Building Paradise

A list of tips I find helpful, when it comes to building the ultimate island, along with what I consider the best El Presidente for the job!

Our Humble Ruler

To start off, we have to remember one key thing. In Tropico 4. Money is worthless.

No I don't mean it's useless in the game, I mean money means nothing after a while.

The simple fact of the matter is that your island can only grow so fast. When you've got 17 fully staffed factories, you make so much money you have nothing to spend it on. I've actually reached points in games where my exports were so large, we couldn't get the docks empty.

What IS useful for your score is your swiss bank account.

As such, I often use the following build.

Naturalist, Elected as Capitalist, Green Thumb, Bureaucrate, Kleptomaniac.

Naturalist gives -30% pollution, a few faction bonuses, and +10% building costs. This is useful when combined with our next trait Green Thumb, which gives -50% pollution and -10% factory production.

So -80% pollution. Pollution is insanely reduced, to the point you'll barely have to worry about enviromental happiness, or the enviromental faction, even if you end up building mines or logging camps. One Water Treatment plant near your factories, 2 if you have a huge industrial area is good enough.

Remember, our goal is a paradise island while pumping the swiss bank account. That's why we've picked kleptomaniac and bureaucrate.

Kleptomaniac gives -10% factory production, but adds 1000 dollars to swiss bank account each year. Over a 50 year game that's a good 50k. Although it's not a lot, it helps. You can probably safely swap Kleptomanic with Administrator if the +10% building costs from naturalist annoys you enough. Do NOT swap out bureaucrate however.

Bureaucrate is probably my favorite trait. The -10% to housing costs is nothing, the real gem is doubling the swiss bank you get off of the building permit. Upping it from 10% to 20%. What this means is if you build a building that has a base cost of 10k, you get 2k in your account. The real insane gem, is that this stacks with the banks reduction. So that 10k building, with 3 banks is reduced to a 4k building, that gives you 2k in the swiss bank. In effect letting you take half of your building costs for yourself! This will pump your swiss bank and get you an insane score. If the intellectuals get mad, just build a few rader dishes to scan for aliens. Naturalist giving you +15 to their faction should make it so that isn't a problem though.

Your probably thinking that factory production is now down 20% though! Not a problem! That's what our lovely elected as capitalist is for. +15 Us relations, +5 capitalist respect, +20% liberty, and +20% factory production! Countering our factory problem, and if you swaped kleptomanaic for administator, actually making it a boost. You have fairly high democratic expectations however, but if you know what you're doing it shouldn't be a problem.

So to sum it up.

Naturalist, Elected as Capitalist, Green thumb, bereaucrate, and either kleptomanic, or adminstrator. Do NOT take cheapstake as you'll want to raise wages later on.

Food Happiness

Food Happiness is fairly basic to explain. People like to be able to eat. What's more, they like to be able to eat various types of food.

Ironically not ever building that you're going to need is related to food.

First things first, you'll want to see if you have any salt mines. If you do, build one. Salt mines boost the production of ranches and organic ranches by 20% if placed nearby. This can help lower the amount of ranches you need to keep your growing population happy. If you have more than one salt mine, build more than one ranch setup, you can always export the extra meat and salt.

Secondly, you'll want a chemical plant if you have modern times installed. Chemical plants unlock the "Fertalize" edict, which will boost soil quality, enabling you to find the best location for your farms and biofarms.

Once you've fertalized the soil, build a college and an academy of science and train up some men. Horiculture stations need professors to work. Then search the island and find the best location for your farms and biofarms. Remember to build different types of food production! Also remember that biofarms are glitched and they don't produce one type of food, but rather "corn" "food crops" and "cash crops" there is no "pineapple" setting as shown when you try to place it.

When you place your biofarms, place around 4 of food crops and 4 of corn, but keep the same types together and keep a small space in between them for the horticulture station.

Organic agriculture will boost your food crop production through the roof. While if you built the academy of science in the last tip, GMC will put corn through the roof as well.

Then build some fish farms, and set to extra fish production. Make sure to space them out, or you'll fish away all the resources.

Lastly, build a supermarket. You can set it to junk food if you want, but I find leaving it on the normal setting is good enough.

Food is covered, and our people are fed!

Housing

Housing is annoying, and once you've built paradise, is even more annoying to keep up with all the immigrants coming to your island.

My first tip? Set your immigration office to "skilled workers" it saves on education, and makes it so you're not flooded with people. Plus it doesn't make the nationalists mad!

The first thing you'll want to do is build a ministry and hire a minister of foreign affairs. Luckily the immigration office workers could as bureaucrates so they can fill the slot if you don't want to pay for one.

Then make sure the USSR is not mad at you and activate the "USSR development aid" edict. Cutting the costs for tenemnts and apartments by 50%.

Ignore tenements. Apartments are your friend, especially if you've got modern times installed, where in 1968 you can upgrade them to "Modern Apartments" with a base 80 approval rating, 24 slots for people, and two useful upgrades, climate control and doorman kiosk which makes it not make crime.

Keep in mind modern apartments, unlike normal ones, DO take power, even without climate control.

Later on you'll also unlock modern condominions, which are useful for those annoying shacks that people build near their jobs.

People will only walk so far to get to work and needs. Build garages EVERYWHERE, and once you've unlocked the metro station, spam the metrostations like you're getting paid to do it, (which if you have building permit active, you are).

If you find you can't get rid of those last shacks, check to see how much open housing you have versus the homeless, and build more. If you have enough housing, drop a modern condominion near the shacks.

To get the housing quality up further, build a fire station set to "cat in a tree" near the housing, and also a nearby telecom HQ. This combined with climate control should get your modern apartment blocks to over 100% housing quality, and keep everyone happy.

Religion Happiness

Religion Happiness is something I've found confuses even people who make youtube videos about tropico 4.

First off, Religion happiness is only indirectly tied to the Religious faction.

Secondly, there is NO such thing as an atheist tropican. EVERYONE goes to chruch.

What this means is that no, one church and one catheral although it might keep the FACTION happy. Will NOT sastify a population of 1000 people.

The solution? Build lots of churches.

No. Not Catherals.

Churchs take only high schoolers to staff, and given their size, service more people for less space. It's better to build only one catheral for the faction, then only build churchs. 4 churchs > one catheral, and believe me you'll need them.

Although the middle east might get mad at you for "religious fundamentalism" there is an easy way around that.

Build an oil refinery and import crude oil for two quick buffs to their liking of you.

Remember to build the churchs need garages and metro stations, so people can easily access them. If you find the service quality is too low. Try activating literacy program, or if you REALLY need to, Papal visit. Just a warning, you can only activate papal visit ONCE.

Later on in the game you'll unlock the diamond catheral, which is fairly good for a single placement. Setting it to increase people's respect of you, will help with the respect happiness requirements.

Entertainment Happiness

Entertainment. Sadly this is probably the most annoying one I've found.

First off, even if you set television stations or radio stations to income making settings. It does NOT boost entertainment. Only Liberty.

To boost entertainment, you need to build nightclubs, pubs, and other such buildings. The service quality of the building determines how fast people are sastified. So once you have a power source going, demolish those old pubs, and build sport complexes, night clubs, and other such expensive high quality things.

If you're working on tourism, build two areas, one for the tourists, and one for the tropicans. Even the highest service quality can't service everyone at once, and tourists WILL take up space on your nightclub's dance floor.

Do NOT however demolish those childhood museums. The loyalists will kill you unless you rebuild them fast.

If you build night clubs, balloon fairs, and sports complexes, pass edicts that boost entertainment as often as possible. If you use tourism, build a blimp ride and set it to the third setting, the "presidente presence" bimp will fly over your nation boosting every nearby building as if you had visited it.

If you find entertainment is still too low. Try placing a tv station set to Learning with Larry" nearby. Also keep in mind that your entertainment, as with all things needs to be accesible. I cannot stress this enough. Garages, and metro stations. Period.

Healthcare

Healthcare is probably the easiest to understand, as there isn't a whole lot you need to do.

First off, you'll want a power source. Unlike churchs and catherals, Hospitals are better than clinics.

Secondly, you'll want to build a sanatorium, and activate the modern times "health care reform" edict to boost how many people they can service.

Lastly, remember that chemical plant you placed for your food quality? Buy the upgrade to it that boost service quality of hospitals and clinics by 20.

Keep in mind that as with churchs, hospitals can only service so many people at a time, if you find healthcare falling, build more of them, and check to see if they're full often so it doesn't become a problem! Unless religious quality that being low will only make people mad at you, healthcare being low will KILL people.

Early in the game, before you can afford to buy expensive healthcare, build an aid camp. It won't solve all your problems, and it'll make the nationalist mad, but at least people won't be DYING.

Crime Safety.

There is basically nothing you need to do to keep this high. First off, crime is produced when people are unhappy and can't find work. If you're following this guide and have everything else happy, no one should be annoyed at all.

However, certain kinds of buildings do produce crime, the obvious one being the smuggler.

Check your crime status often, and build police stations and swat HQs where they need to be. If you have the option select "Special ops training."

Make sure to build a prison for criminals too. Unlike rebels the only way to turn a criminal back into a normal person is to throw them in jail for 5 years.

If you hire a high quality minster of the interior, sometimes you'll get an event where crime happiness will be boosted by 15% due to the killing of the lucky seven gang. How helpful!

Tourist areas also often produce crime, so be sure to place a police station nearby there, just in case.

Overall, keep your people happy and content, and they'll have no reasons to become criminals.

Enviroment Happiness

Enviroment happiness, doesn't just have to do with how much pollution you have. It also has to do with the beauty of the island. If you EVER find small pieces of land you can't even fit a pub into, build gardens.

If you followed my El Presidente build, pollution should be no problem. However keep buiding enough water treatment plants, just in case. Activating pollution standards, and anti-littering is also helpful.

The rest of the time? Parks, Garden, and anything that boosts the beauty of the island. Trees next to the road. A horticulture station set to reforestation, and Gardens.

Pollution is your number one enemy. Spam those water treatment plants! Even if you do have -80% pollution created! You'll thank me later!

Overall, enviromental happiness if you place your buildings right isn't THAT hard to keep up. I've had over 70% enviromental happiness on the "it's all mine" mission with this build, which is amazing given how many pollution generating buildings I had, combined with the fact that I had access to none of the modern times stuff.

Just a warning. Bio-farms and ranches also produce a lot of pollution despite the name, build water treatment plants near them.

Solar plants and nuclear power plants are your favorite friends. No matter how cheap it gets, I avoid the normal power plant like it was poison.

Liberty

Due to our elected as capitalist rise to power. Our liberty already has a nice +20% boost! However there are some key things that will mess you up.

First off, certain buildings LOWER liberty. The obvious ones being military and police. Secondly, some of the edicts I've told you to pass like anti-littering, also reduce liberty.

The solution? Television stations.

Build your military buildings away from your housing and entertainment areas. I often build them near my factories, so I can set the telelvision station to "learning with larry" and boost production.

The other television stations should be placed all over the island. Near places where people live. Place one in your tourist area, place one in your housing area. They cover a large area, so unless you're playing on a HUGE island, you shouldn't have that much trouble covering everything. If you do run out of television stations, radio is a good backup. I find newspapers are too big, and don't produce enough liberty to be worthwhile, once you have television and radio up.

So long as you keep the military away from the people, you should be okay.

Just one final warning. Statues reduce liberty. They also reduce crime, but crime is often so low, I never need them.

Job Quality

Job quality.

Job quality is pretty easy to explain. Buildings start at a certain job quality and this is altered by upgrades and wages.

If you've got a lot of power producing solar plants, and a nuclear power station, there is no reason why you can't upgrade every factory to help out job quality.

In addition, when you're making money head over fist and it's NOT going into your swiss bank account, remember one key thing.

The money leftover in the treasury, doesn't help your score. Nor does it help your happiness.

So raise wages. Raise wages, early and often! Higher wages will also give people the money they need to use your entertainment district. And if you're lucky, your childhood museum or masoleum, which pumps the swiss bank account.

If you haven't used the free housing edict, they also need wages to pay for their housing obviously. Up to 1/3 of their wage will go to housing, so if you're only paying your uneducated $9, don't raise your rent above $3 or shacks galore!

I also find that if you're making enough money as it is. Switching factories to "easy does it" and keeping miltiary buildings on normal training is good enough. Special ops training is for when you're running a miltary dictatorship, not when you're building paradise.

Also make sure to issue "amnesty" every so often. Keeps the rebels low, even if you have enough military to take them on.

Respect

Probably the easiest of them all to keep high. If you keep doing faction tasks, and follow this guide to keep everyone happy. Respect should be through the roof. If you REALLY need to boost respect more, building more propaganda media, and changing your diamond catheral to Presidente's Sect will also help.

There's not really a ton of hints I can give you here. Just remember that respect has to be EARNED not forced. You can't just go arresting everyone who doesn't like you if you want high respect.

Make the people happy, and they will respect you.

[Two Gun Bob]

there's more nuance to housing than was mentioned.
People will pay 1/3 of their wages for rent. Couples will combine their wages.
Here's an example of how to take advantage of that for housing. If you set wages to 6, 12 and 24 you can easily control rent preferences:
-Single unskilled max rent $2
-Married unskilled max rent $4
-Single HS worker max rent $4
-Married unskilled and HS max rent $6
-Married HS max rent $8
-Single college max rent $8
-Married unskilled and College max rent $10
-Married HS and College max rent $12
-Married College max rent $16

Notice the curve is somewhat exponential. Using this strategy you can break housing quality into tiers based on $2 increments. Always be sure to provide some $1 bunkhouse trailer parks for the poor students on Social Security, and eliminate unmarried retirees when possible.

[Pokesus]

I have a question, i always leave the rent in 1 but a lot of people decides build their own houses, even if there is space for them and i build new houses close to their workplaces.
Im doing something wrong?
Everyone have a job who get paid 10 (non qualified) and the qualified ones get paid +15.
Im doing something wrong? Why there is so many homeless or people living in those houses even if there is a ton of housing for 1? (And free housing too, but that ones are full)

[stadshauder]

one thing that im confused about is that cant you just get cathedral galore on your island as it services more people per worker? also i hate the diamond cathedral as it takes tropicans so long to enter the building.

[Snake Bit]

Low religious happiness leads to rebels and low military happiness leads to a coup. Anathama event leads to everyone hating your guts.

[Aturchomicz]

Yeah I never ever built a Church before, dont see a use in wasting money on that even if it makes people "happier"

[vlastovka]

"Money is worthless" right at the start.
I stopped reading after that paragraph.

[Aranwen1]

salt mines can also boost fishing. one salt resource can handle up to 9 mines for it if you have enough space.

[KeKboi66]

immigration isint a problem in a developed island as you will hit the pop cap quiet fast.

[Mad Person]

Fun Fact: If you have the vigilante DLC and build the labor camp instead of a prison, any criminal sent there instantly reverts to a normal citizen. Just demolish the camp and they can be employed again.

[mastervovan]

You are right I don't have the dlc - waiting for the sale ;)