scenarios

[Cram]

I have another scenario idea.I don't know if anyone already said that but the Cuba-crisis would be cool.It's the story of the film "Thirteen Days" with Kevin Costner.I don't know how the start conditions would be but the whole story is interesting

[Bulletsponge]

we would have to see what we can do with the game to see if that scenario is possible, sound cool though. ( plz leave out kevin costner).

Railnut, i have never made a scenario in anything, but i will try in this game

[Brian]

I'm sorry, Eddy.  I didn't mean it to sound as if I was snapping at you.  In your post you said "Oh man, I think I will have more fun with the editor than with the game," and I was being sarcastic by saying "and your point is?" because I love the editor just as much (if not more, in some cases) than the game!

Sorry for the confusion  

Scenario idea:  You have to bring religion to a pro-communist/low interest in religion island, and you win by getting the pope to visit!

[Bulletsponge]

thats a good idea brian


ps- i wonder if you can put an eliminate edict out on the pope when he visits. talk about pissing off your citizens all at once!

[robbo]

i would love to do the WHOLE castro thing.
Start as a rebel, overtrow the presidente, kick out the US, chummy up with the USSR, have a Bay of Pigs, a cuban missile crisis, all the way up to an elian gonzales

[Eddy]

Who wouldn't want to be Castro in this game?  I for one am definitely going to try a game like that, and if there isn't a scenario included like this, then there sure will be when I'm through.

I'm going to be a very busy little map maker.

I just thought of a scenario...

You may have heard of "alternate history" more commonly phrased as What-if scenarios.  What if Hitler had won the war?  What if the American revolution had been lost by the colonists?  What if your grandfather had never been born?

Here's my idea.  What if Batista had stayed in power?  Cuba under his regime was capitalist, a fairly popular tourist destination, and relatively free.  If Castro had been unable to take over, what would be the ramifications today?  What would Cuba be like as a capitalist tourist spot?  Hmm...

[Brian]

Okay, here's one I just thought of...

I create two islands in the map editor.  Neither island can access the other (according to PopTop) so even though the islanders are all from the same "home island", the islands are independent.  The object is to make one island a tourist attraction, and the other island an industrial powerhouse.

[Kazarian]

That sounds interesting, I wonder if the Tropico engine will allow it... I don't see why not.  I was thinking of a kind of delaying scenario... where you have to delay an invasion or a rebellion for a certian time.  You'd have very limited support/loyalty/relations/money.

[Eddy]

Both are very intriguing ideas.  I wonder though if the game engine might get confused.  If you have a church on one island, but none on the other, will the people get hopelessly stuck trying to go there?

[robbo]

I think Cuba under Batista would still be an american influenced, captalist spot. I would think (and this will be what i'll try to do in tropico) that it would be kinda like a richmans playground

[Eddy]

I think we've got to have a Pitcairn Island scenario.  Very remote island with little contact with the outside world.  Can the island be completely self-sufficient?

[robbo]

i love playing games where the company/country/whatever is in deep financial/political/ecomonic trouble, and i revell in pulling them out of this mess.

RT2-company about to go bankrupt, soon huge profits

[Eddy]

I just had another idea.  How about, for the militarists out there, an island where there was a regime that was overthrown in a series of coups.  The island has gone through years of revolution, there is no existing power structure and many structures are decayed or destroyed (think Beirut in the early 1980s.)  The few people who remain are without hope and have grown used to the anarchy.

Your job?  Stabilize the island.  You can be backed by a superpower if you'd like, or for a real challenge, do it on your own.  You can use any means, and probably will have to.

This would be good for you warmongers out there or for pacifists like me who are just having a bad day.

[Eddy]

Ayyyiiiiee!!  I am full of ideas tonight.

Another idea I had.

Start out with an island filled with a large number of a particular faction, say capitalist.  Somehow, you try to "convert" the people into your way of thinking, which unfortunately is the exact opposite of what most of the people believe in.  

Deeply religious <--> Atheistic intellectuals.
Militarist <--> Pacifist
Capitalist <--> Communist
Industrialists <--> Environmentalists

A sub-idea of this is start out with an island that is heavily pro-American or pro_Soviet and try to change the balance to the other side without starting world war 3.

[caddet]

Good ideas, Eddy.  When you have set up these scenarios (using the editor in the expansion pack), let us all know!

[Eddy]

I'll be too busy playing with the editor to be able to post here.

[Coconut Kid]

They're including some real life dictators, like Castro, Evita Peron, and Batista.
Presumably, their respective countries/eras would then be scenarios, but they may only be included as "stock" dictators to help people get going quickly.

Well "Padre" nailed that one. Much of the pre-publication speculation anticipated far too much detail in the potential simulation capabilities of the game.

IMHO, PopTop screwed up in over-hyping the dictator as an alter-ego for the player.

[Coconut Kid]

I moved this thread here since I thought it would be a good start for the scenarios board.  So feel free to continue posting.  We need some good scenario ideas.

I'd like a scenario based on this old Kurt Vonnegut story I found years ago.  Basically it was about this American who becomes a dictator of an island.  Mainly because no one else really could be bothered to do it.  San Lorenzo had no real industry ; No real beauty ; and no real agriculture.  In other words, it was subsistence level.  It would be an interesting challenge to make the island worth something out of nothing.

Well good for Eddy! He used the key word - story! A good 'scenario' does not consist of a battery of unrelated events pasted together like an artificial steeplechase. The steeplechase is a form of horse racing and derives its name from early races in which orientation of the course was by reference to a church steeple, jumping fences and ditches and generally traversing the many intervening obstacles in the countryside. It is a term now used to refer to a distance horse race with diverse fence and ditch obstacles. The engaging game scenario is based on a story constructed with some thought and depth. It is not often encountered in current game "campaigns" which are the second level tutorials. Most games never escape the tutorial phase of development because the buyers become bored just as they do slogging through the same old stuff tarted-up as they grow older in the classroom.

Are there any good stories out there? 

[Coconut Kid]

I think a 'William Walker' scenario would prove very amusing.

To explain: William Walker was a U.S. adventurer who lead an army of mercenaries into Nicaragua, in support of the Liberals. He overthrew the ruling Conservatives in Granada, Nicaragua, with a force of only 58 soldiers of fortune, plus some Liberal troops.

He then installed himself as ruler of much of Nicaragua, albeit briefly, subsequently being removed from office by a combination of external forces.

Your task would begin when you are installed in office and must hold off the rebels/conservatives and outside governments from Day 1, with limited resources and fragmented economy.

It would add an interesting historical scenario and fit in very easily with Tropico. Oh, just make sure you don't follow Walkers example and find yourself up against a firing squad.

That's a good base story line, but it has to be scaled down to the tiny island which contains the game.

[Coconut Kid]

I hope you guys know how to use the editor. If the game ships with only half a dozen scenarios, we'll be needing yours pretty soon. And if Tropico follows in the RT2 mold, the player created scenarios will be more entertaining than the included ones.

Well that says it quite well. The player scenarios did add life to the game. But they were not as effective as the RT2 player scenarios. Life on the RR was far different than life as the ruler of an island of independent people.


For additional story ideas, check this thread:
http://www.the-nextlevel.com/tropico/cafe/index.php?topic=11124.0