Tropico 3 Walkthrough

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1...Introduction...(1TI)
==============================
Use control+F to navigate.
1. Introduction..........................(1TI)
2. Controls..............................(2CT)
3. Gameplay..............................(3GP)
Economy: How to Make Money...........(EMM)
Buildings...........................(BDG)
Strategies..........................(STG)
People: They Make Money For You......(PMY)
Buildings...........................(HOZ)
Factions............................(FCZ)
Infrastructure: Insures Money is Made(IFM)
Buildings...........................(DPZ)
Edicts..............................(EDZ)
4. Campaign Guide........................(4GD)
5. Closing...............................(5CL)
====================
Introduction
====================
Hello, and welcome to my guide for Tropico 3. The purpose of this guide is to
provide a guide for how to play the game along with some tips to get through
some of the harder missions in the game. The guide is organized in to five
sections: you're in the introduction, the controls section lists the game’s
controls, The Gameplay section provides tips for general combat and how stuff
works, and the main guide is the way through the game. The introduction and the
closing section have contact information as well as some other information
about the guide. If you have any questions, you can contact me at
wcrobars@hotmail.com
====================
2...Controls...(2CT)
====================
Xbox 360
L.Stick..........Move Cursor
R.Stick..........Move Map/Zoom
LS Click.........Street View
RS Click.........Normal View
R.Trigger........Menu/Angle control (Press face buttons for menus)
L.Trigger........Track Person
L/R Bumper.......Change Category in Menu
Y................Construct
X................Select Person/Other Options
A................Confirm
B................Cancel
Start............Pause Menu
Back.............Objectives
PC Has fully customizable controls, so use whatever you feel like.
===================
3...Gameplay...(GP3)
===================
Congratulations Presidente! You’ve just taken control of a small island in the
Caribbean sea! As the ultimate ruler of the country you’ll need to control
every aspect of the island: how it makes money, how the government is run, how
it treats its citizens, and how it handles other nations in the world. It
sounds like a lot to handle, and that’s because it is. Hope you’re up for it,
otherwise you can expect a violent uprising and/or a military coup just before
your execution!
---------------
A. Economy: How to Make Money (EMM)
---------------
To put it bluntly, money is the most important resource in all of Tropico.
Virtually everything in the game will cost you money to do, and establishing a
thriving Economy is the key to keeping the island happy and your pockets lined
with cash. There are three primary ways to make money, each discussed below:
Farming
Farming is the most basic means to make money in the game. Farms can provide
food for your people, but the wonderful Caribbean climate will allow you to
grow all sorts of things you can export off of the island. You can grow fruit
in order to can it and sell it by exporting it off the island. You could also
make money by producing a cash crop (Tobacco, Sugar, Coffee) and selling it,
which makes more a profit but can’t feed a worker’s stomach. You can then go
further and build factories to make more money off of your products. Sugar can
be distilled into rum, tobacco can be rolled into Cigars, and Pineapple can be
canned. You can also farm from the oceans with a beach side wharf or raise
cattle. These can feed your people, but also be sold for profit.
The downside of farming is that it requires time to make money. Farms won’t
turn a profit for two years while they plant crops. Even then, farms take up a
lot of space and require large open areas to grow. Crops can also be fickle and
need to grow in certain areas to get the best version.
Resources:
More often than not your island will have something under the soil that can be
exploited for money. This isn’t set in stone though: resources are random on
every island, so you need to deal with what you’re given. Mines will let you
extract the minerals from the ground and sell them as exports, and oil wells
will do the same for oil. These can be sold as is or converted to more valuable
items with an oil refinery or a jewelry factory, though not all minerals can be
used for these.
Resources are a great way to make money, but there is no guarantee what you
might have in any given map. To add to this mines and oil wells are pretty damn
ugly and will make your island look a bit ugly.
Tourism:
Rich people will always want to get away from their boring city lives, so let
them come to you! By building hotels, along with docks or an airport, tourists
can arrive to spend their money and time on your island. Tourists will want to
explore the majestic wonders of your island, so that means you need to build
them a lot of attractions that they can spend their money on. Beachside
resorts, swimming pools, casinos- you name it. You can up the ante with some
nice hotels and go for rich tourists, charging exorbitant prices for all goods
and services.
Tourism can make money, but only if you’re attracting the right kind of
tourist. Your average tourist will merely break even with you on the island, so
you need to attract the high rollers. This means nice accommodations and high
class entertainment, all on the opposite of the island from all of your ugly
tenements and mines.
---------------
I. Buildings...(BDG)
---------------
These are the various buildings related to industry and production, with their
ratings a prices. Many buildings can be given upgrades once certain conditions
are met. These will increase any number of factors, and many buildings can have
numerous contributing factors.
Farm-$1500
Rating- N/A
You can’t function without farms, so they don’t need a rating. As a cash making
venture there are better options out there, but farms are cheap to build and
maintain. They also need a lot of land to function, which is the only major
downpoint. So don’t overbuild in farms.
Ranch-$750
Rating-3/5
Takes up a smaller space but produces a lot less food. It provides meat for the
island, and has a lot of possible options for placement. Doesn’t count as a
true farm, but build a couple to improve food quality.
Fisherman’s wharf-$3000
Rating-4/5
Placed on the coast. It will come with a fleet of boats that venture out to
catch fish. It provides a lot of food for the money, but it can be awkward to
place and usually requires roads to be built if in an out of the way location.
Mines-$3000
Rating-N/A
Mines are the easiest and cheapest way to make money early on the game. Unlike
farms they start producing early in the game, and they never need advanced
workers. They’re dependent on how where mineral deposits are: build them near
(not on) the large yellow area for the best effects. Mines are amazing options
of you have minerals, but they get an N/A because minerals sometimes don’t show
up or appear in hard to reach places.
Jewelry Factory- $13,000
Rating-2/5
These are only good if you’re mining a lot of gold, which is the rarest
resource in the game by far. Even then this doesn’t really make a whole lot
more money than other industry.
Oil Well- $8000
Rating- 4/5
Oil wells are cash cows early in the game, and you should snap oil wells fast.
They need to be built on top of oil deposits. The only problem with oil wells
is that they need educated workers, which you’ll most likely need to hire early
in the game.
Oil Refinery-$15,000
Rating- 5/5
These have a dual function: they will process crude oil into barrels,
dramatically increasing the price of exported oil, and they will also
automatically collect off-shore oil fields. They should be built as close as
possible to offshore oil fields, which you should take note of at the start of
the game. These easily pay for themselves several times over (one can make
around $200,000 in ten years on an oil rich island.) Extremely lucrative
constructions.
Cannery-$15,000
Rating-2/5
This produces canned tobacco, pineapple, and fish for export. This really isn’t
worth it: cigar factories can make just as much for cheaper, and farming
pineapple and fish for profit usually isn’t that lucrative. If you have all the
resources it’s great, but otherwise it’s a pass. Canneries will shuffle food
from the people in addition to costing money, which can leave people starving
while you ship out all the island’s food.
Cigar Factory-$10,000
Rating-5/5
A cheap way to make a lot of money, as long as you have tobacco farms. One of
the best ways to make money earlier in the game, though it’s outpaced by other
industries later in the game. If you don’t have any oil on the island, this is
the next best way to make money. (Or do both and make even more.)
Logging Camp-$1500
Rating-1/5
Logging destroys fertile land for very little profit and makes less money than
other industries. If you have a lot of trees, farming is a better way to make
money.
Lumber Mill-$5000
Rating-1/5
Uses logs to make Lumber, which can be exported or...
Furniture Factory-$17,000
Rating-2/5
...used to make furniture at a factory. Though furniture can be lucrative, the
other aspects just aren’t worth it. It’s the only industry that needs three
buildings to function, which means all sorts of extra work for teamsters and a
higher starting price. The environmentalists will hate you for it too. They
hate other industries too, but those make a lot more money.
Rum Distillery-$22,000
Rating-3/5
Converts sugar into rum for export, which is very valuable. However, it’s also
quite a bit more than other industries. Still worth it, but others are better
to get first.
----------
Tourism:
----------
These buildings are related to the island’s Tourism industry, and will produce
money based off of how many tourists use them. Many of these can also be used
by Tropicans, but not all of them.
Accommodations:
Tourists need somewhere to stay when they’re on the island, otherwise they
won’t even come.
Bungalow- $400
Rating- 1/5
Bungalows are pointless. They provide about the same quality as Hotels, but can
only hold one family. It’s technically cheaper to build a ton of bungalows, but
that means time to build all of them separately which is a much larger hassle
then the few hundred $$$ you’ll save.
Motel- $3000
Rating- 1/5
Pretty much the same story as the Bungalow. These are the “cheap” version of
hotels, but hotels are already cheap to begin with.
Hotel- $5000
Rating- 4/5
The best accommodations for the price, as long as you aren’t looking to attract
the super rich. This provides a lot of rooms for a modes investment, and should
be your only accommodations until you build a power plant.
Beach Villa- $1500
Rating- 2/5
Upgraded Bungalow, with most of the same problems. Jacking up the price can
still bring in some decent cash from wealthy tourists, but the other hotels are
better. Requires electricity.
Luxury Hotel- $8000
Rating- 4/5
The Motel of electronic hotels. It’s the best hotel next to the Skyscraper, and
you can build more than one of them.
Skyscraper Hotel- $12,000
Rating- 5/5
The best hotel in the game, but you can only have one of them on the island.
Offers the best service and ridiculously high prices, and will attract much
richer tourists. If you’re going for a tourism based economy, you need this.
Attractions-
These are what people come to your island to see. Most of these are pretty much
the same thing for different amounts of money. Raising the price and enforcing
dress codes will attract different tourists, as will building more ecological
buildings. Many Tropicans will visit some of these areas as well, and tourists
can also go to some of entertainment buildings for Tropicans.
Tour office- $1800
Souvenir shop- $1300
Beach site- $500
Pool-$4000
These will attract cheap tourists, but they are also the cheapest buildings to
create and the ones that need the least amount of careful placement. Beach
sites are the best tourist building early on when built in a nice area. And
pools are nice when placed near hotels
Scenic Outlook- $1000
Ethnic Enclave- $10,000
Botanical Garden-$5,000
These buildings will attract the substantially richer eco tourists. They also
require careful placement in areas that are naturally beautiful, much more than
other tourist attractions.
Spa-$5,000
Zoo-$7,000
These will attract higher class tourists to your island with high class
entertainment. (Casinos and other electrical entertainment venues do this as
well.) You need these if you want rich people, which is the best way to make
money off of tourism.
----------
Transport
----------
These are needed to get tourists to your island, which is obviously a
requirement if you want tourism at all.
Dock-$2000
Airport-$16,000
Both of these have the same function. Docks will bring in cheap tourists, while
Airports will bring in rich ones. Airports will also bring in more tourists.
Obviously you want to have an airport, and you need one if you’re really going
to make any money off of tourism in the game.
---------------
II. Strategies...(STG)
---------------
Your economy is the first thing that you need to get up and running when you
start the game. It matters more than everything else on the island. Though not
always advisable, it’s perfectly fine to go into debt the first couple years of
the game in order to start producing a lot of money fast.
When you start the game you should pull up your overlays. These will tell you
what’s on the island. The first thing to check is your mineral deposits.
Minerals are the best way to make money early in the game since they provide
instant profits. They also tend to provide the best money: Iron and Bauxite
mines provide pure cash, but they also have no option for advancement with
Industry. Oil wells and Gold deposits give more money and can be upgraded to
refineries and Jewelry factories to make even more.
The second best option is a couple sugar/tobacco farms with a production
factory for cigars or a distillery for rum. This will take a couple of years to
start turning a profit, but it’s a decent option for some money. You’ll need
high school education (more on that below) for factory jobs, so make a high
school one of your early priorities.
After your economy gets going you’ll most likely have more money that you know
what to deal with. You shouldn’t really change your spending a whole lot
though: 2-3 important buildings a year and some houses is good. You want to
save up some money for the crash. Your economy tends to reach a “break even”
point on a lot of the game’s islands. This happened around the tenth in-game
year: your money flow will slow drastically as the island increases in size,
and you’ll sort of reach a point where you’re making just enough money to run
things.
At this point you should introduce a second industry to your island, one of the
ones you have not yet picked. Farming something is not a good idea if you’re
already farming, you simply need to much space. Building another couple mines
or an oil refinery is a good idea, as it adding a tourist dock and trying to
attract some tourism.
---------------
B. People: They Make Money for you...(PMY)
---------------
While money is nice, you need people to make it for you. The citizens of
Tropico are willing to work for you, but they have their own needs and desires
that need to be met. Pay them too little or repress them a little too much and
you could have an uprising on your hands. As a general
People have a host of needs to be met. Making them happy will make you happy,
since they’ll work harder and make more money for the island:
Food:
The most basic thing people need to do is eat. Otherwise they starve to death.
To increase your people’s food satisfaction you need to provide them with some
variety in their diet: they can survive off of corn, but no one wants to eat
that all the time. Build a couple of ranches, a fisherman’s wharf, and a fruit
farm and their food score will sky rocket. Building a market or issuing the
“Food for the People” edict (see below) will increase it even further. As a
general rule you’ll want one food producing building for every 50 people on the
island.
Housing:
People need places to live. If you don’t provide them they’ll make them
themselves, but they don’t want to live inside shacks. People want good
housing: the more expensive it is, the better the quality of life. They also
want their homes to be in appropriate areas: living in close quarters or next
to a factory will lower their happiness.
Health:
Staying alive is a good thing, and you need healthcare on your island in order
to accomplish that. The only way to increase the health score is to build
clinics and hospitals. Hospitals are much better, but are more expensive and
need electricity to work. This should be an early priority: people will start
dying without proper healthcare in a few years. If possible, build clinics in
multiple areas of the island to ensure people don’t have to walk far.
Religion:
Religion is an important factor in the lives of Tropicans. They need churches
to forgive them of their sins and have a solid moral ground. A church should be
an early priority, with a Cathedral built in the first ten years of the game.
Religious satisfaction is also important: these churches need to be staffed by
a full contingent of priests and be near housing in order to make faith a quick
endeavor. Religion is, generally speaking, one of the hardest categories to get
good at making.
Entertainment:
After a hard day of back breaking labor, people need to unwind. They do this
through entertainment: restaurants, gambling, sports, etc. Though entertainment
is not an extremely high priority, people will get depressed if they don’t have
anything to spend their money on. Build a few restaurants in residential areas
to satisfy this, and eventually move up to higher class buildings and
attractions.
Liberty:
As much as people love and adore you, some basic human privileges are always a
nice thing. Liberty determines how many freedoms and opportunities your
citizens have to advance. Schools and colleges let your people learn and grow,
as well as letting them take better jobs to make more money. Liberty is also
governed by the press: have a newspaper or TV station and you’ll be on the way
to freedom.
Crime Safety:
Getting shot is a bad thing, and no one wants to live in the bad part of town.
People want nice, safe areas to raise their families in. Build a police station
to increase the safety rate. You can also build an armory and an army base.
These lower the liberty in the area, but no one’s going to rob a person when
there’s a base across the street.
Environmental Beauty:
Look at an empty concrete lot. Ugly isn’t it? People don’t want their island
looking like a dystopic wasteland. They want pretty trees and lakes, not oil
wells and factories. Take care in how you place your buildings and place some
decorations to spice up the look of the island.
Job Satisfaction:
If you hate your job, you won’t be very happy. People will be satisfied with
their jobs by a couple factors, but the largest one is pay. Pay people enough
and you’ll find they’re a lot happier. You can also upgrade their working
conditions with nicer accommodations or reduce the time of their workday, but
that depends on the building. Try to keep this high, as a high satisfaction
will greatly increase the amount of goods produced.
---------------
A. Buildings...(HOZ)
---------------
These buildings are all related to satisfying the needs of your people.
I. Housing
Shacks-
Rating- 2/5
Islanders build them for free. They’re ugly and people hate them, but they’re
free. As a special note: they get destroyed if you build too close to them
without letting you know, so keep an eye out. The easiest way to get people to
move out of shacks is to build nicer homes on top of them.
Shanty- $250
Rating- 1/5
Completely pointless, don’t even use these.
Bunkhouse- $500
Rating- 3/5
Cheap, holds three families, is a lot better than a shack. Use these for cheap
housing before upgrading to apartment blocks
Tenement- $4000
Rating- 2/5
It costs almost as much as the Apartment block, which is a way better building.
Mostly pointless.
Apartment Block- $5000
Rating-5/5
Your best option for large scale housing in the game, and probably the best
housing unit overall. Before you start building these, try as hard as possible
to get the USSR Development Aid Edict, which reduces the price by half. This
makes it one of the most useful buildings in the game.
Country House-$1000
Rating-1/5
Pointless really.
House-$2000
Rating- 3/5
Decent enough house that most people on the island will enjoy. Place them near
advanced factories early in the game if you hire experts: it will give them
incentive to stay working there.
Mansion (Needs PP)-$4000
Rating- N/A
In the vast Majority of the games you’ll never get to the point where these are
feasible to build. The main reason for building these is to satiate angry
Capitalists, they aren’t useful as general housing. Utterly worthless as actual
housing, don’t even both with them unless you need to increase your housing
score or appease factions.
Condominiums (needs PP)-$6000
Rating- 4/5
See Mansion. Same thing on a larger scale, only useful. If you need to increase
people’s housing score, this is the best way to do it. If you have enough
electricity, these are a great way to satisfy people on a large scale.
II. Services
These Buildings are related to satisfying the needs of your people, and you
should have one in each category for every 50 or so people. Eg: for every 50
people you need one entertainment building, one church, one clinic, etc. Each
of these buildings also has a second level, which offers more satisfaction. For
those one building can cover around 75 people EG: Two hospitals will do the
work of three clinics. With 150 people you’d need three clinics or two
hospitals. A Hospital and two clinics can adequately cover 175 people. High
quality service (level 2 buildings) are better in the long run, but a lot more
expensive short term.
So the formula for service success is:
Level 1=50 people, low quality service
Level 2=75 People, high quality service
Entertainment:
These buildings provide entertainment for Tropicans in different ways. Many of
these can also be used to entertain tourists, and some of the tourist buildsing
can provide entertainment for islanders.
Pub-$800
Rating- 3/5
You get what you pay for. Ugly and detracts from the island’s atmosphere, but a
few edicts are only possible with one of these so they’re a necessity.
Restaurant-$2,000
Rating-4/5
The best value for your money for entertainment at the island, at least for
your people. Extremely cheap and surprisingly satisfying for the low cost, but
there are better options available.
Gourmet Restaurant-$3,000
Rating-3/5
Provides a good bit of entertainment, but takes a lot of resources to create
and keep going compared to a regular restaurant. This is mostly for tourists on
the island, not your citizens.
Childhood Museum-$2,000
Rating-3/5
Different than other entertainment buildings, this has an option of
contributing to your Swiss bank or even brainwashing the people of Tropico.
It’s a useful building, but not necessary.
Casino-$10,000
Rating- 5/5
The best entertainment building in the game. You can make a lot of money off of
this with the right settings. It’s best to build at least two: a low class one
for your people and cheap tourists, and a high class one to cater to the rich
and privileged.
Night Club-$4,000
Rating-2/5
There’s much better options out there for entertainment, but this does let you
issue a great edict when built.
Cabaret-$3000
Rating-3/5
It’s okay. A decent entertainment option, but not fantastic.
Movie Theater-$3000
Rating- 4/5
The cheapest form of “high quality” entertainment on the island and a great way
to please capitalists early on. Provides a ton of different options for what it
shows, so you might want to build a few of them.
Sports complex-$25,000
Rating- 4/5
The most expensive building in the game, but it will get used a ton by tourists
and Tropicans alike. It opens up a great new edict as well. The only negative
is that it isn’t really considered a “high class” building, and that it’s
extremely large and difficult to place.
High School-$8,000
Rating- N/A
No question: you need a school if your game is more than 10 years long. High
schools educate citizens, allowing them to take more complex jobs at factories
and other buildings. This makes you a lot more money, and it means they get a
hgiher job quality. Raises liberty.
College-$12,000
Rating-N/A
Colleges are the next level above High schools, offering education for the
highest level jobs on the island. This building is needed if you have oil
refineries or other high class buildings, which is most likely going to happen
in games longer than 10-15 years. In that case they're mandatory, but if you
don't need college workers they're pointless.
Clinic-$3000
Rating-N/A
This building is the basic healthcare facility, and should be an early priority
in order to have your citizens not die from the flu.
Hospital-$12000
Rating-N/A
Hospitals are a step up from Clinics, and should be the first building you make
as soon as you have electricity. They improve healthcare by quite a bit and
offer some interesting options based on how your island is running.
Marketplace-$500
Rating-5/5
While not necessary to build, Marketplaces greatly increase the quality of food
and transport goods all across the island insread of forcing people to visit
farms themselves to pick them up. You should build one early on.
Church-$6000
Rating-N/A
Extremely important in Tropico, churches will offer people religious salvation
for a relatively low cost. They're needed to improve happiness and increase the
religious satisfaction of the people.
Cathedral-$20,000
Rating-N/A
A much larger church, Tropicans will get angry if you don;t build one of these
a few years after the church is built, which pretty much means you need at
least one of them.
Newspaper-$7000
Radio-$10,000
TV station-$15,000
These all have the same basic function: they increase liberty on the island.
They also have a side effect of offering you a wealth of different bonuses for
the island and the immediate are: issuing coupons provides revenue, airing
propaganda makes people love you, etc. These buildings are useful, but none of
them are completely necessary and are often hard to fully staff. They often
provide access to special edicts which can increase tourism profits greatly, so
keep that in mind if you want a tourist based economy.
----------
Factions
----------
Each citizen on the island is a member of one of the various factions. Factions
can best be seen as different ideas about how to run the country: different
policies will have a different effect on each factions, and they are often
mutually exclusive. While different factions need different things to be happy,
the easiest way to please them is to simply have a high quality of life. If
people live in good houses, make a lot of money, and don’t have to worry about
medicine or food then they’ll be a lot more positive.
Capitalists:
Capitalists like money more than all of the other factions, and their primary
concern is how the economy is going. Capitalists are pleased when the economy
is growing, a lot more than anything else. They also want high class
entertainment and enjoy economic disparity (skilled workers get paid
substantially more.) The easiest way to please them is to have a good economy:
do so and you have a guaranteed score of 60-70. Are opposed to the communists
Communists:
Communists put the people first. Communists are concerned with the happiness of
the people on the island first and foremost. They want good food supplies, good
healthcare, and above all good housing quality. This is a relatively easy
faction to please, since all three of those tenets are important to improving
the quality of life and production on the island. The only possible difficulty
is in their desire for low economic disparity, which the capitalists love the
opposite of. This means giving the similar wages to all workers, which can make
skilled jobs hard to fill.
Intellectuals:
The learned citizens of Tropico make up the intellectual faction. Well
educated, these people want the rest of Tropico to live up to their standards.
Intellectuals want schools and high liberty to express themselves in your
government. They're mostly easy to please since they tend to like things that
you're going to need anyway on the island. The big things intellectuals don;t
like are what they see as corrupt actions: unlike the rest of the island,
Intellectuals are going to realize when you try to pull a fast one with unfair
elections or shady bribe tactics.
Religious:
God is the most important thing for these Tropicans. Their unique combination
of traits makes them a difficult group to please: the religious will demand a
church early in the game and a cathedral not long after. They also want a high
religious satisfaction (keeping your churches full of priests and having enough
of them, and what they consider to be a moral island. For the religious, a
moral island is an island without vice: no booze, cigars, or immoral
entertainment. This group is notoriously hard to please, so it's best to just
resign the fact that you won;t make them happy until later in any given game.
Environmentalists:
The Environmentalists really care about nature on your island. They want the
island to look beautiful and be free of any harmful industries: they hate
logging with a passion, and aren't a whole lot nicer to oil wells or mines.
However, they are still an easy group to please: build some random decorations
and a botanical garden and they'll be perfectly happy. There are also edicts
that reduce your poll