I’ve recently discovered Tropico and have become very addicted to it, but unless you like the city-building it may not be for you. In this game (unless you play one of the pre-generated scenarios, which I don’t) you create a Latin American dictator, decide on the characteristics of the island you are going to rule, and then it starts you off with your palace, a construction office, a teamsters office, a dock, and a few farms. WIth the default rules you are scored based on how happy your people are, how rich your island is, and how much money you have tucked away in your Swiss Bank account.
The thing that makes it different from most city-building games is the strong political component of the game. Every citizen of your island is rated in their intelligence, courage, and leadership, and is usually a member of at least one faction. You can click on any person walking around and see their name, their family, their beliefs, where they work, where they live, and what they are currently thinking. Every few years your citizens demand an election. You can refuse to have the election but this really hurts the peoples opinion of you (how much depends on how you rose to power, i.e. military coups vs. elected as a fascist, which is chosen during the dictator creation section). You can agree to the election, but if it looks like you aren’t going to win you can fudge the election results, but this also bothers the people, though not as much as cancelling the election. Most of the time you end up trying to please as many of the factions as you can. It’s a real balancing act.
The communists will vote for you as long as there is housing for all the people, everybody has a job, and there’s not too much wage disparity (you set the wages for every business in the game). The religious faction likes for there to be plenty of churches and for the clergy to be well paid, and also appreciate you issuing edicts like ‘Book Barbecue’ or ‘Contraception Ban’. The capitalist faction likes for you to have high profit buildings like hotels and factories, and for college educated people to be paid a lot (you can see how this can conflict with the communists desire for low wage disparity). The intellectuals like for there to be a lot of liberty (this is lowered or raised based on various edicts, how many soldiers you have, free elections, etc.) and for there to be enough teachers for everyone to attend school, and they get very upset at a lot of edicts that make the religious faction happy. The military faction wants for there to be lots of soldiers and for them to be well paid. The environmentalists want to see as much of the habitat as possible preserved. Your dictator’s background also effects how the factions like you - if you chose ‘Compulsive Gambler’ and ‘Womanizer’ as your flaws (you must pick two) the religious faction is NEVER going to like you much, unless you bribe the faction leaders regularly. Some factions are not big enough to make much difference in elections (i.e. the Environmentalists and the Intellectuals), but if your well-developed island is relying on a lot of college educated people to run the power plants and the TV stations, you will need to keep the Intellectuals happy or they may emigrate.
Anyway, it’s an intensely fun game, and no two games are alike. I’ve played as a benevolent dictator who relies on tourism for money and as an evil despot who was only loved by the Military faction and never had free elections (as long as the guys with guns like you, what are the people going to do?). The actual interface of the game is very easy - all you do is place buildings (probably at least 100 different kinds), set wages, rent, and sometimes what the building does (for instance, many buildings let you choose whether there is a 14 hour or 10 hour day, or the newspaper office will let you choose whether the paper has political leanings towards a certain faction), and you can set it for all buildings of a type by a shift-click), and issue various edicts (from ‘Have Diego Hidalgo thrown in the dungeon!’ to ‘Offer amnesty to the rebels’). The complexity is in the behavior of the people and the economy. You can’t force people to work anywhere (except in the prison), you have to offer wages that compel someone to work there. One time I had a crime problem so I increased the wages for the police a lot, then suddenly a bunch of my farmers quit their jobs so they could go to high school and learn to be police, and my economy took a downturn until the next ship came with new immigrants.
Oh, I forgot to mention that you can choose to play as a real-world dictator instead of building your own - for instance, Manuel Noriega has Paranoid and Ugly as his two flaws…Eva Peron has the Pop Singer background, rose to power by election as a fascist, and has Kleptomania and Compulsive Gambler as flaws.
The best thing about it is the game is a few years old and should run on most machines made in the last few years, and I’ve seen it at several Wal-Marts for $10 as part of a ‘Maximum Strategy’ package (the other game in the package is ‘Stronghold’, which I haven’t even opened yet). The version in this package is ‘Tropico: Mucho Macho Edition’, which is Tropico + the Paradise Island expansion, and a few added scenarios.
