Duplicates a comprehensive thread

[Coconut Kid]

http://tropico.strategyplanet.gamespy.com/cafe/index.php?topic=11085.0

@ El Malo

Do you have any idea what this campaign business means?

From:

http://www.tropico3.com/en/index.html

Game Info / Features:

X Comprehensive campaign with 15 different missions

Is this a glorified tutorial? Perhaps it has locked steps so that if you can't pass the tutoring tests, you have to repeat the class. Is that not what many games with "campaigns" amount to? I suspect you have played more such games than I have, so I ask for your opinion.

Please take a wild guess on this: How can 15 missions fit into a single El Presidente's life? If a "mission" equals a map, does your El Presidente avatar bounce from map to map? By promotion or escape?

And for that matter, how can 15 missions fit into a reasonable period of 1950 - 2030? 80 divided by 15 is only five to six years for each campaign one.

 

[Smallaxe]

"does your El Presidente avatar bounce from map to map? By promotion or escape?"

this is similar to what they did in T2, the next campaign would either have a new map or new leader, but sometimes they remained the same.



"And for that matter, how can 15 missions fit into a reasonable period of 1950 - 2030? 80 divided by 15 is only five to six years for each campaign."

I guess you are thinking about the way time was done in T1, Has anyone discussed what the passage of time is gonna be like in 3?, I was wondering about that for a while

[Coconut Kid]

...

"And for that matter, how can 15 missions fit into a reasonable period of 1950 - 2030? 80 divided by 15 is only five to six years for each campaign."

I guess you are thinking about the way time was done in T1, Has anyone discussed what the passage of time is gonna be like in T3?, I was wondering about that for a while.

I think (perhaps that should be "guess") that issue has been quite completely covered.

Firstly, there is the publisher's and the developer's commitment that T3 is a refurbishment of T1 which will remain true to the orignal intent and feel of game play in T1.

Secondly, the Game Story and structure demands that the length of the game (at least as to scores) has to be linked to the conceivable life span of an ordinary human dictator.

Then, the story centers on the "Cold War" beginning with 1950. The dictator may not reasonably begin as an infant in control of the affairs of the island. Reason and history (Fidel in Cuba) clearly indicate that the life (scoring period) of a player/dictator can not reasonably run beyond 2010.

Indeed, if the game is to have a semblance of simulation, the history is that dictators last for a far shorter period of time.

I was probably incorrect in projecting a period running to 2030 rather than to 2010.
However, I am often wrong.

Smallaxe, do you have a suggestion for an alternative way of accounting for the passage of time?

 

[Smallaxe]

Well I was only thinking about the equivication of time passed in game to time in real life.

I always felt that time in T1 was no good, what was it like 30 seconds to a month?

[Coconut Kid]

... I always felt that time in T1 was no good, what was it like 30 seconds to a month?

Well, there were/are variable speeds.

One of the large simulation game problems is that compression and/or abstraction has to occur.

War games can not "simulate" battles on a one to one scale of soldiers and ground area.

The abstraction of time is a problem hard to understand. Model railroaders can compress time to fit the scale of their trains --- that is, time shrinks as the size of the locomotive shrinks.

Tropico simulates the economic and political life of a group of individual people for at least half a century (50 years). The player has two choices, either find another game or suspend belief about the link between "real time" and the game people's lives.

So what if a month is 30 seconds or two minutes or whatever? The player can also pause the whole thing.

What is your suggestion on how to compress time?

 

[Coconut Kid]

http://tropico.strategyplanet.gamespy.com/cafe/index.php?topic=11085.0

I really need to stop flogging this hobby horse. 

Well we wandered off on the sub-issue of how time is marked and never got to the point.

It seems that there is a set of terminology in use by the European Developers which is unclear in American English -- at least to me.

Could someone enlighten me, please?

Mission = a single scenario (a Showgirl would call it a "one night stand")

Campaign = a series of scenarios linked in order by successive goals (a Showgirl would call it "found a sugar daddy")

What is magic about 15 Missions? How can 15 missions fit into a reasonable period of 1950 - 2030? 80 divided by 15 is only five to six years for each one.

If the Missions are linked, and if the player fails the victory conditions for one (failed to save the virgin from a fate worse than death), is he recycled to the beginning of the Campaign or just to the beginning of that Mission?

What is the story-line of this Campaign? In T1, a single scenario/mission was a lifetime for El Presidente.

I suspect that the developers will feel they have spent a lifetime on the single scenario of publishing T3.