As we have just explained to you, recovering a license as well established as Tropico is not easy, and like JJ Abrams facing Star Wars Episode 4, the developers of Limbic Entertainment preferred not to take any risks. In concrete terms, this means that if you are already experienced in exercising, Tropico 6 will immediately seem very familiar to you. The game retains the same basics and the player will therefore find the era system introduced in previous episodes. Generally, a game begins in 1800, a century when Tropico was only an English crown colony and El Presidente was still only a small provincial governor. The first objective is therefore to prove to your superiors in the metropolis that you are a loyal servant of the queen, in order to keep your position as long as possible. For this, it will be necessary to satisfy all the requests of your hierarchy, the latter revolving the majority of the time around export objectives towards the mother country. Developing the colony and stirring up nationalist sentiment without seeming to be your first objective. To motivate your flock to fly on their own, each political faction will ask you to perform certain tasks (build a building, sign a law, for example) which will be rewarded with greater support from the faction in question, or by the arrival revolutionary immigrants. As a result, you will have to do everything to maintain a fragile balance between all the factions on your island, but also by proving your allegiance to the crown. Of course, a healthy economy is crucial, and it will take as much cash as possible to develop the colony, guarantee a satisfactory standard of living for its inhabitants, and allow the payment of very juicy bribes to all those who resist you. Moreover, some of your inhabitants will pose a problem for the crown (usually revolutionaries) who will ask you to imprison the seditious elements.
THE EXERCISE OF POWER
Fortunately, we will be able to use propaganda to strengthen the feeling of independence, in particular through the creation of a press organ that we will hasten to direct so that the message broadcast to the crowd corresponds to our expectations. Once the bar of 60 revolutionaries has passed, the time has come to transform Tropico into a sovereign nation. The revolution takes place in a few clicks among which slips a big dilemma: pay $10 to the old masters and buy peace, or face a merciless war. The choice naturally depends on the state of our finances, but also on the strength of our army. Indeed, without numerous garrisons, it will be impossible to deal with the arrival of the colonizing troops who have come to drive us out of the palace. And as any good manager knows, the military is paid for by the public treasury and is useless 000% of the time. If the army is a good solution to bring down unemployment, it will not help to keep the country's finances in the green. Once the revolution is over, you will have to define the contours of your country by choosing the main axes of the constitution. Who can vote (everyone, only the rich, only civil servants who are also forced to elect El Presidente), how the army is organized (pros, conscripts, etc.) and many other points. Each decision will please some political parties and displease others, knowing that in the event that you choose free elections, you will have to keep an eye on your popularity rate. Indeed, as soon as the latter falls below 99%, re-election is no longer guaranteed, and in the event of a defeat at the polls, a game over will be inevitable. Of course, we can use various stratagems to stay in place, such as stuffing the ballot boxes or opting for the repression of activists from other factions. Moreover, if we were used to being able to corrupt the leaders of the opposition parties, or to order their assassination (a bullet in the head in the street, or an "accident" for the most subtle), Haemimont Entertainment offers us a new possibility: that of interning dissidents in a psychiatric asylum (which will ensure their re-education).
We admit that the management aspect has gained in quality in this opus with many mechanisms, and balances much more difficult to find, and to maintain, which contrasts with the previous opuses
The exercise of power will also be impacted by foreign diplomatic relations that will have to be maintained via embassies and trade routes, in order to prevent the major powers (EU, USA, China and UAE) from deciding to send you troops. Foreign trade also remains the best source of finance for the island of Tropico, which pushes the player to focus on this aspect. The more time passes, the more the international context changes, which requires a lot of adaptation to remain sovereign. With the arrival of modern times, Tropico will nevertheless be able to equip itself with fairly new weapons (still defensive), including an aircraft carrier that will send Sukhoi fighters to bombard enemy troops. Over time, we will also be able to direct the production of the island in various sectors. If plantations and livestock are essential at the start of the game, you can choose to move towards industry or even research, provided you have a population with a fairly high level of education. We admit that the management aspect has gained in quality with many mechanisms, and balances that are much more difficult to find and maintain; which contrasts with the previous opuses where once you had the right settings, all you had to do was let yourself go. Where things do not change is of course in terms of humor which remains omnipresent. More than once, we laughed out loud at certain features of the game or on details, such as the description of the buildings. The dungeon (which is used to imprison political opponents) is thus described as a place full of specialists mastering the latest medieval techniques in terms of treating mute patients. Moreover, the main objective of the series is retained, namely to fill its account in Switzerland before the power escapes from our hands. Moreover, to avoid that our Swiss placement is only a simple scoreboard, the developers introduced the Brooker. He is a disreputable financier who will be able to grant us very large bonuses against part of our secret funds.
LIVE THE EVOLUTION
The studio has also brought a whole bunch of small new features such as the creation of bridges or highway tunnels, as well as the addition of many buildings to enrich the game. our island that we can transform into a communist paradise, or into an open-air prison camp that has nothing to envy to North Korea. Another technique is to overpopulate it by making it a paradise with far too high salaries and subsidies for everything (food, housing, children), before closing everything and reducing the population to slavery in order to immediately generate record profits. We can also count on friendly powers to find wealth, whether through international aid when the cash flow is at its lowest, or by attracting their citizens to an island that has been transformed into a real paradise for tourists. The game even allows us to choose what type of clientele we will address: aim for mass tourism, or create an ultra-luxurious microcosm reserved for the richest people on the planet. As you have understood, Tropico 6 is particularly rich, and also offers many game modes. If the classic Sandbox is renewed, we will have several missions (a situation to be rectified in a generally defined time), as well as the mode multiplayer where you have to share a territory with another player (which often turns into open warfare). Finally, it should be mentioned that the Unreal Engine 6 works wonders and offers a really pleasant rendering, while allowing incredible zooms.
