Difficulty percentages

[Wario]

I'm new to this genre and this is the first time i decided to invest my time in a city building/managing game, so excuse me but I will probably only ask dumb questions here:
I'm playing the Modern Times campaign, and the island it gave me was Isla de Sentencia (I looked it up on wiki). I'm fairly advanced by now, with a constant economy going (year 2060 something) that's not super uber rich but enough to bear with my mistakes without too much prejudice. If I remember correctly, this island gets a rating of 118% in difficulty, whatever that means, hard, easy, i don't really get it. I've read there's only 1 mineral soil there (gold) and I already have a mine above it i built ages ago. It alerted me the resource depleted, so my jewelry fabric stopped working along with the mine for some time after the initial boom, came back to working later and then it produces a not so great but not so horrible amount of resource. It never alerted me why did it came back to working so I'm clueless. I have 2 salt mines built but I suspect the island has more, just that I built residence and working places above it (lol I know I know). Is there a way to see if there's a salt spot on the ground without having to demolish what I built above it? And the final question, am I playing the game the expected way for a newcomer? I mean, everywhere I look, people seem to focus on the challenges. Thanks for the time and sorry for the wall of text.

[MikeH]

You play through all the Vanilla campaign missions? Those take your through understanding what is going on.

[theallenfamily3]

Play vanilla first. You should have won well before 2060. Play the tutorials first, there are four, they are really quick and they'll show you everything you need to know. You "focus on the challenges" to win the mission so it isn't like SimCity. For seeing "salt spots" go to the overlays, weird shaped button atop the picture in the bottom left. 118% difficulty is an easy mission that you should have won in the early '80s. I means that 100% is base difficulty, with 18% tacked on it. Hope that helps you a little.

[Wario]

Yes I wasn't playing the expecting way. I realized I was on mission 2, just that I kept playing instead of winning the scenario and my city grew a lot bigger. Is there really anything interesting in playing the mission after the goal? If I want to develop a city and keep maintaning it should I go sandbox? Thank you all for the help.

[MikeH]

Tropico sort of has a diminished return to it. The more you build and population grows, the harder it becomes to move goods around and make everyone happy. It's best to streamline your people and only build what you need. There is no reward for having all the space filled up on a map. Sandbox sounds like a plan if that are your goals. There is also a very nice map editor that will allow you to set up your own stuff.

[ajengine]

I'll try to answer that part by part - Long reply

1. "so my jewelry fabric stopped working along with the mine for some time after the initial boom, came back to working later and then it produces a not so great but not so horrible amount of resource." - Most probably you must have replaced your old mine with a borehole mine. A borehole mine can produce resources from a completely depleted mine and it works better when you build a borehole mine directly above the resource soil.

2. "Is there a way to see if there's a salt spot on the ground without having to demolish what I built above it?" & "I'm fairly advanced by now, with a constant economy going (year 2060 something) that's not super uber rich but enough to bear with my mistakes without too much prejudice." - A good game lies in knowing the details. Bottom left of the screen, the third icon atop the mini-map is the overlay button. Check island resources and use the top right pop out menu to see different menus. I believe Isla de Sentencia has 1 gold around 5 salt and 3 oil deposits - which oddly cannot be exploited. Look at the other overlays like services and see job quality. Check out economy overlay for income/expense data and crime liberty ratings. When you have more green and yellow in the overlays than red you should (as a rule of thumb) be close to winning a game with an economy holding a total above 2 million. On sentencia you should have hit a win by 2000. Don't worry if you don't get there just enjoy playing (if you ask me) after all the playing is in making mistakes and seeing funny occurrences.

3. "And the final question, am I playing the game the expected way for a newcomer? I mean, everywhere I look, people seem to focus on the challenges." & "Is there really anything interesting in playing the mission after the goal?" - A newcomer is not expected play in any certain manner :P its up to you mostly. If you want to get competitive, hook up online and see where you stand - play extra missions and challenges. If you are asking about general gaming well it is a persona choice of what you want out of the game. Some want to be benevolent democrats (peoples rulers - no reference to the US party)), some look to be entirely communist/capitalist, some want to be iron fist army/SWAT dictators, some want to pull a paradise island tourist spot, some are industrial giants you choose. Playing sandbox/God mode/continue playing after winning and all you can do is test yourself in how efficiently you can manage a growing population and play tetris with buildings and maybe notch up some of the harder to get achievements like "Kill Juanito" or be "Elite" and have 1337 buildings on the island etc.

[Wario]

Again I thank you for the support. I'm on mission 7 (crisis) on vanilla and, good God, took me a long time before I figured out what I had to do. I thought you should avoid anything that lowers the DEFCON but, alas, it isn't the case. Everything was good until I built a nuclear plant, my economy went downhill and was on the red and had to build 10 docks. I guess luck was on my side and i won the mission.
What I STILL don't understand, and I did look on google but didn't find any satisfying answer, is how do you interpret the fishing conditions overlay. ALL of my fishing warfs had pretty bad income/production. It sucked so much I decided to avoid building those from now on. If any of you know how do I properly use the overlay condition I would apreciate. Oh and I don't mind the walls of text, I quite enjoy reading them, even if I already know the answer.

[MikeH]

Fishing overlay just tells you if there are fish there or not. Pollution effects the fish overlay. It goes from green, yellow to red then in blocks starts to vanish meaning no more fish on that square. A fully green area in theory should bring more fish in per simulated boat trip out.

Fish are the first eaten by tropicans. Corn next. It's their favorite food. This is why so few fish show up and the canary if any at all.

Fish are a good and cheap resource to feed your topicans with at the start of any mission. I normally don't use fishing wharf's as a couple corn fields last longer. It's normally 1 field of food for every 50 tropicans. Modern times introduce the fish farms which give lots more options and more viable than Wharf's.

If your having issues with economy when getting started. You should hunt a gold deposit and set two Gold mines on top of that. Next would be salt mines, then beef ranches. Dropping a bunch of farms makes it hard to fill all those positions at start. A lumber yard and mill are also good idea's. If possible, set your beef ranches next to the salt mine so they get a bonus.

A immigration office then custom office should be next on the list. Getting more workers to fill those positions is crucial at start and getting a bonus to your exports is also important with Customs office.

For your president you might try.
Background - Self Made man. +15% to worker production.
Background - Booze Baron +100 export price for Rum. (This is not a early game help trait though, but can make your rich.)

Rise to power - Elected as Capitalist. +20% to factory production.
Traits- Entrepreneurial +10% commodity prices
Hardworking- +10% extra overall production of everything.
Plantador- +50% faster learning, education for all farms. +20% price increase of sugar, coffee and Tobacco exports. This does not effect plantation learning though. Export price just increased if in raw form. So rum would not get a sugar boost, or rolled cigars.


Administrator -10% of all building cost. Overall this is better to start with than Plantador.

[EagleShark]

Any opinions on my guy.
Rise to Power: Bought the Election
Background: War Hero
Traits: Well-Travelled
Populist
Financial Genius

[theallenfamily3]

Wario님이 먼저 게시:

Yes I wasn't playing the expecting way. I realized I was on mission 2, just that I kept playing instead of winning the scenario and my city grew a lot bigger. Is there really anything interesting in playing the mission after the goal? If I want to develop a city and keep maintaning it should I go sandbox? Thank you all for the help.

Didn't mean to be mean or anything like that. Sorry if it came across that way. Didn't realize you had already beaten it and kept playing (I never do that, so I tend to forget that button exists). Anyway, I think Sandbox is the right mode for you. Also, read the online manual. So, unless you are doing it for acheivements, I don't really see the point, and think you should just hit the "Win" button and keep going in the campaign and if you feel the urge to just have some fun without goals, do some sandbox.