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.

Tropico 6 tips