Hello! Thank you for taking a look at my strategy guide.

Before we start, you must know that this guide assumes that you know how to play Tropico and have gone through the tutorial, the learning scenarios and read the manual (even though there are some discrepancies inside), so that stuff won't be covered. Instead, I will share with you some strategies I use when I play on a random map on moderate difficulty, based on information I have previously garnered from various sources, mainly the Cafe Tropico Forum when it still existed.

Since my playstyle is focused on satisfying the people's needs and remaining in power for as long as possible, which are, I think, Tropico's main challenges, I may have a tendency to plan for the long run, so I am biased towards the environmentalist faction and tourism.

Now that you have been warned, let's begin!

• [CTRL] click : Set the salary for this job and all those which require the same level of education to the selected level
  
• [SHIFT] click : Set the salary / rent / fee for this building and all the same ones elsewhere to the selected level
  
• [O] : Find and follow your electoral opponent
  
• [W] : Show / Hide clouds
  
• [T] : Show / Hide trees
  
• [G] : Show / Hide grid (soil, minerals, tourism, media range, power plant range)
  
• [C] : Show / Hide large grid (fishing, pollution, beauty, liberty, government control, crime)

When I play Tropico, I always end up playing past El Presidente's set retirement age to see how long I would be able to last. By doing so, I ended up devising a masterplan which would, in theory, allow anyone to rule forever.

Even though fully going through with this plan could potentially create a dystopian totalitarian nightmare state, I personnally use it merely as a way to preserve political power after everything else fails. As the enlightened leader of Tropico, your main task is still first and foremost to improve the people's living conditions and make them happy as best as you can. What else are you supposed to do with all that money overfilling the treasury anyway?

If only I were the mayor of SimCity and didn't have to worry about any of this... *sigh*


In Tropico, defeat can come in five ways :

• Electoral defeat
  
• American or Soviet invasion
  
• Rebel assault
  
• Military coup
  
• Popular uprising

If one wishes to rule forever, one must find a way to prevent these scenarios from happening. The first four are easy to manage :

• Not holding elections prevents electoral defeat (duh!)
  
• Pleasing the communist and the capitalist factions prevents an American or a Soviet invasion
  
• Having a large military prevents a successful rebel assault
  
• Having free prison cells allows putschists to be arrested

The fifth one, however, requires a bit more preparation than the rest. A popular uprising is the most dangerous of all scenarios leading to defeat because its outcome is almost entirely left to chance and it can actually cause one of the first four to happen due to its disastrous effects on the economy.

Therefore, it must be prevented at all costs.


Assuming elections can no longer be won (with or without committing electoral fraud) even by preemptively eliminating candidates with high levels of leadership, the chances of a popular uprising rises each time democratic satisfaction decreases when electoral fraud affecting more than a handful of votes is committed or, worse, each time elections are outright denied. Since a popular uprising is only triggered when the number of protesters achieves enough critical mass (I think it's when about 20 people are protesting simultaneously and one of them has high leadership), the chances of anyone deciding to openly protest needs to be reduced.

People will only protest if they are unhappy with their current living conditions. Therefore, raising the average happiness score over 45 should reduce the number of unhappy people and prevent the number of protesters from becoming high enough to trigger a popular uprising. Of course, military coups and rebel attacks would still happen occasionnally, but it's nothing enough free prison cells and a well positionned military infrastructure can't manage.

If a democratic path had been followed up until this point and the economy is strong enough to have allowed it, raising the average happiness score shouldn't be too difficult. However, if it had been highly dependent on the liberty score and thus can't be brought up within a reasonnable timeframe, the martial law edict needs to be enacted in order to make sure that the people don't get any funny ideas about revolutionary actions... In this situation, pleasing the militarist faction is the only thing that matters until the conditions for edict to be enacted are met.

In order to avoid displeasing the USA, the best moment to enact the martial law edict is during an election which cannot be won without committing electoral fraud. This way, democratic satisfaction remains unaffected, which keeps Tropico-USA relations intact.


Use this strategy if you don't think your economy can afford to keep up with the rising average Carribean wage (which grows until it reaches $20) or any other spendings needed in order to make your growing population happy in the forseable future.

Event though the enactment of the martial law edict reduces the chances of an uprising happening, they could still happen if the average happiness score drops below 40. In this situation, raising it above 40 should be a priority. If the situation doesn't improve quickly, the only way to eliminate the possibility of a popular uprising entirely is to enact the inquisition edict by pleasing the religious faction and then implementing an eugenics program aimed at preventing dangerous individuals from ever having dangerous offsprings (it may be necessary to enact the inquisition edict at the same time as martial law as a preventive measure if the average happiness score had been highly dependent on the liberty score beforehand).

People who are the most likely to openly protest are those with a high level of leadership and courage. Since children inherit these traits from one of their parents within a range of one level above and below that of the parent's, eliminating people with undesirable traits before they can have children prevents these traits from being passed down to the next generation. By gradually eliminating people one level of leadership and courage at a time until it reaches an average of abyssimal and very poor, it is possible to create a perfect society full of spineless cowards who would never dare to ever protest. Of course, to keep things that way, eliminating immigrants on sight might become necessary... (Since factionnal alignment can be inherited as well, the size of any given faction could also be increased or decreased using eugenics methods, should you wish to manipulate that as well)

In order to avoid a catastrophic demographic collapse, the contraception ban edict should be enacted and obstetrics health care buildings should be made available to the remaining people on the island. Of course, the immigration office should be set to nobody gets out of here alive.

Even though the almanac will show the level political threat as being serious, no one will actually have the cojones to oppose you for a thousand years...


If a popular uprising happens before preventive measures have been set up, it is still possible to mitigate its negative economic effects (in case you survive). For the entire duration of an uprising, everyone will be too busy fighting in the streets to be doing anything else, which means that no goods will be exported and no tourist will come (those who were already on Tropco will flee back home). To prevent the national treasury from drying up too quickly, set everyone's wage to $1 and prevent anyone from leaving the country by setting the immigration office to nobody gets out of here alive. If there's still enough money in the treasury after the uprising ends, reset the wages of the essential workers first and then everyone else's as the economy recovers. It's important to avoid any debt to prevent IMF sanctions from crippling job satisfaction.

If there's a high risk of a popular uprising happening soon, always make sure that the police and military are on your side, because they have guns and can eliminate four times as many people as those armed with nothing but rocks.

In Tropico, everyone weights the importance of each of their ten happiness factors differently, on a scale from 1 to 10. This scale isn't static, but dynamic, and can change over time. Increasing the overall satisfaction for a highly weighted factor which used to be hard to fulfill can lead it to be relegated to the bottom of the scale while another less easily fulfilled factor takes its place instead. This system ensures that heavily improving only some of the happiness factors isn't enough to increase the average happiness score significantly. Therefore, each of the ten factors must be addressed equally.

However, since these factors are weighted and their weight can change dynamically according to ease of fulfillment, the weighted happiness factors system can be used to artificially increase the average happiness score by provoking artificial scarcity in one area and then solving it after some time, leading to an increase of the average happiness score since that particular area ends up being weighted more than others. Beware, though, that the effects of any factor being satisfied isn't immediate, but occur over about two years.

In theory, making new appartments available only a year before an election by lowering the rent only at that moment could be a nice way to prepare the doom of the opposition...

... but that would be a bit riskier than issuing a mardi gras edict, which effects are immediate.

Instead, it is best to use artificial scarcity is in a totalitarian regime. If the number of rebels is high while the average happiness score isn't increasing fast enough for the amnesty edict to make them leave the jungle, wouldn't it be nice if it could just go up by 5% and make that happen?

Fortunately, there's a simple way to accomplish this : causing an artificial famine

The benefits of an artificial famine are twofolds :

• It drastically reduces food quality, which increases its weigth among the other factors
  
• Many people die of starvation, which frees up space for other services to be available for use, increasing happiness in these areas and buying you more time to build more in order to accomodate more people in the future

Paradoxically, an artificial famine can easily be created without long-term productivity losses in food prodution by simultaneously changing the type of crop every food farm produces and firing every marketplace's shopkeeper. The time it takes to regrow new crops and harvest them should be enough for the famine to occur. By the time they're producing enough food again, the average happiness score should have increased enough to reconvert many rebels (unless they all die of starvation beforehand!)

(Whelp! This started as a section about happiness factors, but things got a bit out of hand...)

Of all the ten happiness factors, living environment is the only one which is guaranteed to decline over time. This is because, while half of it is calculated from the beauty score, which can be increased by landscaping, the other half is calculated from the pollution score, for which the only thing that could be done is slowing down its rate of accumulation without being able to entirely stop it. Therefore, the only way to slow down the decline of the combined environment score is to slow down the accumulation of pollution to such a degree that it becomes insignificant. Since polliution is cumulative and can never be gotten rid of, it is important to severely restrict its sources.

The best way to do this is by creating a naturalist (-30% pollution) presidente with green thumbs (-50% pollution) and passing the anti-litter ordinance and air pollution edicts. This way, the pollution each Tropican, industrial building and gas powerplant generates is entirely eliminated. Tourists and all other buildings would only be able to achieve 20% of their original pollution output, but this process would take centuries to complete, which buys more than enough time to enjoy a nice political honeymoon before having to take totalitarian measures of political survival...

The other half of the environment score, beauty, is best increased by planting a lot of effective and space-saving $100 trees (not the cheaper ones; they're less effective), which, when enough are planted to cover a whole tile, generate almost as much beauty as a large fountain without any of the maintenance costs!

Churches and cathedrals, which don't generate pollution, can also help to increase the beauty score as well as generating tourism score in the surrounding areas while also providing religious services. Of course, cathedrals, being more expensive, are more effective at this than churches. What do you know? The religious faction's actually right about needing more places of worship!

Of course, for those of you who aren't as interested as I am in very very lengthy games, only picking the green thumbs trait is enough to prevent noticeable effects within the game's standard length (which is probably shorter than 300 years). Some might not like the idea of "wasting" a trait just to guarantee a good environment score, but since the people's happiness is an important factor of political stability, why would anyone overlook what is essentially a freebie?

Side note : The level of beauty near a housing building influences its housing quality. Ugliness reduces it while beauty increases it. Avoid making people live somewhere too ugly.

Tropico is, in some ways, a tropical environment simulator as much as it is a political simulator. Understanding the effects that the elevation, wind and rain can have on farming conditions can help better evaluate any starting situation and plan for future agricultural development.


Tropico's random island generator allows the customization of the island through six sliders :

• Vegetation
  
• Water coverage
  
• Minerals
  
• Population
  
• Elevation
  
• Size

While most of them are straightforward, the vegetation and elevation sliders can have more subtle effects on the gameplay :

• Vegetation not only affects the density of the island's forests for lumberjacks to cut or for tourists to see, but also the quality of the soil, which affects farms and ranches.
  
• Elevation not only affects the height of hills, but also the depth of fishing waters and the size and presence of beaches along the island's coasts.

When playing on a large island, setting an elevation of 40 or 50 meters could be interesting if one plans to build TV or radio stations, because the higher they are built, the wider their range becomes, allowing them to cover most people, if not everyone, on the island.


On Tropico, the wind always blows from northeast to southwest. This means that the northeastern side of any hill is always going to be wetter than its southeastern side. Furthermore, clouds aren't merely shown for aesthetic reasons, but to actually provide information. When the fresh rain filter is toggled on, it's possible to see that the position of every cloud matches perfectly with the spots where rain is currently falling. That's also why the whole map becomes completely wet after a hurricane!

It is important to take this information into account when planning where to put farms. Crops that require wetter terrain (most of them do) should be put on the northeastern side of a hill by which big clouds pass frequently. The best location for sugar farms is, therefore, in a valley between two hills on a northeast-southwest axis.

Although it is rumored that pollution is carried by the wind, this fact is actually only half-true. In reality, due to the wind, pollution accumulates a lot faster on the southwestern side of a building than on the northeastern one. Given that enough time passes, both sides within the pollution radius of any given building are going to end up being polluted.


In most situations, farming is the backbone of the economy in the early game. Since less buildings need to be staffed with uneducated female workers and farms are cheaper to build, farming is easier to implement than any other ressource producing activity in the early game, when the workforce and treasury are both limited.


There are two kinds of crops :

Temporary crops
• Corn
  
• Pineapple
  
• Sugar
  
• Tobacco
Permanent crops
• Coffee
  
• Banana
  
• Papaya

Contrary to temporary crops which need to be reseeded after each harvest, permanent crops leave their trees behind. Since farmers only need to plant these trees once, all they have to do after the first harvest is to keep harvesting the already planted trees (until the farm is destroyed by rebels, that is). Therefore, permanent crops are more productive than temporary ones.


Although a farm doesn't show a visible radius like a power plant or any media bulding, it's obvious that farmers won't travel to the other end of the island to find the perfect spot for their current crop. The radius within which farmers will plant crops is 6 tiles away from the center of the farm. However, since farmers aren't likely to have enough time to harvest more than about 15 tiles before the plants start to rot, farms don't need to be spaced to allow the use of the full extent of the 6 tiles radius.

Knowing that, if left to their own devices, farmers wouldn't be able to harvest every tile they've cultivated, I like to place housing and service buildings between farms in order to use space in the most efficient way possible. However, farms with temporary crops that are sensitive to rain should be given access to the full extent of their working radius in order to give farmers more freedom to adapt to the weather. Since permanent crops are permanently tied to their tiles and can't be replanted unless the farm is destroyed, this doesn't apply to them.

After playing for a while, I couldn't help but notice that specialized jobs requiring a male workforce were more likely to be underfilled. After thinking about it for a while, I noticed that this was due to a gender imbalance between the male, female and gender neutral jobs buildings can provide. No matter the level of education, there is always a higher demand for a male workforce than for a female workforce, which causes unemployment amongst women and job vacancies for male jobs.

In the uneducated category, we have :

Male jobs
• Dockworker
  
• Teamster
  
• Lumberjack
  
• Miner
  
• Fisherman
  
• Attendant
Female jobs
• Cook
  
• Showgirl
  
• Barmaid
Gender neutral jobs
• Farmer
  
• Laborer

In the high school educated category, we have :

Male jobs
• Soldier
  
• Policeman
  
• Priest
  
• Pit boss
  
• Athlete
Female jobs
• Bureaucrat
  
• Teacher
  
• Shopkeeper
Gender neutral job
• Factory worker

In the college educated category, we have :

Male jobs
• Professor
  
• Doctor
  
• Bishop
  
• General
  
• Banker
Female jobs
• Engineer
  
• Journalist

As you can see, male jobs are naturally going to use up a larger labor pool than female and gender neutral jobs. Not only that, but most of the female jobs are either limited (maximum of five bureaucrats, no more than five TV stations, etc.) or have a less vacancies needing to be filled (pub, marketplace) while their male counterparts are always going to be needing more and more workers in order to fill up all vacancies. Therefore, since half the population is male and the other half is female under normal circumstances, the only way to get more men fill up all male job vacancies is by discouraging them to apply for gender neutral jobs.

While it's possible to painstakingly monitor gender neutral jobs and firing men from farms, construction offices and factories, doing so is a rather tedious task. A better solution would be to let the game do this automatically by establishing a salary scale in which, for the same education requirement, the salary of male jobs is higher than that of female and gender neutral ones. This way, men who would have gotten a gender neutral job can fill vacancies for male jobs instead and gender neutral jobs would essentially become female jobs by default, for which there is no shortage of applicants.

This is why I usually end up with this four levels salary scale :

• Level 1 : Female uneducated
  
• Level 2 : Female high school educated / Male uneducated
  
• Level 3 : Female college educated / Male high school educated
  
• Level 4 : Male college educated

Of course, since there aren't any gender neutral jobs requiring college education, college educated women could be paid as much as their male counterparts... But why would you do that instead of saving a lot of pesos by paying them less? It's not like they have any other choice! (also, men are more likely to rebel than women, so...)

(I swear I'm not a chauvinist pig; I'm just optimizing a hard coded sexist system!)

Side note : The gender imbalance is likely due to the fact that women will quit their jobs to become mothers after giving birth before returning to the workforce. Before the game's release, this maternity leave used to last longer than it currenly does. The developpers have shortened its length after noticing how disruptive it can be to the economy in the first years of a player's presidency. However, they had decided not to make every job gender neutral in order to avoid having to make new sprites for every job just before the game's release, which would have significantly increased their workload.

One of the many challenges in Tropico is finding enough people to fill up job vacancies in churches and cathedrals. A better understanding of the ideological struggle between the factions allows us to understand why some educated workers immediately take up the job while others require being fired from every possible job before doing so reluctantly... Unless they're so fed up of being fired all the time that they emigrate first!

For those who aren't interested by all this political mumbo-jumbo, skip right to the conclusion


Each faction in the game represents at least one of its essential mechanic :

• The militarists care about the government's ability to crush its ennemies (rebels)
  
• The religious care about religious happiness
  
• The capitalists care about entertainment and profit-making and represent the interests of the USA
  
• The communists care about employment and housing and represent the interests of the USSR
  
• The intellectuals care about democratic satisfaction and the people's ability to get an education
  
• The environmentalists care about environmental happiness

Furthermore, these factions are all engaged in an ideological struggle waged on two fronts :

• A communist-capitalist-environmentalist struggle on the economic front
  
• A militarist-religious-intellectual struggle on the cultural front

The communists favor an approach mainly based on the export of raw ressources. This, I believe, is supposed to simulate a desire for a more equal society with no income disparity which an industrial approach requiring an elite of educated workers would endanger.

The capitalists, favor an approach based on industrialization and tourism, which would create the ressources for the better paid people (themselves) to enjoy better services than the rest (since only they can afford to pay for them).

The environmentalists oppose both the communists' extractivist (mining, logging) activities and the capitalists' industrial activities by favouring only those which don't harm the natural beauty of the island (farming, fishing and tourism).

Side note : The capitalist-communist conflict in Tropico relies entirely on the player's assumption that educated people should be paid more and that better services should be more expensive. Nothing in the game actually prevents the player from giving everyone the same salary no matter their education or charging the same price for every type of entertainment or housing (or making them completely free of charge) no matter their service quality


The militarists favor martial oriented social values, which is reflected by their demands for a constantly expanding army, better living conditions for the military and their military education cursus, which conflicts with that of the religious' and intellectuals'.

The religious favor spiritual oriented social values, which is reflected by their demands for the adequate satisfaction of people's spiritual needs, the protection of moral values (religious edicts) and their parochial education cursus, which conflicts with that of the militarists' and intellectuals'.

The intellectuals favor liberal oriented social values, which is reflected by their constant opposition to the religious' and militarists' attempts to curb them, their high sensitivity to the people's liberty satisfaction and their general education cursus, which conflicts with that of the militarists' and religious'.

Side note : Though not immediately apparent, the militarists and the religious are also both directly in conflict with the intellectuals because the level of government control mirrors the level of liberty : the higher government control is, the lower liberty gets. The presence of military units and religious edicts tend to increase the former at the expense of the latter.


Every Tropican chooses a job according to their current job experience as well as their factionnal alignment. The factions they align with the most indicate the kind of jobs they are more likely to pick, which can be deduced from the faction's ideology. A capitalist will prefer a job in entertainment over ressource extraction, a militarist will prefer a job in law enforcement over education, an environmentalist will prefer fishing over mining, etc. If none of the available jobs fit the ideological preferences of an educated worker, they will default to any other job regardless of education requirements (frustratingly, an intellectual would rather be a dockworker than a priest; go figure...)

The reason it's hard to hire people to work in churches and cathedrals is because general education is the option selected by default for high schools and colleges, which causes the students to align with the intellectual faction and prefer intellectually oriented jobs over religious ones. The solution to this shortage is to switch over to parochial education whenever churches and cathedrals have job vacancies to fill (or always keep it that way to grow the ranks of a religious faction that is in perfect harmony with your regime).

A similar solution can be used to fill up military and law enforcement job vacancies.
(Capitalists are still going to become pit bosses and bankers, though)

The important thing about the immigration office isn't knowing which option would be the best one in a given circumstance, but rather knowing which combination of options would bring the most benefits.


The number of immigrants depends mainly on two things :

• The number of job vacancies
  
• The average Tropican pay versus the average Carribean pay

If Tropicans don't have enough children while there are a lot of jobs waiting to be filled, increasing wages across the board can be a good way to increase the number of immigrants... if the economy allows it, of course.


Although building a high school as soon as possible might seem like a good investment, it is still extremely costly and, when money is limited, one must do everything one can to optimize its use in the early game. A good way to do this is by building an immigration office instead of a high school and save $5500 in the process.

Every random game typically starts with two educated women, one at the high school level and one at the college level. This is enough to fully staff the immigration office after firing these two from their previous jobs. Setting the building's option to skilled workers welcome attracts a steady flow of educated workers on the shores of Tropico each time a freighter arrives at the dock.

Unfortunately, since Tropico isn't able to provide these freshly arrived immigrants with a job which requires their skills yet, their perceived job quality is going to drop and they're likely to emigrate when they realize that the island have no use for their skills (yet). To prevent this, the immigration office can be micromanaged in order to switch between skilled workers welcome when a freighter arrives at the dock and nobody gets out of here alive after the immigrants have disembarked. This prevents a brain drain while still attracting educated workers to Tropico.

If the immigration office fails to attract enough immigrants before all job vacancies are filled, it's still possible to keep trying by designating a building, such as a construction office, as an "immigrants trap" by closing all the work slots in the building, opening them when a freighter arrives at the dock, see if enough educated immigrants have been attracted, then fire everyone again and repeat the process until Tropico has gotten enough immigrants.


In the late game, there comes a point where emigration can be used to increase the average happiness score by reducing the strain on service buildings (the ones that are always free) and increasing job satisfaction (because unemployment decreases). To do this in the most efficient way, the immigration office's option should switch between Tropico first when a freighter arrives at the dock and love it or leave it when it leaves.

However, this method may cause a brain drain that will decrease service quality, so be sure to provide essential workers with good accomodations and services before opening the floodgates.

Before diving right into the heart of the subject, you should know that Paradise Island comes with a bug that adds tourism profits twice to the treasury, making tourism by far the most profitable industry in the game. This bug is still present in the current version of the game and has never been officially corrected. However, there's an user-made patch, for which the instructions for its implementation are linked in the References section.

Aside from this unintended effect, an economy based on tourism still has many advantages over one that relies on exports :

• It uses an overwhelmingly uneducated workforce
  
• It doesn't depend on a network of teamster offices and docks
  
• Its workers don't need to be physically present at their workplaces
  
• Its revenues are added to the treasury in real time

Because there's no production, transportation or education required in order to set up a successful tourist zone, creating a character with bonuses to tourism value and setting up a tourist zone right at the beginning of the game is a good way to generate a lot of revenue immediately (or you could build a gold mine instead; that works too, I guess).

Of course, since building everything needed to in order to support tourism is a rather expensive endeavour, only high end tourism should be developped when setting up the industry in order to get a nice return quickly (after all, the purpose of any industry is to generate money quickly enough to afford the buildings that will make the people happy). Therefore, the first tourist accomodations should be either a luxury hotel (ideally) or a hotel (the next best thing, if there's no electricity).

Developping an archeological site or a colonial fort (or both) is a nice way to create a lot of tourism value nearby for a future tourist zone. If the island doesn't have either of them, it's still possible to generate a lot of tourism value by placing tourist attractions and then beautifying the surroundings with either large fountains to save building time or $100 trees to avoid maintenance costs. Religious buildings, even though they cannot be used by tourists, can also generate tourism value, especially the cathedral. Don't be afraid to build housing buildings near tourist accomodations. If there are enough buildings generating tourism value nearby, the ugliness of the employees' housing will be negated. The employees will even get better housing satisfaction due to the beauty of their surroundings!

Side note : Although beauty influences tourism value, they are not the same thing. For instance, a casino reduces beauty while also generating tourism value.

Although any given hotel's service quality comes from itself, its value is also influenced by the tourism value of the area and the presence of tourist attractions nearby. To avoid losing service quality, a luxury hotel needs 3 attractions nearby, a hotel needs 2 and a cheap hotel needs 1. Since tourist attractions are locked until the completion of the first tourist accomodation (which is a bit annoying), regular entertainment buildings, which tourists can also use, will have to suffice at the begining. Alternatively, you could also build a bungalow somewhere on the island to unlock them beforehand.

The most important thing to know about tourists is that, just like regular Tropicans, they will visit the first attraction with available slots in order of quality and personnal preference as long as its fees are equal to or lower than their personnal spending limit (yes, they will visit a $40 beach site if they can afford it). Since the spending limit of the average tourist depends on the average tourism value of the tourist zones, raising tourism value allows to raise the attractions' fees as well, because wealthier tourists will come to the island.

Side note : Don't build the souvenir shop. It only has a quality rating of 35 and will never be as profitable as litterally any other attraction.

As soon as there's enough money in the treasury to afford it, build an airport. The airport takes a very long time to build, but its benefits are too great to be ignored. Not only does it bring a lot more tourists to the island than yachts (50 per large plane with the control tower upgrade), but it can also be used to send trade missions to the USA or the USSR (if there's also a diplomatic ministry on the island, but who doesn't have one at this point?), which can grant very nice bonuses (especially the construction subsidies).

Aside from working and satisfying their needs, Tropicans walk. A lot. In fact, Tropicans spend so much time walking that it's the main obstacle you need to overcome in order to improve goods distribution, building speed, happiness, ... and everything else!


Democracy is a more humane system and oppressing people is evil. The end.
(What do you mean? I'm not being hypocritical!)

Alright, alright! The actual reason is because people who protest are actively hurting your economy by doing anything except work. Having a democratic mandate bestowed upon you by fair elections is the only reliable way in the early game to garantee that no one will actually protest and everybody works their full 14 hours shift. It also prevents teamsters and dockworkers from suddenly bursting into protest, making their precious load of industrial goods worth thousands of pesos vanish from existence.

(Side note : Having gerontology health care buildings would also prolong their lifespan long enough for them to reach the retirement age of 65, preventing them from dying at work while carrying that precious load, taking it with them to their grave)

Of course, there will come a time when it won't be possible to win fairly anymore and, by that time, you should have already been paving the way for totalitarian rule, which prevents protests anyway.

So freedom is slavery & horseshoe theory confirmed, folks!


Although producing goods is all fine and dandy, they still need to be delivered where they're needed in order to be useful. This is why a network of teamster offices forms the backbone of any export based economy, whether it be extractivist or industrial (and also why the male labor pool dries up so quickly when developping anything that isn't based on agriculture).

Since teamsters need to walk a certain distance in order to pick up goods and then walk a certain distance to deliver them to their destination, be it a dock, an industrial building, a restaurant or a marketplace, the only way to help them fulfill their task faster (other than increasing their rate of experience gain) is by shortening the distance a teamster has to travel in order to complete a delivery. A fully staffed teamster office should be able to serve 3 production buildings within a range of about 10 tiles away from its center.

(Side note : Although production workers are able to deliver their produce to the dock by themselves if a teamster fails to show up in time and they have no other task to complete while at work, teamsters are far more efficient than them, since they can carry a load of 5 units instead of 3 and have no other task besides carrying goods accross the island)

Now that goods can be efficiently taken to a dock, the only thing that remains to be taken care of is to make sure that there are enough docks to manage the export of all those goods. Dockworkers are only able to transfer onto a freighter a total of 8 loads (1 load is made up from 0.1 to 5 units of the same good). Since a fully staffed dock can serve 2 freighters each year on average (maybe 3 if a road has been built underneath the dock and dockworkers can satisfy their needs nearby), having more than 80 units of goods pile up at a dock is an indication that a new one is needed in order to be able to export everything.


The construction office is one of the most essential buildings in the game, because it employs the laborers who are needed in order to build everything you need to improve anything on the island. Building new construction offices in the right spot is crucial for the efficient development of the island.

Although having more laborers certainly helps improve building speed, the most important thing here is spacing construction offices in a way that allows laborers to reach any construction site in a timely manner. From my experience, laborers start to lose efficiency when they try to reach a construction site farther than about 20 tiles away from their construction office, because they will tire themselves too much just from walking and won't be able to do much work once they reach their destination. However, given enough time, they can still reach construction sites twice that distance and complete them, albeit slower than usually.

By placing construction offices 40 tiles away from one another and building a road between them, a larger construction area can be covered thanks to an even distribution of laborers throughout the island without saturating any given area. Of course, construction offices from which no building sites can be reached should be emptied of its laborers until it becomes useful again sometime in the future.

Aside from working and satisfying their needs, Tropicans walk. A lot. In fact, Tropicans spend so much time walking that it's the main obstacle you need to overcome in order to improve goods distribution, building speed, happiness, ... and everything else!


Tropicans will only work when all their needs are fulfilled (hunger, rest, religion, entertainment, health care). When Tropicans have to fulfill a need, they have to walk to a service building that helps them fulfill it and replenish their need meter when they arrive there. If they can find no such building, they can replenish instantaneously three fourth of the need meter, but the happiness factor associated to it decreases by a tenth.


When Tropicans need to fulfill their religion, entertainment or health care need, they have to find the nearest service building with the best service quality and a free service slot, reserve that slot and walk until they get there. If it's an entertainment building, they also have to be able to afford to use it.

There are two important things to know about this process :

• Fulfilling a need requires a certain amount of time after the Tropican enters the building
  
• The service slot in that building is unavailable to anyone else until its occupant's need is fulfilled

Therefore, the farthest away any Tropican is from a service building in which they have reserved a service slot, the lower the number of people who will be able to use it. The only way to increase the number of people any service building is able to serve is to prevent it from being clogged up by users who are far away from it. This can be done by shortening the distance between any given service building and its potential users' workplaces.

Assuming that people are able to reach a service building within two months, on average :

• A religious building can serve about 20 people per slot
  
• An entertainment building can serve about 16 people per slot
  
• A health care building can serve about 10 people per slot

Even though every slot in a housing building is permanently occupied until its occupant leaves or dies, the same principle as that of service buildings applies in regards to its distance to its occupants' workplace. In order to know how many housing slots should be provided near any given workplace, it's important to take marriage into account, since single people reserve the same amount of slots as a married couple.

In Tropico, only women are actively searching for someone to marry with. When she has found a suitable husband, she will vacate the housing slot of her current housing building and occupy the spouse slot of her new husband's housing building. Thus, the husband decides where they both live.

Therefore, the number of free housing slots which should be provided near any workplace has to be high enough to accommodate every male worker. However, since not everyone immediately gets married as soon as they turn 16, one out of two female workers needs to be accounted for near workplaces providing only female jobs (I swear I'm not a chauvinist pig; it's not my fault if the game is designed this way!)


Unlike any other need, hunger can be satisfied instantaneously. When Tropicans are hungry, they can use up one meal to replenish their hunger meter. After resting at home, if they notice that their personnal meal reserves drops below 4 and if they have no other need to fulfill, they will go to the nearest farm or marketplace to get 6 meals out of every 0.1 food units.

Since a Tropican needs to simultaneously have finished resting at home while having low food reserves and also no other need to fulfill, which is a rather specific set of circumstances, shortening the time it takes for them to replenish their personnal meal reserves is necessary in order to keep a high food score. To do this, housing buildings should be situated within about 20 tiles of any food source.

The best way to accomplish this would be to build them admidst farms or next to fisherman wharves, which, contrary to building marketplaces next to housing buildings, wouldn't require further maintenance or workforce to both carry (teamsters) and distribute (shopkeepers) that food. However, since farming is largely dependent on weather and that some harvests are better than others (the quantity of rain varies from year to year), building marketplaces to save up food in case of a bad harvest is a good idea if, on average, food production doesn't exceed food consumption by a wide margin. Building marketplaces is, of course, necessary anyway in places far away from any food producing buildings (such as a tourist zone's housing district).



A Tropican's walking speed doubles when they walk on a road. Although having roads isn't a requirement in order for Tropicans to get anywhere, it's still better to link production centers to docks in order to increase the efficiency of teamsters. Building roads underneath a dock can also increase the speed at which goods can be hauled onto freighters, allowing fully staffed docks to serve one more freighter than they usually would have been able to, increasing the total volume of exports.


Perhaps a bit counter-intuitively, policemen exert crime reduction on whichever large tile they happen to walk through. Therefore, to maximize this effect, it's best to put police stations far from housing and service buildings in order to force policemen to cover a larger area.


The main purpose of the military is to fight against rebels. Therefore, the best place to put military buildings is next to crucial and fragile infrastructure, such as electric substations, to reduce the distance military units would have to travel in order to catch up with the rebels, should they come out of their hiding place.

Since almost every country in the world is (nominally) a democracy, the people will be upset if Tropico isn't one too! Of course, the people don't actually have any real power other than asking you every few years to please let them cast a ballot so they can decide whether you should be removed or not (cute). You can either accept their request or reject it and face the consequences of being at risk of rebellions, military coups and uprisings. Since these can be quite detrimental to your economy (if you survive) or your carreer (if you don't), I strongly suggest that you get a democratic mandate from the people. Let them think they have a say and you won't have to worry about anything other than getting them to vote for you... Until you can enact martial law and inquisition, and then eugenically engineer obedient spineless cowards to replace them all, that is.


Democratic expectations and democratic satisfaction are the main factors determining the level of liberty in Tropico (edicts, media and traits being the other ones). High democratic expectations pushes the liberty score ceiling higher, which allows high democratic satisfaction to fill it to the brim.

Democratic expectations also dictate the frequency at which Tropicans will ask for an election to be held (from every 9 to 5 years) and how many votes can be recounted more favorably while still maintaining a satisfactory level of democratic satisfaction. The higher the expectations, the smaller the electoral fraud that can be committed without serious backlash. Democratic expectations increase each time an election takes place. It increases faster when an election has been won fairly.


The number of votes you receive depends on the current happiness score versus the one in the last election. If it has worsened, votes will be lost. Since all happiness scores increase very slowly over the years, maintaining the happiness score for services such as housing, religion, entertainment and health care, which have a maximum capacity dependent on the number of staffed service buildings, must be monitored closely in order to maintain their happiness score at their current level. However, in the case of entertainment, the mardi gras and the headliner edicts' effects are immediate, so enacting them can help swaying voters on your side. Job satisfaction should also be closely monitored since the score adjusts itself according to the current average Carribean wage, which increases each year until it reaches $20. It's important to issue wage increases whenever the job satisfaction score has plummetted below its value from the last election (preferrably before the next one, since it increases slowly).

Another factor in the number of votes in your favor is the respect of the island's factions have for you and the level of leadership of your opponent. Your opponent in any election is always the person with the lowest level of respect for you who is also a member of the factions respecting you the least. Knowing this, it is possible to engineer an opponent with a low level of leadership against whom it may be easier to win an election by imprisonning all potential candidates beforehand and by artificially lowering the ideal opponent's respect (one with an abyssimal level of leasership is the best) by either arresting or eliminating family members. Beware, though, that people who witness an arrest or elimination attempt from within 20 tiles of where it takes place will also lose respect for you.

Since the level of respect of people from a certain faction is an important factor in electoral victory or defeat, it's possible to increase the factions which your opponent is a member of in order to swing voters to your side. The easiest faction for which this can be done is the religious faction, since many edicts (prohibition, abortion ban, book BBQ) can be used to increase that faction's respect for you instantaneously. If you have the means to enact them, social security and tax cut can do the trick for every faction. Periodically bribing faction leaders and keeping tabs on them to make sure that their needs are adequately satisfied can also be a good way to ensure the respect every faction has for you, since the happiness of the leaders influences their entire faction's respect for you.

Steam user prozorovsky has provided the instructions as well as the files necessary for the implementation of an user-made fix for the bug that doubles revenues from tourism on Linux.

Aside from the Tropico Gold manual, more information about the game can be found on the FAQ/Strategy Guide by Simulord[gamefaqs.gamespot.com] and the (surprisingly still up) Cafe Tropico Guide[www.the-nextlevel.com]. Although the latter has never been completed, it still provides very useful information about key elements of the game.

When the Cafe Tropico Forum was still available, Coconut Kid provided interesting insights into many of the game's concepts and also some unimplemented and abandonned mechanics. Very useful data about the effects of every building in the game can be found in a file called tropico-tpibuildingdata.xls, although I forgot where I downloaded it from...

Red Light = Cabaret