So, I've decided to try out this gem from my childhood. I have played the newer games, I love them, but the first game still holds a spot dear in my heart.

I've decided, however, to play this time in free mode in moderate political and economical difficulty. I think that I used to play mostly easy or sandbox as a kid.

And damn, this game is HARD. It's a little bit too hard to stay in power for more than 50 years. I've tried and failed multiple times going through the many possible routes. Stablishing the economy early on with farms ands resource gathering is easily manageable and it doesn't take long before there is more money than you know what to do with it... That is the problem, converting the money into actual respect from the citizens is really hard. And developing the economy from commodities to industrialized takes longer than it should, because actually getting enough educated workers is hard in the first 30-ish years of the game.

There is never enough housing for everyone, intellectuals are always complaining, religious are always complaining (even when you've got plenty of churches and a cathedral), the military is also never satisfied, even if you give them good housing and salaries: if you fail to win an election fairly, they'll always be ready to take you out. Even though the island economy is growing and there are more services and housing and wellfare, the actual respect always seem to be slowly decreasing. There always get's to a point in my games where everything stagnates, from income to respect, and elections only get harder and harder.

Funnily enough, the way I've managed to last longer was as a terrible fascist dictator: full on commodity economy with a fat and satisfied military force keeping everything in check up until I couldn't pay their salaries anymore.

I love this game. But I feel like it should be more transparent on it's transition from the early game to the late game. It's very difficult to figure out why the respect is only dropping even though you're providing more and more for the population. I feel like there is too little time in-between elections for you to improve the standards as much as the population expects.

I'd love to start a discussion about it.

I haven't played in a while but here are a few tips:

You might know this already but don't focus on happiness until late game. It's not very important, what is important is respect. They don't rebel over low happiness, they rebel over low respect. This means for example that it's much more important to get everyone into a house than it is to have rich people live in rich people houses, so just build the most economically efficient housing until late game when you ahve extra money and excess builders. Except if your island only consists of capitalists, who have expensive houses as a respect factor. I don't quite remember but I'm pretty sure it's the same for the other factions and needs as well Almost always basic needs coverage is more important than the quality of service for your overall respect level. On the faction screen you can see what they need to respect you. Prioritze the larger factions first(if i remember correctly it's usually communists and religious but every scenario is different), and always prioritize the military. Make sure to overpay your soldiers if things start going south. Bring up the faction screen regularly to keep up with what people need. If the faction is really small, you can often get away with just "dealing with" the leaders and supporters in less democratic ways. As the game goes on it, hopefully, if everything goes well, you will need to rely less on oppressive methods, optimally It should only be a mid-game kind of thing I think.

If you play sandbox game then pick a "rise to power" that sets low democratic expectations, this allows you to be more flexible when it comes to democracy, without incurring too much anger. If you pick the option with the least amount of democracy expectations you can basically not hold elections, people barely get upset at all. It's like easy mode. Keep in mind that for every time you hold an election, democracy expecations increase. But if you don't hold elections, democracy elections stay low (if they started out low), and thus it's also easier to skip elections the next time. So it could be a good idea to just not hold elections until you feel like you have a basic sustainable level of respect. Of course this only works in sandbox mode where you can always choose to start out with low democracy expecations, but in the scenarios you often start out with mid to high democracy expecations so you just have to play better in those haha. By the way, if I remember correctly, the military doesn't really care about democracy all that much, so you can keep your military happy despite not holding elections (even with relatively high democracy expecations), so if you suspend elections yet keep your military happen the worst thing that will happen is rebellions and less economic output I guess, but your power is not really under serious threat.

Also if you're overflowing with cash you should have no problem getting educated workers as you can hire immigrants. I guess the optimal thing to be is to fill all empty spots for your first education buildings of every tier, and your first factory or 2, with foreign workers, so you can quickly convert your economy from raw commodities to luxury goods. If I remember correctly rum is the most profitable product, followed by canned coffee.

Also I don't think you earn military respect by giving them housing and high pay, you get it by building military bases, and whatever else they have listed on their faction page. Probably something about edicts? I don't remember. Giving them high pay is not to raise the overal military faction respect level (unless it's listed on their faction page), it's rather to lower the risk of that specific soldier joining a military coup.

There are some great fan written guides out there, I don't remember the names of them though.

You need to calculate dissent. Some of your factions will be opponents by your plan and it will be small factions. Always the most disatisfied and charismatic (good leadership) faction votes against you. You should never be against religious and military on that small island, even when having penalty with them.
Churches cost a lot of money in material and labor, takes long time to care for people, long time to convert to faction so people will educate to be priests (need at least 1+ in religious affection to attend study). So build churches second after raw production near housing and far from alcohol. Assuming that is latin america & carribean everyone is very religious.
Military are always grumpy because when your cadets turn to active duty they are homeless and bored and it takes about 6 years to level. You need to allocate budget for free entertainment and free housing non matter how cheap near school, assuming your general population is saturated with housing. Assume 2 teachers, 4 pupils: 3 or 4 free bunkhouses. Social pensions does work, but homeless never gets money and drop too low in satisfaction.

Respect lost mostly when a man wants one of 5 basic desires and do not have enough room in accomodations, so they will do it at home least effectively with loss of happiness and respect. And it takes several years and several uses of appropriate building to restore desire to 50. It's worse to not have accomodation in long term than witness arrest.

I think votes are based on difference from last election. If you make everything very good at start you will have hard time later. If scenarion allows you need to manipulate *every* election, even sure victories, because you neither deny free election, not actually allow true free elections, so your freedom don't drop too low, US will love you, people's expectation will fall and after consecutive mendling with elections people's will also be calmer. Do it every scenario, there are less than 5 with closely monitored elections, so it's fair strategy. That is assuming you have military on duty, at least 4 palace, 1 general, 3 tower guard (maybe +3 dungeon), because soldiers lower local liberty and that affect desire to spawn rebels and protest. That never happens in green government controlled areas.

Btw shacks and cheapest apartments spawns communism, they too can vote in block against you. Bunkhouses for the win, almost as cheap but noncommunistic. You may also practice arrests (which are more expensive than outright murder, though later is always available), even on the day of election. Depending on mean courage of your population you can frighten voters and they vote for you despite affection, respect and family ties.

You need to plan ahead, building will be most likely a profit maker only after 12 years, same with social accomodations.
And as in all economic strategies money making first. You can't imagine how much money constant shipments of raw wood earns even at mediocre forests. Diversify, do everything island allows and see what is profitable.

A good scenario to learn massed economy and education is The Mother of all Cigars, earn $1 000 000 in processed good export. As walking takes 66% of time in this game, it's better to have orange crop near, than green far away. And with that much money on hands you surely can build social infrastructure. With banks and entertainment a new social layer will come, which will vote for you as far as you are making cash.

Another non obvious strat is Cabaret. Only men will visit here. All of your military and religious are men. You might consider limiting clientelle to educated workers (school, college, eco and righ tourists), because all soldiers are educated. That building is high addition to happiness.

You also don't need to pay that much money to women. They gladly take less than men, especially since educated men are wanted on specialty jobs and emigration are based on family opinion. Labor of the electrostations and unisex fabrics are twice as cheaper with this policy.
People will immigrate to your island as far as your mean (or perhaps lowest? never tried) salary is half of median carribean wage. Carribean wage stops rising at 20. That means cheapest job to get immigrants should be 10 in 2000. Wage of 20 rises job satisfaction to 50, which is by all means good level and ensures good voting.

With island of 200+ citizens I never have had success with either martial law or border control set to incite emmigration. Unhappy are first to leave, new immigrants are 50 points satisfied with every desire. That's a cruel policy, but it works.

There should be 3 clinics per 2 churches by the way. And unlike cathedral hospital never pays off.

It is more like the newer games are way too easy, its the thing that always left me disappointed in them.

In Tropico 1 If you leave up to elections, you will be out of power in 8 to 12 years, if you want to rule a country for 50 years, you gotta act like a dictator, just like real life.

You can learn the mechanics of the game very deeply and overcome these hurdles with good planning, but its clear to me the indented experience is for the player to struggle to remain in power.