Got to test the new Tropico computer game today, the one that lets you play petty dictator to a tin-pot banana republic. Actually, I could have tried it out last night, but I had writing duties, and Eileene, bored by an absence of office work, took the test flight instead. But now I've played it, much of today, and here are my first impressions.
Ignore the press: Tropico is a builder, not a political simulation. Yes, politics enter into the equation; many useful edicts anger one or more segments of your populace, and if enough get angry, it's time for cigarette and blindfold. But you mollify your detractors by building more things. If a banker gets his bank and a peasant gets his farm, all is well. Sacrificing one faction to your goals is a temporary measure; ultimately, you'll be able to satisfy everyone. The trick is getting it done within fifty years. If you want to play for a score, you'll need to play with a time limit.
Good Points
- The building graphics are superb, minutely detailed and sporting an entirely appropriate seedy look.
- Likewise, online help and the rulebook balance oppression, desperation, and humor nicely.
- The balancing act a player must perform is challenging, and promises to be more so when I try higher difficulty settings. The three-cornered relationship between living space, education, and employment is the best part of the model.
- The painstaking details of your citizenry are delivered as promised.
- You can whip through a game relatively quickly for a builder; about four hours even if you don't ride the time acceleration button. If long, involved games are your thing, you can play indefinitely, but not for a score.
- At the easier levels, at least, you have freedom of action. There's one relatively narrow path to prosperity but if you're willing to ditch wealth and popularity, you can get away with a great deal without actually getting kicked out of office.
Bad Points
- While building graphics are superb, they're undermined by a sparseness of ground. The play area betrays its digital nature by chunking down photographically sculpted buildings on a bland background, looking more like pinups on a bulletin board than buildings on an island.
- Some of the delicate balances you might expect don't seem to be there. In particular, I've pretty much given up on mining iron or bauxite. Mines take enormous space, pollute, return no more cash than good exportable crop like tobacco or coffee, and cannot take on added value at local factories. When a choice has nothing to recommend it, it's either bad design or clever design hiding tactics still obscure to the novice. We shall see.
- Though the painstaking details of your citizenry are delivered as promised, they seem to be unimportant. You can solve plenty of problems with the sledgehammers of wage raises and good housing, never needing to pick over subtle political and familial strands in a web of relationships. Nor would you want to pick; chasing down all the implications of jailing a dissident is a micro-managing nightmare.
- The fact that Tropico is built around short play times (50 game years) isn't so keen once you realize your first twenty or thirty years will play almost the same way every time, regardless of your ultimate goal or immediate resources. Slap out liveable housing, put miners/farmers/loggers at your most readily exploited resource, and build a beeline from your docks to that resource. Get the cash flowing in. Wait half the game while your fledgling economy bootstraps itself. Spend another third ramping up to more profitable ventures, and enjoy a brief five to ten years of actual creativity.
Now remember, these are first impressions, not backed by insights appearing through repeated play, nor any experience in harder difficulty levels. Maybe workers can live in shantytowns for decades. Maybe margins of profit are too slim at the heady peaks of ?hard? or ?ludicrously difficult? to permit bribing your enemies, and you must choose verrry carefully just which political enemies should develop nine-millimeter migraines. Maybe I've missed clever ploys involving bauxite. Maybe you need to court one or both superpowers to keep your island afloat long enough to become self-sufficient.
Altogether, an intriguing game, and one I intend to explore further. Tropico has a working engine under the hood ? surprisingly few games do ? and an entertaining tone. Unfortunately, all the signs point to a strategy game hobbled by stereotyped play.
[Postscript: Not all my readers are gamers; I'll write more on Tropico only if I think I have anything to add which could appeal to the larger audience.]