The challenge feels a little stiffer, not unreasonably so, but just enough that worrying about where the money's coming from and how to keep enough factions on side to get me through another election was a constant concern. I know it all well, and the toothless comedy take on dictatorship remains as insipid as ever - though I'm glad to say that did feel a little less in my face, this time around.īut I don't feel like I'm going through the motions. The choice to be cuddly, Castro or Stalin playing politics with various external nations juggling profit and war, domestic and touristic interests unbridled capitalism vs green sensibilities. It would be a lie to claim that, outside the islands, there have been many dramatic changes in 6, but I rarely felt as though I was simply repeating myself.
"It was ever thus" has been both selling point for and black mark against the last few Tropicos. It's now impossible to imagine a Tropico that isn't split into islands. Some were connected by bridges, some by funiculars, some by boat the hive of motion around and over them was delightful. They were all my precious babies, equally-loved. Later still, another island was coated from shore to shore in solar farms and wind turbines, discreetly providing all the clean energy my now fossil-free 'home' could ever need. Later, I had an island dedicated to tourism, the monied, gullible fools kept well away from what I thought of as The Real Tropico. I grudgingly built a dock on a second island an hour or so in, intending only to haul ore from it back 'home' to the main island, leaving it an otherwise uncolonised no man's land.Ī few hours later, it was a hive of mines, factories and farms, all kept neatly away from my increasingly postcard-perfect housing and leisure main island. But, like the new well of love that opens up in your heart should you have a second child (unless they're a git), it turns out that the capacity to care just as much about another island is there, once the moment is at hand. I regarded the other islands with suspicion, as unwelcome irritations-in-waiting. Your first island will, for hours, seem so vital and precious. Instead of a circle of industry relentlessly pushing outwards, now the other islands become something to strive for distant, initially impossible-seeming goals.Įqually impossible-seeming is that your attentions and affections could possibly be divided between multiple places.
Part of why islands work so well here is that they gently switch up the traditional goal of expansion for expansion's sake. Making the new archipelago format, an empire built across scattered shores, melt neatly into that sensory pleasure, rather than disrupt it, is not as straightforward as it sounds. Tropico's long been a game played as much for mood, a dream of eternal sun and a zen state of building calm, as anything else.
Games like anno and tropico series#
For this most conservative of management series - you're a better man than me if you can easily tell the previous three games apart - even the smallest change can make a profound difference. What would be just a map option to split the landmass into sea-divided blobs in so many other city-builders or strategy games is, in cod-Caribbean management sequel Tropico 6, transformative.