Just Bought Tropico

[MBloomIII]

I couldn't load Civ III on my work computer because of incompatibility issues with Windows NT and DirectX. So I bought Tropico because it supports the Windows NT4 platform. What a cool blend of Sims/Civ strategy. If anybody else plays this game, I'd love some hints/tips to help me along my merry way.

[Urban Ranger]

Sucker! I feel sorry for you. I have sold my copy at an auction website.

If you want hints, start playing in the "sandbox" mode (turn off all the random events and set the objective to open-ended).

Look at the food requirements, but you should change all produces to some kind of cash crops, such as pineapple and banana - hey, bananas are cool. I found that mining is not worth the effort, go straight to tourism.

[Kautilya]

Well I played the demo and it looked pretty good. With Defcon and Republic soon to be out it's not a priority, but maybe some time next year when it becomes really cheap I will buy it.

There is a free game guide avalaible at www.gamespot.com. Just hunt around.

www.cafetropico.com is an excellent site with pretty active boards.

[John-SJ]

I haven't played for awhile, but when I did I enjoyed it very much!

I found the best crops to be tobacco and sugar. (for making cigars and rum) If you have the climate for it coffee works well too. These are the ones I found to be the best money makers overall, of course, climate plays a large part in profitibility so make sure you match your crops to conditions.

John-SJ

[Urban Ranger]

Tobacco and sugar are the best, but since you can't feed the people on them they come later.

There are also things you learn the hard way, information that's never mentioned in the manual.

For starters, beware of how you develop your urban areas because that has a definite impact on your farms. Suddenly you'd find areas where farming was excellent became mediocre. I don't understand how building a few houses could affect rainfall and sunlight, but hey, I didn't design the game.