Cafe Tropico Game Guide

[Coconut Kid]

From Loverevolutionary,
Chapter One:
Managing a growing economy « on: September 03, 2002, 15:28:39 »
Or, how not to overbuild and flush your finances.
http://www.the-nextlevel.com/tropico/cafe/index.php?topic=5522.0

The economy page of the almanac is your best friend.  Consult it often.  General Overhead is the number to watch.  If you are starting an industry, expect farming or mining profits to fall for several years as the industry soaks up the resource.

How do you know if you have enough cash reserves to start an industry?  As a rough guide, I subtract any steady stream income like tourism or media from my yearly general overhead.  Multiply this number by 5. (1 year to build and staff the industry, 1 year to get resources, 1 to process, 1 to get to the docks, and 1 to get on the ships.  Hopefully, it will be less than this, but never count on it.)

Farming, mining, and other industries go through cycles, so look at the graphs for these and see where you are on the curve.  Add or subtract what you think they might be making or losing over the next 5 years from the number you just got.

If this number is more than -10,000, great, go for it!  If not, focus instead on shoring up your cash reserves, or better yet, add a little steady stream income like tourism or media to offset your general overhead.

Or, if you are the dictatorial type with a hefty army and no elections coming up, just slash the pay of everyone but the military for a few years.  All must suffer for the good of El Presidente the country!

Do I do any of these things in actual practice?  Well, not like I've written here with the actual calculations and all, I kind of guestimate, which is probably why I still screw up.  But I do try to pay attention to that yearly general overhead number.

Chapter two:
Warp speed development « on: August 29, 2002, 00:18:47 »
http://www.the-nextlevel.com/tropico/cafe/index.php?topic=5479.0

With a fast growing economy, developing quickly enough to soak up that growing surplus (and therefore make even more in the long run) can be difficult.

The answer, of course, is to build lots of construction sites offices.  But how to get the best use out of all the construction workers?

What I generally do once my economy is stabilized is start development based on one of several concepts, what I call sprawl, line, leapfrog and hub-and-spokes.

Sprawl is the simplest.  Just start plunking down new construction offices radiating outward. Fill in as you go.

Line is easy to understand.  Pick a line that will eventually lead you to something valuable, like gold or a nice area for an airport.  Plunk down a new construction site office, a few apartment complexes or tenements just past it, and some money making farms, mines, or tourist buildings on either side.  Set the pay at the new site office two dollars higher than the last site office you built (up to a max of about 20-26 a month)  Set it to high priority, and as soon as it's complete, pause and take a look at the nearest other construction sites offices.

Fire about half the workers at two nearby sites offices.  Choose carefully based on these criteria: Is the worker currently near the new site?  Do they live nearby?  Do they have a high skill level?  You want your highly skilled workers at your front line of development, but not if they live half an island away.  The less skilled workers can learn their trade building roads, landscaping, and building small in-fill type projects at the trailing edge of construction.

As the areas at the center become complete (available space is full, roads are done, area is as pretty as you want it) you should close out the construction sites offices.  If there are plenty of other sites offices nearby, you might even bulldoze some and put up a fountain or a market.

Hub and Spokes is similar, except for the pattern of growth.  In a hub and spokes, pick several lines leading towards distant goals and start out like a line, but fill in like a sprawl.  It will take longer to get to your goals this way than concentrating on one.

Leapfrog does away with waiting to get to the goals.  In this strategy, the idea is to get where you want to go as quickly as possible.  Put the construction sites offices further apart and only build a tenement next to one before moving on to the next.  Once you reach the goal, though, you should put up several sites offices and rapidly develop your support infrastructure (housing, food supply, teamsters if it's a goods producing region, entertainment, a clinic, and a church)  Failure to quickly develop support infrastructure for a distant town can lead to huge inefficiency.

Don't forget to budget for lag time to market for distant goods producing regions, or build a dock nearby quickly.

Chapter Two has some problems -- namely that everything except "sprawl" leads you into a trap with excessive travel time.

One of the most important gameplay skills is to keep your population concentrated so as to minimize time spent traveling (walking). The algorithm by which the people select the buildings for entertainment, health care and religion does NOT restrict them to the closest ones. So you will soon have them walking back and forth across the island no matter what you do.

[Coconut Kid]

Fishing and Canning:
http://www.the-nextlevel.com/tropico/cafe/index.php?topic=5733.0

[Mr.P]

There is some seriously good stuff here CK, thanks for highlighting them.

I think what I will be inclined to do is give several views on certain issues with the respective topics, much like has already been done within the game guide. So what you have flagged is superb.
 

[Coconut Kid]

From calm_blue_sea:

1.  Introduction:

   A theory, hereto cited as the “Loggers Myth," has emerged and has rapidly become ingrained in popular dogma. The theory holds that using loggers (lumberjacks) to clear areas of trees will decrease the time required to erect buildings on these lands. The theory has gained further credibility from its admission in an online gaming guide (Gamespot).
   It has long been the opinion of this author that this hypothesis is completely unfounded, and indeed a total fallacy. The need for empirical evidence to back this claim has precipitated the following study. Although still ongoing, preliminary research is indeed undermining popular opinion, and is revealing some important truths.

2.  Methodology:

   A new map was started on the second difficulty level and edited in editor mode. A large area was leveled (reduced to sea level). Numerous experiments were performed in which logging camps, labour camps, and trees of various species were individually placed. In a second set of experiments, cleared land was watched closely to determine rates of natural succession, while an old growth tree lot was observed in an attempt to estimate natural mortality rates. Although run in editor mode, preliminary observations suggest that this data also holds true in vivo (or more correctly, in gamo).

3.   Tropican Flora

   A variety of tree and shrub species are indigenous to the island of Tropico. Although both monocots and dicots are well represented, curiously it would appear that that gymnosperms and lower land plants are completely lacking.

3.1.      Growth Rates:

   The excellent soils of Tropico permit very rapid growth of the native vegetation. Most trees appear to mature within 12 years of germination, although the large palms may take longer. Dicotyledonous trees (generally broad-leaved ) appear to mature faster and may require as little as 7 years. Tropoican environmental law forbids the harvesting of under age trees.

3.2.   Tree Mortality Rates:

   Of course trees on Tropico undergo normal life cycles including death. Upon dying, only a stump remains. The maximum lifespan of Tropican trees is currently unknown. Funding permitting, this topic will be the focus of a future study. (Please note, it is with deep regret that this author must withdraw his previous statement that stumps are capable of regenerating new trees. I apologize for any confusion this may have caused among my colleagues in the scientific community).

4.      The Tropican Logging Industry:

   The importance of logging to the well being of Tropician economics cannot be easily dismissed. Of course, the effectiveness of this industry relies on the efficiency of its workers, the lumberjacks. Tropican lumberjacks are powerful fellows, yet the number of axe swings required to fell and remove a tree can be quite variable.

4.1.   The Whack Index:

Note: numbers given below are for workers of medium skill working at a camp that has NOT been upgraded. For highly skilled workers working at an upgraded camp, chop numbers (the “Whack Index”) may decrease to as little as 3 chops per activity

There are three (3) steps in the logging process:

A)The tree must be felled, this generally requires 5-7 whacks, and an ugly stump is left behind.

B)The felled tree must be further processed. A large felled tree consists of 11 subunits. 5 subunits represent small branches and leaves – these are left to ‘rot’. 6 units represent the trunk of the tree – these must be processed further, which requires 5-7 whacks per segment.

C)The trunk units are then carried back to the camp where they are picked up by a teamster. Each trunk unit represents 0.6 of a load.

Therefore, One tree can require as many as 49 whacks to process completely, while under optimal conditions this Whack Index may be reduced to as little as 21. Each tree yields 3.6 loads. These values appear to be unaffected by the species of the tree being harvested.

5.    Tropican Laborers:

Before building, Tropican laborers must not only clear the site of trees, but also of stumps left by the loggers. Unlike in the case of the logger, an upright tree that has been felled by a laborer magically disappears, leaving no stump. Both trees and stumps require 5-7 whacks to be removed by a laborer. As in the case of the logger, I can find no pattern to the variability of the Whack Index, although it may correspond to skill level (future studies will examine this utilizing a larger sample size).
The following parameters were considered:

A) Tree type:
All indigenous tree species have the same Whack Index. However, ornamental trees and shrubs (those placed using the build menu) are an important exception. These plants are dug up rather than chopped down. They require five scoops with the shovel and are thus said to have a “Scoop Index” of 5 (Calm_Blue_Sea, In Press). It is of interest to note that the scoop index appears to be fairly constant in this case. These species are apparently not considered to be of economic importance and are therefore not harvested by the loggers (which, in any case, lack. shovels).

B)Build or Bulldoze Command:
The Whack index does not appear to differ whether laborers are directly ordered to clear trees or are ordered to build on a treed area.

C)Topography:
Terrain is not expected to have an effect on the Whack/Scoop index of tree removal. This is an exciting area of research and will undoubtedly be the focus of future studies (pending appropriate funding).

6.  Clearing of Felled Trees:

The following discovery came as a shock to this researcher. If a laborer must clear a freshly fallen tree left by a lumberjack he is required to not only chop the stump, but also to scoop all 11 subunits from the ground (see above for explanation of subunits). These subunits require 5-8 scoops each to remove. Therefore, the removal of a freshly fallen tree and its associated stump may require a combined Whack/Scoop index as high as 86!

7.   The Bottom line For Would-Be Tropican Developers:

Wood and lumber are valuable sources of income for the government of Tropico. On some islands, forests may be sparse or located far from the work force. In these cases, it may be best to log first and then build on the cleared land in order to keep the logging industry alive and prosperous. If this is done, it is imperative that loggers clear all deadwood from the ground before building is commenced. However, in cases where an area must be cleared for building immediately and the loss of trees is not an issue, it is best to build directly and let the labor force clear the land.
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
calm_blue_sea on 06/04/01: "OK, I've heard several people mention that they use the loggers to clear out an area before they expand into it, in order to cut down on building times. For a while I followed the same strategy. However, the stumps still have to be cleared by the labourers, and removing a stump appears to take just as long as removing a full tree. My point is that many people have mentioned using the lumberjacks to clear the land before building as a means of speeding up the building process (the game guide at Gamespot also states this). I'm saying that this a myth people! Tropican Propoganda I tell you! The labourers take several swings with the axe to remove either a stump or a tree - there is no difference.

A stump is still a tree as far as the simulation goes, it takes just as long to remove (and if left alone eventually grows back into a tree - one of the logging camp upgrades increases the rate of this). And....if you watch your forest for several years (game years that is), you'll see that the trees actually die and regenerate (they turn to stumps then back to trees).

Incidentally, trees also die (they cycle between the tree and stump states). For a while I blamed the loggers from the other side of island for chopping down the Presidential Palms on my lavish palace grounds. It appears, however, that they died of 'natural causes'."

[Coconut Kid]

Sugar and Rum from Senior Ruina:

5 farms growing sugar; one rum distillery.  Presidente with no bonuses to production.  Uneducated salaries were fixed at 12, and high-school at 21.  Ran for about 30 years, then fired the farmers and let the teamsters carry off the sugar, then shut down the factory when it emptied its queue.

Data

Here's the raw data: wages paid and profits:

Farms:

income wages
18299  14616
30520    9720
51568  15168
38136  10080
21952  10366

Distillery:
income wages RSRC
424184 45801 121220

Net exports
rum  22725
spiced rum  401460
sugar 55288

Analysis

I seem to be missing a farm; I need to double-check these results.  Anyway, using the farm data alone, total sugar grown was $160475 worth, or 200.6 loads.  Total wages expended growing it was $59950.  At $12/man-month, that means that a total of 4996 man-months were used.  Thus the average growth rate achieved was .0401 loads/man-month, or .482 loads/man-year.  1.93 loads/year per farm.

This rate is lower than what I expected.  Most of the terrain was dark green for sugar, when I started the farm.  However, rainfall caused a lot of bad years - yellow and red for a good long while, in some spots.  This should be obvious from looking at the farm data; the two initial farms employed the same amount of people, but one produced nearly three times what the other produced.  Sugar is very sensitive to the weather.

On rum making: the distillery processed 151.53 loads of sugar.  It spent $45801 on wages, at $21/man-month.  So it used 2181 man-months.  The rate it got was therefore .069 load/man-month, or 0.83/man-year.  (Note that this is identical to the rate per-person that the cigar factory tested earlier got.)  Per-distillery, you should expect to process 10 loads per year.

Conclusion

Rum is very profitable.  If you want to maximize throughput, you may need something like 5-6 farms per distillery, that is, near to 2:1 farmers per factory worker, depending on the quality of the land used to grow sugar.

[Mr.P]

Ahhh, the whack index!!!! I have been looking for that!!! 

Thank you for bringing that up CK, good ol' Calm did some good analysis.

[Coconut Kid]

Logging, Lumber, and Furniture:
http://www.the-nextlevel.com/tropico/cafe/index.php?topic=5751.0

An excellent exchange.  

[Mr.P]

CK, you're my 'Cafe Tropico Archivist' partner-in-crime.

[Coconut Kid]

From me  :

This "new" edict requires Any Hotel and Any Developed Site.

Would someone please tell me what Any Developed Site means?

I have a staffed Nature Preserve, a staffed Marina, and a staffed Scenic Outlook - but it locks me out of the edict with the "Any Developed Site" highlighted in red.

From belbincolne:

Not often I know the answer to something!!!
You need to develop either the Colonial Fort (PI) or the Archaeological site (Orig) cost approx $2,000 - they are somewhere on the map in every scenario.  You don't need to staff them!  I've never found it worth paying for professors but if you've college graduates doing nothing o/k - I've never made a profit from them.
"Comet" is the only scenario I can think of where you really need to hire one but for gameplay reasons not to make money.
If you've no TV station so can't issue the Ad edict, the World Geographic does a good job in bringing toursits in. Well worth what you pay for developing the site.

[Coconut Kid]

From dargo:

Many jobs in Tropico have a minimum age limit.  Even if the only alternative is unemployment, a Tropican may not take this job until they reach the minimum age.  They will not even start school to fill an open job until they meet the age requirement.

• 16 for soldiers
• 18 for journalists, policeman, teachers, barmaids, showgirls
• 21 for bishops, doctors, bankers, professors, generals, priests, pitbosses.

It can be a good strategy to discourage young men from taking factory jobs.   After a few years of unemployment or working as a teamster, they will happily take that open police job when they turn 18.  If they have gotten comfortable at the factory, good luck getting them to change careers.  There should be enough educated women to handle production at the factory.

Faction leanings can affect career choices.  A strongly religious man can often be persuaded to go to school and become a priest while someone who isn't religious will generally not take the job.  There are exceptions.  Communists usually don't like working at a bank.  I saw a new graduate who just started working at the bank because the only other college opening as a doctor had been filled by a previous graduate.  He was a slight communist.  After he changed to the banker's icon, he lost his communist leanings.  A few years later, he became a slight capitalist.  Ten years down the road, he was a strong capitalist.

A Tropican must be at least below average intelligence to go to high school and average intelligence to go to college.   Imigrants who already have degrees may have lower IQ than the minimum needed to attend school on Tropico.[/i]

Junta_Joe strongly contested this assertation, claiming that every job could be filled by a 13 year old; and further claiming that he had so observed in over 1,000 games.

It may be that immigrants do not conform to the minimum age just as they do not conform to intelligence norms. If so, that could explain JJ's "observations." However, I have spent some significant time trying to force some youngsters into Showgirl jobs. Let me assure you that you will see a white whale before you see a teenage Showgirl; further, you will not see one in her 20's hold the job for any period.

Since we have not "cracked" the unit file, I suspect dargo made a good point, but JJ ran him off. We know from Phil S. that some minimum ages were instituted, e.g. for building use, marriage, etc. So dargo's list should be considered illustrative rather than exhaustive.

 

[Coconut Kid]

From Pinstar:

Just some suggestions for some of the newer players on how best to use the immigration office settings, at least from my personal play experiance.

• Open-door: A good base-line setting. As long as you have a growing economy this will keep all your new buildings filled. Even if you don't, you won't get floods of immigrants to fill jobs that don't exist, even if your doors are wide open.
• Skilled Workers: Despite its powerful effect I very rarely use this setting. I generally don't build a lot of high-school requiring jobs until I build a high school, and college requiring jobs until I build a college - meaning I can train all my workers. Workers who come in on this setting inevitably end up working in unskilled jobs, sending their job [happiness] rating crashing down.
• Tropico First: I rarely use this as well. If I find myself with too many people I rather use "love it or leave it" to shed off excess population rather than try to stem the flow of new ones. I personally don't mind having immigrants make up most of my population, others may have another opinion on the matter.
• Love it or Leave it: The other good setting to leave the office on. Keeps your popultion thinned of unhappy people. My only word of warning is not to use this if you are in badly with the intellectual faction [or the militarist faction], as you may lose many skilled workers [or your army]. ... Otherwise this setting is very valuable. Elections [year prior] are a perfect time to use it.
• Nobody gets out of here alive: Perfect for oppressive dictators, ... I always use this setting when I get "World-Banked." [pay limit] Even if just for a little while, those salary caps play havoic on ALL my college workers' job ratings, makeing them want to pack up. This keeps them in the country until their job ratings go back up.

I pay my most important people very well. Looking at the income disparity page, I've adopted a tactic of paying my people in quintiles, as opposed to a flat 3 pay levels for uneducated, educated and college.
> All unskilled jobs are paid the lowest quintile;
> All high schoolers are paid the 2nd lowest, except -
>> Priests and soldiers, who are paid the middle quintile.
> All college jobs are paid the 2nd highest quintile except -
>> Doctors, Bishops and Generals and Engineers, who are paid the highest quintile.

My starting pay scale starts at 6¹/12/15/18/21 And gradually scales up from there.

¹For short time only, quickly raised to 9.

Coconut Kid: I have found that it is necessary to micro-manage ship arrivals when using "Skilled Workers" - especially if you have open jobs in all categories. The new arrivals will be first assigned to jobs without regard for education; but if you quickly fire them from jobs that don't require their education, the second job usually does require their education.

By monitoring ship arrivals, you avoid problems when you discover the job/education misfit later. After a unit with education has spent some time in an uneducated job, they may be reluctant to change to a "better" one, even with the incentive of better pay.

Several posters indicated that they regarded "Skilled Workers" as very important early in the game.

It was also suggested that the quintile pay scale could well start at a lower level, e.g. 3/6/9/12/15 or 6/9/12/15/18.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Eddy: Quintile pay just means 20% brackets.

1st quintile - top 20% of the people (the rich)
2nd quintile - 21-40% of the people (the solid middle class)
3rd quintile - 41-60% of the people (the solid working class)
4th quintile - 61-80% of the people (the working poor)
5th quintile - 81-100% of the people (the bottom of the barrel, often unemployed)

Note that you can have more than one quintile reflecting the same pay rate.

Average pay: Take all the pay and divide by all the people.

DonaMaria: Then using that as a guide, if I want to make sure that my islanders are happy, I would compare the 5th quintile number with the average Caribbean pay number and make sure the 5th [lowest] number was higher?

Eddy: No, you don't want your lowest quintile higher than the average since the place will be flooded with immigrants.  You will have an overall average, and you want that to be the indicator to compare to the Caribbean average pay.

Your lowest quintile can be zero if you have a large unemployed population, but the average can still be higher than the Caribbean average pay.

[Coconut Kid]

From Juan:

Is it possible to arrest rebelling soldiers,  i.e soldiers fighting against you in a military coup d'Etat ?

From Brf:

Yes, you can arrest soldiers during a coup. If you leave them in prison set to Re-educate, you can often make them loyal again too.

CK: I think this is an important point to be included in the Game Guide since the manual (and other guides) has no emphasis on the counter-balancing control of the Police over the Army. When one sets out to build an Army, one should build a parallel Police Force. Well, that's my humble opinion.

[Coconut Kid]

From Senior Ruina on how many meals = a load of product:

I have done a bit more research.  I am trying to determine how "meals" relate to loads of product.  So I set up a corn farm, and kept track of five things for each year, for 23 years.  One was the island population.  Two of the things I tracked were statistics of the farm itself: lifetime sales and meals-provided.  The other two came from the food page in the almanac: meals produced and meals eaten.  Since I only had the one farm, meals produced were presumably entirely produced there.

I won't post all the numbers, but totals.  They were:
earnings: $26252
meals-provided: 1147
total meals produced: 3273
total meals eaten: 1185 (average me/year: 51.52)
total pop-years: 857  (average pop: 37.26)

Now it is odd that there were 3273 meals produced, but only 1185 eaten.  However, meal reserves (which I did not track) did stay fairly high.  So one explanation was that all meals produced but not eaten went into reserves.  But I don't really think that is the case, because reserves went up to about 4-5 meals per person and basically stayed there, without rising or falling much.

My current conjecture is that all meals that are produced but not eaten, are turned into exports.  If that is so, then $26252 in corn, which is 65.63 loads, equals 2088 meals.  That would mean that 1 load equals 31.81 meals.  Given that there may have been food in the pipeline when I ended that was not yet exported, I suspect that a load is exactly 32 meals. 

That would mean that each meal that the people eat, costs $12.5 in lost exports.  Since the people eat 1.5 meals/year on average, support costs for food for each Tropican are $18.75/year.

Here's another test on food.  It's much simpler than the first test.

You just watch a farm very closely.  Select it and watch the output queue size, and the meals-provided.  The output queue will increase when the farmers harvest crops.  It goes down if a teamster hauls off a cart, or when people come by the farm to grap some food.

Here are the fluxuations I observed at a corn farm for a year or two:

loads  meals  comment
3.9  66 initial state
0  66   teamster
3.0  66  six harvests, at 0.5 units each.
2.8  72
3.3  72  harvest 0.5
2.9  84 
2.6  96
3.1  96  harvest 0.5
2.7 108
3.2 108  harvest 0.5
2.8 120
3.3 120  harvest 0.5
2.9 132
2.7 138
3.2 138  harvest 0.5
3.0 144
5.9 144  six harvests, all 0.5 except one 0.4
5.6 156
6.6 156  two harvests 0.5
6.4 162

On harvest sizes: I did not see any harvests above 0.5 load.  I conjecture that 0.5 load is the maximum harvest.  The ground here was mostly dark green, and the farmers experienced.

On food, an obvious observation is that the output queue declines when  meals-provided goes up, and that this happens when a Tropican comes by for food.  So I conjecture that the decrease in food is exactly turned into meals-provided.

If that is so, then I can calculation.  I observed, in total, 3.0 loads of food being taken for food, providing 96 meals.  This is exactly 32 meals/load, as earlier found in the more complicated test.

In neither test was there a marketplace.  If there had been, it might have introduced teamster delays, which are annoying to deal with.

Regarding the matter of food storage, my observation is that "government" reserves count only food that is sitting at farms, or in marketplaces (and possibly also including that sent to restaurants/pubs etc.)  Private reserves are, presumably, kept in people's houses.

One other thing I have noticed, that I offer for your interest and conjecture.  Meals-produced  in my test always went up by either 6 or 12.  I wonder if that is not a married/unmarried thing.  I also wonder if that is somehow related to the size of meal reserves, which usually seems to hover around 4 or 5.  I need to watch some people to see how they deal with food.

I have been watching some other food farms, and a fishing dock.  Interesting data: in all cases, I have yet to see any food-taking events other than 6 or 12 meals, and each time the amount of output at the farm goes down by 0.2 or 0.4 loads, respectively.

The corn-farm data above are almost entirely consistent with this, except for a few observations which maybe I blew.

This leads me to the following conjecture: all meals in Tropico are 1/30 of a load.  Food is always taken from farms in sets of 6 meals or 12 meals.

[Coconut Kid]

http://www.the-nextlevel.com/tropico/cafe/index.php?topic=8860.0

From Brf:

To increase rain in every one of your games,

• Under your /programsfiles/tropico directory [folder], create a new directory [folder] called "Events".
• Under the Events directory [folder], create a folder called "MoreRain".
• In this MoreRain folder create the textfile¹ "Rain.evt" containing the following lines:

CheckFrequencyYearBegin
ExecuteOnlyOnce
GeneralEffect Addto Cloudrate 100

From CK:

¹I hope you know how to do this! I know how to find and read them, but just today how to make a new one escapes my memory. I'm guessing it's a NotePad document named Rain.evt and shows up with a document icon rather than the file-folder icon.

Example: C:\ProgramFiles\Tropico\Events\MoreRain\Rain.evt
> Hard Drive
>> Folder = ProgramFiles
>>> Folder = Tropico This has to be the folder where all your Tropico "stuff" is, especially Tropico.exe
>>>> Folder = Events
>>>>> Folder = MoreRain
>>>>>> Document = Rain.evt

Use only NotePad -- DO NOT use WordPad!

[Coconut Kid]

From Senior Runia on Farming:

Having watched people for a while, I am pretty convinced that the food loads:meals ratio is 1:30.  That is, 1/30 of a load of corn is 1 meal.  And it is the same for all food on Tropico. Given that conversion, it is possible to start work on evaluating farming.  What are the most productive farms?  What are the plusses and minuses of each kind of farm?

Obviously this is a hard thing to evaluate, because ground conditions and weather conditions vary.  It is hard to control a test.  But here is a first set of data collected.  I made an island with three flat terraces.  I put in two farms of each type except sugar, with an extra three corn farms to make sure there was a food farm near to everything.  (There was no decent ground for sugar on my map.)  Then I ran the game for about 30 years.  The farm wage was held constant at $12.

All of the permanent crops started to produce about 1955. 

The labor hours spent on the farms were nearly the game for all farms.  Each farm ended up in the range of $18300-$18900, with the mean about 18700.  I could transcribe all that, but I think I will just treat them as all the same.

Here are the totals exported, from the almanac:

banana: 216928
coffee: 415480
papaya: 213546
corn: 117016
tobacco: 119040
pineapple: 85239

Meals were taken from all the food farms:

banana: 138, 228
papaya: 390, 198
corn: 370, 807, 1618, 1021
pineapple: 234, 305

So, let me compute total loads output from each farm type.  That's the export totals divided by the price/load, plus 1/30th of the total meals provided.

banana: 271.16 + 12.2 = 283.36
coffee: 319.6 + 0 = 319.6
papaya: 355.91 + 19.6 = 375.51
corn: 292.54 + 127.2 = 419.74 (4 farms)
tobacco: 119.04 + 0 = 119.04
pineapple: 94.71 + 17.97 = 112.68

The inputs here were all about the same: around 18700 per farm, or 1560 farmer-months.  So productivity ranged from a high of .12 loads/farmer-month (papayas), down to a low of .036 loads/farmer-month.  In terms of loads/year from a fully staffed farm, those would be 5.76 down to 1.73 loads/year.

Note that the permanent crops were all much more productive than the non-permanent crops.  I quit in ~1984, that is 34 years.  Of those, most of the first five years were spent waiting for permanent crops to grow.  So the productivity of these crops (once they get going) is actually underrated in the overall numbers; it should be about 17% higher than stated above. 

Once they got going, the papaya groves were cranking out on the order of 6.7 loads/year.  !!!

Even counting the initial growth time, the least productive permanent crop (bananas) still outproduced in loads the most productive nonpermanent (corn), by 35%.  The bananas did take up a lot more room, though.  (All of the perm crops took up a lot of room because I let them fully plant them out.)  In terms of dollar value, obviously the permanent crops easily beat all the non permanent ones.

But consider this.  Since food is load based, this means that in the long run, permanent crops may be better for producing food.  (This is not totally clear because in my test I gave the perm crops all the space they would take, which is less than corn farms take.  But I think it will prove out.)

Consider the profit potential for exports of bananas.  Sure, you can't use a factory to improve their price.  That's a big downside.  But they got $216K even without a factory!  From 8 farmers!  Consider the pineapples also grown, and assume they all went to a cannery - even then their value would be increased by only $600; that is, the total value of the exports would have been $142K!  The tobacco, if all going to a factory, would have more value than the bananas - $381K.  But it does require a lot more overhead to get.

[Coconut Kid]

From Mr.P:

SHIFT-Click does release a person from prison, and the jail term is for a maximum of 7 years.

Every year, when the Almanac pops up, I cycle through all of my army and check their happiness, respect, etc. and if it appears too low, and there is the chance they could join a coup, they are removed. Either fired, if there is no imminent threat; or imprisoned and starved in the Dungeon if a coup appears imminent.

I also check the happiness page and look at the most unhappy 20 and see if they look like they are causing trouble, or may do in the future. Often they have terrible respect and happiness, so I'll write them off as a bad investment and ensure they do not cause any more trouble, by either dropping them in the Dungeon or arresting them, then eliminate via near-by Guard post.

Should the person have some kind of education I will give them a few chances to find alternative employment that suits, this normally make them happier, as would be expected.

Then I check out all faction leaders each year and, if one looks upon me unfavourably (when I think they should at least be satisfied!) I'll make sure they 'resign' and can often find the replacement is more to my liking. In fact changing faction leaders happens often on my islands.

I soften waves of arrests with Mardi Gras, etc.

After that it is the common peon and I really don't worry too much about them, unless they are protesting constantly. Then they will be arrested and be given a swift ticket from the land of the living, by the Soldiers.

It is all a kind of Stalinistic series of 5-Year Plans, but of a Capitalist vein. If they protest (or even look like they might protest, they are a threat!) then it is better for the rest of my loyal peons to have the enemy dealt with.
~~~~~~~
Initially I place my soldiers on special-ops training, but once their experience has increased enough I place it back to normal, or their job satisfaction suffers.

Caberets, a pub and a restaurant help, if you place them near the soldiers. But as you can imagine with 3 or 4 guard posts it can prove difficult. I tend to have satellite towns outside of the main one. At the centre of this is a pub, restaurant, guard post, health clinic and, maybe a church. That way if you have rebellion in one satellite town, it tend not effect the others to much.

Make sure you have plenty of Generals, I always prefer to have one 'spare'. After all, they tend to be the most experinced and therefore oldest and can die suddenly. You don't want your guard towers collapsing now do you? A second armoury can't hurt either.

And don't worry about the costs of your well paid army. Just check out the expenses in the Almanac, your army, even at 15-20 soldiers, costs only a 1/3 if those pesky labourers and teamsters.

If you find any disloyal Soldiers/Generals sack em!! They no longer have a rifle to start a coup with, it keeps the rest of the army on their toes and it places an educated school/college graduate back in the workforce.

[Coconut Kid]

Some basic thoughts:

On a industrial style of island, don't be surprised if almost 10% of your population are teamsters. You really need that many.

Do anything you can to speed up their travel time. If planned well a teamster should be able to deliver 2 loads from factory to dock before "breaktime". Be happy with one trip from farms or mines in the interior. How do you get 2 loads, you ask? Paving. Pave it all in the industrial sector. Even under the buildings. Proper layout is critical too. I am loathe to make too many suggestions as you might take them as gospel. Certain playing styles lend themselves to certain methods better. Since it is possible to do a 70 year term in a 4 hour session, feel free to experiment.

Just remember that travel time is critical. The teamster will not be rested until he gets to his domicile first. Same thought with any of his other needs. The sooner they are done with their "other business", the sooner they get back to work. So place these stops in their normal pathways. I place hospitals, apartments, pubs, and whatever else they need right in the industrial sector.

Learn to segregate your "workers" from "nonworkers". Dock workers, teamsters, factory workers, and contruction workers need to physically doing the work to get results. All other jobs are being performed no matter where the worker is. Your banker is still skimming the accounts even when he's partying at the cabaret. By building around that thought, you can skip building certain structures in the industrial sectors. Who needs the highschool near the factory? That same space could have held a pub, market, and clinic. All things the teamster needs.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~
I did mention that I place homes in 2 of the sectors. I keep homes out of tourist and raw goods areas. Reasons:

Homes near farms take up rare and valuable production space. I would say that if you can shoehorn some housing into the odd nook and cranny then go ahead and do it.

Homes near logging camps are never necessary. Those loggers are some of the most efficient works in the game. Homes near mines tends to get the warning of island ugliness.

Homes near tourist areas are a no-no unless they are luxury homes and you have the anti-litter edict on. You must always be careful to keep your tourist areas in the "green" as far as beauty quality goes.

My big point was the location of markets, entertainment, religion, and medicine. I always place them near the industrial sector. (A contra comment was, "With the white collar workers the more they are actually at their places of employment the more experience they get and the more effective they are. If they have to walk too far they take ages to build up experience.") The experience loss to govt workers, bankers, attendants, maids, and teachers is worth the hit if you have bucks rolling in. I'm already getting the max income from those spas and hotels by building correctly. I can see the point about  bankers and government workers. Bankers make their real money on offshore accounts. It takes time to build up the tourists anyway so they have time to get their act together. Diplomat's skill loss can be overcome with cash. I can relate to Immigration Officer skill. So just place that near the industrial sector. Who cares about teachers and proffessors? I tend to have more teachers than students anyway. Military? If you do your job right, you don't even need them

[Coconut Kid]

From Alphidius:

Do fishing spots run out of fishes? Coz I've seen my green fishing areas turn red after a few years of fishing. Or do they sort of 'replenish' after a while?

Morticcia: I am pretty sure that, like cattle ranches, when the surrounding areas get red, the stock is depleted.  The fisherman then need to go farther and farther out to get their catch.

However, when the area around a ranch goes red, and the cattle go hungry, they don't die, so intuitively you would assume there is still some nourishment, albeit measly, for them to get by on.  I assume this would also be true for fishing grounds.  Maybe, it just makes it harder (and more time consuming) for the fisherman to bring in a haul, but fish remain in the area.

Pancho_Roachas: What i have noticed is that if the fishing wharf is located to an expansive deep area, that the fisherman will deplete the area close to the wharf first.  They will then move further way, at first this slows their production, but over time it does not matter much.  Also, their original "fished out" area starts to replenish.

MadamePresident: There is an internal game variable called "fishingrate". I would think this variable determines the rate at which fish regenerate. There is a corresponding one for farming, tree growth and other stuff as well. So fish regenerate just like trees do, but the rate determines how fast.

Tappy Winchester: M'Pres, have you tested that variable (FishingRate) ? I had assumed that it governed the speed at which the fishermen obtained fish. Similarly, I thought MiningRate, for example, governed how fast the miners worked, not how fast the mining areas regenerated. My basis for thinking this was the presence of the "reforestationrate" variable which is obviously different than "loggingrate."

M'Pres did not answer directly, but suggested a continuation on the "scenario" board. The point is that not only do resources get depleted, but the regeneration rate (except mineral deposits) can be changed by "scripting."

[Coconut Kid]

From Cafe Dave:

The Tropico.exe file is where the names are stored.  If you go in with a hex editor, you can see the following stuff near the bottom of the files at these addresses (version 1.06 file):

City Names: 0017:7E80-8040
Editor Conditons:  0017:AEA0-EAF0
Dictator Names:  0018:1AA0-20C0
Character Names:  0018:7790-8D20

There is also some other interesting stuff on cheat codes, wav file names and even a hint of a scenario translation program.

The names look to be strings of 8 to 12 characters long and should work if you keep them to that.  I changed Che Guevera to my name and changed Clyde the cow to Chris, and it worked!  You need a good hex editor to do this.  I use Hackman.

Rich Nagel: The "XDT" files that are in your DATA2 folder are all of the (proprietary compressed!) music that's in the game. The "PK2" files that are in the DATA folder are all of the graphic resources and the sound effects (excluding Tropico chat).

And yes, you're correct, you can carefully edit the names with a hex editor in the EXE. I had thought about writing a crude QBasic prog to change them, but Poptop release patches too often for me to keep the utility up to date and working.

[Coconut Kid]

From MadamPresident:

:O :O :O Look what I found in a transcript: :O :O :O

-----------------------------------------------------------------
Steinmeyer: We had some interesting interactions between the people in the game world - some we cleaned up and some we didn't. Originally, all the people could use all the buildngs. Unfortunately, the testers complained when 6 year old kids were hanging out at the local pubs, so we put age limits on some buildings. Similarly, we allow Tropicans to start working at age 13, and originally they could get married at that age, too, but again, we got complaints, so I think currently a Tropican has to be 16 to get married.

One thing that slipped by unintentionally in the marriage logic is that brothers and sisters can get married in Tropico - I had forgotten to check for that in the game code where a wife seeks a husband (yes, the women pursue the men in Tropico). The brother/sister thing was pointed out after the game's PC release on a couple bulletin boards, but I think we'll probably leave it in now.

[Coconut Kid]

From Olle_Peterson:

Is there a difference other than name in fuel for Power Plant?
I've always used gas, because it's called cleaner; coal is cheaper but dirtier than gas. What's the game effect?
Re. Output: Click on any powerplant.
To the left in the info screen you'll see a line stating something like
Power consumption:
X of Y MW
X and Y are numbers. X is the amount of power needed to supply your buildings, and Y is the amount you currently produce. Your goal is to keep X < Y.

Each engineer employed at a powerplant produces some power, exactly how much depend on their skill (roughly 10MW for no skill up to 20MW for full skill).

BrodyKoga: There is no power (output) difference between the two, but running a power station with gas costs 50% more in operating costs. The plus is that it produces much less pollution. If you have any tourism, you may want to go with the gas option, because of the reduced pollution. In any case, NEVER put tourist attractions downwind from a power station! What I normally do is leave my power stations on coal, but I try to build them so any pollution from the plant goes out to sea, not over anything on my island. I use the substations to extend my power grid to allow facilities anywhere on my island to use the power. The substations only produce about as much pollution as a ranch ... not hard to offset that with landscaping.

[Coconut Kid]

From DonaMaria:

I had a great game going - 10 years into it - had a restaurant, pub, cabaret, church, markets, clinic, farms, gold mine, fishing dock, a bunch of teamster offices, and a slew of construction offices.  I had 10 apartment buildings awaiting construction set up in a ring around all the other stuff.

And that's when the brain eating plague struck.

Nothing was getting built.  I checked in at the construction offices and the workers were just roaming around in circles.  They weren't tired, or going to the pub, or to church ... they were literally walking around in circles.  They'd start out in one direction and then turn around and go back to where they started from and repeat.

This thread went on for two pages. Folks had a lick at describing all the other people who do their work in the open engaging in similar behavior. All sorts of guesses have been made about the cause. The topic of "BEP" have been discussed ad nauseaum in many threads.

I have had my rare occasions of group confusion; but more often I have found a single individual wandering up and down somewhere totally unrelated to their work. They never find their way to any place related to any "need" and sometimes starve to death.

PopTop has been rather open that pathfinding was not the strongest element in the program. Tropico 2 restricted walking about to roads thereby eliminating the major pathfinding problems of T1.

Individuals who go into a pathfinding loop are relatively easy to handle, if they are even noticed. I believe it is reasonable to state that group problems such as Dona Maria describes are the result of "sport" (statistically unreproduceable) events of corrupt code in an individual game. Instead of worrying over it, it's time to go back to the last automatic save game and start over.

Some actions may tend to trigger problems - such as setting up an extra large number of buildings to be built without putting any of them on hold. Certain patterns of building locations might conflict with the pathfinding routine. We don't know.

One other generic cure that works in many programs. When some of the people are doing strange things (like walking under the dock or refusing to work in a certain building), rotate the map. Like reversing the plug on alternating current, the electrical engineers can't explain it, but sometimes that makes things go again. 

[Coconut Kid]

From PaulNAdhe:

When I build a Yachts Only dock next to my tourist area, do I need any dockworkers to staff it?

From Caddet:

I experimented with yachts only docks with no dockworkers.  It doesn't work.  With 2 hotels fully staffed, and one "yachts only" dock with no staff, I had a yacht sitting off the island for over 2 years.  I opened up one of the dockworker positions.  As soon as a dockworker appeared, the yacht docked and off-loaded tourists.  Then I fired the dockworker.  The yacht stayed at the dock for the next 2 years, while other yachts waited off-shore.  I again opened up a dockworker position.  As soon as the worker was hired, the yacht left, and another pulled in.  I used 2 years for each phase of the test, just to be sure there was no mistake.  Basically, when the dock had no workers it was closed to all traffic, including tourists.

Nave: Without one the yachts won't come in. Does that one actualy need to be present (as with freighters), or do the ships keep coming in even if the worker is at home?

suedenim: It seems that the dockworker simply has to be on the payroll - he doesn't have to physically be present when the yacht arrives.

juventud (in answer to a mixed port question): 1. Freighters come in to port even when you have no dockworkers around.

2. However, if you have an output queue of more than 0.1 in the dock, the ship will stay there until the goods are loaded onto the freighter

3. Dockworkers are required to be present to move the goods onto the freighter. There is nothing to be moved to or from yachts, so they are not required to be present for yachts to unload/load.

4. Each dockworker can move up to 5 units of goods.

5. Your dockworkers will make roundtrips to clear goods if there are more goods than workers.

6. It is not a good idea to keep a freighter waiting around indefinitely because it causes other ships to stack up in queue.  This is bad if you're waiting for crucial immigrant arrivals or tourist money.

7. Make sure your output queue is about 10-15 and the port is staffed with at least 4 dockworkers.  Once you exceed that, build another port.

8. Make sure your dockworkers live near the port they work in.  Otherwise, they will have to walk a long distance to the port when a ship comes in.

Kilgaard: For each tourist that arrives at your port you receive $20.

For each tourist that arrives at your "coach service" airport you receive $100

For each tourist that arrives at your "first class service" airport you receive $200

Additionally, only high class tourists will arrive on a first class plane. Coach service planes and all yachts will draw both high class and slob tourists.

flo: The revenue per tourist is always 20 pesos. So your profit is higher if you only have one dockworker in an yachts-only port as more dockworkers do not generate more tourists nor higher fees.

[Coconut Kid]

From SlickWilly:

I was frequently suffering the crash of '87 in my games.  With some analysis I came up several causes:

1 - Over Developing.  I'd hear "your people suffer for lack of medical treatment" and I'd build a hospital and fully staff all clinics and existing hospitals. Other messages would trigger futher spending sprees.  Basicly, I would see a six-figure treasury as unlimited "income".  Never go into such money-losing endevours unless you can afford to maintain over the long haul.

2 - Presidental Slush Fund.  At first, with a staff of 1 or 2 newbie bankers, the effect those fat cats have on your treasury is very small.  Over time, however, the bank will get fully staffed and they get very good at what they do.  The effect can turn your annual bottom line from black to red.  Tip: If you ever get a negative treasury, fire evey banker but one and switch him to tourist banking (leave existing tourist banking alone). X out all vacated banking jobs.  Open up banking jobs as the accounts fill up.  (If you have no tourism X all banking jobs until the economy is fixed)

3 - Food Producing Farms.  For the first 25 or so years I was producing more food than my people could eat.  This surplus was being exported from my island for profit.  I, duh, just plain never saw corn farms/fishing wharves as part of my ECONOMY. I would wait until production/meal eaten was equal before addressing it, not taking into account the effect it would have on my bottom line.

4 - Foreign Aid.  This fluctuates more than I would have expected.  Also, when the economy shrinks, the capitalists become angry, lowering your standing with the U.S., dropping your foreign aid from them, making the problem even worse.  Keep close tabs on foreign relations and use your edicts to keep relations high.

There are other things to consider as well. 
Never do large, across the board wage increases.
Raise rents whenever you can.
Newspapers, TV, Radio can provide a stable income to a large population.

This addresses a mostly non-tourist economy more directly.

[Coconut Kid]

From fable:

First, I've had "cordial" [relations with] factions with leaders who were Troubled, but "cool" [relations with] factions whose leaders who were Pleased with my performance.  This seems a little...contradictory.

It also seems strange that in "cordial" faction I would have more detractors than all my supporters, strong to weak, combined.  This seems to be the case throughout all factions--yet I keep winning elections with margins of 100-to-10.

Senor_Reuben: The opinion of the leader is all you're seeing. The opinions of individual members of the factions may differ, because people can belong to multiple factions. So, the combined respect of all the faction is enough to make it cordial, even if the leader is upset.

The reply is only partial. Additional observation and analysis is needed, or perhaps the initial observation is not typical. How many times are the members of the faction out-of-agreement with the leader? How much more weight is given to the leader than to the average of the members in assigning the combined Faction Rating?

Experience and interpolation now indicates that the treatment of the Faction Leader is extremely important. By analogy to the effect on family members and if the Faction Leader is considered the "target" : the wave effect is by quintiles:

• Target \ Leader = 100%
• +++ level supporters = 80%
• ++ level supporters = 60% including possible additional plus
• + level supporters = 40% including possible additional plus
• Detractors = 20% possible additional plus

IMHO this is an important concept of the Faction Leader's position. When used in conjunction with the faction growing tools, the player should be able to crush some factions by growing others.