You absolutely have to provide enough food for your population. The fastest route to an unhappy population, rising crime and violent rebellion is homelessness and hunger. You should check for good tourist spots at the start too because you want to keep them well segregated from your industry and farms and….your Tropicans! You can go for crops, industry or tourism as your main focus or you can blend them. The type of economy you build will depend on your personal tastes and on the mission you have to complete. Once you have done this you can start to plan your island. You can use the Overlays above the mini map to do this too and it is something you should refer back to as you go to quickly identify any major problem areas.
The quickest and easiest way to do this is to just select the building (gold mine or coffee farm) and then check where the good spots are on the map, the greener the better. It’s a real pain if you later find out that you’ve built an apartment building on top of a gold deposit or a farm on an oil field. Seriously, pause the game and then check what resources you have. When it comes to the individual levels you’ll start each new game with a new island map. You’ll want to pick the same ones again to build up the potential bonuses. I’d recommend Administrator, Charismatic, Diplomatic, Entrepreneurial, Financial Genius, Hard-Working, Scholarly and Well-Travelled. When it comes to traits you can pick three and what you choose will depend on what you’ve already picked and the individual mission you’re undertaking.
If you don’t choose that then Capitalist Election is probably the next best. The best by far if you want to have a tourist trade is Hotel Corporate Buyout. If you need maximum cash in a hurry then Booze Baron works well.įor Rise to Power you can go for Capitalist for industry and US relation boosts or Communist for farming and USSR relation boosts. Farmer gives you a 50% boost to farms with a slight hit in the shape of a -10 hit with the Intellectuals. Pop Singer is good if you want a tourist island, Self-Made Man is good for industry and Silver Spoon combines the two but at the cost of Communist respect. As a Professor you’ll get +20 respect from the Intellectuals but more importantly education and skill training will be 50% faster.Ī lot of the other options have drawbacks attached. You need them for the army, various government buildings, power stations and industries. In order to have a successful island paradise you can’t do without educated people. In terms of Background I think Professor is the best. You still have to pick a background and your rise to power but now you pick three traits and they are all positive to varying degrees. In Tropico 4 you’ll find you can avoid picking any flaws at all.
The older Tropico games used to make you choose your background, route to power and then two positive traits and two flaws, which was a cool trade-off. Do you want to be a communist revolutionary intent on bringing a decent standard of living to the oppressed or perhaps you’re a silky smooth singer looking to create a tourist haven of epic proportions? The first thing to do with any game of Tropico is to set up your avatar. To be honest the core game hasn’t really changed that much since the original in terms of winning strategies so most of this guide should work for any of the Tropico games. I’ve actually just been playing through Tropico 4: Modern Times so I’ll cover some of the new elements in that as well. As a veteran El Presidente of countless Tropican islands I thought I might do a Tropico 4 strategy guide to share some of my Tropico tactics.