CHAPTER FIVE
PEOPLE
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"You only have power over people as long as you
don't take everything from them. But when you've
robbed a man of everything, he's no longer in your
power- he's free again."
Alexander Solzhenitsyn |
My PresidentΘ, although you are a most magnificent leader, the true power on Tropico lies with the people. If you should lose their favor, you will most likely lose your power as well. Your people are also the engine of your economy, and you will need money to make the people happy. Managing people is a tricky task that has befuddled many a leader before you. You may have noticed that your dry cleaning receipts read, "This month's dictator" instead of your name. We can go through leaders rather quickly.
The problem is that you do not directly control your people. PresidentΘ, I have heard that there are far away places and worlds where the leaders simply 'lasso up' a bunch of people or soldiers, tell them where to go, and those people will obey unflinchingly. Stranger still, I have heard of other places where a leader can slap his workers and make them work with more industry. Such is not the case on Tropico.
All you as PresidentΘ can do is give them reasons to act as you want them to. To get them to work at a new building, raise the pay there. To get them to vote for you, or at least not to rise up against you, make them happy by providing food, housing, medical care, and much more.
Everyone is an individual person in Tropico. Your people have ambitions and dreams of their own. They have families. They have jobs, opinions, and experiences. The same actions that might cause one Tropican to praise your name might cause another to take up arms against you.
Although you cannot directly tell a citizen what to do, you can study them closely for clues as to their attitudes and reactions to your rule. Most information is available simply by clicking on a citizen (the information differs somewhat for tourists - that will be presented later in this chapter).
While any person, whether Tropican or Tourist, pressing
TROPICANS: Understanding Your Citizens
The information on your citizens is divided into 7 panels (Overview, Happiness, Politics, Job and House, Family, Skills, and Thoughts). Select a panel by pressing the corresponding Tab Button.
Overview
The basic information about an individual, including their current needs. The 5 bars on the right (Hunger, Rest, Religion Need, Entertainment Need, Health Care Need), indicate the citizen's current need for those services. When a person has just completed a good night's sleep, their rest bar will be completely full and green. As the person moves about, the rest bar decreases (and turns from green to red), until, eventually, they have to stop working or going about their business and return home for a good night's sleep.
Se±or, please note our sense of time here on Tropico is somewhat different from other places. There aren't any 'days' or 'weekends'. Tropicans need to sleep after they have performed a certain amount of activity (strenuous activity, such as hauling, tires a person quickly) rather than at a certain time of day.
The other need bars work in the same manner, although they generally decline slower - people need health care much less than they need to sleep. If you do not provide the needed service (such as a clinic for medicine), the individual will satisfy his need by himself. However, the result will be quite unsatisfactory, and the person will grow unhappy with you in that area.
Happiness
Each person has an overall happiness rating - how content they are with their lot in life, which in turn, reflects on how they feel about you, PresidentΘ. Overall happiness is driven by many individual factors, and at any given time, for any given person, some factors may be more important than others. Religious happiness is most important to a devoutly religious person. Health care is generally more important to the elderly. Job quality is among the most highly important factors to most citizens of working age.
The happiness panel lists all the individual factors of happiness as well as the overall score, which is a weighted average of the individual scores. The most important factors for any individual are the ones labeled in bright white text. Those with dark gray labels are comparatively unimportant.
- Food: People need access to food. They will automatically walk to buy their food, but it needs to be available, and in sufficient quantities. A lack of food will not cause immediate mass starvation - your people are resourceful, and are used to scavenging food from the environment when PresidentΘs fail to provide it for them. However, there will be some starvation deaths, and those who survive will become quite unhappy in this area, quite quickly. Locations at which people may pick up food supplies are food producing farms, ranches, marketplaces, and fisherman's wharves. Food can also be obtained at restaurants, but the meal must be eaten there - restaurants are not the primary food providers for Tropican citizens (they do not have the money to frequently visit such extravagant places).
- Housing: Everyone has a place to live. If you do not provide them with one, they will build their own shack from scrap materials. However, they do not like living in such meager conditions. You have several housing options at your disposal. There are individual houses, tenements, apartments, luxury houses, rural houses, and bunkhouses. These accommodations each offer a varying degree of satisfaction to your citizenry, but all are preferable to the shacks. Make note that you may charge rent for all housing except for the shack, so even the uncaring despot has benefits in looking after the housing situation. A family will spend no more than one-third of it's monthly income on rent, so if a man and a woman earn $5 per month each ($10 combined), they will spend no more than $3 on rent. Since some of your citizens have no monthly earnings (retirees, unemployed workers), if you charge rents for all housing, then you will force these people into shacks.
- Religion: My PresidentΘ, your citizens vary widely in their level of religious piety. For some citizens, religion is paramount in their lives, and a lack of an adequate worship facility will quickly lead to unrest. Others will only attend church if there's a hot bingo game going on. To serve your people's religious needs, build a church or a cathedral. A cathedral is more expensive, but provides a better religious experience, leading to higher religion quality scores for your people.
- Entertainment: When they have free time, the people seem to think they should be entertained. Luckily, you can earn back much of the salary you pay them by erecting entertainment establishments. There are many forms of entertainment you can provide. For a casual night out on the town, there are pubs, restaurants, and gourmet restaurants. Sports fanatics will love going to see a game at the sports complex. And then there are a few options that may conflict with the religious community- casinos, nightclubs and cabarets. I would like to say that it is good of you to personally inspect the caberets, PresidentΘ, though the people wonder why you have to inspect them so often.
In general, more expensive diversions (casinos, gourmet restaurants, etc.), provide a better quality of entertainment and result in higher entertainment ratings. However, each individual has their own entertainment preferences - some like to drink at pubs or nightclubs while others prefer gambling at casinos. By building a variety of entertainment establishments, you ensure that there is something for everyone.
- Health Care: Put simply, without some health care, your people will not live long. Like religion, health care is always free on Tropico. You will spend plenty of money building clinics and hospitals, then hiring doctors to work there, but you will make nothing backà other than a healthy society fit to work long, productive hours. As a bonus, a healthy society will not get upset because of a miserable health care system. Hospitals cost more to build than health clinics, but provide a better quality of service, leading to higher health care happiness by those who visit there.
- Crime Safety: Muggings, thievery, murderà the people are weak and allow these distractions to upset them. They like to feel safe walking to work and back. As the population density increases, and as the seedier establishments (nightclubs, cabarets, etc) are built, the crime in an area increases. Unfortunately, My PresidentΘ, crime on Tropico tends to be done behind your back - you will not see the criminals acting directly, but trust me, they are making their presence felt. You can see the crime levels for your island in Info Mode, with the crime overlay.
Note that if you plan on building a tourist trade, tourists are especially sensitive to crime. For tourist areas, build plenty of well-staffed police stations.
- Liberty: Ah, the sticky tar pit we call liberty. How can it be defined? How does the government decide the amount of liberty to allow? This is the ultimate double-edged sword, and you have to hold it by both ends. If the people feel free, they will be much happier yet harder to control and will become very irritable if you try to restrict their rights later.
The amount of liberty a person feels is based on a number of factors. A large number of soldiers in an area reduces liberty (how free would you feel if there was a soldier with a gun every time you walked 20 steps outside). Policemen also hurt liberty, but only at one quarter the rate of soldiers. A free press increases liberty (newspapers, TV, radio). Fair and free democracy increases liberty - electoral fraud or bypassed elections hurts it. Even your character traits often have a large effect on liberty.
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TITLE: President of Spain REIGN: 1936-1973 RISE to POWER: Joined the military uprising that precipitated the Spanish civil war. He took command of the most powerful segment of the Spanish army, and become head of the insurgent government in 1936. ONE PARTY: Merged all the Nationalist political parties with the Falange, assuming leadership of the new party. TIGHT REIGN: Dealt ruthlessly with his opposition and established a firmly controlled corporative state. FRIENDS in LOW PLACES: Successful dealings with Hitler and Mussolini ensured him a relationship with the Nationalists' powerful allies. GOING SOFT: With the relaxation of police powers in the 1960s, Franco's image changed from that of the rigorous generalissimo to a more benign civilian elder statesman. His health failing, he resigned in 1973. |
My PresidentΘ, deciding how much liberty to allow your citizens is quite tricky - pull your soldiers off the streets, and your people may be more free, but they will also be free to revolt. Hold honest elections, and your people will also be free, but what if you lose? You will have to make these hard choices yourself.
- Job: Job happiness is straightforward. Mostly, your workers want to be well paid. The better the pay, the higher the job quality (for the most part). There are a few secondary concerns I should mention.
Educated workers want jobs that utilize their skills; try to have adequate jobs so that college graduates don't have to work as farmers. Pay raises trigger short term increases in job happiness above and beyond the simple higher pay level (It's nice to make 10% more money, but the feeling of getting the raise itself also shows that you're valued and, in the short term has a significant impact itself). Conversely, a pay cut hurts worker morale more than a corresponding pay raise increases it (so try not to jiggle pay rates up and down too often). Some buildings have upgrades that you can build (such as skylights) that raise job quality for those who work there without any need for a pay raise.
One more important note on pay - your islanders do not live in a vacuum; they compare themselves and their pay to those around them, especially to those on other Caribbean islands. The long-term trend has been for wages to increase slowly throughout the Caribbean, and this can be expected to continue. A worker who might be satisfied with a wage of $10 per month now might need a wage of $15 per month 20 years from now to feel the same satisfaction. Make sure your economy grows so you can support higher wages for your people.
- Respect: My PresidentΘ, perhaps you have observed that people tend to have strong feelings towards their leaders, over and above their day-to-day feelings about their own lives? Intellectuals may resent you, even as they personally prosper, simply because you have chosen the low road politically, catering to the masses rather than the elite. An otherwise satisfied farmer may despise you if you arrest and jail his father.
Political respect is hard to earn, but it is often the most important factor in a person's overall happiness with the government. In general, an individual's respect is primarily based on how the factions they belong to feel about you. If you are yourself a communist and have worked hard for the peasant classes, then most of those belonging to the communist faction will respect you and most capitalists will not.
You can improve respect on a wide level by improving relations with the different factions on the island (see Chapter 8: Politics), or improve them on the individual level with bribes. Your character traits will have a large impact on which groups respect you and which don't - if you were put in power by the KGB, after graduating from Moscow U., you'll have a hard time earning the respect of a die-hard capitalist no matter what you do.
- Overall Happiness The culmination of all the other factors, this is determined by averaging together the factors listed above, weighted more towards those that are more important to each person. In the end, this is the one that matters. You don't need to keep happiness high, necessarily, and you can't please everyone. You do need to keep this balanced with your military power, however, or everything will come toppling down. And as a word of warning, if the military IS the unhappy group, you'll have a real problem on your hands- a coup d'etat. Unhappy citizens who feel they have no other choice may sneak off and join a rebellion, or may trigger a sudden street uprising. See the Chapter 8: Politics for more information on coups, rebellions, and other threats to your rule.
Politics
People are afraid to be alone. They feel safe in numbers. For this reason, they will belong to factions. Every citizen is a member of certain factions. Some people believe in their faction's tenets very strongly, and this, too, is shown in the politics tab. You can also see the respect they hold for you, truly a dangerous thing to display. Do they not realize you can crush them for thinking ill of you?
Detailed faction descriptions can be found in Chapter 8: Politics.
Job and Housing
This panel repeats the individual's job and housing happiness from the housing panel, as well as showing a picture of the person's workplace and home. Click on the picture to look more closely at either of these buildings.
Family
My PresidentΘ, the people of Tropico feel great loyalty to their families. If you abuse a man, by jailing or even killing him, his wife and children will not soon forget your deeds. A married couple always lives together (there is no divorce on Tropico), along with any minor children they have. You can examine one of the shown family members by clicking on their image in this tab. A family member is only shown if that person is still alive and selectable on Tropico. Take note of the fact that while this tab only displays the parents, spouses, and children of your Tropican, the silly little people remember a much more complex family tree. They keep track of brothers, aunts, cousins, nephews, grandparents, and more (though the impact of your actions against an individual has only a low effect on relatives far away on the family tree.
You may also notice a family resemblance between parents and children in attitudes, intelligence and other individual traits. It's like my mother always told me - the coconut does not fall far from the tree.
Skills
Workers earn skill in their occupations. Highly skilled workers produce more, work faster, serve customers better and are all-around better at what they do.
The longer they work in a job, the more skill they develop. More intelligent workers become skilled more quickly, and can achieve a higher overall skill level. Also, only the more intelligent workers can master the intricacies of high school and college.
Also, some citizens have great courage and some have great leadership. The courageous ones, unfortunately, tend to be troublemakers - they're the first to protest against you, and possibly, the first to start or join an uprising against you.
The natural leaders will often become faction leaders- if you can make them love you, your job will be much easier. If not, there are always edicts such as Arrest, Bribe, and, well, Eliminate.
Pay special care if you spot an individual who is exceptionally courageous AND an exceptional leader- such an individual, if unhappy, is almost certain to cause trouble.
Thoughts
Do you want to see what your subjects are thinking about? Their most base, childish thoughts and puerile opinions? Petty bickerings and foolish beliefs? You can, for you are all-powerful! But don't be fooled, this is not merely entertainment. Tropicans will let you know their most important concerns and issues this way. This can be very nice to know, especially with the faction leaders.
TOURISTS
Se±or PresidentΘ, at some point, you may be able to lure foreign tourists to your island to spend their hard currency on your sunny shores.
Tourists do not hold jobs on your island, do not have families (other than spouses), and do not hold political views. You allow them on your island for one sole purpose- to make you money. This is one thing they do well, too. Tourism is a very profitable industry. It is also an industry that requires a lot of capital to get started. Tourists will not come to Tropico without a hotel to stay at and will not think much of your island unless you have sites to visit. Tourists can find their way to your island either by yacht or plane. After arriving, they will walk to a hotel to check in, then begin roving around and enjoying the sites until they are tired enough to return to the hotel for rest. Tourists will only stay for a limited time - then they will return to the port or airport and head out, opening their hotel room for the next tourist.
Overview Like the islanders, tourists have a birthplace, job (tourist) and age. That is about where the similarity stops. After Age, the next listing is Max Spending. Some tourists are rather thrifty and will spend very little on a given attraction - others will spend as much as you might care to charge (max of $50). If an attraction costs more than a tourist's maximum spending, they will not visit it. Therefore, it is best for you to attract tourists with the most to spend. In general, wealthier tourists stay at more expensive and higher quality hotels. If you build an airport, you can attract a particularly wealthy crowd.
Please note - the high-class tourists have more money to spend, but expect a higher grade of service in return. You can either pay less and cater to the low-class tourists or use a lot more capital and build premium attractions in order to draw the rich, snooty high-class tourists. It's your call.
Also of note here is the Tourism Rating. If a tourist leaves with a high tourism rating, they will leave and talk to their friends back home with much more glowing tales of island adventures and secret moonlit beach affairs. In return, you will get more tourists coming to your island and lots more cash.
Tourism Rating
The overall Tourism Rating mentioned above is broken down into its components in this tab. These components consist of Hotel, Attractions, Crime Safety and Environment. Hotel and Attractions are average ratings of the hotel in which the tourist stayed and attractions the tourist has visited. Crime Safety is based on the safety of the areas the tourist has experienced (remember - a well-staffed police station keeps crime down). Environment is based on a wide variety of factors, including pollution levels and the natural beauty of the tourist area (i.e. don't put a fancy tourist hotel next to your main shantytown). Any ugly buildings within eyesight of the tourist area hurt tourism. Consider building your tourist area on the other side of a hill from your uglier buildings (factories, power plants, shantytowns).
Attractions visited
This panel shows the attractions already visited by this tourist, along with a satisfaction score the tourist gave that location. Tourists will visit both tourist-only attractions (i.e. spa, beach site), and general entertainment buildings that locals might also visit (pub, casino, sports complex). A tourist bases their rating of an attraction on a number of things:
Most important is the quality of service at a facility. More expensive attractions tend to have the highest quality rating. Also, more skilled workers raise the quality rating. Finally, many attractions give you building choices that may impact the quality rating.
A tourist's rating of an attraction is also affected by how much the tourist likes that type of activity, generally. A tourist who enjoys gambling but not drinking will score a casino higher than normal and a pub lower than normal. A wide variety of attractions lets each tourist choose those they enjoy most.
The tourist will also rate an attraction lower if he or she is visiting the site again on the same trip due to a lack of options. If the only tourist attraction you have is a single run-down pub, don't expect a 5-star rating in the tourist guides.
Current Attractions and Housing
Here you find the pictures of the hotel and attraction the tourist is currently at. You can use these pictures to select and navigate to either building. Beneath the Hotel window, the nightly rate and overall quality of the hotel are displayed.
Preferred Attractions
As mentioned before, the tourists all have personal preferences as to what's fun and what's boring. Those preferences are shown here. A list of activities is listed, each with a meter showing how much the tourist favors the activity.
Thoughts
Each tourist's private thoughts are opened up to you, providing you with a handy list of comments in reference to Tropico's tourist attractions. While many are fun and amusing, a few provide insight into how you could improve your tourist trade.