Tropicans Await Elections

Sinead Garcia is done in for.

 

Tropico 4 Propaganda – Part 1

Well in my play of the new Tropico 4 Propaganda I decided to do a weekly Youtubein series for it.

In this propaganda the two towns in USSR and Bulgaria are having a socialist competition in which the person with the best slogans wins.  You have to craft 7 slogans in order to win the competition.

As always in this first one I simply setup my economies so that when the roller coaster ride comes… I’m ready.

Tropico 4 Propaganda

With the release of the final piece of DLC for Tropico 4 called “Propaganda” it wonders when a new Golden version of Tropico 4 will be coming out that will incorporate the Modern Times expansion ($20) and the $40 in DLC for the game.

I ask this because it’s hard to tell whether or not people should even buy Propaganda if they can scoop it for far cheaper later on.

Propaganda is a DLC pack that adds a single building that converts people to Loyalists (which was functionally already done by the masoleum and childhood museum), adds journalists to do a PR job for you (which was already done with the El Presidente TV), a new Russian suite for custom El Presidente… and a single mission.

The single mission will be the yay or nay for most people.

The mission has you go through a choose your own adventure style in which Penultimo is constantly throwing potential slogan ideas at you and then forces you to do something to make his slogans come true.

The interesting thing about it all is that every slogan chosen, is actually a real socialist slogan.  Trust me when I say they’re goofy as all hell.

It adds about 3 hours per playthrough with 24 possible slogans to choose from, which means you should get about 3 playthroughs to see all slogans (so 9 hours of play value).

The new mode is fun… but once again I’m skeptical.

If the gold version is coming out soon, people are just better off waiting on this one.

Tropico 5 will be coming out in 2014 so I’m thinking a Gold or Ultimate edition is due eventually.

Tropico 5 Announced

Well with the release of the final piece of Tropico 4 DLC named “Propaganda” they have now officially announced the launch of their next title, Tropico 5… due some time in 2014.

The new title will feature 4-player multiplayer, a start from the Colonial Era (meaning you’ll have to balance between Germans and America at some point), advanced technology research, a real trading system, and more amazing music.

Review: Tropico 4

Well getting away from games that are on sale or are really terrible it’s time to look at a full priced great game, Tropico 4.

History of Tropico

Coming into a new millennium new forms of video games were taking off left and right.  Whereas many game projects in the past were interest pieces now people were making games to make money.  Personal ambition and creativity was taken out of the hands of the developer and instead they were forced to churn out shooters and RPGs.  Instead of making good games with length to them developers were instead choosing to develop short adventures. This new business model allowed people to churn out massive numbers of clones and see roughly the same sales on each.

At this time no one really thought about how they were oversaturating the market with games and shooting themselves with an arrow to the knee.  The developers who are really big today are those that put out really high quality games that promised a lot of play length.  Some of these included Civilization, Morrowind and… Tropico.

Tropico developers PopTop Software had wowed the world with Railroad Tycoon 2 and were going to try and take their hands on another simulator that was mostly abandoned… the building simulator.

They knew in order to sell this game they would have to make a game that was ridiculous and very offensive.  They had to catch people’s attention because building cities and building Rome had not only been done, but done to death.

What they came up with would not only sell well, but would also shock as well.

Their concept was simple, instead of being God, a city planner, or a Roman dignitary you would instead be the dictator of a banana republic island nation.  Instead of trying to please people and expand you will be isolationist and exploit your people.

Simulators were doing notoriously bad in 2001, but somehow Tropico survived and did very well.  The game saw two expansions in its first year and after a year another full game was released called Tropico 2.  Tropico 2 was basically the full game with the expansions.

Tropico 2 did not do nearly as well as Tropico 1 and with the sale of the studio to Take-Two Interactive the decision was made to make a new giant super studio that would be called Firaxis Studio and run by Sid Meier.  Sid Meier was impressed with their work on Railroad Tycoon 2 (originally his IP).  He assigned this crew to help him work on his own simulator, Civilization.

Sid Meier was looking at his own projects and had no time for Tropico.  The license was sold Haemimont Games.  This was a very odd developer to pick up this title, largely because they were making games mainly for the Italian and Spanish markets.

But the gaming type was great, the European market chews up simulators like it’s no one business.  Haemimont Games before this was creating war and Rome simulators… and doing quite well with it.

But Haemimont Games was looking to hit the North American market.

Against all odds something really really odd happened, simulators made a come back.  In 2009 Tropico 3 would be released and would receive an 8/10 from most reviewers.  It was well received and people were buying this game like mad.  Most importantly people were constantly being fed DLCs to feed their hunger for more Tropico 3.

Tropico 3 was released with a 15-mission campaign representing roughly 40 hours of unique gameplay.  It also featured a fully functional tutorial,.. something the previous titles did not have.  DLCs were released like crazy unlocking more characters to play as and more scenarios.

With such great success they started work on Tropico 4.  Tropico 4 would also be well received and would out sell Tropic 3.  To date they have released 3 scenarios.

The folks at Haemimont Games are off making a sequel to Tropico 4… this time in space.

Synopsis

Oh Hello There El Presidente, I was just keeping your seat warm… I promise.

Welcome to the wonderful world of Tropico.  Tropico is of course the name of every single island that you will run.

At the loading screen you can select from one of 20 dictatorial personalities. Each of these have personality traits that will level up as you play them.  My favorite of these of course is General Noriega.

Much like Tropico 3 this game features a four-part tutorial that will run you through how to play the game.

So unlike most simulators there is no internal economy to worry about.  You have to meet people’s needs but you will not be receiving much for tax revenues and you do not need to worry about the needs of different citizen types.

The game has three different citizen types.  However unlike most simulators they are considered more of a research than a population.  To this end your goal will not be to reach a massive population (unlike most simulators).  Instead citizens are just a means to an end.

The three different citizen types are Uneducated, High School Graduate, and College Educated.  You you need them as employees for various businesses

So you will have primary resources, secondary resources and tertiary resources.

Your primary resources (raw materials) are sold cheaply but are also a resource your people will need to survive.

Secondary resources are industrialized resources crafted from your primary ones and are sold for far higher prices.

Your tertiary resources are support services for your people.

You need support services because you need to keep your people happy.  If you don’t keep them happy they will revolt and overthrow you.

Your population will be split up into eight factions all of which will have leaders you can speak with.  These are Communists, Capitalists, Nationalists, Environmentalists, Capitalists,

Each will have their own unique set of structures they will want built to satisfy their population.  Unlike other games that force you to satisfy all needs you can choose to satisfy some and not others.

There is also an election every year.  You can choose to rig it, which will cost you internationally or run it legitimately in which case you will need popular support of the factions.

Yes I said internationally.  The game features five nations.  America and USSR will attack you if your reputation with them falls, which just means you lose the game.  The Middle East, China and The EU you can have bad relations with, but you wouldn’t want to as importing to them is worth more than America or USSR.  These nations as well can be satisfied by adopting certain policies or having or not having certain facilities.

All of your income will come from these trading partners so best to keep them happy!  Every now and then a ship will arrive which will pick up all your surplus goods for trade and also drop off new immigrants.

The game comes with 20 missions and a sandbox mode.  The DLCs each contain four missions each relating to a new emerging island type.

Strengths

• Great Bang for Your Buck
• Easy to Learn
• Interesting Characters

Upon finishing the game I spent 3 hours per mission with 20 missions… that’s 60 hours.  On top of that I still have the option of leveling my various dictators meaning I’ll need another 200-300 hours to 100% this game.  I purchased all of the DLCs and finished them in 8-9 hours at $4.99 per DLC.

My suspicion is that once the sequel/expansion comes out for this game in a few months the price on this game will dip quite a bit.  I would suggest picking this game up then if you’re looking for a great bang for your buck.  Right now it’s already a pretty good buy but once it goes on sale, oh boy.

About the game itself.  Most simulators have this horrendous difficulty scaling where you go from the very basic and after 5 minutes you are hurled into treacherous waters where it will take you hours to figure out what to do.  The tutorial is really simple and the game controls easily.  There is no complicated math that you will have to figure out.  Everything is displayed in the information panel.

The game is also funny. All of the characters are what people think the stereotypes are like.  As well whenever you have problems there are narrating voices making fun of them  My favorite so far: “People are complaining about low wages.  Think of our El Presidente, he doesn’t make any money!”

It’s propaganda at its greatest and greatly reminds me of Starship Troopers.

Weaknesses

• No Difficulty Scaler
• A Lot of Waiting

The game measures difficulty in percentages.  So the tutorials are so easy that they are between 70%-95%.  Then you go into your first mission and it is 114%.  By the end of the game you will hit 250%.  That’s nice and all.  But it’s not a real difficulty scaler.  Anyone who plays a game wants to be able to set a game from easy to hard in a meaningful manner.

Another complaint about the game is that a lot of time you are just waiting around.  Even when you put it on supersonic speed you will be waiting around for stuff to happen.  This is because the ship that drops off your money comes on a timer, as opposed to live income most simulators have.

Concluding Thoughts

For a person who has placed a number of simulators this game will offer no challenge, will not seem real, nor will it be that exciting.  But it is a funny fun game so maybe that will keep you entertained.  For someone newer to simulators this is a great buy.

It is a thoroughly entertaining experience with great replay value.  I’d recommend this game to anyone willing to spend $40 on a game.  If you aren’t, wait a few months and this game will be available for cheap.

HOWEVER if you own Tropico 3 this is not a worthwhile buy.  Unfortunately there are too many similarities between the two games to make this game worth picking up.