Tropico 2: Pirate Cove

Tropico II couldn’t be anymore different from the original Tropico. In Tropico, you play as the dictator of a 20^th century republic, but in Tropico II you play as a pirate king. The only few similarities in the two games are the tropical Caribbean setting, the basic game mechanics, and the interface. As the leader of the pirates, your main goals are to keep the pirates happy and make sure the stolen treasure comes in.

The game contains one, 16 episode campaign which takes place during the 17^th and 18^th centuries. The first 10 or so scenarios are intended to teach you the game while the last 6 are more difficult and challenging. Aside from the campaign, there are also 8 stand-alone scenarios.

Your economy is fully based on the money you get from raiding other ships. There are 6 types of ships to choose from and all you need to do is to build a few docks, assign the crew and load the ships with cannons. You don’t get to control the ship during combat but you have many options to choose from. You can choose weather  your ships fight with cannons or charge in to board. You can also choose what type of voyage each trip will be. There are many options to choose from including Raid Settlement, Kidnap Craftsman and Exploration.

In Tropico II, you won’t have to worry about micromanagement as much as you did in the earlier game. Every building on the island that needs supplies from somewhere else on the island has a hauler, so you don’t have to worry about that anymore.

All the islands services are provided by captives (who your pirates will capture or will crash near your settlement). Though captives will provide most of the services, you will need craftsman and specialists sometimes and they can be kidnapped by your pirates on a Kidnap Craftsman mission. Though it doesn’t happen often(or at least it didn’t happen while I played), your captives will try to escape sometimes. But if you hunt them down before they reach shore, they are less likely to do it again. To make sure this doesn’t happen often there a lot of bars at stats that track what your captive is thinking. Fear, Order, Hunger, Rest and Prayer make up your captive’s Resignation. The more your captives are resigned, the less chance that they’ll try to escape.

Work on Tropico 2 was started at Frog City in late 2001 and will be in stores by April 8, 2003.