The Last Gasps of Summer Means More Home Repair and Tropico Funstration
After a full month of 100+ degree temperatures and failing air conditioners (literally; two window units broke during the heat wave), we had a little over a week of cool temperatures. While we’re back into the 90’s off and on now, you can see all around us the signs of impending Autumn. The pets have started begging for more food. The cash crops (I live in an agricultural area) have started what they call “cutting out,” the process of dropping any fruit that isn’t developed sufficiently to mature off the existing nutrients. As part of this process, the leaves start shriveling-up and falling off, as the plant itself no longer needs to grow or synthesize energy from sunlight. It’s not a full die-off yet, that will come most likely naturally with the first night of freezing temperatures or, unfortunately, artificially through chemical applications. With the cooler temperatures now, it’s time to start the repairs beyond the emergencies that have been put off. We have ongoing house improvements, with more planned before we move sometime in the next year to 18 months. I also had to clean and/or replace the cabin air filters in two cars, both of which have been experiencing air conditioner problems as well. Unfortunately, only one of them had a cabin air filter so dirty it probably was affecting performance.
In the computing world, I found something very interesting in Linux, I proceeded further in Star Wars: The Old Republic Galactic Seasons 7, and I have progressed in Tropico scenarios. I have a LOT more to say about the difficulty labels, which continue to be confounding.
I’ve been running Manjaro Linux for about three months now. I had come across, while searching for various tips and solutions, several references to updating my “kernel” which I ignored because, hey; I just downloaded this installation surely I didn’t need to do *that*? The “kernel,” incidentally, is…I don’t quite how to explain it properly…the *core* of the Linux system? It is the thing that *every* install of Linux, no matter which distribution you use, is more-or-less the same. It is the thing that makes Linux Linux, instead of Windows, or MacOS and other Unix derivatives, or even this Unix or that Unix. Is the plural of “Unix” “Unixes?” “Uni?” “Unixi?” Like I said, the kernel is “more-or-less” the same. Each distribution makes changes to the kernel to fit their own prescribed goals. The various adaptations usually don’t change the kernel itself, but configure install options, arrange included software, and essentially set up *their* version of Linux to work toward specific goals that may just be a specialized subset of the kernel source, or could even be something completely contrary to the original kernel distribution. The kernel choice is usually made based on “big choices,” such as certain kinds of performance or security. The more local settings are based on what a group of people think users may be looking for in a particular package. For example, Manjaro uses the Arch Linux kernel. Arch is meant to be a simple, streamlined, “power user”-oriented distro, and the kernel reflects that. Manjaro takes the Arch kernel, and then adds libraries and packages meant to make the powerful kernel much more widely accessible…for instance to people like me who have only minor Linux experience and are ready to switch from Windows. It’s not explicitly a “gaming oriented” distribution, but it has gained some reputation in that regard thanks to the Arch kernel and the easy setup of gaming drivers and software.
Wait…what was I talking about?
OH YEAH, updating the kernel. Manjaro is distributed with the 6.9 kernel, which is officially “End Of Life.” 6.10 is actually the current “stable” release, with 6.11 as the current “experimental” release. So with trepidation, I updated my kernel from 6.9 to 6.10. Manjaro makes this incredibly easy, actually. The Manjaro Settings Manager has a “Kernel” app, that lists all available kernels, installed kernels, and running kernels. I told it to install 6.10, then rebooted. After the reboot, I checked and I was running 6.10, with 6.9 also listed as installed. I did learn something else quite quickly: Star Wars: The Old Republic would no longer load after the kernel update. Thankfully, I stayed calm and changed the version of Proton I was using in Steam *away* from the custom GloriousEggroll build to the standard Proton 9 build. After restarting Steam, SWTOR loaded right up.
Moving on to Tropico.
I covered the first “Easy” scenario, Back to the Skies, last week. My final conclusion was that it isn’t hard, but ONLY once you learn the trick: set your random events to the maximum settings so you can get a huge wad of money early in the game, which allows you to place the Airport ($15,000), which is the only way to get enough time to build it in the 20-year timeline. Otherwise, it’s *hard.*
The next “Easy” scenario is Peg Leg’s Cove. The setup is your “friend” Hector Aquerz has discovered gold on his property. The gold is rumored to be the lost treasure of a pirate. Somehow, Hector developed a sudden case of being dead just outside your Palace. In his memory, you swear to fully exploit Hector’s treasure. The win condition of this scenario is to stash $50,000 in your Swiss Bank Account in 30 years. The main challenge starting out is the distance from your capital and dock:
The huge dark green area at “Casa Aquerz” is the gold deposit. (There’s a smaller one near your capital.) You have to build a new Construction Office halfway between your capital and Casa Aquerz in order to build *another* Construction Office near the gold deposit. I forgot to get a screen capture of my winning setup, but this is a scenario that helped me learn that spamming what you need is how you beat an objective. I built 5 gold mines around the perimeter of the deposit, though only 3 to start. You will need a Teamsters Office on-site to carry the mined gold back to your dock. You will also need food and housing at the location to keep the workers from walking all the way back to your capital constantly. The 20-year time-limit is short enough that you won’t have to stress over Entertainment or Education. Before you build anything, make sure you issue the “Special Building Permit” which will re-direct a portion of each building’s construction cost to your Swiss Bank Account. That by itself will likely contribute $6 - $10K. For the rest, you will need 2 - 3 Banks set for Presidente’s Slush Fund. Go for 3 full-staffed and you should be able to beat this scenario in around 20 years. Within the context of all the other scenarios, I don’t actually have a problem calling this scenario “Easy.” New players will likely have to try it two or three times before learning you need a lot of mines and a lot of banks. “Proper community support services” is technically part of the core game, but it takes a long time to fully grasp the limits of this mechanic.
Spring Breakdown is up next. Starting with an Airport and a Cheap Hotel, your goal is to make $150,000 from Tourism in 30 years. Upon reaching $150,000 you also, or before the time limit expires, need to attract 40 simultaneous “Spring Breakers.” That number is *not* cumulative; you must have 40 simultaneous Tourists classified as “Spring Break Tourist” at any point once you reach $150,000 made from Tourism. I.e. currently on your island. There are several internal categories of Tourist. Each class has their own interests, tolerances, and spending limits. You can shift the window of which tourists *tend* to visit by building Luxury Hotels or Cheap Hotels, but almost anyone *can* show up at any time if you have a hotel on your island. Slob Tourists and Spring Break Tourists have very low spending limits and require access to cheap Pubs and cheap Restaurants. You can build better and more expensive tourism facilities to extract more money for your Tourism win condition, but the Spring Break Students will only demand near-free access to beer at the Pubs. As a consequence, they will also start trouble frequently, necessitating a sizable and fully-staffed Police Force. (You also start with a prison, but I never saw a single Spring Break Tourist spend time locked up.)
As with Peg Leg’s Cove, the fast-track to winning is to build, build, build your Cheap Hotels. I ended up with ten of them, with a nearly-free Pub and nearly-free Restaurant near both groups of hotels. I also had a regular-priced Pub and Restaurant in the middle of my island Housing. There are two Police Stations, one near each hotel grouping. The High School provides my Police, in addition to the normal High-School Educated job requirements. I also built a Diplomatic Ministry in order to get Development Aid from the Soviet Union, which provided me with half-price Tenements and Apartment buildings. This allowed me to focus more money on spamming Cheap Hotels. Everything else is normal community support for an island with this population. Spamming Cheap Hotels allowed me to finish this Scenario in 21 years. This was part of the learning curve of just building a lot of what you need. Slow and steady won’t win this one. You have to go for it to do well.
The final “Easy” scenario is Yes We Have No Bananas. You have to export 700 units of Bananas over 49 years. You would think this would not be a problem, but I haven’t beat this one yet.
As you can see from the picture, Bananas require rain and elevation, which our island has available. That Tenement is located right in the middle of prime Banana-growing territory, but I have yet to explore removing it. The challenges here are that Bananas grow slowly, *and* your Tropicans will eat them when they are hungry. They don’t care if the nearest food is your precious commodity, they only care that it’s the nearest food. I have likely generated enough Bananas several times, but despite trying to furnish alternative food sources, the Bananas provide way too many meals to my citizens. I have tried several times to “outlast” the consumption, but inevitably run into the standard late-game problem: the economy starts shrinking as I try to meet community support needs that crop up as you pass 100 citizens. I have honestly, recently discovered another factor: there are certain scenarios that are apparently meant to be beaten with Tourism. These seem to have all been added in the Paradise Island Expansion pack. The in-game menu will let you sort out the Paradise Island expansions, which don’t include this scenario. However, listings of Paradise Island scenarios online *do* list this scenario, so I’m betting that Cheap Hotel you start with is meant to hint at the solution. Tourism, as far as I can tell so far, will let you generate more revenue from a smaller population that the normal methods of farming, mining, and industry.
Having not surpassed this challenge, and thus marking it as “NOT Easy,” I went on to “Moderate” difficult scenarios; the first of which is All Mine.
The win condition is to ship $400,000 of raw metal resources in 40 years. I.e. ship what you mine. Don’t turn it into jewelry or process it in any other way. You start with the standard package: your Palace, a Dock, a Construction Office, a Teamsters Office, and three Corn Farms. Two of the Farms are technically located *on* one of your two nearby metal deposits. You couldn’t build farms there if *you* wanted to, and the ground quality in the mine area will of course decrease over the course of the game. *But* there is enough room outside of the mine area to keep the farms. Despite the “Moderate” difficulty label, this scenario was simple to beat:
Three mines around the perimeter of the large mining area where the farms are, two mines around the smaller area near the Palace, and one near the small deposit near the coast. One extra farm and 3 Fishing Wharves were required to satisfy my Tropican’s hunger in the end (it’s variable, but the general rule-of-thumb is that Wharves and Farms can support 30 citizens each; so 7 total will support 210 citizens.) The Logging Camp generates some extra reliable income. Otherwise I scattered Housing and community services around the perimeter of the whole area. I beat the scenario in 24 years. I felt well-justified in believing the difficulty levels were bogus.
Next up was Another Fish in the Sea. Goal: you run a small fishing community. Ship 600 units of Fish in 20 years. That’s a short time limit, and if your Tropicans are *eating* the Fish, I can see how this would be challenge. Then you see the map:
Oh, wow. That is indeed a fishing community. The only challenge left will be getting the catch to dock. Heck, we might even need another dock! Maybe even three! But the shape of the island sure looks ominous…
Sure enough, after a half-decade of getting infrastructure going, I’m 1/4 of the way to the goal but have no doubts it’s about to just fall into place. Suddenly…
Da Dum.
Da Dum.
Da Dum Da Dum…..
Shark Attack!
Not only does the shark kill some fisherman, it eats the Fishing Wharf they worked from. AND THEIR HOUSES.
Oh, this is an interesting challenge…I now have to rebuild my resource gathering and support to make sure I can win the scenario. I sell some fish, construct replacement buildings, and the shark comes back. Another Wharf gone, with fishermen and houses. This is some shark. My advisor tells me I have to do something to stop the shark. After a few years of this, I’m down to six wharves, but I am one, *maybe* two teamster deliveries from beating the scenario. I am literally watching the Dock for the winning load, when the shark takes out two more wharves (doesn’t matter at this point) and my advisor tells me the shark isn’t going away, everything is getting worse, *but* the shark attacks have drawn tourists. We *could* abandon our fish contract and switch to a Tourism-based economy. To buy out the fish contract, I would need to make $40,000 by 1970, the original time limit. Which is now less than ten years away. Should we continue selling fish or switch to Tourism?
Here’s the thing, that’s a trick question. If you stick with fishing, you lose the scenario. The shark will attack so much over the remaining years, usually two or three times a year, you can’t ever complete a fishing trip on any of your new docks. I suspect even if you rocked out the early game and only needed *one* Teamster to finish delivering *one* unit of fish to a Dock, it wouldn’t count. You are *supposed* to switch to Tourism and meet the new objective. The first time this happened, I quit the scenario and tried to figure out if I did something wrong. Internet searches indicated it was possible to beat the scenario with fishing, but I only saw that once in a Russian-language video. Plus, for some reason, in his video the shark attacks stopped, or at least they appeared to. Every other video showed a player switching to Tourism. So that’s what I did on my next try. In fact, I started out trying to bull-rush my way to 600 units of fish shipped, and I actually had the shark attacks start *sooner* and do *more* damage per attack. My entire fishing industry was ruined within 7 years this time. By the way, there is nothing you can do to “stop the shark.” At least, that I’ve found. I would *love* to see, if I built a police station AND a college, if I would get the option to send an expedition of a Police Chief, a Fisherman, and a College Professor out to hunt the shark.
As you can see, I only had to build 3 Cheap Hotels, 3 Corn Farm, and 3 Beach Sites to win it, too. Done by 1965, And this was supposed to be “Moderate” difficulty?
And that’s when I got to the third “Moderate” scenario, Born Again.
After a devastating earthquake, you start with your Palace, a Dock, a Construction Office, and 20 citizens. And a lot of rubble, which your Construction workers will be attracted to cleaning up as a priority even with high-priority construction jobs. The goal is to have 300 citizens by the year 2000, with an average happiness of 60. I have yet to beat this one, and I’ve tried half-a-dozen times so far. This does bring in one of my weaknesses: end game management. I can get over 200 citizens easily, and I can get their happiness up to around 45 reliably. Maintaining the balance beyond that *without* damaging the economy is something I haven’t mastered yet, apparently.
*However,* I would like to point out something I’ve noticed in this scenario. Normally, getting immigrants to your island isn’t that much of a challenge. Maybe getting the *right* immigrants that best fit your economy and job needs, but…not in general. They show up, and usually unemployment is a bigger issue. Especially if you elevate wages early: citizens from around the Caribbean will flock to your island for high-paying jobs.
Well, they don’t do that in this scenario. You never get more immigrants than you need. In fact, you don’t even get enough immigrants to fully staff available buildings. They may trickle in over time, but normally (especially with the elevated salaries) they will show up on the next boat after you build a new building. I even built an immigration office and fully staffed it. This is supposed to increase immigration 100%. It did, technically. But I also started getting *only one* immigrant, with the office adding a second. So, I think it’s pretty clear immigration is suppressed in this scenario. Also, High School and College-educated workers tend to leave the island, even with salary maxed out. I did find, only earlier today, one thing that may help: you can set the immigration policy to Love It or Leave it, which at the very least will run citizens through a safety valve before the emigrate, and let only less-happy citizens go while preventing happy citizens from leaving. I’ll try this in my next attempt. This is, as I said, a “Moderate” difficulty scenario, although at the moment I would certainly classify it as “Hard.”
I can’t wait to find out what “Very Hard” and “Ridiculously Hard” scenarios are like.
That’s it for now, see you next week!
https://www.shamusyoung.com/twentysidedtale/?p=57990