Hi all, noob to the Tropico series here.

Really enjoyed playing the first two missions and was enjoying the third until I got the message that “a number of tornadoes were staging a co-ordinated attack.” Four tornadoes then subsequently appeared and destroyed half a dozen structures before I rage quit...with all tornadoes well in land and capable of destroying even more.

Having already endured (single) tornado attacks, volcanic eruptions, earthquakes and a fire causing drought in the first two missions – and recovered from it all and enjoyed the experience – I can’t help but feel that this particular event is rather overpowered. Is there any way to either disable it, or at least lessen (i) the likelihood that it occurs or (ii) the damage that results?

You can disable these events for sandbox games, but they're part of the challenge in the campaign.

A couple of things:

-With the right upgrades to the Weather Centre, you can get out a warning before the disaster strikes, which at least saves your citizens from being killed.
-If you have good relations with the EU, the foreign aid you receive after a natural disaster is increased. It's possible to turn a cash profit on disasters, especially if they hit old worthless shanties and bunkhouses. (Though of course, you'll still have to put up with rebuilding time.)

(More of a rant than a relevant thread post, sorry ) Agreed; I feel the tornado events suck a bit more than the other disaster type-random events since with the other events the affected buildings are more or less scattered across the island while the tornadoes target buildings and do many sharp turns to move towards adjacent buildings - in real life imo they almost always travel in one direction and are rarely capable of such abrupt changes in direction, much less their agile in-game maneuvering, which kills the realism for me. This is especially bad when you start a game and a tornado suddenly wipes out your mine/farm cluster, grrr ... then after you've recovered and started building factories the inconsiderate ingrateful rebels destroyed it right away, fffuuuuu!! ... Happened to me last weekend, significantly delayed my play but everything's under control now: my factories are exporting enough and my banks are up and running to enable me to quick-build anything I need, built up a sufficient army, and built additional docks to import labor for the expansions - ready for breakout and takeoff.

Back to the thread topic, I personally don't feel the need to remove disasters from the game: they exist to counterbalance the better random events you may get, and although they are slight inconveniences in the short term it feels great once you've recovered - I recall reading some players in order to add to the immersive game experience, choosing to commemorate major disasters in various ways; might want to try that sometime

Thanks for your replies everyone.

Having looked at the sandbox mode, am I right in understanding that the gamer only has the choice to adjust the frequency of all random events as opposed to the frequency of just one of them (ie. the multiple tornado attack)? The reason I ask is that I agree with @Dicktator: IMHO random events add variety and a challenge to the game, so I’d be reluctant to disable all of them just because I believe that one of them is overpowered.

As an aside, does anyone feel there’s value in at least delaying the ability of the multiple tornado attack event to occur in the campaign until a few more missions have passed? I just wonder if that would give the gamer more opportunity to get to grips with the basics of the game (which I was still doing whilst playing mission three) - and would still leave them having to deal with disasters such as volcanic eruptions, droughts, earthquakes and singular tornado attacks.

I really wish they would release the scripts to all the campaign missions, cause then we could mod them.. I think a hugly popular mod would be to remove tornados and tsunami.. as those are the main ones that are bothersome. the volcanos typically don't do much except set things on fire.


as far as doing things to prevent them.. I would have to say yes, but what those things are i'm not entirely sure. I say that cause the first time i played through the campaign i had many events. The second time, i knew T4 much better and found i played much better and they rarely happened. Or if i did i had so much money i could just instant build everything back and not skip a beat.

So if ya ask me, there are many scripted events in the campaign that have some sort of varriable. For instance, only certain buildings will be knocked down.. If you build them, and restart the game, the same event will happen. But if you do other things, it might bypass the event.

aka, if you build 4 farms, a tornado spawns, But not if you build 3 or less.

If you build a church, it might bypass an event.. ext..


Im not saying these exact things happen, i'm just saying it can be scripted that way. replaying the first 5 years of a campaign 5-10-15 times you can see that happen. Now is it just random pattern? or is it scripting.. And i would have to say a little bit of both, without cracking the code in every mission.


Your best bet for the campaigns is roll with the punches.. For most of them, the key is to get a good economy going quickly, and have a decent builder workforce. 2-3 constuction offices early is key.. and enough money rolling in to cover them. Also 3 banks works wonders.

you can delay a lot of the happiness building things till 10-15 years down the road.. as long as enough money is coming in, food, and healthcare.. you can pretty much control the population with edicts and building settings to keep from having an uprising.

@Tropi’je: I completely agree with you about the need for a mod, especially if this event isn’t going to be adjusted by the developers. In fact, the first thing I did after rage-quitting was to search the internet to see if such a mod was available...and the absence of one is what led me here.

As it happens, I’ve also had many of the same thoughts regarding this event as you have re: the extent to which it’s random or scripted. In either case though, its severity and early occurrence need adjusting IMHO - to at least allow noobs to get to grips with some of the game’s mechanics in the early campaign episodes first. As it stands, this event reminds me vividly of the barb uprising event in civ 4, which is so unbalanced that gamers are actively encouraged to turn all events off when playing.

yea, there is a learning curve in tropico.. But it isn’t as much as the previous versions. t1, some missions i have worked on for months to beat..


if you need tips to help you in this, please by all means ask away. there are many helpful people, and there is tons of info on these boards to help the struggling dictator.

in the t4 campaign they are all rather easy to deal with, so unbalanced is not really the right word. Unforgiving for a novice, is more accurate. Or annoying for those that just want to city build and not really worry about anything.

Just cruise though the first 3-5 pages of the forums.. there should be some good threads about playing that you can get some good tips from.. you can also search, or just start your own thread if ya have a bunch of questions..

those early campaign missions.. a good idea is to build a tobacco or sugar farms early.. Just see which one has better farmlands near you. Unless you happen to have great coffee. then you can go with early pineapple, and cannery, then move to coffee a bit later.

the maps with lots of iron, if you want to focus on weapons you can.. but you can run into more trouble with envoirment, if you don't get up garbage dumps and housing early enough.

Try building an immigration office, and market early.. put off the ministry for a few years. Then you can higher the two ministry workers you need. (foreign affairs and economy) this is much cheaper than highering foreign workers this way you can use a few edicts, get Russian aid and cheep tenements.

get an early high school,, police station as well to train your other workers for the ministry. (close off slots if you need to limit the workers in some industry)


those are some basic tips that should help ya out if you are having troubles.

@Tropi’je: Thanks very much for your tips. However, as it happens, fortunately, I’d already managed to work out those things in the first two missions. Another tip for any fellow noobs lurking out there BTW is to use Presidente to hurry builds and increase the service level of your buildings to increase the tourist and Tropican levels of satisfaction.

The reason I mentioned noobs was because the third mission (which I was playing) is the first to introduce to the gamer to the tourism modules...and I think it helps to give the gamer the chance to at least start acquainting themselves with new parts of the game (which is what I was doing playing the mission) before having four tornadoes simultaneously descend on the island to destroy everything in sight. In my case, I’d gotten about 5 or 6 years into the mission with an economy in pretty good shape (for a noob anyway lol!): mines were harvesting iron (x2) and salt, a sugar plantation was about to provide a cash crop and many of the key buildings, including a high school, ministry, 2nd construction office, immigration centre, garages and others to satisfy Tropican needs had all been built. In fact, I’d just finished my first bungalow when all hell broke loose and the four tornadoes descended on the island and tore it all to shreds.

In short, you were absolutely right earlier IMHO. Re-building the destruction wrought by four tornados is just plain bothersome. By contrast, I have no problem at all with a singular tornado attack (since it fits the game’s storyline), nor with volcanic eruptions or droughts, since they reinforce the value of the fire services in game. IMHO, you were absolutely spot on earlier: a mod to remove the multiple tornado attack would be hugely popular.

ok.. going off what you posted that you built.. I would of either droped the iron, Or sugar.. built a highschool about year 2, and rum or weapons factory by year 3.. for about the same amount of workers you would have much more money..

by year 5-6 when those tornadoes came, you could have had 50k+ banked,,. once those tornados hit, and destroyed the buildings you could set immigration to open doors if it had not been, and quick build a couple of construction offices. the next year can rebuild what was destroyed,(mainly for free due to forien aid) basically doubling your builder workforce.

your econmony would not get hurt, cause the tornados shouldn't have knocked down your factory so that should keep on producing. If it was running out of supply, you could always import a needed shipment.


If i had to guess the tornados went around and knocked down all your mines and farms? I think that is the lesson script kicking in that you should have had an industry up and running by 5-6 years in...