Anyone play Tropico?

Agathon · September 20, 2003, 21:13

I have a soft spot for this game, but I'm not that great at it.

How the hell do you get your construction workers to actually do any work?

Same goes for the teamsters.

Urban Ranger · September 20, 2003, 21:29

I was.

The construction office has a radius. So if you need anything done you need to build a string of them. Very stupid. What's more, they walk from their homes to the offices, then to the construction sites. Even stupider.

I didn't have problems with the porters though.

General Ludd · September 20, 2003, 21:31

In order of priority...

1. The closer their office is to the construction site/factory, the more work they will get done.
2. The closer their home is to the office, the more work they will get done.
3. The closer a food source is to their office and house, the more work they will get done.
4. The closer their recreation/church is to their office and house, the more work they will get done.

In other words, you have to minimalise the amount of walking they do. It can take a long time for those lazy bastards to walk around, and if you re trying to build something on the other side of the island, they'll want to go home by the time they get there, and will only do a couple swings of the hammer.

Likewise, if they spend all their time walking to that market place a mile away from their work and home, they'll not be around on the job as much.

MichaeltheGreat · September 21, 2003, 01:11

Quote:

Originally posted by Urban Ranger
I was.

The construction office has a radius. So if you need anything done you need to build a string of them. Very stupid. What's more, they walk from their homes to the offices, then to the construction sites. Even stupider.

Why is commute time stupid? Walk, drive (you want Sim City?), it's the same. It's a simplified model, but the result is real world - if you have a business remote from where it's employee's live, you'll have less production (game, they walk, real world, they don't work for you), and if you have a business office (or a contractor's parts and equipment yard) at a distance from a job site, you'll lose productivity there.

Quote:

I didn't have problems with the porters though.

Porters eventually get stuff, but it's a similar process, especially when you have industry chains (and Tropico: Paradise Island gives you an extra step with the Furniture Factory), and you have multiple steps to get to the docks.

MichaeltheGreat · September 21, 2003, 01:24

Quote:

Originally posted by Agathon
I have a soft spot for this game, but I'm not that great at it.

How the hell do you get your construction workers to actually do any work?

Same goes for the teamsters.

I love the game, plus the Paradise Island expansion, plus Tropico II. They're both long-time favorites of mine.

Worker happiness affects productivity, (so sweatshops lose efficiency over time) as does the distance the worker has to go to get the essentials of their lives.

If you really want to tweak things, you have to slow things down and look at the motivations of your workers - if you're building far away from the nearest church or cathedral, for example, it won't do you much good to have your nearby construction workers be religious. They'll either not have their needs met, make them unhappy, and thus unproductive slackers, or they'll spend all their time on the opposite end of the island, praising the Lord instead of swinging a hammer.

If you're close to a church, then you want religious types working there, but if you've fired the Jesus-freaks because you're working in a remote area, then build a pub and make it cheap.

Another thing you can do in a remote area is fire female construction workers and male farmers, so you get the women on the farms and the guys swinging the tools, then provide them with a cabaret - it's great for male recreation, but with the 1.2 patch (IIRC, it may be part of the Paradise Island expansion) , it has no effect on female recreation.

You have do develop parts of the island in blocks, and prioritize your main buildings. If I'm going to do a new section of an island, I like to do three construction buildings, raise the wages a dollar there, while firing everyone from three other construction buildings and locking them out so nobody rehires there unless I want to build more. When my workers show up, I want them working on new housing, a new corn farm (faster to get them food than a market, and a pub. I selectively evict them from their old housing, and kick out any non-construction workers moving into their new housing. This way, you get a bunch of workers whose main lives are centered close to the construction buildings, so you can get more productive hours out of them. Once they're all in and situated, switch from easy does it to sweatshop mode, but raise their pay considerably - the raise in pay offsets the job happiness loss from the sweatshop conditions (in the short and mid-term) and you get extra hours out of them, so that their "idle" time is used working for you, not wandering off beyond the immediate area where their critical needs are met.

Adagio · September 21, 2003, 05:56

I still play it from time to time, though I haven't tried the expansion pack...

Tropico II isn't that great though...

Asmodean · September 21, 2003, 06:00

Maybe I should dig out my copy again. I had the exact same problems as agathon, but with the tips Osweld and MtG provided, it's worth a try.

Asmodean

MichaeltheGreat · September 21, 2003, 12:10

Quote:

Originally posted by ADG
Tropico II isn't that great though...

Tropico II hasn't been nearly as popular as the original, but I love it. I just play in sandbox mode, get a decent size island, and plunder away.

General Ludd · September 21, 2003, 12:19

Thing about Tropico 2 that I don't like is that it basically all comes down to gambling. (apropriate for a pirate game, yes...

) ie. you send your ships out for a mission and it's mostly out of your control wether they come back alive or not - you can do things to raise their chances, but that's it. It is very easy to lose practically everything you've built for yourself in a single mission that you have no control over.

General Ludd · September 21, 2003, 12:21

Oh, and the music in Tropico 2 is crap aswell. I felt the graphics when't as good either, kind of feels like a budget game compared to the original. Which is too bad, because atmosphere is a big part of those games.

MichaeltheGreat · September 21, 2003, 12:41

But it's Pirates(!)

Agathon · September 21, 2003, 22:03

Thanks for the responses, guys.

Quote:

Originally posted by MichaeltheGreat

I love the game, plus the Paradise Island expansion, plus Tropico II. They're both long-time favorites of mine.

I have the expansion, but T2 is not out for the mac yet. I'd need a new one to play it.

I love it but my wife thinks I'm weird because I showed here it by having my soldiers eliminate an old woman.

Quote:

Worker happiness affects productivity, (so sweatshops lose efficiency over time) as does the distance the worker has to go to get the essentials of their lives.

OK the former sounds like the problem. What I've been doing is building them in stages at varying distances from my palace and making sure that there is a market and housing near first. I naturally wanted to treat them like slaves - I didn't realize this would slow them down (they're slaves after all

).

Quote:

If you're close to a church, then you want religious types working there, but if you've fired the Jesus-freaks because you're working in a remote area, then build a pub and make it cheap.

Have done.

Quote:

Another thing you can do in a remote area is fire female construction workers and male farmers, so you get the women on the farms and the guys swinging the tools, then provide them with a cabaret - it's great for male recreation, but with the 1.2 patch (IIRC, it may be part of the Paradise Island expansion) , it has no effect on female recreation.

Quote:

You have do develop parts of the island in blocks, and prioritize your main buildings. If I'm going to do a new section of an island, I like to do three construction buildings, raise the wages a dollar there, while firing everyone from three other construction buildings and locking them out so nobody rehires there unless I want to build more. When my workers show up, I want them working on new housing, a new corn farm (faster to get them food than a market, and a pub. I selectively evict them from their old housing, and kick out any non-construction workers moving into their new housing. This way, you get a bunch of workers whose main lives are centered close to the construction buildings, so you can get more productive hours out of them. Once they're all in and situated, switch from easy does it to sweatshop mode, but raise their pay considerably - the raise in pay offsets the job happiness loss from the sweatshop conditions (in the short and mid-term) and you get extra hours out of them, so that their "idle" time is used working for you, not wandering off beyond the immediate area where their critical needs are met.

OK - thanks. I'll try this out. I suppose that even though I pictured myself as an evil despot I was averse to firing people. That will no longer be the case.

MichaeltheGreat · September 21, 2003, 22:27

Quote:

Originally posted by Agathon
I love it but my wife thinks I'm weird because I showed here it by having my soldiers eliminate an old woman.

And you said you weren't a brutal Stalinist.

I've done that too, just for fun, but I'm normally a nice guy.

Urban Ranger · September 21, 2003, 23:13

Quote:

Originally posted by MichaeltheGreat
Why is commute time stupid? Walk, drive (you want Sim City?), it's the same. It's a simplified model, but the result is real world - if you have a business remote from where it's employee's live, you'll have less production (game, they walk, real world, they don't work for you), and if you have a business office (or a contractor's parts and equipment yard) at a distance from a job site, you'll lose productivity there.

Construction workers go straight to sites, not via offices. Any equipment to be used is kept on site. Construction workers are waged, at least that's the case here, so it pays for them to work at least 8 hour days.

I was amused by the lack of vehicles. How does one build an airport without construction vehicles?

MichaeltheGreat · September 22, 2003, 01:15

One would presume that they're abstracted.

Although construction (field) workers do go direct to sites, you do have a form of "office to site" time impact, because most materials (at least where I've worked) are not stored on site, until they're ready to be used. A lot of stuff (trusses, control panels for industrial or commercial lighting, piping, etc. is shop built, and distant contractors do have some efficiency issues in job mobilization and supervision.

I'd rather have my serfs walking around wasting time abstractly than have to play construction manager and logistician.

Grumbold · September 22, 2003, 09:03

The workers really don't make sense. If the office -> site time was too great, they would start by building portakabins etc on site, not plod back and forth. There are gold/diamond/oil/gas mining operations in the most desolate places on the planet, for goodness sake, and they don't need a three star hotel complex down the road to get them to do their jobs. The pay is high and the holidays are long to let them spend it, period.

That and the inability of them to build anything on a slope properly drove me to return the game within 10 days to get my money back, something I don't often do. If a sim is going to be primarily focussed on constructing things it should not be sloppy at it. At least Tropico 2 progressed in that respect.

Agathon · September 23, 2003, 07:24

Quote:

Originally posted by MichaeltheGreat

And you said you weren't a brutal Stalinist.

I've done that too, just for fun, but I'm normally a nice guy.

Me, a Stalinist?

I usually play the "Leftist Author" since it seems closest to me.

On the other hand I think I might play a game as Somoza, just to see how one can manage using eliminations and arrests.

General Ludd · September 23, 2003, 07:56

Try playing as a religous fascist. It's really the only way to be a cruel dictator and stay in charge.

MichaeltheGreat · September 23, 2003, 14:06

And here I'm always the Silver Spoon elected for family values, with progressive policies and wages and lots of cabarets.

Agathon · September 23, 2003, 15:06

Presumably you could kill everyone else and have you and your soldiers live off foreign development aid.

I can't seem to get enough people to visit my pubs and cabarets. They all seem to like the movies though.

General Ludd · September 23, 2003, 15:07

Entertainment? My people where always far too busy planting the crops for any of that.

MichaeltheGreat · September 23, 2003, 15:37

Quote:

Originally posted by Agathon
Presumably you could kill everyone else and have you and your soldiers live off foreign development aid.

I can't seem to get enough people to visit my pubs and cabarets. They all seem to like the movies though.

Radio and TV stations, but especially radio, are also big money makers. The problem with the cabarets is cost, and the quality of workers there - same with pubs and restaurants.

Adagio · September 23, 2003, 16:27

Quote:

Originally posted by Osweld
Try playing as a religous fascist. It's really the only way to be a cruel dictator and stay in charge.

I'm always trying to make some person who more or less looks like having a split personality, like some Zeelot who was voted in as a communist, and knows everything about bussiness (Ok, not sure if those are possible in the game, it's been a while since my last game, but you get the point!)

Agathon · September 23, 2003, 20:48

Quote:

Originally posted by MichaeltheGreat

Radio and TV stations, but especially radio, are also big money makers. The problem with the cabarets is cost, and the quality of workers there - same with pubs and restaurants.

I always have mine doing the "voice of the worker" thing.

Agathon · September 23, 2003, 20:54

Another thing:

How do you stop pollution? There are two edicts which don't seem to have much effect, and you can beautify the affected area with trees, shrubs and fountains, but the greenies just keep pissing and moaning whatever I do.

Should I just give up on the environment and throw them all in the dungeon, or what?

MichaeltheGreat · September 23, 2003, 21:36

I always pick naturalist or green thumb, one or the other, to reduce it. The biggest thing is overall density - the amount of pollution from any given building is pretty constant, and has a radius of effect. Those big bleeding red areas are the result of overlapping effects from many buildings, but what you can do is limited by the island size you have and how level it is.

The greenies are never very politically significant, so you can always ignore them.

Voice of the worker, bah! What the ignorant scum revel in is low brow music and American reruns, plus coupons from the newspapers.

Agathon · September 24, 2003, 14:41

Thanks - I'll try that next time.