help me watch my people better

[treedom]

To me the central part of this game is not putting up the buildings (I've done that before in countless games), but watching and taking care of the people. Anything that helps that would be a benefit to the game. Even though I love this game, I find it rather awkward to follow and guide the people the way I'd love to. Here's some suggestions that I think would help that.

1. Some sort of a logging system where you get brief messages about stuff that happens...especially stuff like moves, births, deaths, marrieages, emigrations and immigrations. It would be nice if this included clickable icons of the people involved (like the rest of the game) but even straight text would be good.

2. In addition to the little pictures, it would be nice if the names of people would appear when you click on a workplace. My hand gets sore hovering over the little pics just to see who it is.

3. As has been mentioned, individual savings from which all rent, entertainment spending, tuition, food, etc is deducted.

4. Also mentioned before, it would be nice if homes could be reserved for a specific type or types of job (including student and retired). Better yet...it would be nice if you could invite certain people to a job or a home, and have the spot remain vacant until they either refuse or accept. This would make it easier to keep your faction leaders happy.

5. One thing that annoys me is that when a father dies, and his widow remaries, all their children change last name, no matter how old...I could see this is they were really young...but if they've already moved out it's not realistic.

6. A bit of a buffer time between when a person arrives and when they can lead a faction would be more realistic. I've seen people get the leadership a couple months after they arrived.

7. More fluff statistics so you can get a better feeling for the people, such as, time at current job, time in current house, years married, etc...

These would make me really happy, and, if I see them, I promise I would never say another word about not being able to rotate the buildings...

treedom

[suedenim]

.
1. Some sort of a logging system where you get brief messages about stuff that happens...especially stuff like moves, births, deaths, marrieages, emigrations and immigrations. It would be nice if this included clickable icons of the people involved (like the rest of the game) but even straight text would be good.

I'd especially like to see this one.  The problem is that it's almost impossible to get any info on this sort of thing except by the dumb luck of happening to catch it as it's happening.  I.e., you know that several people emigrated, but not who or why.  You know several people died, but was it due to poor medical care?  Old Age?  Accident?  I still don't know, for example, whether infant mortality is even a problem (realistically, it should be a pretty big one for a Third World country) in the game.

[5strong]

It could be kind of like Roller Coaster Tycoon. Like when your locked onto a person it automatically tells you when to go on/off a ride, buy something, etc.

[Professor Pioneer]

I think the best part of the game is NOT knowing all of the details of a person's life.  The attraction, and skill, is in reacting to situations presented as the Tropicans lead their lives.  If I knew all of the details, I would have nothing harder to do than micro-manage the people and industries.  As far as reserving housing is concerned, if the house is reserved for a job skill, a family is relegated to certain neighborhoods, schools, etc, and his future is greatly influenced.  By allowing anybody/family who can afford a house to buy it, the game allows for a family to grow and improve its station in life.  I do agree with the point on renaming, though.

[BananaBaron]

I tend to side with Pioneer.  I do play RR Tycoon and occasionally will highlight a person to see what they do.  Usually, though, its when I name a person some stupid name...like brother or whatever.

While it is a game, it is not realistic as a Presidente to know what each and every person is doing.  Primarily you are concerned about factions and not individuals....the big picture so to speak.  The only people I tend to individually target are faction leaders.

Yep, housing for specific people is a difficult deal.  I have yet to really please anyone by moving them to a better house except for those pain-in-the-tush Generals.

I think the renaming is a Tropican religion.  Besides, if you are micromanaging you want to whom a particular person is related.  You put a hit on someone, you have to know who will react...different last names would confuse the player.

I did read...cuz I don't really want to buy the game...of an odd yet cool feature in balck and white.  The article said that you can rename villagers to people on your email list.  When you get an email from that person while you are playing the game...the little villager comes running out of his hut waving his hands at you.  NOW that would be fun....unless you happen to get a lot of email.  Maybe PopTop will attach to ICQ ...."Hey wait a minute, paco is waving at me from the shack...oops...instant message."

[treedom]

I think the best part of the game is NOT knowing all of the details of a person's life.  The attraction, and skill, is in reacting to situations presented as the Tropicans lead their lives.  If I knew all of the details, I would have nothing harder to do than micro-manage the people and industries.  As far as reserving housing is concerned, if the house is reserved for a job skill, a family is relegated to certain neighborhoods, schools, etc, and his future is greatly influenced.  By allowing anybody/family who can afford a house to buy it, the game allows for a family to grow and improve its station in life.  I do agree with the point on renaming, though.

Yeah okay...but, what with the lack of logging messages and this weird name changing, if a family improves its lot in life as opposed to being stuck in a rut, it doesn't matter anyway. You wouldn't be able to appreciate it since it's impossible to follow what happens to them...

And, as long as you guys bring up realism, I think, presidente or not, if I lived on an island with only a few hundred other people, I'd know when one died, was born, left or arrived... It's less people than at a high-school...

treedom

[Professor Pioneer]

That's ok.  We each have our preferences.  I think there are other concerns with the game which need to be fixed - CDT being the biggest one.

[suedenim]

Yeah, I think all that stuff would be printed in the newspaper or something.

Actually, that might be a cool addition - an annual edition of "Coupons 'n' More," or at least the "Local News" page with Obituaries, Marriage Announcements, Birth Announcements, and maybe Immigration/Emigration.

[Professor Pioneer]

The newspaper idea works for me.  That way the information is in one central place and can be accessed as needed.  Good idea.

[sceeva]

i like the newspaper idea mucho senor

sceeva  

[Eddy]

The newspaper idea is great, but I'd like to see it expanded to have headlines about your island.  It would be interesting to see each paper's slant on thing.  It wouldn't need to be incredibly detailed, just headlines like "Emigration rate rises dramatically - low pay cited" or "Baby boom occurs because El Presidente recognizes the word of god"

[suedenim]

Yeah, that'd probably be workable without too much extra effort - you could generate headlines pretty easily based on existing statistics.

[PaulNAdhe]

The newspaper is a definite winner.  I'd like to see the births and deaths every few months, especially the deaths.  Too much info would be bad tho.  

Perhaps, there could be a list of checkboxes of what we'd like in the paper.  Births, deaths, marriages, imigre / emigre lists, crop prices, tourist info, etc, etc.  I know many of these things are available elsewhere, but I like the idea of a periodic reminder to check.

[Coconut Kid]

...  The problem is that it's almost impossible to get any info on this sort of thing [deaths & emmigrants] except by the dumb luck of happening to catch it as it's happening.  I.e., you know that several people emigrated, but not who or why.  You know several people died, but was it due to poor medical care?  Old Age?  Accident?  I still don't know, for example, whether infant mortality is even a problem (realistically, it should be a pretty big one for a Third World country) in the game.

I tend to agree that some sort of statistical tabulation beyond just raw numbers would be helpful for emmigrants and perhaps deaths. However, it was a fairly heavy processing load when the game was developed.

Emmigration We now know that emmigration is a family thing; one spouse deciding to leave triggers the rest of the immediate family. Although there is a thought (one of a series) that shows when the decision has been made, there really is no specific reason that can be plucked out of the algorithm that produces that result. Probably the most useful tool would be adding age and occupation to the number tabulation.

Deaths Many players wondered about infant mortality as part of a third-world simulation. Considerable testing (careful observations) has established that 'starvation' is the only actual, concrete reason for death. The Random Events feature includes mass deaths by random selection for epidemics and hurricanes. Otherwise death dates are NOT due to environment conditions (other than food) and infants and children rarely die. It seems clear that each individual is assigned a random date to die at the time he\she is created. That date can float plus or minus a maximum of five years based on health care. At death, the cause - other than starvation - is randomly selected from a list. Probably the most useful tool would make the number of starvation deaths a distinct tabulation. There is also the possibility of totally reworking the whole life expectancy system to make a more realistic simulation.


The developers did consider a cemetery -- but time and resources caused it to be dropped.