Tropico 3

[heat901]

I am really digging the graphic update they did on this game and also glad I got it for 13 dollars.

 

[9mak9]

One thing you need to make sure is spreading out buildings that provide the same service. Make sure your Church and Cathedral, 2 clinics, restaurant and pub are not right next to each other. Since it might take awhile for people to walk places they they might get tired and say they cannot find any satisfaction for religion, entertainment, etc.

You should use the last tab when you have selected one of the people to see what their comments are. If they say they can't find a specific need, then look where the live/work and see if you can decipher the problem.

Building a high school then a college is really important because you cannot keep importing specialists because they cost a lot and the nationalism will drop because you are focusing too much on outside help. You might need to import the first teacher/professor but after that they should graduate and the workforce increases

 

[Born2bwire]

My main problem now is getting people to move from the shacks to better housing. I can plop down an apartment building, condo, house, whathaveyou (all having pretty good housing quality) and set the rent to zero and it still will have vacancies with people building shacks next door. Christ, what do you people want? I tear down the shacks, put in good quality FREE housing for you ungrateful proles and you still build the shithouses in front of my hotels. Thanks assholes. Maybe I should try arranging accidents for all of them... Hell, it's not even just the unemployed, I had a bishop living in a shack with decent housing next door.

 

[microAmp]

My main problem now is getting people to move from the shacks to better housing. I can plop down an apartment building, condo, house, whathaveyou (all having pretty good housing quality) and set the rent to zero and it still will have vacancies with people building shacks next door. Christ, what do you people want? I tear down the shacks, put in good quality FREE housing for you ungrateful proles and you still build the shithouses in front of my hotels. Thanks assholes. Maybe I should try arranging accidents for all of them... Hell, it's not even just the unemployed, I had a bishop living in a shack with decent housing next door.

I usually destroy the shacks near by newly building living quarters to encourage them to move into those buildings, though sometimes they pop up again but if they do, it's less of them. Then I'll building another until the shacks are gone.

 

[heat901]

My main problem now is getting people to move from the shacks to better housing. I can plop down an apartment building, condo, house, whathaveyou (all having pretty good housing quality) and set the rent to zero and it still will have vacancies with people building shacks next door. Christ, what do you people want? I tear down the shacks, put in good quality FREE housing for you ungrateful proles and you still build the shithouses in front of my hotels. Thanks assholes. Maybe I should try arranging accidents for all of them... Hell, it's not even just the unemployed, I had a bishop living in a shack with decent housing next door.

Do the social security edict, for the retirees,students and unemployed can at least afford living somewhere. Also location, location, location! Sometimes people will build shacks because its closer to their jobs then the housing and takes to long on foot to get to work. You could also build roads so that they can get to their jobs fasters. If you want I could take a look at your saved game.

 

[Born2bwire]

Do the social security edict, for the retirees,students and unemployed can at least afford living somewhere. Also location, location, location! Sometimes people will build shacks because its closer to their jobs then the housing and takes to long on foot to get to work. You could also build roads so that they can get to their jobs fasters. If you want I could take a look at your saved game.

Well, my planning sucks in general but below is an example of what I see. In the end, I think I limit the shacks more by leaving no room left for them to build than anything else. All rent on this map was set to zero and normal maintainance (can't remember if I had SS turned on or not). But there are vacancies in the houses (do those not fill up because it only holds two families and not four people?) and the apartment building and there are shacks that would keep popping up next to them. So there are a few shacks between the apartment building and the hotel (yeah nice, thanks) and the houses and the pool.

 

[heat901]

I feel in the first came the shacks were all over the place!! What is your unemployment precentage? Other then the shacks how do you like that game?

 

[JoshGuru7]

do those not fill up because it only holds two families and not four people?

Yes, this is your problem. Houses and Apartments hold family units and your screenshot depicts an effectively full house. Tropicans will always select the unit with the highest housing quality where the rent is 1/3 their salary or less and is within reasonable distance of their workplace. You don't need to set rent on apartments to zero - set it to 1/3 of minimum wage and issue the social security edict.

 

[Skott]

I've tried it 1/3 and zero rent with and without the social security edict. Plain fact is that you will always have some shacks. Just the nature of the game. The goal is more like to keep the number of shacks to a minimum since you cannot get rid of them entirely it seems.

Kinda makes sense. No matter how good things are we have some people in the USA that will live on the streets no matter what. Its just a part of life. Sad but but true.

 

[JoshGuru7]

I've tried it 1/3 and zero rent with and without the social security edict. Plain fact is that you will always have some shacks. Just the nature of the game. The goal is more like to keep the number of shacks to a minimum since you cannot get rid of them entirely it seems.

I never have shacks. Try clicking on one of your shack occupants to see what their profession is as it's possible that you're missing one or two when you adjust wages (very easy to do with dockworkers in particular). You already know that the houses need to be relatively close to their jobs so I'm not sure what else could be the problem.

 

[minmaster]

i play sandbox in T3 and for the most part, the game is way too easy. once you get your economy going, it's very hard to lose the game. i still haven't delved into campaign yet but i almost exclusively play sandbox in previous tropicos.

i still can't get over how incredibly large some of the buildings are (garages, newspaper building, diplomatic ministry), i mean WTF?

 

[Born2bwire]

i play sandbox in T3 and for the most part, the game is way too easy. once you get your economy going, it's very hard to lose the game. i still haven't delved into campaign yet but i almost exclusively play sandbox in previous tropicos.

i still can't get over how incredibly large some of the buildings are (garages, newspaper building, diplomatic ministry), i mean WTF?

Yeah, I have found newspapers to be utterly worthless. They have a small effect on the populace and usually by the time you are ready to build them their size marginalizes them to the outskirts of town where there crappy delivery radius makes them even less effective. A few TV stations and radio stations do so much better.

 

[paperfist]

I never have shacks. Try clicking on one of your shack occupants to see what their profession is as it's possible that you're missing one or two when you adjust wages (very easy to do with dockworkers in particular). You already know that the houses need to be relatively close to their jobs so I'm not sure what else could be the problem.

I don't have shacks either.

Ok, ok if I have unemployed on the island I'll have a couple.

You also have to keep in mind when they are couples that means the rent they will pay is 1/3 x 2 for them both.

 

[JoshGuru7]

i play sandbox in T3 and for the most part, the game is way too easy. once you get your economy going, it's very hard to lose the game. i still haven't delved into campaign yet but i almost exclusively play sandbox in previous tropicos.

The campaign is definitely a lot harder than sandboxes so if you think they are too easy, that's the next step. For example, the second to last mission requires accumulating $500k cash by a deadline but you can only unlock industry, tourism and government buildings over time which makes it more difficult. The last mission has you playing second fiddle to a whismy dictator who keeps issuing bizarre edicts that make it difficult to stay out of debt.

 

[9mak9]

I love the game/series but I feel like after you build a power plant and some of the buildings that need electricity there isn't much else to do. Nothing really else to build, you just expand and don't really do much. That's why I don't like the sandboxes, but the campaign is fun because you have a specific goal with obstacles (but short length).

I can finish a challenge or get bored with a sandbox in a few hours. When I compare this to some of the other strategy/sims I like (i.e. Total War, Civilization), I can play a single game for weeks on end and still have an interest. I think they need to bring on more random events, challenges or have an upgrade system based on the years similar to how Civ 4 did it.

 

[Born2bwire]

I love the game/series but I feel like after you build a power plant and some of the buildings that need electricity there isn't much else to do. Nothing really else to build, you just expand and don't really do much. That's why I don't like the sandboxes, but the campaign is fun because you have a specific goal with obstacles (but short length).

I can finish a challenge or get bored with a sandbox in a few hours. When I compare this to some of the other strategy/sims I like (i.e. Total War, Civilization), I can play a single game for weeks on end and still have an interest. I think they need to bring on more random events, challenges or have an upgrade system based on the years similar to how Civ 4 did it.

Yeah, I agree. After a certain point there isn't much challenge. Still, usually something happens where you hit a tipping point and suddenly your economy goes in the crapper. In a way it is a good thing because it keeps the game accessible in small doses. You can sit down and play for an hour or two and you can play through an entire scenario and such. A bit nicer for people who are a bit more casual about gaming like myself these days. Take thi in comparison with a full blown simulation like SimCity. I do not know if I would want to get back into that game because of the huge time sink it becomes to get a very large city. It's nice sometimes to just sit down and be able to go from beginning to a sense of an end in a reasonable amount of time.

 

[minmaster]

you can't compare this game to the greats like civ. it ain't called sid meire's tropico.
now that i think back, the previous tropicos were the same way. if you pass the initial industry setup phase, you're smooth sailing form there on. the game is not as much about challenges, but builidng a nice little island and following the people and their simulated lives.

 

[paperfist]

you can't compare this game to the greats like civ. it ain't called sid meire's tropico.
now that i think back, the previous tropicos were the same way. if you pass the initial industry setup phase, you're smooth sailing form there on. the game is not as much about challenges, but builidng a nice little island and following the people and their simulated lives.

Yeah this is more like a tycoon type of game, once you get the math down it's clear sailing ahead. That said it was a new company who took over Tropico 3 and if you look at their official forums there's some threads dealing with expansion possibles, not official of course

 

[heat901]

Got the absolute power expansion for 6 something this steam sale... def not worth $20 but for 6 it does at some flavor to the game.