Four words to start: It’s not you. Even a veteran will have a horrible first couple of years. If you read Ken Conway’s Evening Chronicle article (CLUE I in the mission materials), you know that Buccaneer Bay is the place everybody has given up on - except you. Well, you would’ve too, had you been given a choice.

So how to turn a place like this around?


- no one on this island is doing honest work (the few workplaces that exist have nobody working in them);

- everybody can be found in the island’s many bars, getting drunk before noon;

- the infrastructure is in tatters (roads are washed out and miss entire chunks (check!), almost all of the island can only be reached by dirt roads or jungle trails);

- whoever is left has given up hope (look up these lost souls who are the wards of your administration in the Almanach-Population tab: everyone is broke, few attended school, and all live in squalid, deplorable conditions - the colonial homes that are still standing are in a state of disrepair (living quality: 1);

- central authority on Buccaneer Bay has dissolved long ago: people have built their homes and shacks in the middle of roads, scattered across the country side, or in locations that are too valuable to be taken up by a dilapidated country home with a swing on the porch. You will have to enforce your authority from the start: demolish decrepit structures, illegal watering holes, etc. Underused buildings cost you money! And you have no money!


There’s no easy fix for any of this, so the one thing you will need above all is time. Which leads to the most important advice of all:

When the Crown offers you a reward during the COLONIAL TIME, always elect to receive more time.

And don’t worry for many years about your job approval rating. People are dejected to just be on Buccaneer Bay. The best remedy is to fix up the island according to your vision; people will come around to it later when they see your vision bear fruit. You will not need revolutionary approval to leave the Colonial Period. So don’t fixate on pleasing a bunch of depressed drunks.


- Immediately on mission start, set the budget of your DOCK to max, to cut down the time for ships to arrive. You desperately need ships to arrive to bring more people to the island. Keep it at max, or at least put a Union Leader in charge of the DOCK(S), to keep them fully staffed even if you lack money to max out their budgets (the same applies to TEAMSTERS OFFICES and CONSTRUCTION OFFICES).

- Immediately on mission start, set the budget of your PALACE to max. You need PALACE staff to explore your vast island. Avoid all unnecessary conflict in the first few years! That will tie up your troops, and they are way too valuable for that. Because of money constraints and because you won’t have researched THE TRIGGER until much later, your PALACE staff is all you got until late in the mission.

- Once you’ve hired PALACE staff, get them out immediately to EXPLORE. Ideally, in the first few years, your PALACE staff should never be back at the PALACE but constantly on the move.

- Keep a very close eye on your EXPLORERS! The map is so huge and the terrain so challenging, your troops will get lost or stuck, and sometimes they will just take a break. For example: there is a lovely spot on the Highlands west of your PALACE where the air is fresh and all EXPLORERS like to take a break and take in the scenery. If that happens, get them going/motivated again by clicking on them and by updating their orders. Sometimes you will have to actively route them to a desired destination by sending them along multiple waypoints (so they don’t drop from a cliff or drown in a swamp). Yes, that sets you back $1,000 each time, but such is the cost of doing business with Tropicans...

- Always have a $1,000 safety cushion to be able to re-route your EXPLORERS on a moment’s notice.

- Keep a very close eye on your EXPLORERS for another reason: Thick jungle covers much of the island, and obscures the terrain. If you track your explorers when they make their way through thick jungle, sometimes you can read from the route they take where you can later run your roads.

- While the jungle makes it difficult to see much of your island, its wood and lumber products are one of your most valuable resources (up to +25% vs. vanilla). Try to lead your development with logging camps, so that you slowly clear the jungle by logging it for extra profit.

- Always lead your development with CONSTRUCTION OFFICES. By the end of the second year, there should be at least four (4) CONSTRUCTION OFFICES spread out evenly over the map. QUICKBUILD a CONSTRUCTION OFFICE to cut down on construction time of a far away building. QUICKBUILDING a CONSTRUCTION OFFICE is much cheaper than QUICKBUILDING - say - a DOCK, or a MILITARY FORT.

- There’s a tremendous amount of buildable space on this map. But you may want to leave some of it untouched, especially if it comes in small tracts of land, because building everywhere can scatter your towns and ruin your island’s optic. Jungle looks best untouched. Leave some for your NATIONAL PARK later. Identify areas early on where there are large tracts of buildable land, or several small tracts that can be combined into one. Pause the game very often and very closely look at the map: it’s a beautiful map, but it’s also packed with clues that help a veteran turn the terrain to his/her advantage. Plan to split your city into multiple neighborhoods: an old town, a new downtown with skyscrapers, and several suburbs ringing the two, with lots of parking spaces and good roads in between so people can commute.

- Leave space for buildings that become available only later. For example: if you want your old town to be anchored by a CATHEDRAL, block out sufficient space by either leaving it empty or by putting in buildings that you can later raze, like cheap COUNTRY HOMES.
- Look for tell-tale signs in the terrain that makes it suitable for special uses: there are locations on this map that will fit a MILITARY FORT, AIRPORT or a row of GEOTHERMAL POWER PLANTS perfectly. You may have to raze older structures to clear way for those uses.

- Remember that you do not need a LIBRARY to progress along your research tree. Putting an inventor into a building and giving him/her a big budget will earn you research points. You may have inventors among the early arrivals to your island. On the other hand, even a veteran will struggle for quite some time playing this mission to find funds to build a LIBRARY on the island.

- Staff all your buildings with skilled people. You will have self-taught experts land on your island before you will even have researched the FOREMEN technology. These are entrepreneurial spirits, who share your vision to return Buccaneer Bay to former glory. Turn them loose on your island. They will be your only help on Buccaneer Bay from here on out, because I’ve run out of advice I could share.

Godspeed, Senor/Senorita Presidente!