I've just picked up Tropico 6 (never played any others before) and I'm loving it. BUT I've read all the advice out there on how to make money in the early game and I have literally NEVER gotten my plantations/industries to be in the positive (based on their Stats screen). I'm doing the pinwheel multi-culture thing with manure, etc. I'm refining what I can (making cigars, chocolate, etc depending on the mission). I have plenty of teamsters. I've checked every box I've found in other posts. And my plantations and industies are ALWAYS in the negative. I've completed 3 missions so far by surviving on financial aid until I can get wonders and banks, but I feel like I'm just failing the early game.

WHAT AM I MISSING?

EVER!

My country got fucked up beyond repair and I didn't notice it till too late... went from 20mil to <1 mil in a few months.... And there's no saving it since corruption increase expense by % of income...

NB: Tried the All for the Folk Trait, doesn't work that only negates Spending swiss money, not gain, so the colony still fks your economy up :(

Love Tropico 4, brought T5 years ago with all the dlcs but never get to play it, got T6 in recent sales so decide to at least playthrough T5 campaign, now I'm on the mission to build nuclear programm before WW3.

But I'm on the brink of bankruptcy, cause each time when ships come I got 20k income from export which is quickly spent to my buildings budge just in time for the next ships arrive, while my docks constantly have goods that worth 50k-60k. And I already set all docks budge to max and got a fully-upgraded drydock. Do I need to place service buildings and houses next to docks so dock workers can spend lesser times to fulfill their needs and more time loading export goods?

Though I'm a fan of the game, one of the bigger personal gripes I have with it is that buildings barely progress visually. Outside of palace customization and the occasional later-era replacement building, most structures look the same from the moment they complete until the end of the game. It feels disconnected, like nothing you do gives shape to the game. Take the standard library:

The moment it's constructed, it's already-overbuilt colonial relic that seems like it services a population of thousands. Because it doesn't change, one asset has to cover every condition, so we get scale, ornamentation, timelessness of design, and island-nation-style decay that implies the structure's been standing for years.

This might be way too much to ask, but why can't these structures change a bit? They could follow a nice progression path where they start small and dare I say, clean? They might evolve according to several axes like era, upgrade level, age of the building, wealth level, even ideology. So it's less static and makes you feel like the game is remembering your decisions.

You could start with something like this:

Get your first upgrade and watch it transform to this:

Then you upgrade it to the default, original-game form, but it went understaffed/in a depressed area for too long:

Or go the other way, and improve your library even beyond the base game model. This final form would be the dopamine-addled treat for you cratering your island's budget:

Or starting over, what if you first constructed your library in the year 2000? Should it be a thing of terraces, repetitive arches, or just placidly millennial?

Hey, maybe the military faction has become the ruling ideology, and their design logic has bled into academics:

I think this would let the player actually build the island’s character. It adds the brain-happy dopamine reward of seeing our decisions actually make visual marks. Scars or sexy upgrades. "Look what we did to this place." That kind of feedback gives strategy games a soul, rather than minmaxxer/numerical mastery that most builders seem to be going for.

I know fully developed versions of every building would kill development times and be ruinously expensive. But they wouldn't need to be bespoke: rather than a unique hand-built model for every variation you could have modularly, like one base structure, several facade kits, material swaps, weathering, upgrade pieces, etc. Games used to do visual asset evolution like this. Why do we have to let that disappear?

Would anyone do the multiplayer achievement with me? In and out, 20 minute adventure!

Seems like everytime i build a tourism economy on ww when i go to modern times my rebel threat just sky rockets to high and tourism goes down and kills my economy, i deleted most of the military building and increased the liberty, but the moment the threat goes to medium it immediately goes back to high, not sure what to do anymore.

I’m just started playing 6 but I enjoy finding a youtube play through to help me get going.Any suggestions on a YouTuber I can look to for this?

It has some DLC, and I apparently did some research and found out that both are... delisted?

I'm not sure, but it's just something I wanted to share, since one of these relates to the sub. 😊

Looking for tips on how to make more money in Tropico 6? Greed-E bank covers numerous ways to MAXIMIZE profits in your Tropican state!

I think im doing good, so far, mostly turned into a trade hub, steal stuff, export goods

Back in 2020 I got this old papercraft from Tropico 5 finally printed (yeah, I do procrastinate a little bit). It's still alive, usually limping on my right speaker. Sooner rather than later it might need a replace (that's why I looked for the original pictures).
If someone finds it useful, go ahead!

It was fun as a novelty in T5 but come on is this really what they want as a defining feature of the series?
If we wanted to play a game where we watch our country evolve across time we have dozens of other games that fulfill that niche way better. As it stands, all the era system has been is making your island look like crap by having different aesthetics clashes and encouraging uou to build similar islands over and over.

It’s not immersive. It’s not that fun. It’s limiting where every playthrough your basically limited to what you can build by the same scenarios. End result is just putting down the same modern age buildings and tearing down old ones until your island looks the same as the last one.

Also, even with the eras system they don’t even go all in with the idea. Your presidente is some immortal dude somehow able to live from colonialism all the way to the sci fi future? If they wanted to convey a changing island you’d have to retire the presidente. But they don’t want to do that because that would destroy the cult of personality aspect they also try to sell. The way it is now it’s like mobile game trash

Yee i jus want a buddy to play and chill on this game with hit me up if you want

So, I told my mother about how I was playing Tropico 1 in sandbox mode and just trying to make people happy while making everything free, yet I still couldn't get above 50 percent happiness. I had plenty of citizens with the flag-burning icon above their heads.

So, my mother, who has historically been offended by everything, was aghast by the fact that people were living in shacks. I explained that the game has no homelessness mechanic, so the people who don't have housing, or who can't afford housing, live in shacks. My mother told me that "it teaches people that people who live in those kinds of countries live in shacks." Well, looks like I'm playing Tropico 6 with the no shacks mod! Can't let anyone be offended. Viva Tropico!

I’m a relatively new player & have started drilling into the detail about my citizens, and found that huge numbers of them live on totally different islands to their workplace. I’ve got plenty of vacant housing in the correct wealth bracket closer to their workplace, with better leisure nearby, but they don’t want to move.

I’m assuming this is an issue, because they’ll spend longer travelling, but how do I actually resolve this?

Does anyone play Tropico 3 on the hardest settings? What's that like? I just started playing a couple weeks ago and there's surprisingly little in-game info about the depth of the mechanics. I find guides online are limited and there's very little on YouTube.

What's your strategy for playing Tropico 3 with lowest money settings and lowest political stability?