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[JuntaJoe]

Forgive my lateness on this.

I'm having to get myself back into the Tropico frame of mind after a long hiatus.

And I can't find my booklet with my editor codes and notes. :(

It's here in the piles somewhere.........


So I'm making due with a lucky computer generated isle for now.

I call it mountaintop.

It's a 183 difficulty rating.

That comes from a small high island with low population and a short 40 years.

The base settings are "far away place" and "economic powerhouse".

So forget tourism and a host of other things.

Your dictator is Juan Valdez.
Farmer
Elected as a Socialist
Hardworking
Diplomat
Ugly
Coward

You start in the hole respect wise, but you can fudge elections.

Ugly and faraway place make for pathetic tourism.

40 years is tight. No chance for really big industry.

The place is very moutainous and will make building and travel hard.


But the are some advantages.

It has a sweet mountain valley that will grow anything but sugar.

Your profile will make those farmers work like dogs.

And while I used the lowest minerals setting, there is a small place near the palace for gold. Just don't expect it to last long. But it might be a nice cash jumpstart that you can clear later and slap a banana farm on.

The place will grow some major coffee, but watch the clock. 40 years is short. Any coffee farm not up in the first decade is a waste.

I'd limit industry to a packing house or cigar factory.

Forget the long haul on this one and go for broke right out of the chute.


The zip is actually the save game. So unzip it to saves and not maps.

I'll remember how to do a proper map when I find my book. :?

[Brf]

JuntaJoe wrote: And I can't find my booklet with my editor codes and notes. :(

It's here in the piles somewhere.........


Hmmmm.... I seem to remember a post somewhere with all those... :roll:

[Brf]

OK.... I played this one once to start things off. This time I didnt do coffee.... that will be for next time.

The hardest problem I had was with the construction workers, who wouldnt build anything. In this first picture you see 5 of them all the way on the other side of the island. I think they said they were searching for food....

In the early 80's my economy tanked hard. I switched over the one TV station from Learning with Larry to Yanqui Sitcoms....it dug me about half-way out of the hole. See my treasury at -11,111.

I never had any problems with any election. I won them all easily.... Are you sure you cranked up the political difficulty?? Here you see the last election, which was called in 1989, and never came to ballot. The election in the early 80s was pretty funny.... I had three different opponents. The first two either emigrated or died of natural causes.

My best score was around 750, just before my economy tanked in the 80s.... My final score was 719.

[JuntaJoe]

I started with coffee and am at 1965 and have 100k in the bank.

Money I have, but building is a pain in the arse. I still only have farms, tenements, a bar, and some roads. No church or clinic 15 years into the game.

I got things started fast with that gold mine and two more farms making coffee. I set the front two farms on coffee as well. The back farm was set to papaya. Food has been a serious issue the whole time.

Actually, other than money, it's been a struggle.

I hope to turn the corner soon.

I can say that getting secondary building offices and roads going seem critical.

It's really a challenge for a pregenerated island, imo.

The economy and political settings are normal. It's the island itself which poses the challenge.


Btw, what is the code for a screenshot?

I really must start digging in my software piles........

[Brf]

Screenshot is just hit the PrntScrn button.... It puts a picture in your Tropico directory....

This next game I paused to play cards.... I have tons of coffee and a cannery, but not enough housing, so I had to "adjust" the elections so far. I have money coming out my ears, but building is slow.... so I just now got all the services up....

OK.... I just finished this game.... My biggest problem was building speed again... even with 4 or 5 construction sites. The only time my treasury went negative was in 1985... with 50 units on the dock -- mostly freeze-dried coffee. My best score in 1988 was 1189. I ended up with 1140.

[JuntaJoe]

As I said, the island can make cash, but building is a pain.

With all those building offices, you should devote a portion of that labor to lots of roadway.

[JuntaJoe]

I'm up to 1988 and getting ready to print screen it all.

Better go back to the drawing board, Brf.

I'm already over 3000 in score.

You'll see why when I show the screens.

I denied these people everything. Never a policeman, soldier, professor, or journalist. Hell, they only had one bar for 30 years and only got a imported doctor in 1979.

They did get religion, cheap housing, and roads out the wahzoo.

Food quit being a problem in the early 70's when the second papaya farm started producing.

Elections were hard as they had no needs being fulfilled. It was Mardi Gras, Tax Break, and ballot stuffing every time. I also paid them decently too.

The roads will just kill you.

That one edge of the map near the docks is a huge parking lot. :lol:

I'll get pics up tomorrow when I do the last two years.

You'll see why I got my score. Only 110k in buildings, but 700k in cash.

I'll post my export page as well to show I wasn't fudging. :wink:


C'mon folks, join the game. This one's a decent challenge.

[Brf]

Hmmmm..... I could have tried all-cash too, but I was investing.

I had problems with the roads. My monitor is being nasty and displaying everything too dark... that added to the shadows from the mountains makes it very hard to layout the roads.

[JuntaJoe]

Crap! I hate new equipment!

I'm clueless on how to make my print screen work.

I've followed all the instructions to the letter and can't find a result.

I look in the Tropico and My Pictures folders and don't see an image file.

And I've done this a dozen times.

For all I know, I'm stacking up images somewhere and can't find them.

There is no way I dare to finish my game if I can't make an image of the final score screen. :(

[Brf]

You are hitting the PrintScrn button? That should create PCX files in your \program_files\tropico directory. You will need to convert them to JPG to display them. it also leaves the last image in the clipboard, where you can paste it into paint or something.

[JuntaJoe]

I can't even find my clipboard. :roll:

But, yes I remember the way I did it on my old pc.

And I found 3 new pcx files in my folder.

But clicking on them doesn't open them.

I'm thinking I don't have a proper graphics program to view or convert them.

[Brf]

JuntaJoe wrote: I can't even find my clipboard. :roll:

The clipboard is right-click-paste. You should be able to paste from the clipboard into MSpaint.

I dont know what type of graphics programs you might have.... but I use Paintshop to open PCXs. Microsoft Office Photo Editor will open them too.

[JuntaJoe]

I'm thinking I have no paint program.

I only got XP and didn't buy Office.

Funny thing is that I've got tons of software for video and sound.

Just nothing for images.

Time to find some freeware. :?

[Brf]

XP comes with an Image Viewer.... and I am pretty sure it still comes with Paint. What opens when you click on a BMP file or a JPG?

[JuntaJoe]

They come up fine.

But when I click on the pcx files it just pops up a Windows Picture and Fax Viewer page that has "no preview available" in the middle.

If I right click and look at my "open with...." options I get this list

Picture and Fax Viewer
Adobe Acrobat
Creative Media Source (sound)
IE
Notepad
Open Office 1.1
Windows Media Player
Zip Genius

So I don't see anything useful.

[Brf]

Hmmm... I would have thought picture and fax viewer would have opened it......


I tried a game your way..... no services at all except for marketplaces.... and finally a clinic....

My best score was in 1978, with about 2400. That is when the popular rebellion started. Without any police, there was no way to end it.

[JuntaJoe]

You've got to get those tenements and a bar up fast.

And don't forget to pay those guys when the money starts flowing.

[Robbo]

PCX is no longer a supported microsoft file format - if you want a (free) Microsoft program to open PCX, either get Office XP or 2000 (perhaps it also came built-in with Win9x?) and install Microsoft Picture Editor (I'm still dirty about 2003 replacing it with that awful 'Picture Manager', but thats a story for another day :)).

The much better solution is to get Irfanview. Not only does it open PCX, but it also does TGA (which is replacing PCX for game screenshots), and a whole pile of formats, as well as various image editing/batch file functions. You can read all about it here.
And its free 8)

Quote: If I right click and look at my "open with...." options I get this list
On the dialog box, instead of clicking 'Select a program from a list', try 'Use the web service to find the appropriate program'.
You get this: Microsoft Windows File Associations

[Brf]

JuntaJoe wrote: You've got to get those tenements and a bar up fast.

And don't forget to pay those guys when the money starts flowing.

yup. Everyone was in tenements, except the educateds, which were in apartments and houses.... and I had the bar up first year. They were complaining because there were no police, army, church, school, etc.... no services.

[Brf]

Robbo wrote: , either get Office XP or 2000 (perhaps it also came built-in with Win9x?) and install Microsoft Picture Editor (I'm still dirty about 2003 replacing it with that awful 'Picture Manager', but thats a story for another day :)).

Yeah. Microsoft Photo Editor.... that was one I mentioned. It comes with Office 97, 2000, and XP, but not Office 2003.