It's a wonderful game, one that holds up well to this day, but you've got to approach it on its own terms. Staying alive in itself is a massive struggle, one with a real sense of accomplishment once you've figured out how to do so consistently. It is difficult, arbitrary, and the typical Tropico humor of the later games is nigh-nonexistent. If you do, you will end up not liking it. Don't come in expecting an experience like Tropico 3 and beyond. Come in expecting to lose, multiple times, before you get a good grip on its systems. In this regard, it accurately simulates how precarious a situation real world pirate colonies were in - but it's not for everyone. Your population can be arbitrary in its demands, invasion usually means death, take from raids is random and therefore not guaranteed to generate profit, and one good captive revolt will put you into a death spiral that you will not recover from unless you handle yourself precisely. Tropico 2 is far more difficult compared to 3-6. This all adds up to a vastly different game compared to any other Tropico game, to the point where it may as well not even be in the same series. There is no keeping your island in line through tyranny and oppression (for everyone on the island, anyway) like in every other Tropico game. Historically, pirates operated under libertine ideals of meritocracy - your rule is only as good as their respect for your capacity to rule. Keeping your captives too scared to escape - or worse, start a slave revolt - and your pirates happy and drugged up enough to dissuade them from putting your head on the chopping block. Every building generates one or more of these auras, coupled with living spaces, so it heavily influences your city planning. Buildings generate auras that contribute to keeping your slaves in line or making your pirates happier - pirates like living in anarchic areas that are well protected by defensive buildings, and captives are kept in line with fear and order. You don't staff your rum distilleries or cigar factories with high school educated labor that you cultivate over the long-term, you kidnap uniquely-skilled individuals from across the Caribbean to serve that end. The industrial goods you do produce are designed to further the above ends - cannons, sword, and ship's biscuit to outfit your pirate vessels, hooch and cigars (not to mention prostitutes) to keep your pirates happy.īuildings from farms to manufactories to pirate schools require no currency, but resources (namely, lumber) and inputs to build or function. Pirates don't work your buildings, so you need slaves in order to work them for you, and this means you need both pirates and slaves (called 'captives' in-game) - there's no getting by with one or the other. You don't have citizens as such, you have slaves - and they too, need to be kept with a modicum of comfort or else you'll find your island embroiled within a slave revolt. As such, the main focus is on building a pirate fleet, avoiding detection from the major European powers, sending off your pirates on raids that could easily see them all wiped out, and keeping the surviving pirates as happy as possible so they don't decide that you're next in their crosshairs. Exports are possible, but hardly the focus, and the Smuggler's Cove is really something you build after you've already built up your economy through the aforementioned plunder. In Tropico 2, you are running a plunder driven economy. This is not how Tropico 2 works, not in the slightest. Everything else is an elaboration on that idea, from refining raw or unfinished goods into industrial commodities, or building tourist and entertainment-oriented buildings to profit from rich foreigners. You build nodes, you work the nodes using your citizens, and you reap the profits from those nodes. In every other Tropico game, the economic focus is on supply chain management in an export or services-driven economy. Tropico 2 is radically different to any other game in the series, beyond its pirate thematics.
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