Set on a hidden pirate island and starring some of history's scurviest sea dogs, Tropico 2: Pirate Cove casts the player as an all-powerful Pirate King managing a seventeenth century band of buccaneers. The traditional economic model of the Tropico is reversed: the player maintains his/her wealth not through the production of materials, but by plundering merchants on the high seas and bringing the victims back to the island as captive workers.