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El Presidente returns for one more try at building a prosperous city on the island state of Tropico, as expected the release comes with official Linux support. For those who've never played a Tropico game, it's a very satirical take on city-builders and very different to things like Cities: Skylines.

Note: Key provided by the publisher.

El Presidente is back! In times of political turmoil and social unrest, the people are calling out for a visionary leader, one who will steer the fate of their country with foresight and ingenuity. Prove yourself once again as a feared dictator or peace-loving statesman on the island state of Tropico and shape the fate of your nation through four distinctive eras. Face new challenges on the international stage and always keep the needs of your people in mind.

Release trailer:

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This interesting thing about Tropico 6 is the change in the developer with Limbic Entertainment and this isn't the first time it's happened either. The original was developed by PopTop Software with the second from Frog City Software, then it switched hands again with Haemimont Games doing Tropico 3, 4 and 5. In addition, Tropico 6 brings the series over to the Unreal Engine.

A few interesting changes have come with the new game engine and new developer to take it in a different direction, including more customization of your dictator and your palace. There's no family to deal with this time either, so you pick a special trait when you create your dictator. It's quite simple really but a nice way to mix-up how you play the game and you can change this after if you don't like your choice.

Features to expect:

  • Play on large archipelagos for the first time in the series. Manage multiple islands at the same time and adapt to various new challenges.
  • Send your agents on raids to foreign lands to steal world wonders and monuments, to add them to your collection.
  • Build bridges, construct tunnels and transport your citizens and tourists in taxis, buses and aerial cable cars. Tropico 6 offers completely new transportation and infrastructure possibilities.
  • Customize the looks of your palace at will and choose from various extras.
  • Tropico 6 features a revised research system focusing on the political aspects of being the world’s greatest dictator.
  • Election speeches are back! Address the people and make promises that you can’t possibly keep.
  • Online multiplayer for up to 4 players.

The release comes with a single-player campaign as well as the ability to do whatever you want on sandbox maps, for those who prefer less structure to their city-builder and those who've completed the campaign it's pretty sweet. The sandbox play is interesting as it actually allows you to play on maps from the campaign, maps made just for the sandbox mode and there's even a random generation feature allowing you to adjust all sorts of things (landmass, size, islands, climate and so on).

While there are a number of differences to the previous game it doesn't honestly feel like a massive evolution. The biggest change is the island system, which is a huge improvement and makes it far more interesting to play over Tropico 5. It just opens the game up so much more, giving you a lot more space to play with and just makes it better in my opinion.

As for performance, it's okay. When viewing from a normal height and scrolling around it's quite smooth but when you zoom out to get a good view, performance drops pretty hard no matter what settings I stick down. It's playable but it does need improvements.

Performance aside, personally I've really enjoyed my time with it. If you find games like Cities: Skylines to be a bit too squeaky-clean, the more colourful character of Tropico 6 is worth trying.

Find it on Humble Store, Steam and their own store.

Article taken from GamingOnLinux.com.
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19 comments
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Liam Dawe Mar 29, 2019
Quoting: GuestThe tutorial for Tropico 5 was way too complicated, so yeah, no.
I’ve been told that it’s better to start with Tropico 3, and for some reason I have it on GOG… I guess I’ll try that under Wine, maybe, some day.
Honestly, the tutorial in Tropico 6 was actually alright. I tend to get overwhelmed with info usually but this was fine.
Purple Library Guy Mar 29, 2019
Catchy music on that trailer.
PieOrCake Mar 29, 2019
"As a true leader, it's your responsibility to build bridges, not walls". A poke at a certain US politician, perhaps? It made me smile.
Ehvis Mar 30, 2019
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It crashed for me, but that was fixed by setting the launch options to "LC_ALL=C %command%". First time that I actually needed to do that.

As Liam already mentioned, heavy on the frames when zoomed out tilted to a very horizontal angle. Still around 35 for me, which I don't really notice too much with GSYNC on.
PlayX Mar 30, 2019
For me the native performance is a bit better than proton.
with "__GL_THREADED_OPTIMIZATIONS=1 %command%" the framedrops on zoom and rotate are a bit better.
Egonaut Mar 30, 2019
The Vulkan support in the Unreal Engine is only default on Linux since 4.21 but Tropico 6 is using 4.20. Good chances that there were some remain issues.
14 Mar 30, 2019
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I enjoyed Tropico 4 a lot and thus bought Tropico 5 I think at release. Sadly, I haven't played it enough to warrant getting a newer release. This is largely due to my stage of life. I just can't play all the good games.
Ketil Mar 31, 2019
It looks like a quite decent game, with better gameplay than tropico 5. I haven't played it enough yet to say for sure though. On a technical side, on some maps, or maybe in certain eras, FPS drops quite a lot. The 4th tutorial gives me 5-15 FPS on recommend graphics, and 10-23 on very low. I'd say it's playable on 10+, but is too annoying when it drops below that.

In the other tutorials FPS is fine. The 4th tutorial is fine again on recommended graphics after finishing the 5th, without me really doing anything to fix it.


Last edited by Ketil on 31 March 2019 at 5:24 pm UTC
cRaZy-bisCuiT Apr 1, 2019
So as a fan of Tropico 5: Is it worth buying that game?
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