Part 11

Learn the best avatar traits and skills in Tropico 4 for increased production, faster learning, and construction discounts. Avoid pointless modifiers.

Traits and Skills Overview

In Tropico 4, your avatar can have various traits and skills that provide general abilities. You can mouse over them to read their descriptions and tool tips. This guide focuses on the general abilities and which ones to prioritize or avoid.

Traits to Avoid:

• Faction or Superpower Respect Modifiers: These are pointless as the bonus only lasts for about 5 minutes at the start of the game. Respect fluctuates wildly in the mid-game, and you can have 100% respect with negative modifiers and 0% with positive ones. These modifiers should not influence your decision.
• Crime, Criminals, and Liberty Traits: These are mostly pointless. Liberty is a late-game concern as it requires media buildings. Once you have one of each active media building, liberty will be high even with negative modifiers. Crime and criminals can be managed with one or two extra police stations or jails. Neither positive nor negative modifiers for these three will significantly impact your game.
• Free Building or Yearly Income Traits: These are not very useful. An income of $2000 per year is negligible even by early-game standards. A free building is also a poor choice because if it's destroyed or misplaced, the benefit is lost. Consider a free building as only providing an extra $1000 at the start of the game.

Recommended Traits:

• Skill Learning and Graduation Speed: Traits that increase the speed at which your people learn skills or graduate from high school or college are excellent and should be stacked. Faster skill acquisition leads to more efficient production, increased income, higher service quality for all buildings, happier citizens, and improved tourism.
• Construction Cost Discounts: Any trait that provides an across-the-board discount on construction costs, even a few percentage points, is well worth it. If a trait offers a discount on a subset of building types, consider if it will be beneficial. A discount on housing is okay, but a discount on souvenir shops is generally pointless.
• Increased Production: Traits that increase production are similar to increased skill progression. More production means more money, but this only affects buildings that actively produce goods. Skill gains affect production levels and service quality across all buildings, making them a better overall choice.

If there are any traits or qualities not covered, they are likely not worth discussing or are considered bad. There is an achievement for maxing out all skills, requiring you to use every skill at some point if achievements are important.

The Swiss Bank Account

The Swiss Account is a side feature that does not significantly affect game mechanics but can increase your score. Several buildings can help funnel funds from your treasury to your personal account:

• Building Permit Edict: This economic edict increases the cost of all buildings by 20% and sends half of that increase to your Swiss account. Enacting it early on makes the cost increase less noticeable, and the accumulated charges can add up significantly over time. This is a primary method for padding your account outside of scenario rewards.
• Childhood Museum (set to Retirement Fund): This building makes loyalists happy, provides entertainment for Tropicans and tourists, and sends all entry fees directly to your account. It should be built as early as possible.
• Mausoleum: This decorative building automatically sends its entry fee to your account. It is an expensive building and a target for rebels.
• Custom's Office (set to Duty Evasion): This setting sends a percentage of all export revenue to your Swiss account. While the percentage is small, it adds up quickly when exporting large amounts of goods.
• Bank (set to Slush Fund): This setting funnels money directly from the treasury into your account, dependent on the skill level of the bankers. It typically yields $100-$200 per month, and multiple banks can be set to this mode simultaneously.

During late-game scenarios with a stable economy, setting all these buildings to Swiss account mode can result in $100,000 or more in the Swiss account by the end of a scenario, though it does not impact gameplay.

Elections

Elections are the primary way to lose the game, except for specific scenarios or sandbox games with time limits. You are informed of the current political landscape before elections. If you typically have 80-90% of the vote, allowing elections is usually safe. If the populace is against you by default, you can ban elections.

Giving speeches does not appear to have a significant impact. If the vote is close, you can perform election fraud to sway the vote in your favor, though this is often not required. Fraud is typically only used when there is nothing else to do.