A Totalitarian Dictatorship

[AcolyteOfDeath]

I'm a relatively new player to Tropico, and I've begun to experiment with totalitarianism. The goal: Make Tropico, a nice little paradise island into George Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four by the year 1984.

What I do: Numerous Farms, industries and infrastructure buildings. Bourgeoning military with many police, armories and guard posts (army base is essential), max pay for all soldiers to get on the good side of the militarists.

The fun part: At the beginning, wipe out the oldest citizens and continue to do so if they pop up. Set all schools to military education. Squelch all opposition with eliminations, arrests and captures thru the overlay screen. Look for any people with either high leadership ratings, lots of courage, low respect or low happiness. Eliminate or arrest them all. If any people start protesting, eliminate them. Conduct numerous purges of potential threats. Develop your propaganda machine, make newspapers, radios, television stations.

The Result: By the last couple of decades I had gotten rather paranoid of opposition, so I conducted a huge purge, eliminating everyone who had respect for me in the red. I had a very big military. I ended up with a massively industrialised island, several docks, and lots of rotting tenements.

Suggestions?

[MI4REAL]

why not draw out the old people suffering?

Make them live in bunkhouses  

Also, issue martial law, keep those peasants in line, along with those purges, police, and soldiers, plsu, suck up to Russia, they dont mind you abusing your people, unless theyre communists, they dont care , so get the Russian military base to keep the US from killing you.
Oh, and kill off anyone who runs against you in an election, and those party leaders who get mad at you.

[AcolyteOfDeath]

I do all that too... yet, new Party leaders are always coming back, and they get mad at me too! Do I have to have executions of everyone except those in the communist, militarist and religious factions every year?

I like getting in good with the religious freaks because then I can declare an Inquisition and a book burning to further oppress my people!!!

[MI4REAL]

no, you cant stop it, unless you kill off the whole faction, which is near impossible, and you have to keep it going, its easyist to do with the intellectuals, book burning, book buring, PURGE, book burning, PURGE.

you get my drift?

[AcolyteOfDeath]

no, you cant stop it, unless you kill off the whole faction, which is near impossible

Well I don't know... there's a lot you can do when the game is Paused... target everyone with party leanings using the info overlay.... hmmm

[MI4REAL]

Wouldnt work, it takes time for your guards to run over and kill whoever, in that time someone else will jump over the the party...you could "muerte" them all while paused, but that would give you repetitive stress syndrome.

[Marlow]

never EVER kill all your intellectuals.
Just the plus 2 and plus 3 ones.

The others are needed so you can teach your soldiers, generals, teachers, professers propaganda spreading journalists, engineers to power propaganda buildings, beurocrats to prevent anyone from leaving, factory workers that support your army, and so on.

Intellectuals never need wiping out.

Environmentalists on the other hand...

[Kermon]

u sound like hitler dude just make sure noone does a coup and noone is pissing u off with complaints if they do waste them with ur soldiers. then ur set

[MI4REAL]

I've noticed that sometimes party leaders complain after theyre dead.

[Marlow]

Its not as bad as when your election opponent is dead, and still running against you.

[el_malo]

Ashcroft lost an election to a dead guy.  

[MI4REAL]

*can see the scene*

*President is wired to a robot who moves his mouth and limbs with wires*
 

[Nevitsky]

LOL...

Once, however, I remember that I had wiped out the entire Environmentalist party on one of my small, Martial Law islands. Even a slight leaning was killed. Weird thing is, no one joined after that. O_o..My Tropicans are smart ones. Though..half of my starting population was wiped out, including a good chunk of the Communists, which got the Ruskies pissed at me.

[solidmantis]

Can somone please provide me with a good strategy on a totalitarian dictatorship, or their strats of a non-democratic island?

I don't have the Paradise Island expansion.. Heard that there was this Army Base thingy.. Perhaps I would buy the expansion.

[Privateer0]

In my experience, it is best to be a "compassionate" dictatorship, if you want to go non-democratic route. What this basicly means is that I don't hold elections and I do have a strong loyal military, but I don't abuse my people too much. This is because arresting someone, let alone killing them, causes a big public backlash in the form of plummeting reputation in everyone who sees the arrest.

Instead of paranoidly attacking any and all opposition, I wait for the opposition to become active and then kill them. Shooting a rebel can be much safer politically than shooting a disloyal civilian. Not to mention that with a good military the civilians may just be too afraid to turn rebel.

[Dr. Dictator]

If you want to be oppressive, you have to build a strong enough economy to support your army. This can be tricky, at least at the highest difficulty level.

The army base can be very useful. It provides high quality housing (as well as health care and religion, I think) to you soldiers and their families.

When I play evil, I usually repress the uneducated, and try to keep the educated workers relatively happy. So I build entertainment, for example, but price it above what the peons can afford. It can be difficult to keep educated people from turning rebel, however, because they like high liberty. So keeping the clinics and power plants staffed can be difficult. There are various edicts, like book burning and heretic that can be useful. Also, Martial  Law is very useful for times when you get the "you are making quite a number of enemies" message, to keep the peons from uprising (not a pretty sight). It doesn't help with rebels though.

I played one game on hardest economy/political difficulty, and managed to survive over 70 years while (a) never holding an election, (b) never raising the uneducated wages above $5, and (c) having "Rebel Yell" as my special condition. I also used "No One Gets Out Alive" to prevent emmigration (one person sneaked out in 70 years when a bureaucrat died and I didn't notice), and used the contraception ban, so I had major unemployment problems near the end.  I had three army bases and about 35 soldiers at the 70 year mark. That was just barely enough to defeat the 50 rebels that had the temerity to attack my palace!

[Brf]

The army base can be very useful. It provides high quality housing (as well as health care and religion, I think) to you soldiers and their families.

The army base supplies all of their needs: Housing, Food, Health-care, Entertainment, and Religion. Actually, there is no reason for the Generals to ever leave, since they are employed there too.