Cartel Tycoon Beginner's Guide | Tips & Tricks

Don’t be fooled by considering Cartel Tycoon as any other Tycoon game. After playing the games for 50+ hours and publishing the Cartel Tycoon Early Access Review, we have decided to share some tips and tricks that could help you get a good grip on the game if you’re new to playing it.

First of all, Cartel Tycoon is a game where you manage a drug empire and control every single aspect of the operation, from growing the illegal crops to shipping them to foreign countries. It’s more of a Business Simulation for trafficking illegal goods and managing the cartel. So, these are the five areas where you need to focus during your gameplay: 

1. Establish Production Facilities

It’s obvious that you need to establish your production facilities immediately after the game starts. Initially, you get to start with Opium farms and warehouses for distribution. Build at least 4 farms for each warehouse.

These farms will produce enough Opium for you to make Dirty Money quickly. Later on, during the game, when you upgrade the firms, depending on your warehouse numbers, you can decide the number of firms each warehouse will manage.

2. Hire Lieutenants

Don’t hesitate to hire lieutenants whenever you feel like added manpower will help. Especially for transporting dirty money from Aerodrome or Sea Port to Residence. Because a Residence delivers money to several locations and has limited cars, to speed up the process, use lieutenants for delivering purposes.

This doesn’t imply delivering money only. Use lieutenants to deliver goods to the Aerodrome and Seaport, and even to production firms or warehouses, depending on need. Don’t forget to keep your lieutenant’s loyalty in check by keeping it between Loyal and Dedicated with upkeep money.

3. Expand Slowly

You might want to capture rivals’ territories to expand your business fast, but that’s the biggest mistake everyone makes. Don’t plan for expansion unless you have enough money for building structures, bribes, or Legal Money for throwing events to increase your popularity.

Because each time you’re going to expand your territory through an Encounter, your Terror Bar and Stars will increase, and that can only be lessened by the expense of your overall popularity.

You can not get rid of the Terror Stars at any point, and this will increase the number of raids by Government officials on your locations. So, learn to deal with them, depending on the situation, either by selling the goods at a lower price or shutting the operation until the raid is over.

4. Upkeep Cost 

This is where most of the cartel crumbles. When the business starts to get bigger and enough lieutenants are working, the upkeep cost needs special attention. Upkeep costs can be paid with either Dirty Money or Legal Money.

You need to understand which buildings or lieutenants are to be paid with which type of money. Places that generate money quickly are wise to be paid with legal money, and so are the lieutenants who are on the road doing something.

Remember, dirty money needs to be delivered by the Residence, and it takes time when there are several areas to drop the payment. Lieutenants stationed inside a building can be paid with dirty money. Having said this, though, you must ensure that you make enough money to run this cartel.

5. Micromanage

This part may sound a bit annoying, but you have to do what you have to do to expand your drug empire. Micromanage each part of the operation, starting with production and delivery.

If you leave the Residence or your lieutenants to do the assigned tasks, they will surely do what’s been assigned, but they won’t stop doing it even if the task reaches a risky stage.

For instance, if you assign a lieutenant to deliver Opium to the aerodrome, s/he won’t stop even if the storage capacity is more than full. This will create trouble by inviting the Govt officials for raids. The annoying part is that the lieutenants still won’t stop delivering the Opium there because you’ve said so.

You have to cancel your command so he can stop delivering. The same goes for the warehouses and firms. Make sure you keep an eye on each of them before the officials seize them.

Watch the gameplay below and see the depth of micromanagement Cartel Tycoon requires:

That’s it for now. We hope these tips will help you get a grip on Cartel Tycoon and, most importantly, help you enjoy the game.