Cartel Tycoon is a complex and engaging strategy game that demands careful planning, resource management, and an understanding of the game’s intricate mechanics. Whether you’re new to the game or a seasoned player, these veteran tips will help you streamline your operations, maximize profits, and dominate the cartel world.

1. Build Smart: Skip Building Tiers and Go Straight to Level 3

One of the lesser-known features of Cartel Tycoon is that you can construct level 3 buildings without having to build level 1 or 2 first. However, this requires first constructing a university, which costs a hefty $120,000 in legal money. While expensive, this investment is worth it because level 3 buildings are more productive and eliminate upgrade costs. Researching upgrades for lower-tier buildings does not carry over, making those upgrades a waste unless absolutely necessary. To pull this off, ensure you have enough resources and security to sustain operations before committing to a university.

2. Control Your Supply Chain: Production vs. Selling Capacity

A critical mistake players make is overproducing goods without a sufficient transport infrastructure to sell them. Remember, your ports and airfields determine how much product you can export. No matter how much you manufacture, it’s only profitable if you can move it. Moreover, too much dirty money can jam your laundering operations and cause selling points to cease functioning. Excess goods and money can also increase terror levels without offering any benefits, so optimize production to match your smuggling capacity rather than producing wastefully.

3. River Ports: The Best Smuggling Option

While smuggling operations often require lieutenants to unlock more selling slots, level 3 river ports allow full access to all five slots without the need for lieutenants. This means you won’t tie up valuable personnel in transport duties when they may be needed elsewhere. Unlike seaports, which come with risks like confiscation and increased terror levels, river ports allow you to sell illegal goods safely and efficiently. While upgrading to level 3 costs $100,000, the return on investment is rapid, making river ports the foundation of a robust smuggling empire.

4. Maximize Profits with Containers

You can use containers to smuggle more illegal goods through seaports and airports. Legal goods such as vegetables and coffee allow you to pack multiple illegal goods inside each container, increasing your shipment capacity exponentially. For example, a coffee container can hold five units of dried cannabis, meaning a single shipment slot at a level 3 river port can move up to 900 units of an illegal product. While workshops are required to pack goods, which can slow down logistics, this method ensures higher revenue per shipment and prevents bottlenecks.

5. Optimize Transport with Warehouses and Supply Chains

Trucks in Cartel Tycoon are easily overwhelmed if tasked with transporting too many goods across multiple provinces. Instead of relying on a single transport company for long-distance shipments, it’s far more effective to chain multiple warehouses and transport companies to form an efficient supply network. Use the cargo tab to designate specific goods per warehouse, ensuring that each link in the chain remains efficient.

For example, in cocaine production, you have three steps: farming coca, drying it, and refining it into cocaine. To streamline logistics:

• Warehouse 1: Only collects raw coca and delivers it to drying racks.
• Warehouse 2: Only collects dried coca and delivers it to cocaine labs.
• Warehouse 3: Only collects cocaine and sends it to transport hubs.

This division of labor prevents truck congestion and ensures a continuous flow of goods without overwhelming your logistics.

6. Diplomacy Over War: Befriending Other Capos

While violent takeovers are an option, diplomacy is often a more effective long-term strategy. Every capo has a unique personality and preferences, and by carefully choosing your responses, you can build positive relationships with rival factions. Over time, friendly capos will refrain from attacking you, and eventually, you can absorb them peacefullyrather than engaging in costly and risky warfare.

7. Managing Disloyal Lieutenants

Lieutenants who lose loyalty can go rogue, defect, or even rebel against you. You can keep them happy by increasing their wages or eliminating them—but both options have drawbacks. Killing a lieutenant will increase terror and lower overall loyalty among your team, while constantly increasing wages can drain funds. A third, lesser-known option is to send disloyal lieutenants to Los Grandes prison, where they can be permanently removed from play without damaging your reputation. As a bonus, this temporarily lowers law enforcement activity, giving you breathing room for operations.

8. Free Placement with Dirty Money

When constructing buildings with dirty money, you don’t actually spend anything until the cash physically reaches the construction site. Use this to your advantage by placing buildings and planning road networks without commitment. If something doesn’t fit optimally, you can cancel construction without losing money, making this an excellent tactic for refining layouts and maximizing space.

9. Raising Loyalty with Dirty Money

Boosting loyalty often requires spending legal money, but there’s a way to raise loyalty using dirty money. Buying goods from villages and indigenous settlements not only provides useful resources but also boosts population loyalty. This is particularly valuable for obtaining vegetables, coffee, and other legal goods, which can then be repurposed as containers for smuggling illegal goods without requiring additional production chains.

10. Smart Promotion: Choose Your Lieutenants Wisely

As your cartel grows, you’ll recruit many lieutenants, but promoting them blindly is a mistake. You have limited slots for each rank, and each lieutenant gains specific abilities upon promotion. Instead of promoting everyone, carefully evaluate their skills and only advance those with abilities that complement your cartel’s needs. If you run out of slots, you can send lieutenants to prison to free up space without damaging loyalty.

11. Conclusion: Optimize, Expand, and Dominate

With these veteran tips, you’re well on your way to mastering Cartel Tycoon. By focusing on efficient production, optimal transportation, safe selling methods, and strategic recruitment, you’ll build a cartel that not only survives but thrives. Whether smuggling goods across provinces or forming diplomatic alliances, the key to success is strategic planning and adaptability. Now, get out there and ship some cannabis for world peace!