Mr. Rankinfile's Tropico Preview
posted at 5:27 PM on Tuesday, December 12th, 2000
We here at The Corporation, your favorite journalism sweatshop and globally-renowned cheese correspondent, have a special treat in store for you today - a joint preview! We have flown-in a special guest to provide expert insight into PopTop Software's upcoming strategy game, Tropico. Please welcome Fidel Castro, benevolent ruler-extraordinaire of that little island paradise we call Cuba. Welcome, Fidel!
Fidel: Hola.
First, a bit of background. Tropico is the latest project undertaken by Phil Steinmeyer's St. Louis, MO-based software development firm PopTop Software (best known for their 1998 strategy hit, Railroad Tycoon II).
The game sets the player in charge of a small, fictitious tropical island, leaving him (or her) to rule as they see fit.
Fidel: Girls would not rule Cuba. This is not realistic.
Whereas most strategy games focus on money, buildings or inanity, Tropico, as PopTop president Steinmeyer puts it, "is about exercising influence on people, to make them happy, or failing that, to repress them and/or otherwise keep them from tossing you out of office." The player is in charge of building the town, setting domestic and foreign policy, creating jobs, creating attractive tourist locales (and keeping the poor and disgruntled natives away!), etc. etc. etc. SimCity + politics - blandness = Tropico.
All of these tasks work toward the primary goal, which is to remain in power by any means necessary. Let's move in for a closer look.
Fidel: Stay away from me.
Tropico employs a rather lovely and enhanced version of the S3D game engine from Railroad Tycoon II, with vehicles, and air and water animals in full 3D as well as sprites rendered at an eye-popping 3200x2400. 3D accelerators are supported, as are resolutions up to 1600x1280.
Fidel: Eye-popping! Ask Catholic missionaries in Cuba about eye-popping!
Two great features of this engine: 1) The interface scales up with higher resolutions, meaning no more magnifying glasses just to read and move about your screen; 2) A map editor will be included to - YOU WILL NEVER GUESS - design and edit maps. Muy interesante. The engine also supports rotating maps and conformable terrain.
The player begins the game by defining who his dictator is and from whence he comes. Is he a farmer-turned-politician? Is he a skirt-chaser? Does he often take comfort at the bottom of a bottle of fine Tropican rum? Perhaps he is a decorated war hero or a stellar administrator. Did he seize power via coup-d'etat or through democratic election? All of these aspects define the people's response to the player throughout the game.
Fidel: Democracy is for puny American sissies! Their evil will be avenged by my furious fists of iron!
Tropico does not merely toy around with island politics; rather, it nearly pulls a Derek Smart in its ambitious recreation of village life. The island itself can have up to 500 citizens, each with individual lives, thoughts, feelings, and political views as determined by the way their unique character set of over 40 attributes respond to the dynamic environment.
Fidel: Cuba is the motherland of over 11 million happy peoples! 500 is weak and pathetic! It is foolish to allow each citizen to have individual thoughts! No wonder the island is so small!
These villagers will generally fit in one of five different factions: Peasants, the Rich, the Military, Clergy, and Expatriates (these may overlap. For example, one citizen may be a wealthy expatriate). They may be journalists, lumberjacks ("and that's OK!"), barmaids, miners, professors, unemployed - the list is extensive and impressive. These characters may marry and produce offspring, which may attend school as children and ultimately enter the workforce based on their skill base and level of education (no school, high school graduate, or college graduate). Characters will, over time, die of natural or not-so-natural causes.
Fidel: In Cuba, everyone dies of "natural causes.”
Which brings me to a very cool feature in the game. Once a building is complete (and there are over 100 types), controlling it is important. For example, the player may decide to use the TV station to broadcast propaganda to help curb rising dissension amongst the locals. "No, the army didn't massacre a number of potential mutineers in the jungle last night! They died of 'natural causes.'" In turn, a hostile rebel force may use that same TV station to heighten support for its anti-you movement.
The economy is also yours to manipulate as well, featuring just about every facet of the economy one might find on a tropical island. The two exceptions: prostitution, and drug trafficking.
Fidel: How in the hell will they make money then? Stupid game! Not realistic!
Die-hard sim fans will be glad to see the extensive statistics which may be pored over - grain reports, mining reports, logging reports, foreign relations reports, crime reports, and of course extensive details on the wee little villagers themselves - and the rest of us will be relieved to know that playing, enjoying and winning the game can be done without a Ph.D. in agribusiness and political science. PopTop is striving to make the game palatable to a wide spectrum of players (given that Who Wants to Be a Millionaire? is the best-selling game at the moment, the dumbest of the dumb must have a fighting chance if the game is to make money) while attempting to provide the depth that true fans of the genre need to draw them away from their graphing calculators.
Fidel: All citizens are stupid! That is why the need my guidance!
Diplomats will get to try their hand at foreign relations, balancing fragile relationships with the USA and USSR (remember that, you teenage punk?). These two world powers can be sucked up to by enforcing domestic policy that they smile upon (via edicts of a capitalist or communist flare), allowing them to build a military base or by maintaining positive trade relations. Of course, pissing them off is no great challenge, and these meddling nations are prone to funding revolutions on your little island.
Fidel: Viva la USSR! They shall rise again under one Communist banner to smite the American pigs while they roll around in their dirty American money.
Best of all, Tropico seems poised to provide that ever-present feeling of paranoia that must accompany the dictator of any Third World country. With hundreds of rebellion-happy citizens to please from vastly different factions, not to mention the two most powerful countries in the world (at the time), revolution is just un momento away, be it from the inside or the outside. What better way to escape the stress of daily life then to be the high-profile leader of a politically unstable tropical island?
Fidel: Si!
Tropico is slated for a March 2001 release on the PC, with a Macintosh release shortly thereafter.
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