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Tropico | Tropico 4 Plans a Bloodless Coup in 2011

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    captainkcaptaink TexasRegistered User regular
    edited July 2010
    The best option is gold mines->jewelry factory->fine jewlery I just did the cursed island mission, and 3 gold deposits showed up after an earthquake. When I built all that, I started pulling in ridiculous amounts of cash. I couldn't spend it all by the end of the game, ended up with nearly $400,000 in the treasury.

    captaink on
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    JintorJintor Registered User regular
    edited July 2010
    The deal is you gotta tech up to jewelery before you start mining the gold, because it's finite and there's often so little of it...

    Jintor on
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    captainkcaptaink TexasRegistered User regular
    edited July 2010
    Yeah I made sure I put them all down at the same time. It was 3 deposits of 5k each, plenty to last me through the end of the game.

    captaink on
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    Santa ClaustrophobiaSanta Claustrophobia Ho Ho Ho Disconnecting from Xbox LIVERegistered User regular
    edited July 2010
    Jewelry makes an assload of money, but it's not necessarily the best idea on every map. Cursed Island is more an anomaly. A map with oil deposits is better, overall. The solid money to be made is in hand-rolled cigars or spiced rum (if the map allows for it). Gold and oil is harder to invest in from the start.

    Santa Claustrophobia on
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    JintorJintor Registered User regular
    edited July 2010
    The best thing about cash crops is that they don't run out, imho

    Jintor on
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    captainkcaptaink TexasRegistered User regular
    edited July 2010
    Jintor wrote: »
    The best thing about cash crops is that they don't run out, imho

    Yeah I definitely favor rum if I can get it, followed by tobacco.

    captaink on
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    EchoEcho ski-bap ba-dapModerator mod
    edited July 2010
    Can I see how my food production is somewhere? I want to know when I need another food farm.

    Right now I'm just eyeballing the export page to see how much food gets exported.

    Echo on
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    captainkcaptaink TexasRegistered User regular
    edited July 2010
    No. You just have to guess. One food building will feed 50 or so people though, it's pretty lenient. I just finished an island with 400 people, and I only had 3-4 corn farms, 3 other fruit farms, a fishing wharf and a ranch. That was apparently enough even with Food for the People on.

    captaink on
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    JintorJintor Registered User regular
    edited July 2010
    Check out food quality in your happiness page, it's the closest you'll get.

    Jintor on
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    tralevtralev Registered User regular
    edited July 2010
    I have a quick question about mines - how do you tell what ore to specialize them in? I couldn't see where it told me what the area was rich in...

    tralev on
    Steam: tralev PS3: GeekMcD
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    captainkcaptaink TexasRegistered User regular
    edited July 2010
    The page icon when you click the mine lets you pick an ore.

    captaink on
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    Santa ClaustrophobiaSanta Claustrophobia Ho Ho Ho Disconnecting from Xbox LIVERegistered User regular
    edited July 2010
    Technically, you can just plant the mine and be done with it without specialising. But, there is one or two maps where it's possible to place the mine so it could take care of multiple deposits. It doesn't hurt to specialise the ore, but you won't be killing yourself by not doing it.

    Santa Claustrophobia on
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    tralevtralev Registered User regular
    edited July 2010
    Ah, so ore deposits themselves aren't specialized, you just pick whatever you want the mine to ore for and off you go?

    tralev on
    Steam: tralev PS3: GeekMcD
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    captainkcaptaink TexasRegistered User regular
    edited July 2010
    No, the ore is specialized. I'm not sure if I understand what you're asking.

    Check the color overlays and find ore deposits, then plunk down a mine right next to it.

    captaink on
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    Santa ClaustrophobiaSanta Claustrophobia Ho Ho Ho Disconnecting from Xbox LIVERegistered User regular
    edited July 2010
    If you pick the wrong ore to specialise in, you won't get anything out of the mine. Either pick the correct ore for the spot, or just leave it set to 'all'.

    Santa Claustrophobia on
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    Pete0rPete0r Registered User regular
    edited July 2010
    Sometimes you may not want to extract all of the ores at once though. As people have already said, you want a jewelery production system set up before you start getting gold out of the ground to maximise the value. The only time I'd suggest otherwise is if you really need quick money without the factory costs and you have another industry planned to be your major exporter.

    Pete0r on
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    tralevtralev Registered User regular
    edited July 2010
    If you pick the wrong ore to specialise in, you won't get anything out of the mine. Either pick the correct ore for the spot, or just leave it set to 'all'.

    Sorry, my question is how do you know what ore to pick? I didn't see it noted anywhere...

    tralev on
    Steam: tralev PS3: GeekMcD
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    MorrandirMorrandir Registered User regular
    edited July 2010
    tralev wrote: »
    If you pick the wrong ore to specialise in, you won't get anything out of the mine. Either pick the correct ore for the spot, or just leave it set to 'all'.

    Sorry, my question is how do you know what ore to pick? I didn't see it noted anywhere...

    When you select the ore type to specialize in, it will only show those ores on the map.

    Morrandir on
    camo_sig2.png
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    Santa ClaustrophobiaSanta Claustrophobia Ho Ho Ho Disconnecting from Xbox LIVERegistered User regular
    edited July 2010
    Morrandir wrote: »
    tralev wrote: »
    If you pick the wrong ore to specialise in, you won't get anything out of the mine. Either pick the correct ore for the spot, or just leave it set to 'all'.

    Sorry, my question is how do you know what ore to pick? I didn't see it noted anywhere...

    When you select the ore type to specialize in, it will only show those ores on the map.

    And you can select the ore specialty before placing the mine. It's also in one of the overlay tabs.

    Santa Claustrophobia on
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    mcdermottmcdermott Registered User regular
    edited July 2010
    Jintor wrote: »
    Check out food quality in your happiness page, it's the closest you'll get.

    It shows you how much food was grown, how much was eaten, and whether people were skipping meals...I don't know what else you'd need...

    In general I think it's about one producer (farm, fishery, ranch) per 50 people or so. With "Food for the People" on, that is.

    Another way to check if you're getting close is looking at your marketplace. Is it serving meals? If it isn't, it's because your farms aren't building up enough of a store to actually ship off to the marketplace, because everybody's showing up to Jose's farmhouse looking for corn. Grow more food, amigo.


    EDIT: You can also see how much each farm produces...I'm not sure how much it is, but I think each Tropican eats a fixed number of rations per month...figure that number out (using meals consumed divided by population, give or take) and you can figure out how many farms you need (roughly) to support your population. I'm not sure how children factor into that, though.

    mcdermott on
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    Santa ClaustrophobiaSanta Claustrophobia Ho Ho Ho Disconnecting from Xbox LIVERegistered User regular
    edited July 2010
    The meals they gather are 'household' meals. Short of showing a stat tracking how many meals they have left, we're never really going to be sure. Corn and fish should be the staple foods since they're not really good for anything else. After that, unless you're going for a cannery, one each of every other food-type (llamas only produce export goods) should be sufficient for a high happiness rating. Just build extra fisheries and corn farms every 50-100 people as mcdermott suggests and you should be doing plenty fine with occasional exports to the rest of the world.

    So long as there is beach space, I usually build fisheries. A corn farm can sometimes be a waste of housing land or some other necessary building. And farms produce a surprising amount of pollution, too.

    Santa Claustrophobia on
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    TheGerbilTheGerbil Registered User regular
    edited July 2010
    A word to new people, a bunch of ranches right at the start is usually a good idea, as they have high export prices generally and feed a bunch of people cheaply, whilst only requiring two people to run it, at the low price of 750 tropico bucks.

    Once you get enough cash upgrade the cattle to smoked beef and watch your exports skyrocket for the first while.

    TheGerbil on
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    LucascraftLucascraft Registered User regular
    edited July 2010
    I will try that suggestion for the ranches.

    Just failed my first attempt at Bananas. They voted me off the island when I was like 1300 product from victory. Yeah. I suck. :(:(:(

    I was having some serious rioting problems and I wasn't able to figure out how to actually make the people happy. When I went to my almanac and looked, health was good, food was good, I felt like I had all the right structures, and yet they were still rioting. I honestly don't know what I was doing wrong but its got to be something pretty major.

    Lucascraft on
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    LucascraftLucascraft Registered User regular
    edited July 2010
    Oh, and on top of my own failure as a dictator in the Bananas scenario, the CEO of the company that was my big investor committed suicide because his company fell on hard times after I didn't re-up for another 10 years of horrible shipping costs.

    Lucascraft on
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    TheGerbilTheGerbil Registered User regular
    edited July 2010
    Here's a tip, when placing a farm select what type of crop you want to have it grow before placing it, and make sure the building is on the document looking tab and it will show the desirable areas to build the farm in green.

    TheGerbil on
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    MorrandirMorrandir Registered User regular
    edited July 2010
    In my experience, people will riot just because they feel like it.

    "Well sure, Presidente gave us good homes, running water, a large variety of food, a strong military, reduced crime, minimized pollution, strengthened education, and provided the most modern medical services, but other than that, what has El Presidente done for us!?"

    Morrandir on
    camo_sig2.png
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    Santa ClaustrophobiaSanta Claustrophobia Ho Ho Ho Disconnecting from Xbox LIVERegistered User regular
    edited July 2010
    Morrandir wrote: »
    In my experience, people will riot just because they feel like it.

    "Well sure, Presidente gave us good homes, running water, a large variety of food, a strong military, reduced crime, minimized pollution, strengthened education, and provided the most modern medical services, but other than that, what has El Presidente done for us!?"

    Tropicans are members of the Tea Party.

    Santa Claustrophobia on
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    Steel AngelSteel Angel Registered User regular
    edited July 2010
    Morrandir wrote: »
    In my experience, people will riot just because they feel like it.

    "Well sure, Presidente gave us good homes, running water, a large variety of food, a strong military, reduced crime, minimized pollution, strengthened education, and provided the most modern medical services, but other than that, what has El Presidente done for us!?"

    Usually if I'm getting protests at that phase of the game it's due to the good conditions attracting way too many immigrants who then get pissy when they can't all find jobs.

    I'll still have really high scores in respect from factions, but that hobo segment of the population just gets really unhappy without skewing my stats into red flag territory.

    Steel Angel on
    Big Dookie wrote: »
    I found that tilting it doesn't work very well, and once I started jerking it, I got much better results.

    Steam Profile
    3DS: 3454-0268-5595 Battle.net: SteelAngel#1772
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    JintorJintor Registered User regular
    edited July 2010
    Lucascraft wrote: »
    Oh, and on top of my own failure as a dictator in the Bananas scenario, the CEO of the company that was my big investor committed suicide because his company fell on hard times after I didn't re-up for another 10 years of horrible shipping costs.

    Don't trust the foreign gringos.

    They will **** you up.

    Steel, consider just closing your borders or limiting it to skilled dudes.

    Jintor on
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    Steel AngelSteel Angel Registered User regular
    edited July 2010
    Jintor wrote: »
    Lucascraft wrote: »
    Oh, and on top of my own failure as a dictator in the Bananas scenario, the CEO of the company that was my big investor committed suicide because his company fell on hard times after I didn't re-up for another 10 years of horrible shipping costs.

    Don't trust the foreign gringos.

    They will **** you up.

    Steel, consider just closing your borders or limiting it to skilled dudes.

    I usually do but sometimes the boats coming in get really messed up schedules and dump workers back to back.

    It felt like it had to do with boats being delayed navigating around oil tankers.

    Steel Angel on
    Big Dookie wrote: »
    I found that tilting it doesn't work very well, and once I started jerking it, I got much better results.

    Steam Profile
    3DS: 3454-0268-5595 Battle.net: SteelAngel#1772
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    FerrusFerrus Registered User regular
    edited July 2010
    The game needs an edict to ban poor people.

    Ferrus on
    I would like to pause for a moment, to talk about my penis.
    My penis is like a toddler. A toddler—who is a perfectly normal size for his age—on a long road trip to what he thinks is Disney World. My penis is excited because he hasn’t been to Disney World in a long, long time, but remembers a time when he used to go every day. So now the penis toddler is constantly fidgeting, whining “Are we there yet? Are we there yet? How about now? Now? How about... now?”
    And Disney World is nowhere in sight.
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    EchoEcho ski-bap ba-dapModerator mod
    edited July 2010
    Damnit, El Presidente insists that this terrain is flat and doesn't need further flattening! Let me build there damnit!

    Echo on
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    Santa ClaustrophobiaSanta Claustrophobia Ho Ho Ho Disconnecting from Xbox LIVERegistered User regular
    edited July 2010
    It depends on what you're trying to build. But I recommend saving first and then using roads to 'flatten' the terrain. It can be somewhat costly, since you don't get money back for deleting roads, but it can deform terrain enough that you can begin to build in on it.

    Saving first is just in case you can't find anyway to build where you want it to go.


    Also, sometimes the terrain looks flat but isn't flat enough (fucking beaches...). But if you place the larger building first and then delete it, you can sometimes build any smaller buildings in the block first and put the larger one later when you're ready for it.

    Santa Claustrophobia on
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    EchoEcho ski-bap ba-dapModerator mod
    edited July 2010
    This was a big, perfectly flat plain on the first Absolute Power scenario.

    Echo on
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    JintorJintor Registered User regular
    edited July 2010
    Let us just agree that terrain deformation and building placement in Tropico 3 is ridiculous.

    Jintor on
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    JoeslopJoeslop Registered User regular
    edited July 2010
    I just finished the scenario where the British have the 50% tax on your raw goods.

    I spent the last 10 years in a minimum of 20k, sometimes up to 60k debt.

    Things were very quickly falling apart towards the end but I made it.

    Joeslop on
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    captainkcaptaink TexasRegistered User regular
    edited July 2010
    Has anyone gotten far in the Absolute Power campaigns? They all look really wacky.

    I just survived the time crisis one. It starts in 2000, and you have until 2020 to prevent the time crisis. Almost every building is locked at the start, and you have to pick 1 building out of 3 to unlock periodically. Along the way, other weird shit happens, you get a commission from monkeys to export bananas, a loan to the future US somehow travels back in time and pays you off for $11k, and buildings start getting randomly destroyed by the tachyon flux. The victory condition only becomes clear in the end, so I won't spoil it, it would make it too easy. As it was, it was a scramble to do what I needed to do to win.

    I'll give you a hint.
    Lots of educated workers will help you immensely.

    captaink on
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    LucascraftLucascraft Registered User regular
    edited July 2010
    Joeslop wrote: »
    I just finished the scenario where the British have the 50% tax on your raw goods.

    I spent the last 10 years in a minimum of 20k, sometimes up to 60k debt.

    Things were very quickly falling apart towards the end but I made it.

    I just tried that one. Got off to a really horrid start and aborted mission. I'll restart again later with a different start-up strategy.

    In my aborted attempt I went for two early logging camps and a lumber mill, but those just weren't generating enough revenue and I ran out of money super quick.

    Lucascraft on
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    captainkcaptaink TexasRegistered User regular
    edited July 2010
    Wow. I lost a mission.

    Cash for Bonkers in Absolute Power is nuts. It's basically recession island. You start with 3 private factories and a lot of cash, but a month in, you lose $50,000 because Penultimo was actually running a Ponzi scheme. The whole time you're fighting falling export prices. And one of the very first decisions is to either have a $15 minimum wage or a $15 maximum wage. Basically choosing between Kayek and Keynsian economics.

    I think I'll try again with tourism and a wage ceiling. Even though the island is ugly, I can build an avatar to compensate.

    captaink on
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    captainkcaptaink TexasRegistered User regular
    edited July 2010
    Ok, doing tourism is easy street for that mission. This time I took the $15 wage ceiling. My doctors weren't as happy but they lived. I got to ignore all the terrible messages about prices plumetting, my tourism just hummed along like nothing happened.

    I chose the Hayek/save money options. This apparently led to another bubble and another price crash. So if you want long term stability it might be wiser to choose the Keynes options, though they really hurt your wallet in the short term.

    captaink on
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