Building | Mechanics in Tropico 6 Tropico 6 guide, tips
Last update: 08 April 2019
Aside from managing your citizens, the most important aspect of the gameplay is developing the island. Constructing buildings that serve various functions enable you to fulfill the needs of the society and secure a steady flow of cash. The chapter below contains information regarding constructing buildings in Tropico 6.
In Tropico 6, you have access to a long list of buildings that you can build. You unlock them along with the introduction of new eras. Some of them require you to buy their schematics first. The buildings were divided into categories that contain buildings of the given purpose. These are: Traffic & Infrastructure, Food & Resources, Industry, Residential, Entertainment, Luxury Entertainment, Media & Education, Tourism, Public Services, Raids & Military, Government & Finance, Decoration and World Wonders.
The crucial aspect of growth is the right placement of buildings. You need to plan everything beforehand for it to work flawlessly, so your citizens don't have to move a lot, and the transporting path isn't too long.
It is recommended that your citizens have everything they need nearby them. This way, you'll lower the time needed to move between the individual buildings. This is especially important in case of food. Build a Grocery nearby every large settlement. Thanks to it, your citizens won't have to go to farms to get food. The distance between housing and work is also important. If citizen homes are too far from their work, the employees will start to build shacks next to their workplaces. This will negatively influence the housing indicator. This becomes a problem in case of mines which thanks to the locations of deposits have to placed in locations away from larger concentrations of people. This forces building smaller settlements next to mines, in which you need to build various buildings that satisfy the basic needs, such as Tavern, Clinic or the aforementioned Grocery. In further eras, you can eliminate the problem by building various means of mass communication.
Please pay attention to the facts that some of the buildings have a certain range. This applies mainly to media buildings and the Fire Station. Therefore, they should be placed in places where they can affect as many buildings as possible. The area of influence is highlighted in blue, as in the image above.
In case of farms, the main factor involved is the richness of the soil. Every farm or husbandry achieves various results, depending on the location in which they are found. The richness of the area is displayed when constructing a farm building or through Overview tab. Soil degrades over time - this means that built Ranch or Plantation will lose effectiveness as the time progresses. You can change these buildings for more advanced ones only during the modern era. They will require electricity, but will allow you to become independent from the quality of the soil.
Industrial buildings should be built near resource deposits that they utilize, which will decrease the time needed to transport the resources. Moreover, a Dock should be built on every island that has industrial buildings. This way, you'll avoid overloading the docks and prevent creating jams in their vicinity.
Remember that some buildings require electricity to be operational. You'll receive this information in the building menu. You need to build such buildings in electrified zones. Unfortunately, power plants have limited range. You can increase it using Electric Substation. The electrified area can be viewed using the Overview tab.
Tropico 6 introduced certain changes to construction mechanics. The amount of workers working at a site is limited. You cannot send more employees to a site. Changing the priority will only make them visit certain locations first.