When you start a random scenario in Tropico, you
can customize your dictator, which has an important effect on
the game mechanics. However, the various dictator traits aren't
the least bit balanced. Some choices are definitely more useful
than others, but the all cost the same. For this reason, it would
have been nice if your score was affected, but it seems the point
of the dictator character is more for role-playing than game balance.
It does add a lot of flavor. In making a dictator with the maximum
effectiveness as a capitalist, I ended up with a Silver Spoon
background, a Capitalist Rebellion rise to power, and a Financial
Genius who was Hardworking. For flaws, I just took two that seemed
the least offensive: he was a Cowardly Womanizer. Unfortunately,
the choice of cowardice was eventually his downfall. My presidency
fell during a military coup in which one loyal soldier was shooting
it out with one traitor. The soldier eventually fled in terror
with a graphic of a squawking chicken over his head. The traitor
took down my palace and thus ended my capitalist's reign.
Tropico keeps a list of your high scores, but there's
no indication in these lists of your dictator's stats or what
kind of game you were playing. There's a verbal debriefing at
the end of the game, but no written evaluation. In terms of rewarding
the player after a long game, Tropico can be a little disappointing.
There's no sense of runaway time in Tropico, since
you can pause and tweak to your heart's content (you hear that,
Chris Sawyer?). An important part of learning the game involves
efficient building placement. The importance of a sensible layout
in Tropico can't be underestimated. You have to take into consideration
how people move in Tropico. They go to get food. They go to churches
and pubs when they're so inclined. They live in a house and they
have to physically move to their job site before anything gets
done. If you put a construction office on one corner of the island,
a marketplace in another corner, your laborer's house in a third
corner, and the new building site in the fourth corner, nothing
will get done. Your poor laborer will be walking all over creation
and he'll get tired and hungry in the process.
Roads supposedly help people move faster, but they're
awfully expensive and I can't tell how much of a difference they
make. My most successful island did without roads. Slopes can
be a major obstacle, since it takes a long time to even them out
them for building. You can't take flat land for granted, since
it gets used up quickly. In one game, I laid out a site for an
airport, which takes up a lot of real estate. Twenty years later
my game was over and construction on the airport proper hadn't
even begun because it was taking so long to hew out a flat area
on the side of the hill.
Tropico's economy relies on things happening in
real time. To make money from cigars, for instance, people have
to harvest tobacco. Teamsters carry the tobacco to a cigar factory.
Factory workers turn the tobacco into cigars. Teamsters carry
the cigars to the dock. You don't make money until your dockworkers
load the cigars on a freighter. Since this is such a drawn out
process, an entire year can pass without a supply of expensive
cigars being delivered to the freighter. This can lead to a bouncing
economy. One year, I might have a profit of $14,000 and the next
I'm in the hole for $12,000. It seems difficult to make a smoothly
running economy, especially in the later game when there's a lot
of money changing hands.
Cont'd
