Cheat Codes

Rules of thumb:

• Try to always have 3 incomes and 2 students/volunteers, unless you have enough saved to get by on fewer than 3 incomes for a season and there are good educational opportunities available.

• Fill all volunteer slots until you have everything built. To have a realistic shot at 15 diplomas, you need the community center to get started in season 1 or 2, and you should have everything done by halfway through year 2.

• Educate/volunteer the parents early and often, because their educational opportunities are rarer, since vocational school isn't year round, but there is always a school option for the kids year round. Also, the two younger kids give you no monetary benefit from education anyway. Just fit them in when either there are no volunteer slots and no vocational school, or when jobs are scarce and one or both parents need to work jobs the kids can't do, or the kids are run down and need a little break.

• You don't need any of the expensive items (beyond the bicycle). You need all the money you can get to further education instead. Do buy the books every season, and early on the herbal remedy as well (until the health awareness nights kick in). You probably won't need the toys, but the radio can be helpful, and the uniform is necessary for public school. Pick the bicycle up in year 1 or it probably isn't worthwhile.

• Buying the stall only makes sense in the first two years... later on you're just breaking even or even taking a loss and it's better to have the financial cushion or get more people in schools.

• Keep your living standard on good as often as you can afford it early on, then drop it to decent once everyone's health gets back up to 8 or so due to the health awareness nights.

• If anyone is getting low on health, use them as volunteers or send them to school. Ideally, their health will hold out long enough for the health awareness nights to start their magic.

• Always have everyone work hard. Taking it easy doesn't seem to save much health, except if they're working as rum distillers (which should only be a last resort job if it's a very weak job market otherwise). You get quite a bit more money (and presumably education/volunteer work) than if you take it easy.

• For schooling, early on take all volunteer slots, but when there aren't two slots, priority should be vocational school for the adults, then public school for the kids (cheap and effective, you can sometimes get all three kids in at once if you have the parents working good jobs), then if necessary protestant school or professional tutor. Try to avoid local tutor and lottery school, since they are not as helpful, and catholic school since it basically cancels out one of your incomes (though it is pretty effective... can be a good choice in the last two seasons of the game if you have some money saved and one of the kids needs more than 1 education point to get to 9). Once everything is built, public school and vocational school are more effective than volunteering, but volunteering is still better than a local tutor or lottery school, and it's free so it can be more useful than the other schooling options.

• Keep at least 150 on hand to start hurricane season, and make sure you are making money that season in case there is a second hurricane to boot. More than once I've paid through the first hurricane only to be out of cash and had my game effectively ended by the second one.