Civ : Unique Abilities

Special abilities are a new feature added into Civilization 5 that give certain civilizations bonuses. Special abilities have replaced traits from Civilization 4 (most likely to make civilizations more unique instead of two civilizations having the similar bonuses).

America - Manifest Destiny

• Land Military Units gain +1 Sight.
• Gold costs of Tiles reduced by 50%.

Arabia - Trade Caravans

• Trade Routes yield a bonus +1 Gold.
• Oil Tiles provide double quantities

Austria - Diplomatic Marriage

• Can spend Gold to annex or puppet an allied City-State.

Aztec - Sacrificial Captives

• Killing enemy units provides a one-time Culture bonus equal to the Strength of the killed unit (Cites excluded).

Babylon - Ingenuity

• Birth rate of Great Scientists increased by 50%.
• A Great Scientist appears at your Capital after you research Writing.

Byzantium - Patriarchate of Constantinople

• Choose one more Belief than normal when you found a Religion

Carthage - Phoenician Heritage

• All coastal Cities get a free Harbor.
• Units may cross mountains after the first Great General is earned, taking 50 HP damage if they end a turn on a mountain.

Celts - Druidic Lore

• +1 Faith per city with an adjacent unimproved Forest.
• Bonus increases to +2 Faith in Cities with 3 more more adjacent unimproved Forest tiles.

China - Art of War

• Birth rate of Great Generals increased by 50%.
• Great General combat bonus increased to +35%, instead of +20%.

Denmark - Viking Fury

• Embarked Units gain +1 Move (preserved when disembarking)
• Disembarkation does not incur a Movement penalty
• Melee Units pay no Movement cost to Pillage Improvements

Ethiopia - Spirit of Adwa

• Units receive a 20% combat bonus against larger Civilizations (based upon city count).

Egypt - Monument Builders

• Cities gain a +20% Production bonus while constructing a Wonder (also applies to National Wonders, but not Projects)

England - Sun Never Sets

• Naval and Embarked Units gain +2 Move
• One additional Spy

France - Ancient Regime

• Cities yield a bonus +2 Culture; goes Obsolete after you finish researching Steam Power

Germany - Furor Teutonicus

• Land Unit Maintenance costs reduced by 25%
• Defeating Barbarians within an Encampment has a 50% chance of converting the unit to your side and providing a reward of 25 Gold

Greece - Hellenic League

• Diplomatic relations with City-States degrade 50% slower and are recovered 50% faster

Inca - Great Andean Road

• Units ignore Terrain costs of Hills Tiles (but not Forest/Hill or Jungle/Hill tiles)
• Roads and Railroads built on Hills have no Maintenance costs
• Roads and Railroads not built on Hills have half the normal Maintenance cost

India - Population Growth

• Unhappiness from Population is halved; Unhappiness from Cities is doubled

Iroquois - The Great Warpath

• Friendly Forest and Jungle Tiles provide a Movement bonus equal to that of a Road
• After the Wheel, Friendly Forest and Jungle Tiles serve as if they had a Road built on them when determining Trade Routes

Japan - Bushido

• Units fight at full Strength even while injured

Korea - Scholars of the Jade Hall

• Specialists yield a bonus +2 Science
• Great Person Improvements yield a bonus +2 Science
• A tech boost is awarded whenever a Science Building or Science National Wonder is completed at the Capital (equal to Research Agreement tech boost, Scientific World Wonders do not count)

Maya - The Long Count

• After researching Theology, receive a bonus great person at the end of every Maya calendar cycle (394 years)

Mongolia - Mongol Terror

• Military Units gain a +30% combat bonus VS City-States and their Units
• Mounted Units gain +1 Movement

Netherlands - Dutch East India Company

• Retains 50% of the happiness benefits from a luxury resource if your last copy of it is traded away.

Ottoman Empire - Barbary Corsairs

• Naval Unit maintenance costs are reduced by 67%
• Moving adjacent to a Barbarian Naval Unit has a 50% chance of converting it to your side and providing a reward of 25 Gold*
• Gods & Kings: Naval unit maintenace costs are reduced by 67%. All ships start with the "Prize Ships" promotion, allowing them to capture any enemy ship they defeat.

Persia - Achaemenid Legacy

• Golden Ages last 50% longer
• During a Golden Age, all Units gain +1 Move and a +10% combat bonus while attacking (movement bonus is also granted to civilian units)

Polynesia - Wayfinding

• Units can immediately Embark over Coasts and Oceans*
• Embarked Units gain +1 Sight
• Moais you control grant a +10% combat bonus to nearby Units (multiple Moais don't stack)

Rome - The Glory of Rome

• Cities gain a +25% Production bonus while constructing a Building that has already been built at your Capital

Russia - Siberian Riches

• Strategic Resource Tiles yield a bonus +1 Production
• Horse, Iron and Uranium Tiles provide double quantities

Siam - Father Governs Children

• Food, Faith, and Culture from City-States are increased by 50%

Songhai - River Warlord

• Gold from pillaging Cities and clearing Barbarian Encampments is tripled
• All land units get the Amphibious and War Canoes promotions

Spain - Seven Cities of Gold

• Discovering a Natural Wonder provides a reward of 100 Gold, or 500 Gold if you are first to discover it
• Happiness from discovering Natural Wonders is doubled
• Tile yields from Natural Wonders are doubled

Sweden - Nobel Prize

• Gain 90 Influence with a Great Person gift to a City-State
• When declaring friendship, Sweden and their friend gets a +10% boost to Great Person generation

Civ 5: Dealing with Nukes

I confess I don't have a lot of experience with getting nuked, but I tried to share what I do think you can do. I believe my best advice is what I've written in the last part, though.

Also, remember that if your enemy is just too militarily superior, there are other ways of winning the game!

How to stop nukes

Technically both atomic bombs and nuclear missiles can be intercepted by any air-intercepting unit (destroyers, AA guns, SAM, fighters and jet fighters), but they have a percentage to avoid the interception completely, and in practice I have never seen an interception actually stop a bomb or missile.

So in general - no, there's no way to stop them, at least not a reliable way. If you keep your cities far away from the enemy you can just focus on preventing enemy naval units (carriers, missile cruisers and nuclear submarines) from getting close enough - using your own submarines to patrol the waters is a great way of doing that.

In many cases there just isn't enough distance from their cities to yours, but even guarding some of your cities is useful - getting the capital nuked hurts more than letting some small border city get nuked.

Strategies to avoid getting nuked

The best way is to defeat them before they get the Manhattan Project done, of course, but that's not always possible. Just remember there's a global broadcast when the Manhattan Project begins, serving as a useful heads-up.

Another way is to team up with another civ and let them attack first, so they draw all the nukes. It's even better to team up with a nuclear-capable civ, that way you get a civ to waste its nukes on an enemy, instead of an ally; and you can later backstab the now-nukeless-civ.

I also think one of the best strategies is to prevent the enemy from getting Uranium. You can take the direct approach - conquer areas with Uranium, or use culture bomb - but that's not always feasible; a better way is to trade with them and get their Uranium. The AI often values luxury resources above strategic ones, so you can usually lure it to give you its Uranium - the exception is with hostile AIs, which practically never trade strategic resources away. In any case, even if the trade agreement is broken when the war breaks and they get their Uranium back, they won't have time for building a large nuclear stockpile.

If you're already in war, you can still tactically snipe their uranium. You can either do that by darting a high-movement unit inside and pillage the uranium mine, or - if you have nukes of your own - just nuke in the vicinity of the uranium and hope it will get destroyed.

Finally, you can counter with your own nukes. Atomic bombs will kill all units in the target tile, and a nuclear missile will kill all units within 2 tiles of the target, and this include air units, so if you find that they have stockpiled several nukes in 1 city firing your own nuke at it will take out all of them. In my current game I took out 8 English atomic bombs on the first turn of the war by doing that.

How to deal with getting nuked

Don't panic! Getting nuked is really not as bad as it sounds. I mean it can be a sign that the enemy is much stronger than you, but a nuke by itself is not the end of the world. While nukes are great against units, they aren't that amazing against cities - so you lose some citizens and health, and might lose the city, but that's alright. By the time nukes become available a few citizens here and there don't matter all that much, and in war the possession of cities is fluid anyway. Also remember nukes are expensive and Uranium is severely limited, so unless you're fighting Russia or a very rich civ, the amount of nukes they can field will typically be low.

Nukes are pretty effective against units, so my number one advice when fighting nuclear civs is to keep your units apart. This is easier said than done since this game really encourages units to work together (melee units with siege units, AA covering other ground units, etc.). Still, as long as the enemy has at least one nuke around, try and keep your units apart. What I usually do is leave a gap of around 1 hex between every two units, and I also try to split my forces into two "armies" to flank the enemy.

Alternatively I guess you can bait the enemy to waste its nukes on clusters of your weaker, cheaper units, while keeping your real units in the rear - but that never worked for me.

By the way, if I remember correctly, nukes can kill garrisoned units and air units inside cities; so I also recommend not basing too many planes or missiles in the same city, and if you fear a certain city is about to get nuked, get your highly-promoted rocket artillery out of there.

Starter tips for Tropico 4

 So, campaign over. Somehow, it felt shorter than that of T3...

Tropico 4 is basically Tropico 3 with a few twists. So, to save me typing work, I want to refer you to the guide I wrote for T3 (you'll find it here). Everything not covered in here didn't change.

Basics
Making El Presidente
Very simply, there is one basic setup that works great for every mission. Why? Because every mission gets tackled the same way. Since there is no time limit for most missions (at least in the beginning, where time limits would really hurt, later you can simply buy problems out of the way. There is only one mission where this doesn't work so well, I'll go into detail for that one), the general idea is to get your economy running first of all, and as soon as the money is pouring in, start dealing with the mission goals. So whether you have to build a certain building or get a certain amount of tourists on your island, just ignore it until you have the money to tackle it.

The presidente makeup in T4 is actually quite different from T3 where farmer was the background to go with. In T4, farms aren't as critical and you can let a factory take off quite early since you needn't produce the raw materials first, you can import them now. It's also not as critical that the USSR likes us since the standing with the superpowers doesn't take a dive as quickly as in T3, so elected as socialist is no longer a critical rise to power path. Also, there are no "good" and "bad" traits anymore, you just pick 3 traits that may have negative effects to balance out the positive ones. Personally, I didn't change much here from the old setup. Also, they "level" now, with each island you play with a certain advantage, this advantage gets better, so on island 5, you can already have the three we will need at maximum. Neat.

The way I setup El Presidente is simply this:

Background: Self-made man
Rise to power: Elected as Capitalist
Traits: Administrator, Enterpreneurial, Hardworking

As you can see, most of the benefits aim at industrial productivity and export gains. This is where we'll get money from.

In the beginning... money, money, money
The first million is still the hardest, that didn't change at all. The first things you should do, other than in T3, are:

Build ministery and hire a foreigner as Foreign Minister.
Build a marketplace and keep it on "allow imports". Instant no more meals skipped and nobody dies from starvation.
As soon as the ministery is built and the minister is in his place, issue the "USSR Development aid" edict.

You see, it's a similar start as in T3, just that you need a ministry and a minister instead of the diplomatic office. Else, same business. Oh, and you need no farms for food. In fact, ignore them altogether, at least for now. They may come handy later when you have room and need to get some cheap work places quickly to keep your people busy, but for now, no farms. No farms AT ALL. Check the corn farms on your island and see whether you can turn them over into something more sensible than corn, i.e. whether something else grows there, too, that sells for more dough. Unlike T3, you needn't worry about food. We'll import that (this is why we have the marketplace). You also needn't "save" the iron and gold for later so you can build weapons and jewelry out of them, so simply mine them and sell them. If our mines run dry, we'll simply import what we need. It's easy and fast money. Other quick sources of early money are logging camps and fishermen wharfs, but I'd keep the logging camps to a minimum, your environmentalists will eventually ask you to destroy them and they make them REALLY unhappy. And they are one of the problem factions and quite hard to entertain (unless you plant pesky little trees all over your island in the gaps between the houses, and I hate that kind of micro management). Farms would produce more money than mines, but they need a LONG time before they start to make money, and your people might simply eat your profits (quite literally) if you're planting edible crops. Also, by the time they finally start paying off, you usually could have built industry buildings that make at least five times the money. Yes, after import expenses. And salary.

Also unlike T3, try to keep your balance positive, or at least try to make sure you will have a positive balance once everything in the dock is sold. The reason is simple: You can only buy imports with a positive balance. Another thing you'll want to do is set the import amount to infinite, you will want to buy as much as you can, your economy will depend very heavily on importing raw materials. Exports/imports work like this: The ship docks, then your dock workers throw your goods into the ship which is instantly converted to cash (about 45000 per "trip" of the dockworker, watch the dock when a ship is anchored and you see what I mean). After that, just before the ship leaves, imports are bought. If, and only if, there is a positive balance. If your industry would need goods worth 30k and you only have 25k, only goods for 25k will be bought, you can't go into the "red" with imports. This is also the reason why you'll want to keep from building until the ship has left, that way you can buy imports (with positive balance) AND construct your buildings (with up to 10k negative balance). And you DO want to make sure that you get as many imports as you can, your income depends on them!

Next things you want to build soon is a high school and a college, as well as a customs office (set on export). If any faction offers you any blueprints in exchange for exports, take it and start with that industry. If that doesn't happen and you manage to get the roughly 20k together, build a weapons factory. Not only will it make the middle east happy (and they're generally quite unhappy due to a lot of churches), it is a true cash cow, especially if you produce landmines. Yes, it makes the US and the USSR unhappy, but since we keep the capitalists and communists happy, that won't matter too much. If needed, build a foreign office. Do not forget to set the industry to allow imports (and don't forget it for any other industry building you create). Staff the high school well, you'll need a lot of high school graduates (and some of them will be "lost" to the college). If necessary and you have money to spare, hire a few teachers from abroad. If you feel like it, build an academy and set it to research grants, it will make the various blueprints cheaper and also give you another presidente to improve the various buildings (unfortunately not under your control, but hey). It's not really strictly a requirement, the blueprints are dirt cheap anyway, but considering the time you'll spend between buying them, it does in the end pay off. The rest can be found in the T3 primer.

Farms are not strictly a necessity, since you can import everything. If you have too many people and some space to spare, they're a nice way to get them employed, but otherwise, just don't bother building them. In fact, I usually demolish the ones I start with eventually to make room for more sensible buildings. Yes, that means I'm fully dependent on imports, but soon after you start building an industrial empire the main problem will be that your dock workers can't shuffle the goods in time on board before the ship leaves... So build another dock. And if you have to, another. And as long as you have money, you'll have raw materials. Oh, and make sure that the docks are set to import infinite amounts! 5000 isn't even pocket change later (my imports range in the 50-80k usually).

New buildings, what's good, what's bad
Basically, the rest is similar to the T3 tutorial. There are a few new buildings, though.

Wellfare:
Shopping Mall: Another happiness modifyer, I think it affects entertainment quality but in the "thoughts" lists it has its own entry. Not strictly an early must-have, but eventually you should build one. Up to 3 can be built.

Customs Office: A very useful building to increase the export prices. Build it as early as you can spare the 10k, usually after 2-3 industrial buildings are up and running it makes sense to build the CO.

Stock Exchange: Allows you to build "private" building. Quite similar to the privatization edict, you have to build them, they will hire your people (and since they usually pay more than you do, your people will prefer to work there). Not really useful. Early in the game, when you could use the rent, they'd take away valuable workforce, later in the game, the benefits (in terms of entertainment value, money or resources) can easily be covered on your own. Not worth it, IMO.

Weather station: Very useful building, with the addons it allows you to get early warning for disasters, which leads to fewer/no casualties and/or ample warning time to prepare for the impact, e.g. to build a few fire stations quickly if a volcano eruption is about to happen. Earthquakes can even be avoided sometimes. Really worth it once you have a lot of buildings and searching for the broken ones would be a nuisance. 

Entertainment:
Museum: A cute little thing, very high entertainment value but also very high cost to keep it running. Fortunately, if you're getting low on cash, you can simply switch it to domestic art and make a few bucks that way. Good building to start entertainment with.

Cosmic pin: Yet another restaurant. 'nuff said. Yes, I still don't think too highly of tourists.

Government
Ministry: Must-have building for some other buildings and nearly all edicts. Usually the first building I create in the game to get the USSR aid edict up and running early for cheap tenements.

Fire Station: VERY useful building if your island is under a volcano or plagued by frequent droughts. Not strictly an early requirement (most buildings you build early on can as well burn down, they're cheap), and needs high school staff which is quite tight early while you're trying to get your industrial economy up and running, later you should have a few of them around your island, especially near volcanos.

Education:
Academy of Science: Basically the tool to make the blueprints cheaper. Not strictly a requirement, but later you want to have one, first to make the blueprints a bit cheaper (40% is enough) and then to let almost everyone study.

Food/Resources:
Salt mine: Yet another mine. Yes, it affects nearby ranches and canneries, but since the salt deposits are usually where you don't want to put a cannery, don't worry about it. It's a good early source of money, nothing else.

Horticulture station: Would be cool if you had logging or farms. Since you don't, don't worry about it.

Industry
Chemical Plant: More than yet another factory. You can improve your hospital quality here, so it should be one of the first industries you develop. Also, it's one of the few industrial buildings that need no raw materials, so even if your exports plummet and you can't import, this will still run and generate revenue.

Infrastructure:
Nuclear power plant:
A very powerful power plant that produces near infinite amounts of power. At least I never managed to squeeze it dry. Still, you should start with a normal power plant (on gas, not coal). The reason is that running a nuke plant is expensive. Very, very expensive to run, uranium is pricy! You need a fully developed industry to afford it. Start with a normal power plant and build the nuke plant as soon as energy starts running low.

Landmarks:
Mausoleum: Not only is it good for the loyalist standing and it entertains your people and tourists, it works as a trap for rebels. Not often and not well, but once you have the money to build it, tack on the addon, the odd rebel will stumble over it.

The new tourist attractions are new tourist attractions, nothing else. Read the mouseover description to see who benefits from them.


Spoiler alert
There are a few missions (ok, actually just two) that require some deviation from the usual plan. If you don't want to spoil the fun of unfolding the story, stop reading here. Have fun and enjoy Tropico 4!

The first nonstandard mission is the one where the UN and Van Hoof takes control of your island and doesn't allow you to issue edicts. Here, everything is done as usual, though the ministry isn't as critical since you won't hire a foreign minister and won't issue the USSR edict. Else, standard plan.

The other nonstandard mission is the last one, where your second task is to amass 50k in the bank within 5 years. Not easy. Not easy at all. But you can keep the first mission goal, 100 people on the island, from being fulfilled by building an immigration office and setting it to "Tropico first". Build the ministry as usual, then build mines on the iron, bauxite and gold deposits left of the main town (with "left" being left if turning the map so that the dock is below the town). On the hill is a salt deposit, built a salt mine there. Put a garage next to every mine so people can quickly get to and from. A marketplace and a wharf, as well as a church and a clinic to get the religious and communist faction from going bananas, a childhood museum for the loyalists, then get the immigration office up to make sure you can keep the immigration under control. You will lose people due to bad healthcare, so you will periodically have to switch to skilled workers, just make sure you stay below 100 people. As soon as you have the money, get a weapon factory up, unless you get a free blueprint from a mission. Jewelry works well too, if you can get that up before you have to go over 100 people. You will have too few people to keep everything staffed well, so after the weapon factory and the jewelry is up (and on "allow import"), and you have a few bucks left, open the doors and crank out the money. Try to get away without printing any, the cost explosion would later cripple you most likely. You have only until 2012 to complete the whole game, so don't tardy too much. Later, you'll be asked to set the minimum wage to 20. This is not trivial. Make sure you have at least 5-6 factories running before you issue this, your treasury will bleed dry quickly once you turn it on. By then, you should also have a second dock up to get more ships coming and smooth out the money generation. Expand and build mines wherever you have a deposit, build your industry near the shore and sprinkle some teamsters liberally between them to make sure your goods get to the docks. In general, once you mastered the 50k in 5 years obstacle, it's quite straightforward, though money can become a bit of an issue. Watch out that you don't go too deeply into debt that you can't pay for imports anymore, you need to keep your economy running on full power!

Other than that, it's pretty straightforward. On, one more tip, in the mission with the spies, when you're told to eliminate, don't shoot them silently, eliminate them (else new ones will just pop up, happened to me since I wanted to have my secret police cap them... the game didn't like that).

Good luck and have fun!

ps:

The following Presidente also works, and gets you high trained people at an insane pace:

Background: Professor
Rise to Power: Installed by the CIA
Traits: Diplomatic, Hardworking, Scholarly

Though to be honest you could substitute out Installed by the CIA if tourism and US relations are less important to you.

I have one thing to add, though: if you are running an export-heavy economy, you have to make sure there are no traffic jams around your docking areas. There is nothing worse than spiraling into debt while 110k+ worth of exports sit in the dock(s) because the dockhands couldn't get there in time due to being stuck in a gridlock elsewhere. 

Ergo, build the docks at the different locations on your island.

P. S. Industry ad campagin edict works miracles with this setup.

Tropico 4 Guide: Tips and Strategy

As a veteran El Presidente of countless Tropican islands I thought I might do a Tropico 4 strategy guide to share some of my Tropico tactics. I’ve actually just been playing through Tropico 4: Modern Times so I’ll cover some of the new elements in that as well. To be honest the core game hasn’t really changed that much since the original in terms of winning strategies so most of this guide should work for any of the Tropico games.

In the beginning

The first thing to do with any game of Tropico is to set up your avatar. Do you want to be a communist revolutionary intent on bringing a decent standard of living to the oppressed or perhaps you’re a silky smooth singer looking to create a tourist haven of epic proportions?

The older Tropico games used to make you choose your background, route to power and then two positive traits and two flaws, which was a cool trade-off. In Tropico 4 you’ll find you can avoid picking any flaws at all. You still have to pick a background and your rise to power but now you pick three traits and they are all positive to varying degrees.

Choosing a Background

In terms of Background I think Professor is the best. In order to have a successful island paradise you can’t do without educated people. You need them for the army, various government buildings, power stations and industries. As a Professor you’ll get +20 respect from the Intellectuals but more importantly education and skill training will be 50% faster.

A lot of the other options have drawbacks attached. Pop Singer is good if you want a tourist island, Self-Made Man is good for industry and Silver Spoon combines the two but at the cost of Communist respect. Farmer gives you a 50% boost to farms with a slight hit in the shape of a -10 hit with the Intellectuals. If you need maximum cash in a hurry then Booze Baron works well.

Rise to Power

For Rise to Power you can go for Capitalist for industry and US relation boosts or Communist for farming and USSR relation boosts. The best by far if you want to have a tourist trade is Hotel Corporate Buyout. If you don’t choose that then Capitalist Election is probably the next best.

Traits

When it comes to traits you can pick three and what you choose will depend on what you’ve already picked and the individual mission you’re undertaking. I’d recommend Administrator, Charismatic, Diplomatic, Entrepreneurial, Financial Genius, Hard-Working, Scholarly and Well-Travelled. You’ll want to pick the same ones again to build up the potential bonuses.

Scoping Out Resources

When it comes to the individual levels you’ll start each new game with a new island map. Begin by conducting a thorough survey. Seriously, pause the game and then check what resources you have. It’s a real pain if you later find out that you’ve built an apartment building on top of a gold deposit or a farm on an oil field. The quickest and easiest way to do this is to just select the building (gold mine or coffee farm) and then check where the good spots are on the map, the greener the better.  You can use the Overlays above the mini map to do this too and it is something you should refer back to as you go to quickly identify any major problem areas.

Once you have done this you can start to plan your island. The type of economy you build will depend on your personal tastes and on the mission you have to complete. You can go for crops, industry or tourism as your main focus or you can blend them.

You should check for good tourist spots at the start too because you want to keep them well segregated from your industry and farms and….your Tropicans!

Housing and Food

The fastest route to an unhappy population, rising crime and violent rebellion is homelessness and hunger. You absolutely have to provide enough food for your population. Always start by placing a couple of food farms and at least one fishing wharf. The good thing is that you can sell any surplus food you produce. You can import food as well, but you have to get your economy on track first. You can build a marketplace (or supermarket in Modern Times) and allow imports to avoid starvation but you might find it quite costly at the start.

You’ll inevitably see shacks popping up as your homeless population look for shelter. These shacks aren’t just an eye sore they are also a major source of crime. Keep an eye on your housing stock as your population grows. When you have enough housing to cater for your whole population (which will be a running battle) you should consider making your bottom tier tenements free so that even the unemployed homeless have a basic option that will discourage them from building a shack.

If your Tropico 4 housing stock includes a lot of tenements make sure that you upgrade them to have air conditioning when you get power because it seriously improves the living standards for tenants.

Stay in the Black

You can actually spend up to $10,000 into the red but if you go into debt it will harm your relationship with foreign powers which is very damaging. You can easily get stuck in a negative feedback loop. If you treat $5k as zero you should avoid problems but this isn’t always possible early on. Watch out that your export cash doesn’t all get splurged on imports or you may struggle to get out of debt.

Useful Edicts

There are loads of useful edicts in Tropico 4 and the Modern Times expansion adds even more. In any standard game you should build your Ministry early and hire a Minister of Foreign Affairs so you can enact edicts with foreign powers and go for USSR Development Aid for a 50% discount on tenements and apartment buildings. A little later when you want to build a power station enact the USA Development Aid edict for a 50% discount on power plants and airports. These two edicts will save you a fortune.

As your economy grows you can save Food for the People as a happiness booster when you need it. You’ll also want to enact the Literacy Program to encourage some more skilled workers. Everyone likes Social Security and Police Sensitivity Training has no negative side effects either.

There are a host of edicts that will encourage tourism, if you’re going for a tourist economy and you have the cash then they are all worth doing. Most of the other edicts have particular political implications so whether you use them or not will depend on your aims. I usually enact the National Day, Anti-Litter Ordnance and Pollution Standards.

Sometimes Free Housing is a good idea, especially if you have a lot of empty housing stock and homeless people who can’t afford to move in. The Papal Visit option in the US Foreign Affairs edicts is great for appeasing the religious faction and there’s no downside to it apart from the cost. The last one worth using periodically is the Amnesty for rebels.

Construction

Everyone knows that builders are a lazy bunch and in Tropico 4 this unfortunate truth can be a real pain. You’ll often find that you’ve put out multiple buildings and you’ve got money to spend but your builders can’t keep up. Now each building only has a set number of slots for builders to work on it so building another construction office won’t speed up individual building projects, but if you have multiple buildings waiting to be erected at once then it will help. I usually have at least a couple of construction offices. You can also set priorities for buildings so always hit high priority for the ones you want completed first.

The best way of getting them to speed up on an individual building project is to find El Presidente and send him to visit the construction site (you can hit Backspace to select him and just right click on the construction site you want him to visit). This can make a real difference and get your builders moving.

It’s also worth noting that you can press the [ or ] key to change the layout or style of some buildings before you place them out.

Imports and Exports

Your balance of goods will ultimately decide whether you win or lose. At the start of each game I’d recommend going to the dock and lowering your maximum imports to $2,000. That will give you a chance to build up some export money though you’ll definitely want to raise it again quite quickly.

The fact you can import goods is great. You can build a furniture factory and just import lumber instead of chopping down your own trees which will anger the environmentalists. In fact it means you are free to import all manner of goodies and build any industry you want. Just make sure you set the building to allow imports and that you’ve got the bank balance to cover it.

Always try and get a Customs Office fairly early to increase the prices of your exports.

Transport

Your Tropicans will get around by car so you’ll need to build garages. You’ll want at least one garage for each group of buildings. The traffic will inevitably build up and become gridlocked as you grow. For some reason 4-way intersections are especially bad, you’ll actually find things run more smoothly if you avoid making any of them and build loops instead but it looks weird.

Modern Times introduces a wonderful new transport option to the world of Tropico – a subway system. You can build subway stations anywhere and your Tropicans will happily use them which means – no more traffic problems. Just be careful when you put them out that you keep an eye on the cost, the further apart they are the more expensive they are to build. You should also leave gaps in your busy areas so you can slot the subway stations in when they become available.

Logistics

Another important Tropico tip to keep things running smoothly involves logistics. You need plenty of Teamsters to pick up your exports and transport them to the dock for sale. They’ll be much faster if they have easy access to a car so they need to be close to garages. I don’t think it really matters where you build them because you can’t tell them where to pick up products from anyway. As long as they are near a garage and you have enough of them to pick up all your goods then you should be fine.

If you have a lot of surplus goods at your factories or mines and they seem to be taking too long to get picked up then you need more teamsters. On some islands (depending on the layout) you should consider building a second dock to help. Ideally you’ll have separate docks in separate bays rather than two in the same one.

Industry

Getting your industry up and running can really bring in the cash. You can always sell raw resources but if you use them to manufacture products instead your profit will grow significantly. You will need an educated workforce though, so a high school and college are essential.

It’s worth noting you can also set up imports for some of the manufacturing businesses. So even if you don’t have any tobacco farms you can import it and make cigars for profit. Just bear in mind that your import bill might be high and that you’ll need skilled workers for some of the factories. For this to work you have to turn on imports in the factory.

Most of the industrial buildings have upgrades so always click on the building and take a look. Many of them require electricity so you may not be able to get them when you first put the building out but you should make sure to remember and go back when you have power. The chemical plant is a good industry to start with because it only needs power to run and it improves the quality of your clinics and hospitals.

In Modern Times you’ll be able to get Borehole Mines; the big advantage with them is that even when the resource runs out they’ll still produce a trickle of output.

Military and Propaganda

You need an army to ensure that the rebels don’t overrun you. Make sure your palace is always fully staffed with soldiers (raise the wages if necessary) and build the improvements to increase their job satisfaction. You can build an Armory, Army Base and Guard Post later on. It’s a good idea to have a Guard Post near your power plant to ensure the rebels don’t attack it.

Always build the Childhood Museum and consider building newspapers, radio stations and TV stations to improve your standing with the people (you can target specific factions if you like). You should also build the Mausoleum when you can afford it because the rebels will always attack it first (there’s a fun booby trap option too).

Immigration and Wages

You need a steady supply of immigrants to begin with but when you start to see unemployment and homelessness you need to close the gates. You can only control this with an Immigration Office so get one early.

Wages in Tropico 4 are vital as they determine what your Tropicans can afford. You should keep an eye on average Caribbean pay and see how your wages compare. Increase them when you can to avoid expensive strikes and increase job satisfaction. If you go above the Caribbean average you’ll also boost immigration.

Make sure you keep the same tier structure of unskilled – high school – college workers. You don’t want to increase just one. You can also use better wages to attract people to a specific job you want to fill. Make sure the dock workers and teamsters are always happy because they can effectively freeze your economy if they go on strike.

Religion, Healthcare and Entertainment

You will need entertainment and religion to keep your Tropicans happy. You should get a church fairly early to keep the religious faction off your back. You’ll also want a clinic early on. Both healthcare and religious buildings should keep pace with your growing population just make sure you have a sound economy to support them.

You have a pretty good range of entertainment options to choose from and some of them, like the movie theatres can be set to provide different bonuses. The pub and the childhood museum are a good start but you should wait until you have the money and you’ve already provided food, housing, healthcare, education, and religion before you spend big here.

A Few Final Tropico 4 Tips

• Get your high school up and running early and buy in staff for it.
• When you hire ministers make sure they are talented or they might trigger negative events. Always fire them if they do. Good ministers will trigger bonuses for you.
• Check your Almanac frequently it has all the information you need to plan the right strategy and decide on priorities.
• Remember to build some beauty in the shape of parks, trees and fountains.
• Build a weather station so you get warnings about upcoming disasters.
• In the campaign many of the missions have trigger points. Things will only advance when you complete certain tasks, so sometimes holding off on a specific task can help you build a solid foundation before advancing.
• You’ll always make more money if you develop your raw resources rather than sell them. Even gold can be made into jewellery so take advantage.

If you’ve got a winning Tropico 4 strategy of your own or you want to share some Tropico 4 tips then post a comment.