In Tropico 4, how do I increase the export volume to the US or USSR for their specific quests?
Best Answer
It basically means that you need to manufacture more of the things they want, you can't actually increase export values. Export is pretty much fixed, based on whatever you need. Strangely enough, you only need food for your own nation, everything else is all export. So the quests that require you to increase export value want more of something, any resource that the quest requires. You can speed up these kinds of quests if you produce more of a certain resource but, of course, that would increase maintenance. So what these kinds of missions are is "We want to buy that much [insert resource here] from you."
When expanding to a new area, build a garage there first. Your workers take a construction truck out to the build site, but they walk back. This is particularly problematic when building mines or farms in remote places. But if you build the garage first, they'll build the mine and then drive back.
Make sure your workers' other needs can be satisfied quickly. Build Garages so that your workers can get to food, entertainment, churches, doctors, work, and their homes quickly. This means they'll spend less time away from the job (or at least their breaks will be shorter).
Have skilled builders.
A skilled builder puts up structures much faster than a neophyte builder.
Select traits and a background that increase worker training.
Enable the Literacy Program edict, set your Ministry to Council of Ministers, and have a TV Station set to Learning with Larry.
Pay your builders more, so your skilled builders won't walk off and take different jobs. If there's a factory job available, then your builders may well decide to get an education and take that job. Make sure the job satisfaction of being a builder is better than the job satisfaction of other available jobs. (There's no good way to keep them from taking a college job, other than manipulating the open slots in the job — make sure there are no open slots, then make them all available and hire foreigners a split-second before the freighter arrives. The job satisfaction of college-education jobs is so high – usually 80-plus – that it's really not worth trying to compete with that.)
Rushing the actual construction.
Send El Presidente to oversee construction. Alas, there is only one El Presidente, so make sure that the building he's supervising is on the highest priority, and that nothing else will be built first. (At equal priorities, Construction Offices build the thing that's closest to the office.) You may have no idea which end of a hammer to swing, but your workers don't know that; they'll build faster just too see your backside that much sooner.
Spend real world money to buy the Quick-dry Cement DLC. If you wait for a Steam sale, you can get this at 75% off. This allows you to build a Cement Factory, which makes your construction workers build things faster (and exports cement, which doesn't sell for much but doesn't require any input goods to make). You may build up to five Cement Factories, and each one will accelerate construction further. Side note: you don't need to buy blueprints to make the Cement Factory.
Grit your teeth and throw money at the problem with the "Quick Build" button on the thing being built. It doubles the price of the building, but this can be worth it for cheap buildings (like, say, Garages that make your builders spend less time walking) or if you think it'll eventually pay for itself (for anything that makes you money).
Did I mention that building Garages will help?
(If you have the Modern Times DLC, a network of Metro Stations can help, but those get expensive pretty quickly; they're much better for tying together two different "towns" than getting your people from one block to the next.)
Best Answer
It basically means that you need to manufacture more of the things they want, you can't actually increase export values. Export is pretty much fixed, based on whatever you need. Strangely enough, you only need food for your own nation, everything else is all export. So the quests that require you to increase export value want more of something, any resource that the quest requires. You can speed up these kinds of quests if you produce more of a certain resource but, of course, that would increase maintenance. So what these kinds of missions are is "We want to buy that much [insert resource here] from you."