transport the good from the farms to the dockyards. You'll also need a nearby teamster office in order to get the goods loaded and unloaded.

But the issue is moot unless you have workers. To get workers you'll have to make sure that you have houses nearby and that you're paying good wages. Of course, you won't be able to afford lots of great housing for your workers right at the start and you won't be able to pay particularly high salaries.

This will cause lots of unhappiness among your people, particularly given the terrible state of the rest of the island with regard to health care and religious worship. You can check in with each of your citizens individually and see where their needs are or aren't being met. In terms of basic needs, your people need food, rest, faith and health. They can get food and rest at home, but they can also eat at farms and marketplaces. Faith is served through churches and cathedrals, and health through clinics and hospitals. All of these needs contribute to a person's overall happiness, but you'll also need to be concerned about the crime rate, unemployment, the environment and tons of other issues. If things get particularly bad, you may have to step out onto the balcony of your palace and give a speech to raise the morale of your people.

As you place these new service buildings to fill the faith and health needs of your people, you'll notice that you need more educated people to fill the jobs. If you don't have a high school pumping out graduates (which you won't for a while), you'll need to pay a premium to hire foreign workers. You don't want to do this too much, however, because each additional foreign worker costs substantially more than the last. You'll need to balance the costs of running your nation against the cash you can raise selling goods at the docks. Depending on your policies, you can even count on timely aid packages from either the US or the USSR.

Sooner or later, election time will roll around and you'll have the option to run them above board, to tamper with the vote, or to call them off entirely. As you lead up to election, you'll have the chance to make a few issue points in your speech. You can pick an important issue (like the military), a group to praise (including yourself) and even make a promise (like building a hospital). Your speech will have an impact not only on how people feel about you, but also on what they expect from you in the next few months. If you live up to your promises, you can expect a fair bit of support from the interested parties. If not, well, you might be looking at a permanent retirement.

If you decide to call off the election, you can be prepared for lots of unrest and even an armed uprising. To combat this, you'll need to make sure that you have plenty of armories and army posts around town and, this is the most important part, that you are paying your soldiers well and give them lots of attractive housing. If the farmers turn against you, you're going to want the army to be on your side.

With so many factors having so much impact on each other, there's a large learning curve in the game, but there are hundreds of interesting ways to track all the information, both for your society as a whole and for each of the individuals in it. If you'd like to try it out yourself, go ahead over to FilePlanet and grab the Tropico 3 demo.