Cafe Tropico Game Guide: Education

[flagator_]

This may take multiple parts to post, but anyway, here's my draft for the Education part of the Cafe Tropico Game Guide.


Education

If you expect to make serious money, you're eventually going to need educated workers. All the industries, from the lowly lumber mill to the huge rum distillery, require high-school graduates; without them, your economy will be limited to farming, mining, fishing and tourism. Almost all the other important buildings in the game, such as the Immigration Office, Diplomatic Ministry, Clinic, Hospital, Powerplant, Armory, Marketplace and even your Palace, also require educated workers. It's possible to build an island that's a socialist paradise, but you won't get very far.

There are four ways to get educated workers on your island. First of all, unless you're playing a predesigned scenario that specifically leaves them out, every game should start with five educated workers: one each male and female high school graduates, plus one female and two males with college diplomas. This is enough to partially staff your palace, plus a few early buildings like a marketplace, a clinic and perhaps a newspaper. But after those workers are allocated, you will need more.

Hiring Educated Workers
The most reliable way to bring educated workers to your island is through an outside employment agency. A building that requires educated workers will indicate that with a small graduates' cap in the corner of the building's employees window. This cap is blue for buildings requiring high-school educated workers, green for college. Clicking the cap icon brings up a dossier explaining the requirement, and giving you an offer to hire an appropriately trained worker from overseas.

If you say yes, a boat icon appears next to the graduates' cap, reminding you that at least one foreign worker is scheduled to arrive on the next freighter to dock at your port. You can hire more than one at once, if you have the money; they will all arrive on the next freighter, even if that freighter is already in your harbor and maneuvering to dock.

The cost of hiring overseas workers goes up with each one you hire. Your first high school grad costs $500, and each subsequent one costs $100 more. College workers cost $1,500 for the first, and get $300 more expensive for each one afterward. Expensive as this is -- hiring six college-educated workers from overseas would more than pay for the cost of building a college -- this method does have its advantages, at least early on. First, educated workers hired from overseas come not just with an education, but also a basic skill level in their intended job; right off the bat they'll do a better job than a Tropican straight out of college. Second, assuming the building is complete and the job is waiting for them when they arrive, they'll go right to work; there's no finding and firing them from other jobs to try to get them into the one you want.


Skilled Workers Welcome
One of the most cost-effective ways of getting educated workers is through the Immigration Office. This building costs $2,500, can be built fairly quickly, and can be staffed by a single high-school educated woman -- perhaps one of your initial ones. If you set the Immigration Office to "Skilled Workers Welcome," with just one staffer with no skill as a Bureaucrat, 10 percent of your immigrants have high school educations, four percent have college. Though the "tooltip" hint at the bottom of the screen says that a full staff of average skill can raise those numbers to 30% and 10% (which is pretty darn good), it actually reaches those numbers with two bureaucrats of middling-low skill. At high levels of skill, two bureaucrats can make sure that more than half of your immigrants have an education.

Part 2 to follow.

[flagator_]

Part 2 of Education.

Fast Times At Tropico High
When you're ready to staff several industries and other jobs requiring higher education, you can't rely on immigration, though; it's just not fast enough or reliable enough. That's when you build a high school. You should probably be ready to build one when your population first reaches 100.

In a chicken-and-egg thing, you need high school educated females to be the teachers at your school. If you haven't built an immigration office yet, you'll probably have to hire them from overseas. But those should be the last overseas high-school grads you have to hire. Get two to start with; each teacher can teach two students (now there's a small class size!), and at this early stage, it's unlikely you'll have more than four prospective students.

At this early stage, you'll want to X out three of the teacher positions. Reason: Tropicans choose jobs not just based on pay, but also on their political leanings and the job's proximity to home. Tropicans who tend to go for an education often favor the Intellectual faction already, and if they don't have a wage-earning spouse at home to pay for their housing, they probably moved into a shack near the school shortly after enrolling. These factors combine to make teaching at the high school a very attractive job for new female graduates, so if you don't X those positions out, you'll end up with six high school teachers before you get a single shopkeeper or diplomat out of it.

Building and staffing a high school is the easy part. For many people, the hard part is getting any Tropicans to attend. To a Tropican, being a high school student is just another job, and a poorly paying one at that. So unless there are other factors involved -- particularly, unemployment at the uneducated level, and jobs available for educated Tropicans -- most won't quit the paying job they have to go to school. If you have a staffed school and nobody is attending, you probably have no jobs available at the educated level. Build another factory, and students will flood your school.

Though you'll probably want to crank out graduates as fast as possible, there are other settings for your high school which serve special circumstances and may be worth looking at. General Education, the default, works the fastest at teaching your students; with two or three teachers providing an educational quality of 50-60, a student of average intelligence will graduate in a year, more or less. (Wish it worked that way in real life, eh? Well, you didn't have to move out on your own at age 13 either.) More teachers, more skilled teachers and more intelligent students lower this study time. The other settings, Parochial Education and Military Education, increase the time it takes for a student to graduate by about 30 percent, or four months. Parochial Education indoctrinates the students toward the Religious faction, which is good if you're having a hard time staffing your churches and cathedrals; Military Education does the same for the militarist faction, which is just the thing if you've got lots of Guard Posts to staff. Note that neither form of special education is much use to female students; they'll get the same boost to their Religious or Military faction support, but since they can't take jobs in either field, it's kind of pointless.

Looks like I'm going to need a part 3.

[flagator_]

Part 3 of Education.

Tropico U., Home of the Fighting Banana Spiders
A college works the same as a high school, except that it costs more to build, maintain and staff, and instead of female high-school grads, you need male college grads to teach there. The other difference is that a college employs eight instructors who can teach 16 students, instead of a high school's six and 12. But there are similarities, including the time it takes a typical student to graduate. (Where were "El Cliffo's Notes" when I was in college?) Colleges can be set for General, Parochial or Military Education, also like the high school. And like a high school, you'll probably never need more than one.

You'll probably want to build it just before you plan to start building things that require electricity, like Luxury Hotels, Casinos, Nightclubs, Hospitals, TV/radio stations or powered industrial upgrades. That's because many of these buildings (not to mention the Power Plant to run them) require college-educated workers, and growing your own is in the long run cheaper than buying.

Like a high school, if students are staying away from your college in droves, it's likely because there are few or no college-requiring jobs available. But if you're building something that's going to require college-educated men, like a Hospital or Armory, and you want to have some staff ready the moment it goes up, here's a trick (which also works for females at the high school level): Temporarily unblock those Professor jobs you X'd out when you built the college. The available jobs will attract a few students to the school (especially if you "encourage" likely candidates by firing them), and when your new building is complete and ready to staff, fire the extra profs and they'll probably go right to work at the new building. Unless they're communists, in which case they'll probably go right back to work at the construction office, but that's a whole 'nother story.


So, what do you think, sirs? <pushes button>

[Maus]

Very well written!  With your permission, I'll volunteer to e-mail you a proofread of the text.  Just the standard stuff: nudge a clause here, bump a modifier there, swap a passive for an active, don't ya just hate peer review?  

[flagator_]

Nope. I'm a professional; I expect it. I wouldn't have posted it here otherwise.

[Eddy]

Clause?  Modifier?  What are these things you speak of senora?  The only words I understood were passive and active.  

Eddy's definitions...

Active - A person doing something, like drinking a strawberry fizzy, then ordering another and another.

Passive - A person who isn't doing much of anything at all, llike me when I've had six fizzies and am passed out with a small puddle of drool beneath my open mouth.

[IrishBrianMc]

Nice job.  Sounds like part of the text for the strategy guide they are putting together has been written.

[Jest]

Just a little detail Señores, i always issue the edicts that make people go to High School and College. Seems to me that if you have positions available there will be students.

[flagator_]

There's no edict I know of that makes people go to high school or college. What edicts are you talking about, Jest?

[Crandaddy]

Flagator_,

Great text, and I think this is a very good project.  This is well-written and helpful.  I think the Strategy Guide is a great idea to consolidate the collective knowledge we've been gaining here.

At the risk of giving unsolicited advice, can I suggest a few additions?  These aren't anything new we haven't already seen here on Cafe Tropico, but I'm just thinking of things which seem to come up a lot...

For the Skilled Workers Welcome section:

Be aware, though, that the Skilled Workers Welcome setting will not increase the number of immigrants your island receives.  If immigration is already low, perhaps because there are very few job openings and your average worker pay is well below the Carribbean average, you may still not recieve many educated immigrants.  

Any educated immigrants you receive will most likely take unskilled jobs such as Dockworker, Teamster, or Farmer, even though there are appropriate positions available at your factory, clinic, or power plant.  Eventually, these workers may find there way to these better-paying jobs, but they will be unhappy in the meanwhile because they are underemployed.  If you have positions available for high-school or college educated workers that you are trying to fill, you may need to fire each of these educated immigrants from the fresh-off-the-boat jobs they take to "encourage" them to take the skilled jobs.  If all of the positions on your island for educated workers are filled, using the Immigration Office to import educated workers may simply increase the likelyhood that you will have unhappy people.

This setting is a great reason to build an Immigration Office early in the game, since it is cheap and can act as a substitute for a High School and College for a few years.  However, as you

For the High School and College sections, I suggest you should point out that you only need one of each, since that question comes up a lot.  Also, keeping extra teachers and professors on staff when there are no students is a big drain on expenses.

Hope this helps!  Great job.

[flagator_]

Some of the things you mention I left out becuase I thought they were too obvious. Some things I didn't mention because they are better covered in other chapters, like Infrastructure (uses of the immigration office) or managing employees. Some of what you said I did say and you missed it, like this, under, Colleges:

And like a high school, you'll probably never need more than one.

I will add in the bit about how the Skilled Workers Welcome doesn't increase your number of immigrants, though, and the bit about educated workers being unhappy is a good one. Thanks.

[Crandaddy]

Whoa!  I did miss that.  Anyway, just trying to be helpful.

While we're on the topic of Education, I've alway wondered how the Education bonuses affect the game.  If I have a Professor background, I get +50% in Education.  What does that mean?  Does that mean 50% shorter classes?  More educated people to start the game?  More educated immigrants?  More likely that people will go to school?  More people in the intellectual faction?

Has anyone experimented with this?  

[Lachrymologist]

I think that the Education bonus refers to the speed at which your workers aquire new skill.  (i.e. becoming more productive workers faster, similar to the education edict)

[flagator_]

While we're on the topic of Education, I've alway wondered how the Education bonuses affect the game.  If I have a Professor background, I get +50% in Education.  What does that mean?  Does that mean 50% shorter classes?  More educated people to start the game?  More educated immigrants?  More likely that people will go to school?  More people in the intellectual faction?

Hmmm, you're right. I will have to test that. When I was doing the testing for this section I didn't want that to skew the results so I was sure to pick dictator characteristics that had no bonuses or detriments to education. So I forgot about going back to test them later. Thanks for the reminder.

[gd2]

Hi all, hi Flagator.  The edict that was mentioned but never followed up on is the "literacy project" edict.  While it may not "make ppl go to school" it helps by supposedly allowing students(and all workers) learn 30% faster.  Thus the time to graduate is reduced 30%, and workers learn their skills 30% faster. And all for a paltry sum of a one time $500 fee and a $2 per Tropican student/worker annual maintenance fee.  At 30% it seems very much worth it, no?

[Alastar]

one more point about parochial/military education: imo skewing their job preference isn´t the main reason for chosing them - usually you will want to run a ´tight´ administration on education jobs, having as many open jobs as educated people so their preference doesn´t really make a lot of difference (unless having a job corresponding to their political faction increases work satisfaction, in which case i take everything back and ask for forgiveness). however, it is very useful of adding more members to a faction that is ardently supporting you.

[Peron]

 Anyone who builds a college and then doesn't use the sensitivity edict should be put in front of a firing squad.

 Warm and sensitive of me, I know.

[maxim]

Good text Flagator, just two comments:
1) Put something in it about the literacy edict. I've found it very useful, at least when the economy is good.

2) Why the assumption that socialism have anything against education? Just look at the Soviet flag. The symbol is for farmers and labuorers. The latter requires high school education, even in Tropico, am I wrong?  

[Revolucionario]

Superb work Gator. Will you make any other guides up?

[General PinochetNut]

Skilled Workers Welcome
One of the most cost-effective ways of getting educated workers is through the Immigration Office. This building costs $2,500, can be built fairly quickly, and can be staffed by a single high-school educated woman -- perhaps one of your initial ones. If you set the Immigration Office to "Skilled Workers Welcome," with just one staffer with no skill as a Bureaucrat, 10 percent of your immigrants have high school educations, four percent have college. Though the "tooltip" hint at the bottom of the screen says that a full staff of average skill can raise those numbers to 30% and 10% (which is pretty darn good), it actually reaches those numbers with two bureaucrats of middling-low skill. At high levels of skill, two bureaucrats can make sure that more than half of your immigrants have an education.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

I try to make sure my burucrats are young and well paid so I  don't expect things that don't excist. I got my skilled imigrants up to 100%. By the time they retire I learning with larry and literacy program up.

[General PinochetNut]

Very good guide. *Clap, Clap*

[Darkstar]

Very good, useful guide.

[Olle_Petersson]

What I find interesting is that I usually build a Highschool almost ASAP. Then I also try to get a university pretty fast to get engineers for the powerplant that supplies my hospital with electricity...

Cheers
Olle

[Cluk (Guest)]

Whadya mean you can't have a socialist paradise?

This worker's paradise gets good happiness scores:

          FARM  | C    C  | FARM
                   |    C     |
                   | C     C |
                   |    C     |
          FARM  | C      C| FARM
                   |    C     |
                   | C      C|
                   |     C    |
          FARM  | C     C | FARM


Just have farms and country houses in long rows.  Grow a variety of crops, mostly edible ones.  At points along the road, have "node towns" -places that offer religion, health care, and entertainment plus the high-class housing needed for those.  You'll need at least a high school and probably even a college, but by not offering many educated jobs, you'll keep those down.  The Commies will love you and the Yanquis will hate you, so an alliance with USSR is a good plan.  Eventually, you'll need electricity for the hospitals, nightclubs, and stadiums, but no banks are needed, so the intellectuals will be small and easily kept in check with book bbqs.  On the happiness scenario (with a large, flat map) this strategy can do very well.

BTW, yes, socialism/communism says that everyone should be educated.  Note that the Soviet Union and Cuba had 99% literacy.

Also btw, Tropico has a socialist govt. no matter what you do.

[Starfish]

 These really need to be kicked up from time to time.