My power plant ended up surrounded by slum housing for probably the same reasons that happens in real life, too. Clustering things together is more efficient and less sightly, but over time it makes for a more authentic looking island. Tropico 6 will give more life to the population - and more problems for El PresidenteĮven with unlimited money in a sandbox mode, the simplest vision my inner autocrat has for Tropico requires constant management. I actually missed the deadline for the very first shipping contract the Crown imposed on me, where in Tropico 5 that was largely a matter of constructing a plantation and making sure there was available space down at the city docks. (Workers getting to the library has a similar effect in lengthening research time, under a new system there). Sticking the teamster office all the way down by the docks was a nice aesthetic choice, but that compounded in both workers showing up there and then ferrying the crop back to the ships. But in an initial run-through, it took me forever to get my first tobacco export contract filled, because I’d gotten too cute with where I placed the farms and where I placed the poor housing. In Tropico 5, productivity was mainly solved just by balancing the population number with the jobs available, because building output was constant whether workers were there or not. Straight away I noticed that a building’s productivity suffered, even in colonial times, if its workers were not in affordable homes nearby. Tropico 6 still feels like a more challenging game, more consistently thwarting my grand vision, because employment and housing - the quality-of-life conditions that affect everything on the island - need more management to keep everyone sheltered and on task. The beta still has me excited for the next game even though that has been delayed into 2019, and most of what I’ve seen so far reminds me of Tropico 5. That’s why the Tropico 6 beta underway has already claimed more than seven hours of my time, most of it in sandbox mode. I used to live in Washington D.C., which probably inspires my city-building approach to Tropico - begin with very orderly straight lines and discretely purposeful districts, and over the course of a hundred years watch it turn into crap.
It was in the decay - the entropy that can only be shown in city blocks planned under a government warped by the shortsightedness, desperation and instant gratification of its leadership. For me, the hours-burning allure of Tropico wasn’t so much the decadence of being a despot with total control (or the illusion of it, at least) over an island paradise.