Cav's Place

This sure was a nasty cold, seeing as I’m still struggling with it two full weeks after the first symptoms appeared. Right now it seems to be too exhausted to make things worse and I’m too exhausted to get better, so there are no other symptoms anymore and there’s not much more crap being generated either, but it’s too hard to spit out what little remains when all the muscles involved in the process hurt as much as they do and can hardly move anymore. And right now I won’t say anything else, because I said last time that I thought I was just about cured and it got a lot worse just a few hours afterwards.
I’m sure the mold that once again reared its ugly head in my room doesn’t help either, especially since it got noticeably worse just these days. But I’ll be moving everything and spraying tomorrow, with dad’s help, so that should be dealt with. And in fact that was the plan, as I had noticed it for some time but wanted to just spray in January and perhaps not need to do it again by the end of the cold season, the only issue being that it decided to spread significantly faster than anticipated just now, since my cold got worse, so it’s actually getting worrying and I certainly can’t wait until I’ll be well again.

I tried to keep writing proper posts last week, regardless of how I was feeling, but this is all you’re getting now. Need to save all the energy I have for tomorrow’s work and then for whatever I’ll manage to write about on Sunday, because I guess I’ll be sticking to two posts per week this year as well, even if it’s getting harder and harder. But at least that story of mine is advancing…

The second post in this series, which I wrote over six months ago, ended with something of a preview of the third. After all this time, some of those ideas are obviously no longer at the forefront of my mind and some new ones have taken precedence, especially after my recent wanderings. Still, it was a good plan, so I’ll do my best to mix and match, including as much of it as possible alongside the newer ideas. Let’s see how that’ll turn out now…

Something that was painfully obvious to me this month was that any pedestrian city needs labels everywhere, placed so people will be able to easily read them while walking past, as opposed to driving past. Alongside signs pointing to various potential places of interest, placed in more important intersections, every intersection should have labels for each of the streets and those labels shouldn’t be placed too high, in the middle of the road, only on one side or behind any kind of obstruction. It’s easy to get lost in a large city, sometimes even if you do have some knowledge of the area, so you shouldn’t need more than a glance to figure out where you are, even if you don’t know any of the landmarks that would otherwise make it easier.
In addition to those plain labels, complex intersections should have simple maps, showing which road is which and likely also specifying which to take in order to reach various nearby locations. Major intersections could supplement that with interactive kiosks, allowing people to see larger maps and find routes to all sorts of destinations within the city. As long as certain issues, such as reliability, data accuracy and somehow making sure that they won’t be used as public toilets or temporary shelter, are addressed, such kiosks are extremely useful, but the authorities must always make sure that these issues are taken care of, because otherwise the kiosks immediately become a negative element instead.

The above also holds true for parks, gardens and public squares, as those are locations where many people are likely to be at any one moment, coming from and going to many different places. Kiosks should probably be a given, alongside simple maps of the surrounding area, for those who know that the place they’re looking for is nearby. In case of parks that aren’t small and open enough to be taken in at a glance, detailed maps of the parks themselves should also be posted in various places, without excluding simple signs pointing to the important locations within the park that people may want to visit.
However, what’s even more important is the placement of these parks, gardens and squares, which should be planned in such a way as to allow as many people as possible to walk through them on their way. Particularly in case of larger parks, the main entrances should be very close to important landmarks, major intersections or other such notable locations, connecting such places and offering pedestrians a pleasant route from one to the other, away from motorized traffic and the concrete jungle. Granted that this is far more difficult to achieve with public squares and the very small parks and gardens, as that’d require important locations that are very close together, but there must be some such places and that’s exactly where such small parks, gardens and public squares need to be placed.

Making parks serve the purpose of connecting important areas of the city means that they will see an increased amount of traffic and therefore also require wide and well-maintained paved paths. These would essentially be the park’s main roads, its skeleton, likely starting from each of the main entrances and meeting in some central area, but perhaps also branching at some point along the way to provide a quicker route between two main entrances that are relatively close to each other. Any and all commercial areas, playgrounds and pretty much anything built in order to be actively used by people should only be found along these main paths.
The remaining areas should be a place for people to escape from the concrete jungle and find some peace and quiet. For any reasonably-sized park, each such area should be separated from the main paths that border it by tall hedges or thick lines of trees and contain somewhat narrow paths snaking through the vegetation, with branches and vines arching overhead and only the necessary intrusions, such as benches, lights and trash bins, plus perhaps a few discreet fountains and statues. At least one or two such areas should also exist in small parks and gardens, being placed wherever the available space allows. And, while public squares are something entirely different, those that are mostly commercial, loud or otherwise potentially taxing should have one or two small places meant to be calmer and quieter as well, somehow separated from the rest.

The last point mentioned in the previous post on the topic had to do with some less common vehicles that could be included in the public transport network and the connection between this and the rest of this post is that such vehicles could stop in parks or public squares or, in some cases, they could even be used specifically to provide transportation through large parks. I’m talking about gondola lifts, boats or driverless vehicles placed on rails, all of which could readily supplement a large city’s “traditional” transport network or even replace good parts of it in smaller cities.
Out of the listed vehicle types, only the boats are likely to be polluting, as the rest can be entirely electrical and therefore provide environmental benefits as well. Gondola lifts and boats also won’t compete with any other vehicles for road space and won’t be affected by traffic problems, plus that they could easily take people to locations that could otherwise be difficult to reach on foot. As for the driverless vehicles placed on rails, most of these could be small, for a single person or small group, and offer various predefined options for the destination, as well as a button allowing the vehicle to be stopped wherever the passengers want to get off, after which it would continue to the nearest station on its own. These could readily be used to provide transportation through large parks, but perhaps, if the computer would be reliable enough to both find the best route and also avoid any accidents, also as a sort of personalized tram network. In this latter scenario, the existing tram rails would be used, but people would be allowed to pick the stop they want to get off at regardless of their starting location, as long as there would be some way to reach the destination by navigating the available tracks.

At this point, I don’t already have a plan for the next post in this series, so I’m not sure that there will be one, but I’m certainly not ruling it out either. It’ll probably depend on how much I’ll be wandering around the city in the future and how frustrated I’ll get by the various problems faced, plus whatever else I’ll happen to notice regarding the preferential treatment those who insist on driving their own motorized vehicles continue to get.

I mentioned nursing a sore throat, didn’t I? Well, no more than a couple of hours after I posted that, the sore throat became only a minor concern, as the other symptoms started making themselves felt, adding up to probably the worst cold or flu I had ever since I was little. Back then, I usually had a few bad ones each year, but in recent years I found myself almost completely free of anything of the kind. I may have to deal with occasional coughing for even months at a time, the odd sore throat and of course a simple runny nose, but the last time I had anything that could be in any way comparable was right after Andra left, and not even that was quite like this.
It may have started with nothing more than a sore throat, but a very stuffy nose soon followed, then all that crap started sliding down my throat and settling in various places, leading to coughing. Plus, of course, quite a bit of fever, being dizzy, feeling like all flesh wanted to peel itself off me, headaches, short but very sharp jabs in my ears, my throat switching from being sore to actually hurting and at times feeling very cold no matter how many warm clothes I had on me or what the temperature was inside the room. Typical symptoms, but taken to such a level that I couldn’t even sleep at first, as I’d wake up suffocating and coughing within minutes, no matter what positions I tried. Not even trying to sleep sitting up did any good.

But, as the saying goes, a cold gets cured in a week if untreated and seven days if treated, so I was counting the days and waiting to see improvements after the fourth, while just drinking some warm tea made from what I could find around here that I thought would help, with honey and lemon, and eating a fair amount of citrus fruits, including about half a lemon at some point and another piece later. I also did my best to get as much of the crap out as I could, by blowing my nose in the sink even a few times per hour, so I won’t rub it raw by wiping it with something. Not that I was getting anywhere, as everything seemed to “regenerate” almost instantly and I was usually stopping when I just couldn’t keep blowing anymore, but it had to make it at least slightly easier later, when I knew I’ll have to spit out everything that got deposited in my chest.
See, I absolutely sucked at expectorating when I was little, hardly ever managing to get anything at all out, which resulted in some complications and treatments that could drag on for months… And then I didn’t really need to do it anymore for probably more than ten years now, so I knew that anything I’ll manage to keep from getting there in the first place will be a huge help later. My attempts to also try to spit out a little from the beginning were probably more effort than they were worth, but I was rewarded with a few very tiny pieces every now and then too.

It wasn’t exactly easy to last through it, after barely catching an hour of sleep Saturday night, another hour Sunday morning and two more, separately, Monday morning. But then I also managed to get some little bits of sleep lasting anything between 15 minutes and one hour later that day, as I curled in bed whenever my nose seemed slightly less stuffy for a moment and slept until I’d wake up suffocating and in a fit of coughing. And since I had also noticed that the symptoms didn’t exactly get worse during that day but my ability to manage some of them got better, I was quite sure I was past the worst of it. It was day four, after all.
And that’s exactly how it was, as yesterday’s improvements were really noticeable, and I could also start spitting out some of that crap. Not much, and the amount of effort needed to get any of it out was so high that the muscles used for coughing quickly ended up next to unusable, to the point that after such an attempt it was even difficult to use them to try to breathe properly anymore. But I just kept up what I was doing, also aided by being able to sleep for a total of seven or eight more hours over the course of the day, including just about two hours without interruption yesterday morning. The fact that Monday evening I took a bath probably helped as well. By myself, so not counting the baths taken with Andra, I had taken only showers pretty much ever since I met her, but a shower seemed like a rather bad idea at that point, so I went for the bath and will take another one this evening as well.

And then we get to today, when I’m really feeling that I’m breaking free of it, probably also thanks to a couple of better teas that dad bought. (Speaking of which, I seem to have “passed it on” to my parents already and it probably started too late to get cured by New Year’s, so that’ll probably result in a rather rough time then, unfortunately.) Nose’s still very runny, perhaps even more so than yesterday, but I could sleep pretty well this time, even for four hours straight, and really started to be able to spit stuff out. It’s surprisingly easy too, though there are still moments when the accumulated effort gets to be too much and I have to try to persuade my body to give itself a bit of a break, because it tries to break and spit so much that I can end up in a coughing fit when I’m hardly even able to cough anymore, much less spit anything out. But I got a good part of it out already and seem to have reached something of an agreement with my body regarding how and when further attempts should be made.
The other symptoms are also much better and my throat seems to want to get back to being roughly as sore as it was during the first two days instead of hurting. Then again, that may simply be a result of all the coughing and spitting. I’m at least thankful that I’m not spitting out blood, as that’d be worrying, though hardly surprising at this point. I blew quite a lot of it out my nose, particularly this morning, when there was a point when there was more blood than anything else in what was coming out, so I even stained my sleeves a little. But that seems to have gotten much better since as well. It’s day six, after all.

Either way, all’s well that ends well, which I hope I can already say about this at this point. Seeing as I wandered around the city about as much while searching for the cat and the box as I would have in around half a year otherwise, and that I also went through a lot of crowded places, with plenty of people coughing and sneezing around me, it was perfectly obvious that I’ll end up here. I’m just thankful that the first symptoms appeared the day after it was all done, so I lasted long enough to get what I wanted and send it. It may be all for nothing, certainly looks like it right now, but at least I did what I felt I had to…

Unrelated, but let me add this here too: Sunday, I cried again. That’s three times in less than five months, after three years without managing it at all before that. The trigger was looking up “If We Hold on Together” after happening to stumble upon The Land Before Time IV: Journey Through the Mists on TV and finding myself carried probably some 20 years into the past, when I first saw the first one… Probably wondered what if I’d have known back then that my life was really going to continue being just as crappy, with the exception of those three years…

This is where I tell you just what I’ve been struggling to do for the past couple of weeks, likely wandering around the city more during this time than during the last several months put together otherwise. Why? To find a good plush kitty, with realistic proportions and colors, and send it to Andra. Or, more specifically, send it to her mother and add a note saying that it’s actually for Andra, seeing as I have no way of knowing whether she managed or even tried to get back to Romania for the holidays.
What’s the point? Who knows. The idea simply struck me shortly after the start of the month and I knew I had to do it, so I took things one by one and hoped I’ll manage in time. Then I of course also had to hope that the parcel won’t be refused and that she’ll be here for the holidays to see it, since that’s why I sent it now after all, but these were things I could have no control over. My part was to find such a cat, somehow manage to purchase it, find a suitable box, package the cat in the box, do my best to ensure that the address I have is still the right one and then send the parcel to said address, hoping for the best.

I started, as you’d expect, by searching on-line. Unfortunately, I couldn’t find anything I liked on my own, so I more or less dropped that idea and started to actually look for one around the city. The first day I did this was Thursday, December 8, but I didn’t see anything I liked then, in fact hardly seeing any cats at all. That stayed true for Friday and Monday as well, as I didn’t go anywhere during the weekend. The first real glimmer of hope was when a friend pointed me towards some on-line shops I hadn’t found myself, where I stumbled upon one that I thought was just about perfect. However, the shop’s actually not from Romania and the shipping would have been 35 RON, which seemed like an insane amount to spend on shipping, plus that I really wanted to be able to touch it myself before buying it, to get a feel of its quality.
Seeing as at that point I was starting to think that what I was looking for didn’t even exist, that glimmer of hope was crucial to keep me going. And it was also a good omen, as the next day, on Tuesday, I finally saw something that seemed somewhat suitable (the one on the right, with black) in a shop from here. It didn’t look as good as that other one and it cost more than I had on me at the time, but it was a plush cat that I could theoretically get and, as I realized the moment I picked it up to look at it, the materials it was made from were of excellent quality.
Still, the fact that I couldn’t afford it at the time meant that I had to put it back and look somewhere else the next day. However, said next destination was the place I think dad usually goes to when he wants to buy food and other such things for a longer period of time, so I told him that I was going there to look for something and could pick something else up as well if he writes it down and gives me the money for it. That resulted in a little note with a couple of things written on it and an amount of money that exceeded the price of the items written on the note. Rather surprisingly, it also resulted in me finding some other plush cats, at less than half the price of the one found the previous day, once I got there. The quality was also significantly lower, so I wasn’t keen on them, but they were an option.
The next day, Thursday, was my deadline for getting the cat, so I absolutely had to get one of them. Since I had been told to keep the money I had been given the day before, at that point I could afford that one found on Tuesday, but I still checked out another place first. It was only when I convinced myself that there was nothing else of comparable quality that I went to finally pick it up. I even somehow managed to ask whether they had other models, but they said it was the only cat they had. I guess I was rather lucky that nobody else bought it first, though the price could somewhat explain that, seeing as many will look at that before looking at the quality, especially considering the current economic situation.

After spending the next three days resting a little and wondering where could I find a good box of just the right size, I went out again this Monday. Unfortunately, on top of not finding what I was looking for, that “trip” also resulted in me getting lost, as I tried to go past the place I meant to get to and my “mental map” somehow ended up reversed. It took me quite some time to reach a place I knew how to get back here from, but that still was an improvement over the next day, when I somehow managed to get lost first, never reaching the place I meant to go to. When I eventually made my way back, after dark and with my feet rather worse for wear due to having worn my boots, which are a bit too tight, I was starting to get quite desperate. I was running out of time and, though I had the cat, I didn’t have a suitable box to put it in.
The problem is that, while there are several factories that make boxes, some of them offering dozens of models and allowing customers to pick the sizes and place orders on-line, they’re all meant for companies, having minimum orders in the hundreds. As others who tried to ask this question on some forums from here quickly found out, most people who need a box that they can’t find already lying around tend to go to a random shop and ask someone to allow them to have a look at the boxes that the shop in question would otherwise just throw away anyway, possibly in exchange for some loose change. As a result, a person who wants to actually buy a good box will have an extremely hard time finding one, since shops know that very few would be interested and therefore tend not to offer plain boxes.
I did all I could on-line, even asking the courier service that I planned to use and also the Post. However, the reply from the courier service said that they don’t offer boxes. The Post normally should, but I couldn’t see any in the offices that I looked through and the reply to my message said that only the management of each individual office can know what boxes they have, so to ask around. And, of course, if I could ask around I would have gotten one from a random shop, like most people do, instead of wandering around like this.
Fortunately, that same friend who had helped earlier advised me to check out IKEA, and I did notice something on-line, though it was rather big and could only work if those “handles” could be covered. But I had no other ideas, so I went there, on foot from the metro station that’s closest to that part of the city. Actually, IKEA is pretty much outside the city, so getting there meant walking for almost exactly one hour, despite going as fast as I could whenever I was able to put some more speed into it, mostly along a wide and very busy road, occasionally needing to squeeze around large puddles and at one point even having to go straight through a lot of mud because the sidewalk was simply gone. This last part meant a few centimeters of mud stuck to my boots, requiring me to spend quite some time to get the worst of it off, and the speed I tried to put into whole thing also meant getting sweaty, unzipping my jacket and breathing through my mouth, which my throat is now paying the price for. But at least I got that box, because those holes are actually covered until you poke those bits of cardboard out.

Finally, on December 21 I had everything I needed and the cat was fully dry as well. It says it can be washed at up to 30°C, so I had washed it a little Sunday evening and, despite me trying all I could do while keeping it in my room and without putting heat on it, it took a good two days to fully dry, and leaving it for one more day after that seemed only sensible, so I couldn’t have sent it any sooner even if I would have gotten the box earlier. Not that I wanted to send it any sooner anyway, as the original plan was actually to send it between Christmas and New Year’s.
Either way, after struggling some more, as it’s the first time I package something like this, it was in the box and pretty well protected from anything that could happen to it on the way. I had also done all I could to confirm that the address was still valid and find an associated phone number, so all that was left for Thursday was to write a short note for Andra and add it inside the box, then more or less seal the box and send it. But, of course, writing that brief note was extremely hard, as I was shaking all over but still had to somehow make it be far more legible than my handwriting usually is. Not to mention that it was very hard not to say certain things all over again.
Still, I managed to do all that and went out yet again. I think I could have had a courier come and pick it up instead, but I had kept everything hidden until then and didn’t want my parents to know what I was trying to do before it was all done, so I chose to drop it off myself. Of course, that required me to actually interact with people, and they seemed to feel like being funny too, so I made quite a fool of myself, at first not seeing the scale despite it being two steps from me, then not knowing what to do with the box, then having to pull out my phone and check before I could give them my number… But at least I somehow made it through it all, though I was dizzy, frozen and shaking all over for the rest of the day.

Today I saw the confirmation that the parcel was delivered yesterday, which obviously means that it wasn’t rejected, so at least it worked well up to that point. Now I’ll be nursing my throat and feet, trying to put the fear and embarrassment behind me and waiting to see what, if anything, will happen next. Since it was sent on her mother’s name, I obviously can’t even know whether Andra is even there these days to see it. And even if she is, seeing that she even put me on ignore as of some two months ago, I can’t reasonably expect any sort of reaction. But I can at least hope that she won’t hate something so sweet and cuddly just because it’s from me…
In the end, I simply felt that I had to send her a very nice, soft and extremely cuddly plush cat. And, for me, looking for something like this, buying it and then also sending it is absolutely insane. I didn’t really think that I could do it until the very end, and I obviously wouldn’t have put in even a quarter of this amount of effort for anyone else or under different circumstances. But it’s for her, the circumstances are as they are and I’ve spent over six years waiting. I guess it was about time to do something a little more direct. Since now I’m also on ignore, it’s not like I have much of anything left to lose.

I remember wanting to play the first Tropico ever since it launched, but never got around to it. Tropico 2 never really caught my eye, but when I heard of a Tropico 3, I immediately added it to the list of games I wanted to play, removing the first one from that same list a short while later. However, I still didn’t get around to playing it until Tropico 4 launched. At that point, instead of making another change to the list, I left the latest game for later and finally got around to obtaining the third one, including its expansion.
That said, you don’t make a note of wanting to play something for so long if you don’t expect to really like it, so there were certain expectations involved. Fortunately, the first few scenarios did meet said expectations, so I was hooked right away and quite willing to trudge through the few tedious moments that did appear later. Still, while I did play both campaigns and enjoyed the original one more than the Absolute Power one, I did have Absolute Power installed all along and can’t really say how the game would have been played without the changes and enhancements brought by the expansion. What I can say, however, is that it most likely was a far less interesting experience, so keep in mind which version this review is about.

The first thing that needs to be said about this game is that most of the time it’s fun and sometimes even funny. It could have taken itself more seriously, but it does not, instead maintaining a lighthearted tone even when the waters are rough and things turn sour. The wording of the important messages you receive, the names used, the brief radio broadcasts, the very limited but equally fitting music, everything keeps reminding you that it’s just a game, its purpose being to entertain. Considering the things you may end up needing to do, despite your best intentions, such a reminder is more or less required for those of us who tend to spend time thinking about the consequences of our actions.
Of course, you will need to think about the consequences of your actions anyway, but you probably won’t feel too bad about it when things go wrong. And things will go wrong, because thankfully, at least from my point of view, there are a whole slew of factors that need to be taken into consideration when developing your island, many of them being pleasantly realistic and therefore able to teach players a lesson or two, if they’re willing to notice. For example, notice how pollution constantly accumulates according to what buildings exist in an area and what edicts are issued, while a garbage dump, depending on how it’s developed and set to function, needs a certain amount of time to reduce it. Or how resources, including fishing stocks or soil quality, are depleted when intensively exploited. Or how areas plagued by poverty and inadequate housing are unsafe, while those populated by wealthier citizens who also benefit from good housing are very safe.
This kind of lighthearted, forgiving realism is, in my opinion, what makes this game addictive. And when you add it to the way some of the scenarios are created, you’ll see why you’ll probably find yourself hooked on it at least until you’ll finish the campaigns. This may actually go double for the original campaign, which tends to be based around long-term goals which are all the more rewarding when they are finally achieved. For example, I’ll certainly keep in mind how I worked steadily through my development plan for thirty game years during the original campaign’s final scenario, undaunted by the fact that, until the very end of this process, I didn’t think that I could complete it in time. However, once everything was finally done exactly according to my original plan, things instantly clicked into place and I could sit back and watch for a few years, until I had accumulated the necessary amount of money to win.

Unfortunately, the Absolute Power campaign tends to be based around short-term goals, offering you unclear objectives at the start of its scenarios and then multiple clear but less major ones while you play, requiring you to think quickly and meet them one by one before each deadline passes. It’s more stressful and less rewarding than the approach used in the original campaign, so I’m not particularly keen on it. I’m also not keen on it because needing to meet these goals on such short notice means that you’re far less able to care for your people, resulting in worse living conditions and the need to take harsher measures if you want to stay in power. I did my best to be a very democratic and benevolent leader during the original campaign, but the Absolute Power one, as the name implies, often made this impossible.
On the other hand, when I think that this approach was most likely meant to make the game more interesting, I have to look towards probably the only reason why it can get tedious and wonder why wasn’t something done about that. I’m talking about the start of the scenarios, which is more or less the same every single time, regardless of the background you’re presented with. I’d sure have liked to at least occasionally start with islands that are already developed, having objectives ranging from finding ways to develop further to making them more sustainable, improving efficiency or rebuilding after a major disaster. For me, that would have made it more interesting than throwing some weird background texts over nearly identical starting conditions and adding a whole bunch of scripted events later throughout the scenarios… Though I have to admit that some of those were nicely done too.
But while I’m at things that repeat themselves, I can’t not make note of the music and the radio broadcasts. I’m probably already nitpicking, because I already said that, even if very limited, they’re extremely fitting, but you will probably notice very quickly that the game’s soundtrack contains only a couple of songs, which are repeated over and over and over, and that you’ll be hearing either Juanito or Betty Boom say the exact same things time and time again over the course of the game, as there are apparently no alternate versions to be used, the game at most deciding which of the two will report on any given development. Not even that happens all the time, as some reports can only be presented by one of them, making it even worse.

When it comes to actual gameplay annoyances, something must be said about pathfinding. I have seen characters get out of cars some distance from their destination and then walk the rest of the way, sometimes even driving past the destination and then returning on foot. They may also choose other doors than those that face the road, sometimes walking all around a building before entering it. And they are also very determined to cause gridlocks by insisting on taking a certain route between two points even though that road is packed full but there are others available that are almost empty. During one scenario, I even made two roads exactly side by side to connect the two major developed areas, only to see that one was almost always gridlocked and the other nearly empty.
Speaking of roads, I would have really liked the option of building wider ones, with more lanes, but on many islands you can’t even connect areas with roads that are side by side, as there’s barely enough room for one in between cliffs or other such terrain obstacles. While I’m at it, I’d have really liked public transportation, tunnels and trains as well, but I guess that’d be way too much to ask when you can’t even build roads the way you want to. In fact, building roads properly is one of the trickiest parts of the game, and at times unnecessarily so. This is largely because there’s no tool to level the terrain as you need it, instead needing to make use of the tedious and unreliable process of trying to repeatedly place and remove roads or buildings, hoping that the terrain will eventually end up in a shape that’ll allow you to build what you actually want to build in that specific spot.
A minor annoyance that’s also connected to the above would be that doors aren’t clearly marked when you select something to build, forcing you to zoom in closely to make sure that they’ll be placed where you want them to if the road can only reach a certain spot. And while I’m at minor annoyances and buildings, I also need to point out that you can’t select the specific building type when there are more available, such as for fountains, gardens, trees or even farms, requiring you to keep clicking a button until the shape you want just happens to pop up. That’s unnecessarily frustrating, as is the fact that the exact reason why a protester is protesting isn’t listed if you check their latest thoughts…

In the end, while I once again rushed through the good parts but detailed even some of the minor annoyances, I have to point out that this game had me hooked for most of the time I played it. Yes, the first five or even ten years tended to be more of the same each time and there were moments when I didn’t quite feel like starting the next mission after completing one, and that Viva Tropico scenario from the original campaign was terribly difficult for something that can be unlocked so early in the game, but these moments that actually required me to make some effort to keep going were relatively few, those when I had a hard time quitting the game in order to do something else being more frequent.
It can at times be frustrating, sometimes unnecessarily so, but for the most part Tropico 3 is a fun and addictive game that can even have a few lessons to teach those who are willing to see them. You’ll see how much planning is required for sustainable development, how hard it is to run even a small country, how complicated it is to meet people’s conflicting demands, how the ends often do justify the means, how even your best intentions are constantly doomed to be twisted around and presented as hidden and dangerous agendas by your opponents… In a lighthearted, forgiving way, you’ll be put on the other side of the barricade and be shown some of the things that are wrong with our current methods of government, but also with the way we, the regular people, think of governments.
Or perhaps I played it entirely wrong and it has nothing to do with any of this, but just with keeping yourself in power by any means necessary, whether for personal gain or because it takes many years to accomplish anything important. At the very least, that should explain why supposedly democratic governments, made up of people who risk being removed from office every few years, have such a hard time getting anything done.

With Tropico 4 already released and said to be more or less just an enhanced remake of Tropico 3, I can’t tell you to go play Tropico 3 anymore, but it wouldn’t be a bad thing to at least try it, if only to decide for yourself if its successor is an actual improvement or not. I’ll probably see that for myself someday too, but probably not all that soon. That has nothing to do with what I thought of this game, mind you, but is a simple logical conclusion, considering how long it took me to even play one game in the series.