The industrial goods you do produce are designed to further the above ends - cannons, sword, and ship's biscuit to outfit your pirate vessels, hooch and cigars (not to mention prostitutes) to keep your pirates happy.īuildings from farms to manufactories to pirate schools require no currency, but resources (namely, lumber) and inputs to build or function. Pirates don't work your buildings, so you need slaves in order to work them for you, and this means you need both pirates and slaves (called 'captives' in-game) - there's no getting by with one or the other. You don't have citizens as such, you have slaves - and they too, need to be kept with a modicum of comfort or else you'll find your island embroiled within a slave revolt. As such, the main focus is on building a pirate fleet, avoiding detection from the major European powers, sending off your pirates on raids that could easily see them all wiped out, and keeping the surviving pirates as happy as possible so they don't decide that you're next in their crosshairs. Exports are possible, but hardly the focus, and the Smuggler's Cove is really something you build after you've already built up your economy through the aforementioned plunder. In Tropico 2, you are running a plunder driven economy. This is not how Tropico 2 works, not in the slightest. Everything else is an elaboration on that idea, from refining raw or unfinished goods into industrial commodities, or building tourist and entertainment-oriented buildings to profit from rich foreigners. You build nodes, you work the nodes using your citizens, and you reap the profits from those nodes. In every other Tropico game, the economic focus is on supply chain management in an export or services-driven economy. Tropico 2 is radically different to any other game in the series, beyond its pirate thematics.

Tropico 2 guide