First of my most closely guarded 'secrets'
If you modify the 'c_Mandate' variable, you CAN increase the length of the colonial era by any length of time that you wish
The mandate works by months, so an increase of 12 will be 1 year. An increase of 120 would be 10 years, etc

Its not a publicly listed variable but does exist

There are other colonial era variables but I am at this stage unsure of their effects on the game

Have you found a way to query for a task state? Accepted and completed are two states that they haven't screwed up when they neutered their editor for us (the wait cmds use those two). But you can't obviously run a check if say a task is "expired", " abandoned", etc, at least not to my knowledge. If you run "If then" queries on other tasks, their state returns empty.
It's one of those things with the editor..

Another perennial bugbear of mine is that you cause ships to be mired at the dock when you "force" skillsets of immigrants too early. But its not a consistent bug either because you can get the Universal type specialists even before the FOREMAN tech is active, if you select Universal and Random. Every other combination crashes the ship routine however.
Oh, and heaven knows, but I've never managed to force just one of my little Tropicans to emigrate from my island. Once they are there, THEY WILL NOT BE REMOVED!!

Originally posted by The World is a Sandbox:

Have you found a way to query for a task state? Accepted and completed are two states that they haven't screwed up when they neutered their editor for us (the wait cmds use those two). But you can't obviously run a check if say a task is "expired", " abandoned", etc, at least not to my knowledge. If you run "If then" queries on other tasks, their state returns empty.
It's one of those things with the editor..

This still works
To call tasks from other sequences, the sequences must be labeled with a _ at the front
So for example _MyTask could be checked in a different sequence
The If statements are not "wait" statements, so run once and stop. You would need to insert them into a loop (preferably with a 1 month wait time) to get them to continue checking (Then insert a end sequence once the result is 'true')

Abandoned is when the player physically presses the abandon button
Expired is when a timelimit lapses
Outdated is when the era advances (And you set an end era). I do not think the "months" work though
Skipped is when the player pays a certain amount (that you set) to skip the task

Originally posted by The World is a Sandbox:

Another perennial bugbear of mine is that you cause ships to be mired at the dock when you "force" skillsets of immigrants too early. But its not a consistent bug either because you can get the Universal type specialists even before the FOREMAN tech is active, if you select Universal and Random. Every other combination crashes the ship routine however.
Oh, and heaven knows, but I've never managed to force just one of my little Tropicans to emigrate from my island. Once they are there, THEY WILL NOT BE REMOVED!!

Argghhh.... I encountered this bug and solved it in the intervention mission.
I cant quite remember what it was but I believe it was due to the fact that I had an 'autoupdating label' activated from the outset of the mission.
By delaying it by 1 month, it solved the bug
(Try this and if it still happens let me know)

Also, auto-update labels are bugged in the game, especially when they are for citizens (It seems fine for buildings), so I had to create another sequence which would periodically start and stop the autoupdate label every 3 months to refesh it

Apart from c_mandate , the other colonial era variables I encoutered were
c_RevolutionariesWeightChange
c_RevolutionariesChange

I tried playing around with these but couldnt find the exact effect they had on the game

Thanks mwyeoh and The World Is A Sandbox for your considered responses - very kind of both of you! So it looks like i'll have to make my temp fix a permanent one! I hadn't thought about increasing the mandate time - it's meant to be a short mission anyhow but if it looks like the tasks will run too long I may well do that too. Cheers guys, your help is greatly appreciated!

Originally posted by mwyeoh:

Originally posted by The World is a Sandbox:

Another perennial bugbear of mine is that you cause ships to be mired at the dock when you "force" skillsets of immigrants too early. But its not a consistent bug either because you can get the Universal type specialists even before the FOREMAN tech is active, if you select Universal and Random. Every other combination crashes the ship routine however.
Oh, and heaven knows, but I've never managed to force just one of my little Tropicans to emigrate from my island. Once they are there, THEY WILL NOT BE REMOVED!!

Argghhh.... I encountered this bug and solved it in the intervention mission.
I cant quite remember what it was but I believe it was due to the fact that I had an 'autoupdating label' activated from the outset of the mission.
By delaying it by 1 month, it solved the bug
(Try this and if it still happens let me know)

Also, auto-update labels are bugged in the game, especially when they are for citizens (It seems fine for buildings), so I had to create another sequence which would periodically start and stop the autoupdate label every 3 months to refesh it

I encountered both these problems testing my current mission - I tried to get a general and a tactician to immigrate, and they didn't arrive. Then the rotten ships got stuck at the docks... didn't work out it was related though. I'll take your advice and set it to Universal and random if that's the fix. I also have an autoupdatelabel for crimelords, on autostart - but it has a wait period of a few years before it kicks in, and it's not set to repeat - so hopefully that's not the problem and i just need to set my immigrants to universal and random as The World Is A Sandbox suggests.

Also I tried to get five citizens to leave Tropico at various times - and they refused (they must love me too much to leave!) It's a shame that won't work - I'd planned on having them leave out of fear of further pirate attacks.... I'll have to get rid of that then! (sob!)

With regard to task states, I find I can't get anything to work if I do 'if task accepted then...' In Pleae Please Me I wanted to advance half the cost of a power plant on acceptance, but couldn't get it to work - I ended up just reimbursing the player once it was built - with 'if task done then...' which does work. Is there a way to get an effect (ie: wait message/ give money etc) to work on acceptance of a task?

Another thing with task states, I thought it was 'if task failed then...' for timed tasks that had run out of time. I tried to get an invasion to occur as a result of not completing a task in time - but when I tested it - no invasion! It would seem from what you guys have posted that I should have selected 'if task expired'. Now I'll have to do some rewriting to get the invasion to occur - but that's no biggie - I'm glad I'll be able to do it.

It is a cursed buggy editor, but it's all we've got and it seems they're not going to fix it's flaws any time soon so I guess we'll have to live with it! Thanks muchly people for all the good info!

Originally posted by mwyeoh:

First of my most closely guarded 'secrets'
If you modify the 'c_mandate' variable, you CAN increase the length of the colonial era by any length of time that you wish
The mandate works by months, so an increase of 12 will be 1 year. An increase of 120 would be 10 years, etc

Its not a publicly listed variable but does exist

There are other colonial era variables but I am at this stage unsure of their effects on the game

Another question - where do I find the c_mandate variable? Or how do I set one up? I may well have to increase mandate time in this current mission - and I don't have a clue as to how to do it! (You'd think I was a blonde from all these dumb questions!) Thanks in advance for any light you guys can shed on this!

Yet another problem - just tried to get my tactician and general immigrant thing going, but if I select random, I can't select general and tactician. Mwyeoh, I noticed from playing your mission you had specific managers appear as a reward, how did you do that? I looked in 'add skill', but it requires a citizen label, and I don't know how to select just one citizen from 'All citizens' in the autoupdate citizen label. Sorry for all the questions - I'm becoming a nuisance!

Originally posted by mehopkins1971:

Another question - where do I find the c_mandate variable? Or how do I set one up? I may well have to increase mandate time in this current mission - and I don't have a clue as to how to do it! (You'd think I was a blonde from all these dumb questions!) Thanks in advance for any light you guys can shed on this!

c_Mandate isnt a visible variable at all. All you need to do to access it is use "Effects"/"Modify Register"
In "Store In" type in c_Mandate (Remember the capital M)
In "Value", change this to "Number" and type in the extra number of months you would like to add

Originally posted by mehopkins1971:

Also I tried to get five citizens to leave Tropico at various times - and they refused (they must love me too much to leave!) It's a shame that won't work - I'd planned on having them leave out of fear of further pirate attacks.... I'll have to get rid of that then! (sob!)

This should work just by setting immigration to a negative number, however if you get the usual (built in) immigration at the same time, they cancel each other out
Eg- You set immigration to -20 (20 will emigrate), but if the game wants to add 25 citizens to your island via immigration, the net effect will be that 5 will arrive on your island (Not 20 leaving then 25 new people arriving)

Originally posted by mehopkins1971:

Yet another problem - just tried to get my tactician and general immigrant thing going, but if I select random, I can't select general and tactician. Mwyeoh, I noticed from playing your mission you had specific managers appear as a reward, how did you do that? I looked in 'add skill', but it requires a citizen label, and I don't know how to select just one citizen from 'All citizens' in the autoupdate citizen label. Sorry for all the questions - I'm becoming a nuisance!

To select a single citizen from a label (especially if its a one off), Id advise you to use "Create Citizen Label Snapshot" since it only does it once (Alot less processing power for the mission) and will keep your mission more optimised

Set "From Label" to Adults
then under "Condition", select "Skill" and find the skill you want
HOWEVER THIS IS ANOTHER BUGGY MESS IN THE EDITOR!!
Some skills work properly while others do not work at all! It will require some trial and error (I did have a list a long time ago from checking each one one-by-one but seem to have thrown it out)

c_Mandate isnt a visible variable at all. All you need to do to access it is use "Effects"/"Modify Register"
In "Store In" type in c_Mandate (Remember the capital M)
In "Value", change this to "Number" and type in the extra number of months you would like to add


Right-e-o seems easy enough - I'll give that a go!



This should work just by setting immigration to a negative number, however if you get the usual (built in) immigration at the same time, they cancel each other out
Eg- You set immigration to -20 (20 will emigrate), but if the game wants to add 25 citizens to your island via immigration, the net effect will be that 5 will arrive on your island (Not 20 leaving then 25 new people arriving)

That's what I did - I set it to minus five but didn't see any notification that the poeple had actually left. I'll re-add the remove citizens tasks now that I know it's actually working.



To select a single citizen from a label (especially if its a one off), Id advise you to use "Create Citizen Label Snapshot" since it only does it once (Alot less processing power for the mission) and will keep your mission more optimised

Set "From Label" to Adults
then under "Condition", select "Skill" and find the skill you want
HOWEVER THIS IS ANOTHER BUGGY MESS IN THE EDITOR!!
Some skills work properly while others do not work at all! It will require some trial and error (I did have a list a long time ago from checking each one one-by-one but seem to have thrown it out) [/quote]

Hmm, might just pass on adding managers via immigration then - sounds like it's too problematic!


Thanks for all your help - it's appreciated!

I'm back with a problem - just tried out the mandate thing and it's not changing the mandate period from 4 years when i go in to play it.. It should either be 5 years (if it overwrites the existing time) or 9 years (if it adds to the existing time)

I made an autostart sequence, selected 'modify register' typed c_Mandate in 'store in' changed Value to number and typed in 60.

The task reads c_Mandate = c_Mandate +60

What am i doing wrong?

Sorry to be such a pest!

Hi Mehopkins

It seems that if you activate it immediately as an autostart sequence, it doesnt work. However if you delay it by even just 10ms, it does work

To do that, at the beginning of your sequence add
"Wait"/"Wait Time"
And enter 10 in duration

I recommend adding 100ms though just incase (A slower computer may not be able to process everything quickly enough and it may still cause the error)

I have found that this is actually a common source of Tropico 5 bugs. A small time delay for any autostart sequence will usually fix many errors

Thanks for the speedy response mate! I'll add the time delay in now! Noticed you're an Aussie too - I'm in South Western WA and it's almost midnight here - roughly where on the continent are you? If you're eastern states, you're up late! Thanks again for the help - you probably regret offering it now!