Some starter tips?

[mcsproot]

One thing that's always irked me about any Tropico game is there never seems to be a standard 'roughly this many resources for this factory' or 'this many food sources feed this many people'.

Is there any rough guide? Like 2 resources per factory? Or 3?

Also, I've noticed that land suitability for things like ranches tends to change, what causes that? Is having the ranch fully staffed and maximum budget over intensive on the farming, and I should reduce staff/budget to allow to land to regenerate? On that note, do Country Houses provide 100% food for the occupants, or does it more reduce their reliance on mass farming?

Also, how does the new wealth system work? I'm assuming that the wealth provided by a workplace translates to that person's/familial wealth. They need to be that wealth level to live ina house with that required wealth level, and entertainments likewise. So a Rich family can live in/use entertainments of Broke, Poor, Well-off and Rich, but do not have access to Filthy Rich? I ask this because I noticed one of my Librarians was living in a shack and had Broke wealth despite the Library providing Rich wealth. I'm guessing it take a short time for the Wealth to count?

On that note, is there any way for Retirees to have any Wealth? It seems to me that the Colonial Era has no Broke housing and if you have No Free Lunch edict, they'd not be able to get food either. I'm assuming in later eras you can get things like pensions/social security.

Also, I ended up rage-quitting the third mission after 3 groups of soldiers appeared within 60 seconds of starting the mision. I never really paid much attention to the military in previous games as I was usually able to keep the number or Rebels low and never got on the bad side of a Superpower. I usually only built things when the Militarists complained. Considering it seems that you continue with certain islands rather than starting new each time, is there any recommended number of miltiary buildings to use? Or is a good bet to try and survive the invasion of the crown instead of buying independance? On that note, what happens if your whole army is defeated? Do the soldiers/pirates leave after awhile, or is it game over as they'll destroy everything?

[Hassan]

You can look in the guide section here on steam or there is this[forum.kalypsomedia.com] guy that made a guide topic on the Kalypso forum.

[Wakawaka]

You might want to play that mission again and just see what happens :)

[bauerbach]

farming generates income for your excess, the game is a whole lot easier if you have a ton of exports. I just finished the 3rd mission, and on that island I think I have 12 farms among some ranches and luxury factories.

[Z2J]

re: military - yes you do need a military.
In Colonial Era I like two of those big forts and about about 3 guard towers. I place the big forts near my palace and the towers I put three near one pier and three at another, as the invaders tend to come from the piers at either end of the beach. I always win independence without having to be in debt.
WW era - get rid of the big forts, keep the towers, give the towers machine guns. I replace the forts with barracks, and when tanks come I build two military bases.
Pretty much after that I make sure to have an aircraft carrier, that takes care of all invaders and rebels.
Make sure to up date every military building - like get the tanks the good armor when it's available.
Placement - I try to keep all my military stuff (except guard towers) in one block, so they move together (roughly) as a stack of doom. If you place them all willy nilly then they will show up for battle as time allows and it's easier to lose.
I tend to use "conscription", because you have a lot more uneducated people around than HS graduates, and they do just fine.

[Z2J]

re: wealth. As a general rule, I pay illiterate folks enough to be "well off", I pay HS grads enough to be "rich" and I pay college people enough to be "filthy rich" - happy people spend their money and are less likely to revolt.

A few tips - power plants, build more than you need, don't bother with nuclear power, geo-thermal does just fine. If I have a volcano I cluster the geothermal power units around it and I have tons of power that doesn't require me to have a raw material.
re: how much food - your ledger tab has "happiness" on it, hit that, than look at food happiness, click on it and you can see exactly how much food and markets (you need markets) you have any how many people are served by them. People like lots of food and variety.
re: supplying factories - feels like you need at least two resources/factory at the very least - as in two sugars/rum factory, but you also need a lot more Teamsters than you did in Tropico 4 - I try to build at least one set of teamsters/factory and for every 2-3 farms I have a set of teamsters. In some cases I supplement supplies by importing materials, which is why I tend to have a TON of docks.

[MaxDoomSWE]

If you want to pay to be a beta tester of this game, remember to save every 5 minutes, because the game crashes and freezes a lot.

[bauerbach]

that doesnt seem very releventant and I think Ive had 1 crash in about 10 hours of game play. YMMV but keep those kind of comments to the whining threads, this is the internet afterall, theres plenty of them.

[jimboola]

I have played around 30 hours. Two crashes.

As to the general points. Yes I wish it was more clear how much resources you need for things. How many coal mines do you need for power plants, are geo-thermal plants worth the bother with no volcano's? And why does it sem that nuclear plants just sit there?

[Finkle and Einhorn]

You can easily look up how much resources your factories are using in the journal thing. On the first page under 'Resources', click that and it will tell you exactly how much you are exporting and how much you are using locally for each resource. Using this you can tell that it is mostly a 1 to 1 ratio of farm to factory. Except in the case of the steel mill, where it seems that one coal mine produces a whole lot more than one iron mine. This is probably because power plants also use coal.

[Grey Buddhist]

This should be the BEST Tropico 5 starter tip at this time: Do NOT play it until it gets patched a bit more. (next patch 1.02 'should' be out early this week. It should contain some good fixes BUT you still won't be able to save a multiplayer game yet (that patch is coming later sometime).
If you still decide to play without waiting for patches, try these:

1) Buy the houses that have 4 families in them that also feed all occupants by itself. This will help you alot because your people will all be in houses that have gardens feeding them instead of you having to spend alot of money feeding your people and will also prevent your tenants from starving to death.

2) Whenever possible try and curve your roads and avoid creating intersections. Intersections will slowly become bottlenecks and slow down your teamsters/profits. Subways are a great idea, but since sometimes (aka usually) they fail to work properly, cars will be the primary transportation for most of your Tropicans.

3) Put factories near docks, housing close to factories, and entertainment (and other work and safety buildings) near housing. Teamsters should ALWAYS be near any buildings that need to have anything picked up...or dropped off! (NOTE: There is a teamster BUG that should be fixed in patch 1.02 - The bug is that sometimes your teamsters get stuck in places like docks, or disappear. Some people have fixed this by destroying buildings that they are lost in, or roads they got lost on, and rebuilding. To me that is just ridiculous but some people want to play now and not wait for a fix) Anyway, back to #3 - reason you want these close to eachother is factories make stuff that you export from the docks so closer they are, your profits will be larger/faster. Housing close to factories so that when done with work your people don't have far to go in order to go home and rest. Other buildings near houses so that your people and their families don't have far to go in order to have fun (if you don't build fun things for them, they will make their own fun by burning your buildings down)

4) Don't rush things! Don't rush to get from one era (example colonial) to the next (world war). Slowly build up your economy, happiness, etc...and when your are well prepared then change. Reason is there is usually alot of turmoil/unhappiness during/after an era change and if you barely had stuff running when you changed, your rule will not last long in the new era.

5) Take all the advice you receive from anyone (not just me) and try different things out. Some things might work for one person, but not you...and some things might work for you, but not others.

Hope these help you out.