This is taken from the manual. I'll check it against in-game later because the manual is at least in some cases factually incorrect.

Tourist
-------
Beach Site
Botanical Garden (H)
Ethnic Enclave
Tour Office (H)
Pool (H)
Scenic Outlook
Souveneir Shop
Spa (H)
Zoo
(H) Requires Hotel

Entertainment
-------------
Cabaret (E)
Casino (E)
Childhood Home
Gourmet Restaurent (E)
Movie Theater (E)
Night Club (E)
Pub
Restaurent
Sports Complex (E)
(E) Requires Electricity

To refine, the stuff that can be built without prerequisitse of Hotel (e.g. in order to entertain the native Tropians) or a Power Plant are:
Beach Site
Ethnic Enclave
Scenic Outlook
Souveneir Shop
Zoo
Pub
Restaurent

Thus 5 touristy things, that presumably the native Tropicans can also enjoy (I haven't tested this yet, but I'll get around to it, since I tend to not go for tourism - in fact I've never played a game where I pursued tourists in any fashion, either in Tropico 1+E or Tropico 3). The Pub and the Restaurent are the only pure-entertainment buildings that can be built before you get power.

This post may look fairly useless, but I have in mind doing some more analysis later on, about upkeep vs income, possibly also taking into account building cost and over how long a time frame one would want to earn it back (e.g. 8 years or 25 years or whatever, at zero interest), for the purpose of calculating how much one should charge for entertainments.

(And since I expect to examine the buildings early on in a game started for that purpose only, I need to know which buildings I can actually build without having to jump through all sorts of expensive and time-consuming prerequisite hoops first.)


The one thing that puzzles me, though, is that the Intellectuals tend to clamour for a Botanical Garden. That makes sense in one way, because it's an intellectual and scientific thing, but in another way it does not make sense because it requires a Hotel as a prerequisite. One would expect that everything the Intellectuals clamour for can be built as-is without for-them irrelevant prerequisites (I'm sure they share my dislike of the notion of tourism).

PS. It is of course possible that the manual is wrong and that the Botanical Garden doesn't have a Hotel as a prerequisite.

--
Peter

It is quite tragic but this thread will render your entire train of thought completely null and void:

http://forum.kalypsomedia.com/showthread.php?tid=4413

Sorry buddy

You have it right, the botanical garden needs a hotel already built to be able to build it. I believe it should have been made an entertainment instead of an attraction since the environmentalists are always screaming for one even if you don't want to build a tourist industry on the island.

"Let the environmentalists scream till they're green in the face. I don't want no Hawaiian shirted slob tourists on my beautiful island!!"

Okay, I've now done some in-game looking-at-numbers, and the Manual is wrong. Very wrong.

None of the tourist attractions can be built without a tourist accomodation building first. The in-game gives me the impression that it doesn't matter what kind of hotel I build, but I have not tested this.

Four entertainment buildings can be built without Electricity. In addition to the 3 from the list above, Childhood Museum, Pub and Restaurent (non-Gourmet), the Cabaret can also be built without electricity.

Here's some analysis

All workers must be female. 2h means 2 high school-educated (females).
Wages are based on the default 5/10/20 education level-dependent wage scheme.
Pub and Restaurent can handle 4 customers per worker, Museum and Cabaret 3 customers per worker.
Note that the Childhood Museum's default setting is Loudspeakers which makes the visitors respect (yay!) you more. The alternative is something to do with Swiss Banking.
The three other (pure entertainment) buildings have 2 or 3 settings that alters the quality level but may exclude lower-class Tropicans, or alters the quality level but affects upkeep.

What puzzles me is, why ever build Restaurents? They cost a lot more to build, per potential customer, but the quality is only slightly higher (12% higher), compared to a Pub. One could speculative that Tropicans have different preferences for entertainment, so that some might prefer a Pub, and others good middle class food, but I'm unconvinced that this is the case, due to having read a few threads on this forum.

I'd thus be disinclined to skip the Restaurent entirely, and build only Pubs and Cabarets, and maybe one or two Museums too, mainly in order to increase Respect.

Upkeep is irrelevant when compared to the high wages of a fully staffed entertainment facility, so wage is what counts. Default Charge is 5 for the first three, 10 for the second, but I'm not at all sure exactly how Charge (entry fee) works (i.e. does a Tropican actually pay 5 dollars to enter a pub? - I kinda suspect he does not), and therefore I cannot recommend a charge. The default ones are probably good, although if you toggle quality level, you should obviously change charge. And maybe make the museum cheaper because you want as many Tropicans as possible listening to your Respect-increasing loudspeaker propaganda.

Another approach is to look at the building, a few years after it has been built, then adjust the charge based on how profitable the building is, i.e. if it's running at a loss increase the charge or fire one of the workers (thus significantly reducing the running costs), or if it is making a huge profit, reduce the charge, since the primary purpose of the building is to make Tropicans happier, with making a (small) profit being only a secondary purpose.

I never did look into Entertainment buildings while playing Tropic 1+E, I'd just plop down a few, eventually, because of massive clamouring, but this brief analysis has given me a little piece of mind regarding playing the game. I have a better idea, now, of what to build, and when and where.


edit notes: Skype inserted some crap formatting that mucked up my table, so I had to insert the forward slashes in order to get rid of the crap formatting. Anyone know how to get Skype to not do that?

I usually build restaurants in preference to pubs because restaurants do not raise crime, piss off the religious, and are unaffected by Prohibition should you choose to use it.

The increased build cost is fairly negligible long as you don't plan on making 30 of them.

Ah, that makes sense. Thanks for expaining why Restaurants might be better than Pubs!

---

I've got a long-running island (very easy difficulty settings, and it basically runs itself now) that I've done a little experimentation on, and I had a Cabaret that had been running for a decade or more, several hundred visitors.

By taking the fee income, not subtracting the wages or building upkeep, and dividing by the number of visits, I found that each visit gave $40 of fee income, even though I had left the fee at the default of $10.

Odd, but it seems to suggest that the actual payment subtracted from the Tropican's purse is x4 what the fee is.

---

Like with Housing earlier, I've also done some more analysis of Entertainment buildings, now looking into those that require Electricity.


h still means high school-educated worker, but all workers no longer have to be female. Some of the new buildings may require men only, or allow both sexes. I haven't bothered to write that down.
65* means that quality is improved 20 points because the Movie Theater shows Hollywood classic movies. Alternatively it can show various propagandistic genres, e.g. war movies to cater to the Militaristic faction, or to increase Respect for El Prez.
The Sports Complex stuff is not a typo or mistake. It really is that expensive to run (and to build, but the later should not surprise anyone).

All in all, there are many good reasons to electrify, which just makes it even more annoying that electrification requires such a huge outlay of cash and takes such a long time to reach (in terms of the years it takes to build the Power Plant). One could wish for a smaller and cheaper but less efficient power plant that can then be built more easily earlier in the game.

Here's some food for thought:

I wanted to find out how long Tropicans would remain in the workforce, so I began to check lists periodically. Gosh, I wish I could deport retirees.


A Cabaret Showgirl worked until she was 67.

Guess some guys find wrinkles attractive XD

Hey Ironfist, it may not have anything to do with liking wrinkles. Would you care to guess how old Raquel Welch is?

LOL! Cabaret jokes aside...

Everything mentioned above, particularly re: pubs vs. restaurants, is spot-on. I usually stick with pubs and avoid restaurants, because it's in my nature to irritate the Religious faction.

As for fees, I've found a non-math-intensive way to squeeze as much profit as possible from your facilities. When it comes to Tropicans, simply set the fee for one less than the wages of the lowest class person you would like to visit. Assuming default wages (5/10/20), you would set the fee for 4/9/19 depending on what class of Tropican you want in the establishment. If you are limiting it to high school and college educated workers, choose "Upscale Dress code" to improve the service quality of that establishment. (For restaurants, the choices "Paper Napkins" and whatever else only affect service quality, not who is allowed entrance).

It gets a little more micro-intensive for tourists, as you'll have to keep an eye on how much the gringos on your island are willing to spend on average at any given time, then adjust the fees accordingly. As has been discussed at exhausting length in other threads, tourists seem to favor entertainment buildings over attractions, so in terms of profit, it's best to cater to them and your citizens simultaneously with pubs, nightclubs, et cetera. Also discussed elsewhere is the issue of wages and upkeep on your attractions. Never run them fully staffed, because the wages will always suck dry any profits you might have accrued.

Lastly, I've never, ever had my intellectuals petition for a Botanical Garden. Which is good, because B. Gardens make NO MONEY, like Casinos and the Stadium.