Apologies for my absence last week gang (it’s OK, I know none of you really noticed, but don’t we all just want to be loved?), but I’m back now, and before I vanish into the hazy sleeplessness of a 48 hour Mass Effect 2 binge I found the time to share some thoughts on a totally different game.
Tropico 3! Now many of you may never have heard of the Tropico franchise of city building games. Neither had I, until I stumbled across this beauty. City building games seem to be an increasing rarity and I suppose few can understand the niche appeal of building economies and supply chains, ensuring stable income and efficient infrastructure. It isn’t for everyone, but I have spent hundreds of hours on games like Pharaoh, Caesar, SimCity and Settlers, and I know there are many other niche-lovers out there too.
However (I wanted to start that sentence with “but”, but the vengeful ghost of my year 10 english teacher Ms Aitken convinced me to bow to the grammar gods) even if you are someone who perhaps doesn’t think city building can be fun or considers those kinds of games too stodgy and stat heavy, here is something that may make you change your mind. Tropico 3 is possibly the best city builder for a newcomer to the genre to cut their teeth on. For a start it is the kind of game that is almost as much fun when you are messing things up as when everything is going great.
The flavour of the game is Caribbean, and you are El Presidente, dictator (or democratically elected nice-guy) of a small 3rd world banana republic. You can design a cute little avatar for your persona (my guy was essentially Isaac from Love Boat, with an even more glorious afro and a cigar) and assign him various personality traits that will affect your governing style, or alternatively choose a real-world revolutionary from a list. Some traits are positive, such as being a war hero, others ,like being a kleptomaniac, are negative.
The main focus of the game is keeping the various factions of your people happy. Everyone belongs to political parties, such as Nationalists, Democrats, Communists and so forth, each with different agendas and desires. Nationalists for example despise immigration, and an open door policy will earn their anger. Communists on the other hand will hate you for allowing high income disparity and poor housing. It sounds a lot more complicated on paper than it works out in the game, but generally the best bet is to try and please most of the people most of the time, or alternatively just ensure the military is on your side and gun down anyone who protests (this is the only city builder where sending the soldiers to gun down protesters is a valid strategy, as is making political rivals disappear into prisons never to be seen again).
Building an efficient economy will help you in all of this, and luckily for the new comer, its a pretty straightforward supply chain and economic model for the most part, especially when you compare it to games like Settlers. Primary industries such as farming and lumber will get you started, as well as aid from the USSR and USA (whose relationships with you need to be balanced, as highly negative relations with one of the super powers can lead to bad things), but as in real life it is manufacturing and tourism that bring in the big bucks. Of course, to have manufacturing you need an educated workforce, and so the whole focus of the economy is managing your labour pool and natural resources. A strong economy helps you keep people happy as you can build the facilities, like healthcare and entertainment, that they want (not to mention that the better shape your economy is in, the more money will be available for you to pilfer away into your Swiss bank account!).
To be blunt, if you are a city building veteran you will find Tropico 3 pretty easy once you get your head around the supply chain and economic model. Don’t let that put you off though, because although it is shallow in some ways, it offers you a great depth of variety in play-style You can lift your people from poverty into penthouses if you like, or it is equally valid to keep them oppressed in squalor while you siphon the national budget for your own nefarious needs.
Ultimately you can play the game how you like, opting for being an iron-fisted dictator, a staunch supporter of democracy, or anything in between. Personally I always find myself being quite liberal and open to democracy, unless it looks like I might lose, in which case out come the bribes and strong arm tactics, naturally.
Some of the city building tools will frustrate you, especially the road building tool which often won’t let you build the road quite the way you like it, forcing you to try over and over again til you find the magic angle the game wants you to follow. Once you get a fair sized city going you will also be frustrated by the AI that governs your builders. Often construction sites will go days with no-one working on them for no apparent reason, while your building teams sit around lazing in their offices. I still haven’t quite figured out why it is that sometimes a building will just not get built for what feels like an eternity despite all your best efforts. Also, once you get a pretty populated island, congestion can become a big problem at key junctions. The path finding AI of vehicles doesn’t seem to take wait time into account, so it always goes via the route that is the shortest distance meaning that opening alternative roadways sometimes does little to ease matters.
All these quirks and bugs shouldn’t put you off though, as this is undoubtedly one of the most entertaining city builders I have played in quite a while. The flavour, style and charm makes you forget about the minor frustrations some of the tools will give you and the game has a fantastic sense of humour. The soundtrack of latin swing will keep a smile on your face, and the news reports that play over the radio regarding the status of the country and your actions will always elicit chuckles.
I think this game deserves a respectable 4 Cuban cigars out of 5.
Popularity: 6% [?]
Write a Comment