By: Jack Almond
Tropico 6 is a construction, management, and political simulation game that was released March 6, 2019. The sixth main installment to the Tropico series, Tropico 6 was developed by Limbic Entertainment and published by Kalypso Media. In Tropico 6, you assume the role of "El Presidente", a leader of a Caribbean island nation Tropico. You are given the option of playing sandbox mode, missions mode, and multiplayer - I personally stuck to the sandbox mode, so that's what I will focus on inn my writing. Throughout the sandbox mode of Tropico 6, your focus is to build a powerful nation on an archipelago, manage simulated citizens, govern building and public transportation, decided trade routes with other nations, and much more. The method of victory can be selected when starting the game, with those options being by Swiss Bank, by Era, by Tourists, or by Tasks. When aiming for victory, there are four different iconic eras that you must play through, in which each era brings new options, abilities, and challenges. The four eras of Tropico 6, in order, are the Colonial Era, the World Wars, the Cold War, and Modern Times. While growing your island nation, the direction of your rule is completely up to you. You can choose to be a communist nation, who focuses on the economic growth of your nation, and religion across the island. You could also become a capitalist nation, with a focus on maximizing tourists visiting the island, and military supremacy. In Tropico 6, your island is truly your sandbox, with each decision you make as "El Presidente" having positive and negative reactions.
Tropico 6 was a much easier game to get a handle on then previous strategy games we played in class, like Sid Meier's Civilization VI and Empire: Total War. After completing the tutorial and customizing my own "El Presidente", I opened sandbox mode, chose the map Ballgame, and began my rule. In my gameplay, I planned on becoming an economic powerhouse, with a focus communist power, and an atheist state of religion. I began by buying a few extra trade deeds in order to fulfill as many trade routes as I could. I selected to export hides, sugar, and corn to the Crown. I built extra plantations and ranches to support my trade routes, an extra construction building to speed up building, and another teamsters building to speed up transport of goods. I focused on the building of the colonial era large living spaces for my citizens and immediately built a military fort by the recommendation of a YouTube tutorial I watched. After performing all of these builds, I saw the money slowly quickly draining from my account and was worried I already failed, that was until I received my payment for the completion of my first trade route - it was a great feeling! I continued completing carious trade routes with the crown, constructing buildings, and completing tasks brought to me by revolutionary leaders and the Crown. After about an 2 hours or so of maintenance and constant Googling, I was given the option of independence from the Crown for a large fee, or by simply leaving with the potential of retaliation. I decided to pay the fee to avoid attacks from a powerful nation, becoming an independent nation and ending my Colonial era.
The next era ahead of me was the World Wars. The first difference I noticed in the change of eras was I was no longer given trade options with the Crown, rather I was to choose between options with the Allies or the Axis. I quickly learned that each trade route completed with either power would determine my standing with them, with a relationship with the Axis being more militarily beneficial and a relationship with the Allies being more financially beneficial. As I felt I would be a financially successful nation on my own, I disregarded history and became an ally with the Axis, with one of their members occupying my newly built embassy.
I continued growing my various production methods, increasing resources available to my citizens to increase their happiness, and expanding to a smaller island off the main. This is when I noticed the cost of maintenance, which would be the ultimate demise of my nation and gameplay as a whole. The cost of maintaining the amount of buildings I had was exceeding the amount of money I was bringing in monthly, therefore I was consistently losing money. For the first time in my nation's history, I went into the negatives in my bank account and had to receive a payment from the Axis power to bail me out. After getting out of the negatives, I quickly paused the game to slow my collapse and immediately went to the almanac screen to evaluate my financials. I lowered wages, destroyed a few extra buildings, and switched high cost housing to the lower cost option. After unpausing the game, losses slowed and I believed I fixed the issue - but eventually realized it was only a temporary fix. Due to my lowered wages, efficiency of my plantations, ranches, tanneries, and mines were tremendously reduced, significantly effecting the speed at which my main source of income, trade routes, were completed. After this realization, I was discouraged, overwhelmed, ended my interesting playthrough, and came to terms with the fact that I could never be the leader of a nation.
In my opinion, Tropico 6 relates to my major of marketing significantly. One of the methods of victory in Tropico, as I stated earlier, is victory by tourism. In order to increase tourist numbers, you must develop your island with exciting attractions, natural wonders, and island beauty - ultimately advertising your nation as a whole. Although this was not my focus throughout my gameplay, I believe that if I were to play again, I think tourism was be an interesting approach to the game that I would have great success with.