➤ Tropico's solution 4 🕹

Please note:

The solution is based on the US PC version of the game. There may be divergences from the Spanish version and / or for other platforms.

As it is easy to guess from the title, this guide deals with the fourth chapter of Tropico, a management software that puts you in the shoes of a dictator of a tropical island. Your decision-making power extends to every aspect of island life, from political to military, but there are events beyond your control. In fact, some natural disasters could reach and raze large portions of the island, demolishing buildings and structures, destroying roads and changing the geography of the place. However, it is possible to be prepared even in the face of similar events and limit the damage, we will see later how. However, natural events are not the only agents capable of undermining the safety of your island. In fact, your dictatorship is not unanimously accepted in the country and a group of rebels, more or less numerous according to your actions, will insistently try to overthrow you and your government. In addition, two great powers keep an eye on your work: in the game world, the USA and the USSR still divide the globe and your island is in a strategic position.

You can therefore attract their sympathies and enjoy a subsidy delivered in January of each year by one of the two powers, or by both if you are skilled in managing relationships. The management of political life on the island, however, could hurt one of the two, to the point of considering it a threat to be eliminated through a military invasion. The fundamental element to ensure a peaceful life is therefore money: as long as the coffers of your state are full, external dangers will make you much less afraid.

The food

As mentioned earlier, money is the engine of the world also in Tropico 4. The first thing to guarantee to the people thanks to the money is the availability of food. Food keeps your subjects alive and makes them satisfied, and therefore less likely to social revolt. At the beginning of the game you will have a handful of farms or small agricultural industries and you will be told that each of them can guarantee food to 50 citizens. Do not rely too much on this number, but try to guarantee the people a surplus of production. The surplus food can be stored, sold or reused in the future in another industry.
You can see quite easily the degree of appetite of the population. In fact, if an inhabitant of the island is hungry, an icon depicting a fork and spoon will appear above his head. When this happens it is good for the hungry to have a garage with food available at close range for a variety of reasons.

Mainly having food available at a short distance ensures that people spend less time in an uncomfortable situation; furthermore, all the time an inhabitant will spend getting food will be time taken away from work, and you don't want your economy to collapse because workers spend more time out and about than at work.
Also note that not all crops produced on your farms serve to feed the people. In addition to wheat, pineapple or bananas, excellent for remedying hunger, you can in fact grow sugar, coffee or tobacco, luxury products that serve to guarantee you additional income thanks to exports.

La ricerca della felicità

The level of happiness measures the satisfaction of the people with your work, or rather, the reaction of the people to the laws you have imposed on them. The scale ranges from 1 to 100, where 50 is the median level you are trading on at the start of each scenario. The threshold to aim for to be satisfied with your decisions is estimated at around 70. However, do not be overwhelmed by frustration, it takes time to improve this parameter and bring it to an acceptable level. After all, every single decision affects the happiness of the population, whether it is social policies or the availability of food, passing through the health system and the level of crime. The general average, displayed at the bottom left, takes into account the level of happiness in each of the ten categories examined that we will comment on shortly. As a general advice, it is good that in each category the indicator goes out of the red zone as soon as possible, to avoid the increase in crime and the emergence of pockets of rebellion. If you allow the population to vote, a low level of happiness will also jeopardize your re-election.

crime
Crime management is the responsibility of the police headquarters. The greater the number of police stations, the lower the level of crime in the country. In principle it is better to focus on the defense of inhabited areas, but industrial settlements can also be subjected to theft, fire or vandalism. Through the submenu concerning the population, you can keep an eye on the map on the distribution of the areas most subject to criminal activities - indicated in yellow and red depending on the seriousness of the situation - and intensify the presence of the police in those territories. Densely populated areas also need more police stations. As with farms, it is best to build a few more police stations than necessary so that you can be prepared when the population increases.
You can also influence the level of crime through legislation: the enactment of edicts allowing the use of secret police and wiretapping significantly lowers the level of crime in the streets.

Food
As mentioned initially, nutrition is an important issue. The food indicator indicates a datum that is an average of the quantity of food available to the population and the variety of the same. However, it is sufficient to issue the edict "Food for the People" to ensure that the people are satisfied with corn without complaining. In this case, however, the consumption of corn will double, so make sure you can provide for the production of the cereal.

If you choose to take this path, however, know that you will have to give up the export of other vegetables that are an important item in the economic calculations of the country. As long as you can, therefore try to satisfy the food tastes of the people and commit yourself to cultivating as many products as possible. Indeed, such a policy will not only improve your image among the population, but will also bring visible economic benefits.

residential
The management of the housing plan is rather delicate. Initially, you can only afford to build low-quality houses, but for the time being it won't be considered serious. As soon as possible, however, you will have to at least abolish the lowest level in the scale of the houses, the barracks, and begin to provide for a general improvement. The ideal solution would be the construction of apartments for the entire population, but if this is not possible due to finances, at least try to provide air conditioning for public houses. The next step is the construction of condominiums and residences, but know right away that this will be possible only if you have already provided for the distribution of electricity in the area.
In any case, it is not necessary to accelerate in terms of housing improvement. Rather, it is better to guarantee everyone an acceptable condition, getting new arrivals out of the shacks as soon as possible, rather than erecting luxurious apartments in some areas of the island and then leaving other inhabitants in conditions of hardship and poverty. The difficulties on this front affect very quickly the degree of satisfaction of the population.

Religion
Atheism on the island does not pay. The people feel the need to satisfy the religious sentiment that animates them and you must do everything to guarantee them this right. Obviously to do this you will have to provide for the construction of churches. Pay attention to the capacity of the neighborhood churches: you must consider that not all the inhabitants will go to the church at the same time, however if any of them are rejected because the church has already reached the maximum capacity, the citizens will develop bitterness in yours. comparisons which will result in a decline in happiness. Make sure you build enough churches to accommodate 2/3 of the entire population at any given time. Cathedrals can accommodate more worshipers, but their cost makes them uneconomical. However, build at least one to meet the demands of the religious leader.

Labor policies
In Tropico 4 the types of jobs available are based on the educational level of the workers. Basically, there are three categories: jobs for the illiterate, those for high school graduates and those for college graduates. It is up to you to decide the salaries of these three categories. The values that can be sufficient to keep happiness high enough are 15 for the illiterate, 20 for high school graduates and 25 for graduates. At the end of the missions, however, when the economy of the country improves, you will have to distribute increases.

Entertainment
The population needs recreation. The influence of leisure on happiness is calculated through the percentage of the population who have buildings nearby to have fun and the quality level of these buildings.

It is therefore not enough to build a single type of buildings for entertainment, but it is good to diversify the offer between pubs, casinos, night clubs, sports centers, theaters, etc.

Freedom
The level of freedom, according to a very modern conception, is directly linked to the construction of TV, newspaper and radio stations and the dissemination of news through these means of communication. In this area a lot depends on the kind of dictator you want to be. Know that allowing freedom in the media and letting them spread news will not prevent you from taking reprehensible actions in any case.

Pollution
Pollution makes the environment ugly, and living in an ugly environment demoralizes the population. Make sure you have enough landfills and try to opt for clean energy sources like wind blades or gas plants. However, pollution is also produced by factories, so you will have to commit to the promulgation of anti-pollution laws that establish the maximum levels allowed.

Health
Bad health kills the population and the people can only be happy if they survive. Clinics and hospitals are essential to ensure the good health of the population, but their positioning affects more than their presence. As with churches, it is essential that citizens are not turned away from clinics because they already host the maximum number of patients. Keep the population level under control and distribute medical centers both near inhabited neighborhoods and near industrial areas.

Respect
To get respect you will have to meet the needs of the population, a decent salary, widespread health care, liveable housing and so on. Pay attention to the demands of your people and they will never fail you in their respect.

Money

As mentioned at the beginning, it is money that makes the world go round in Tropico 4. Be careful, especially in the initial stages, not to spend more than you have in hand, as it is all too easy to end up in the negative and find yourself in a spiral of debts from which it is impossible to get out.
To increase the income in your coffers, you can resort to either tourism or exports. While promoting tourist travel on the island is profitable, exports are preferable. This does not mean that you have to abolish tourism, but just pay more attention to exports and the different variables you can manage. An export policy is fundamentally based on crops, so in the first place you will have to focus on agriculture to have products to export.

Then, keeping an eye on the prices on the almanac, you can decide whether to proceed with the export of the raw or processed vegetable. The first hypothesis is simpler, but less profitable. In the second case, the gain is much higher, but you will have to build factories to process the raw materials. Generally speaking, limit yourself to exporting raw products in the beginning and, when the economy allows it, build factories to process them. But don't spend public money unnecessarily on building industries if you don't have enough material to make them work at full capacity.

The people

The population of Tropico 4 can be divided according to several principles, but the most useful for the purposes of the game is that of their education.
Illiterate people represent the most labor-intensive workforce, they work in factories or farms that produce the raw materials needed for export or industrial processing. As a result, they find themselves on the lowest rung of the job ladder, having to bear the worst jobs and the lowest quality of work.

Over time it is good that you raise their salaries to improve their lifestyle. The biggest problem in this sense is the newcomers who end up living in the shack. When you have accumulated enough raw material for processing, you can put a stop to immigration by setting up a blockade for the illiterate and accepting only graduated or graduate immigrants on the island.
Graduates make up the island's middle class, lend labor to industry, and tend to live in condos or apartments. The quality of work superior to the illiterate allows them to occupy more prestigious positions such as policeman, teacher, employee, etc. Finally, graduates are the key element to allow the island to make a qualitative leap. They enjoy high salaries, the quality of their work is excellent, and it can only increase by improving wages. They occupy managerial roles in hospitals and clinics and, above all, they are the only ones who can manage power plants.