Game News Tropico 5 released

[Whisky]

Tags: Kalypso; Tropico 5



Tropico 5 has been released on Steam. It can be purchased for $39.99.

Unlike the previous games, which deal exclusively with the Cold War era, Tropico 5 begins in the Colonial Era and ends in Modern Times.

 

[fizzelopeguss]

How is it?

 

[Country_Gravy]

Best Tropico that I haven't played.

 

[Sensuki]

I don't like anything past Tropico 2

 

[thesheeep]

I would say it is the best out of 3, 4 and 5.
I like most of the things they added.

That said, the game is in dire need of some hints. For example, rebels seem to pop out of nowhere at times, despite being in at least good relations with everyone.
You can work around this by going full democracy route (no uprisings, which lets you kill every single rebel while not caring about the increase in unrest).
In general, it is just not that clear what you should do to please certain factions. You have to figure it out for yourself, some like that, I don't really. It is pretty much save, do something, watch the faction changes, reload. They should just tell you what the faction changes are for some actions (not all are as obvious as environmentalists disliking lots of oil platforms).
IMO this is not the kind of game where "figure it out yourself" is a great and fun thing to do for something like faction influence.

It also still has some annoying bugs (buildings never finishing, being stuck at 80%+ forever). But don't get me wrong, it is more than playable and definitely fun.

 

[Country_Gravy]

So you want more handholding?

Get the fuck out.

 

[JarlFrank]

 

[thesheeep]

So you want more handholding?

Get the fuck out.

Yes, because telling the fucking rules of the game is handholding.
This is not even RTFM (which would be fine, though kinda anachronistic), because it is not written in the FM.
I'm not asking the game to tell me the solutions, I'm asking the game to tell me why certain things happen, because it is just not clear.
For example, not just having a rebellion, but have the rebels tell what they want instead of just attacking random buildings.
Or, when a faction hates you, make it clear why they do. The 5 or so latest events in that window are utterly useless as all of them will be "bribed faction leader" sooner or later (you have to spend all that money on something).

It's not like I'm losing at the game. I'm not. But I find this artificial obscurity really annoying.

 

[Turjan]

Or, when a faction hates you, make it clear why they do.

I don't know about Tropico 5, as I don't have that game yet, but in Tropico 4, this information was available in your journal/yearbook almanac on the faction relations tab.

Here an example for the loyalists:

Have they removed this from the game?

 

[thesheeep]

Not completely removed, but it holds much less information now.
For example, there are no demands. And the modifiers are only the most recent ones.

This window has become practically useless.

So in theory, you could do something, wait some days and see how it affects relations. But "doing something" takes some time on its own (like building some structure), then it takes even more time until its effects start popping up. And only then you will MAYBE see an effect in this window. By then, of course, so much time has passed that you are hesitant to reload if it turned out to be a bad idea. So you basically have to play new games until you halfway memorized what does what.

And even then you still get bullshit like rebels popping up everywhere despite over 70% happiness and favorable relations with all factions. As I said, this is easy to come by by becoming a democracy and killing every single rebel. The eventual uprising will be magically removed because.. uhm... a real democracy can never have violent uprisings in this game. Even when it shoots every single dissenter.

Btw. when you click on a faction in this window, you see every single member. And you have to scroll through all of them to find the leader to bribe him. Even more funny: Some people that have 0 approval to you will not even tell you why.

 

[Turjan]

That sounds like a shitty implementation.

I'm not exactly sure what that developer does. If you compare Tropico 1 with Tropico 4, you can see that the game is pretty much the same in most aspects, but everything that has been actually changed in the new version is somehow questionable or useless. It's weird. I can't even tell why, as the basic Tropico 1 is a solid concept. It looks as if the developer doesn't want to touch the basic code and just deals in ancillaries.

 

[baturinsky]

At the very end of "People" tab in almanac (you'll have to scrolls) there is a list of all "important people", including faction leaders.

 

[Telengard]

That sounds like a shitty implementation.

I'm not exactly sure what that developer does. If you compare Tropico 1 with Tropico 4, you can see that the game is pretty much the same in most aspects, but everything that has been actually changed in the new version is somehow questionable or useless. It's weird. I can't even tell why, as the basic Tropico 1 is a solid concept. It looks as if the developer doesn't want to touch the basic code and just deals in ancillaries.

After playing some of Haemimont's (Tropico 3, 4, 5) other stellar offerings, such as Imperium Romanum and Omerta, I'm going to got out on a limb and say that they don't really have a feel for what makes city builders tick. They have an inherited success on their hands with Tropico, but not really knowing what made Tropico popular nor what people like in general about city builders, they don't dare touch PopTop's old core gameplay. So, they just doodle around each iteration, doing what is essentially adding minor expansion packs (now with fully voiced stories!) to the old core game, while shinying up the graphics and doing general streamlining.