Tropico, how to be an evil dictator..

Lemmy · December 28, 2002, 10:36

Question for the tropicans, how do you play the evil dictator, i've actually never lasted long as evil dictator, i ended up getting my people happy, and winning elections.

I suppose you'll need:
A good military
The support of at least one of the factions, preferably the biggest?
An immigrations office to keep your population from leaving.
A high school, to train more military
A clinic to raise the birthrates
Some farms and a factory for income.

As for diplomacy, id' think Russia would be best, since they don't seem to care about liberty, and they offer cheap housing.

But i've never tested this in the game, does anyone have experience with this?

Urban Ranger · December 28, 2002, 11:42

Nope, got bord with it long ago and sold the game to some hapless sucker.

Lemmy · December 28, 2002, 12:36

i haven't played it for a while myself, got some free time now, thought i'd give it a try again.

General Ludd · December 28, 2002, 15:44

It helps to be a religous dictator. Build a strong religous base to help keep your people in line even when you treat them like crap, and then build a strong military and keep your soldiers as loyal as possible - issue martial law, do book burnings, ect... and, once you are able to, get some newspapers and radio stations going with propaganda to keep your people loyal.

A nice bonus to being a religous dictator is that you can label any enemy of yours as a heretic.

DarkCloud · December 28, 2002, 18:27

Tropico is insanely simple... Just never assassinate any of your people and you'll be fine.

Frankly, I don't think you can be a successful evil dictator; the game just doesn't seem to be written that way.

Adagio · December 28, 2002, 19:14

Quote:

Originally posted by Urban Ranger
Nope, got bord with it long ago and sold the game to some hapless sucker.

That was how I felt the first few times I played the game (= Quickly uninstalled), but about six months ago, I reinstalled it, and realized it was actually quiet funny... Though in my games, I always forgets to build the churches, and I have never been that friendly to those militarists... in my games I have most of the time, been focusing on liberty and knowledge...

General Ludd · December 28, 2002, 20:29

Quote:

Originally posted by DarkCloud
Tropico is insanely simple... Just never assassinate any of your people and you'll be fine.

Frankly, I don't think you can be a successful evil dictator; the game just doesn't seem to be written that way.

Not true, I have done quite well as a religous dictator - I established a decent economy, with a couple of factories. I was eventually able to field quite a sizeble army, and had succesfuly crushed a revolution and two coup detats.

Assassinations? That is for the desperate, or just plain stupid. A smart dictator will just brand dissidents as heretics, fire them from their jobs, and evict them from their homes - make their life a living hell untill they die or leave the island.

(the military jail in the expansion is also quite good - they get put in there for two years, and have a good chance of dying due to the poor conditions before their time is up, if I remember correctly)

Edicts and leader traits play a large role in being a succesful dictator, aswell.

DarkCloud · December 29, 2002, 13:41

Quote:

fire them from their jobs, and evict them from their homes - make their life a living hell untill they die or leave the island.

But their families still get mad don't they?

-
Oh and build a lot of construction crews- they are the lifeblood of the island

Lemmy · December 29, 2002, 14:09

Ah yes, construction crews..in my "good" game i have 3 of them wokring on an airport...it takes forever to finish one, it's been 15 years now, and they're still levelling the terrain...maybe i shouldn't have build it in the center of the island

Adagio · December 29, 2002, 14:12

I have never finnished an airport yet... it took toooooo long (and that was on a somewhat flat land)

Lemmy · December 29, 2002, 15:37

I just finished it...in 2009, took about 30 years in total, and it really wasn't worth it...oh crap, i forgot to check out the trade delegation option...meh, maybe later.

General Ludd · December 30, 2002, 21:59

Did you patch the game? I remember it reducing the time it takes to build an airport. (or was that the expansion...)

Lemmy · December 31, 2002, 06:21

I patched it to 1.01, the actual building didn't take long, but levelling the ground took years.

DarkCloud · December 31, 2002, 22:14

Quote:

I have never finnished an airport yet... it took toooooo long (and that was on a somewhat flat land)

the patch fixes it, decreasing the building time by half.

-
And yes Osweld, the expansion also patches it

Standup · December 31, 2002, 23:49

Tropico Gold (your standard expansion pack) also claims to reduce the length of time for large constructions.

I've never actually built an airport or played a bad guy. Keep thinking i'm missing out but as someone said the game doesn't seem to encourage evil dictators. Its too easy to build a healthy economy and be a nice liberal.

Lemmy · January 1, 2003, 07:56

even when turning up the difficulty?
At moderate difficulty i always had problems winning the first election.

Standup · January 2, 2003, 09:23

Not quite sure what difficulty i play at

i tend to tweak quite a few of the settings but its generally higher than the standard settings.

First elections normally see a tax cut and the mardi gras event about a month before. Normally seems to work but i guess a lot depends on your background, expectations etc.