Tropico 5 Diary – Between the Axis and the Allies

Once the player manages to get an economy going and develops his island enough to get rid of the influence of the King, he might believe that it’s time to turn energy inwards, focus on making money for that Swiss bank account and exploit the citizens in interesting ways.

But this quickly proves to be an illusion as the Axis and Allies start to put pressure on the tiny island nation to join their cause and, as diplomacy starts to fail, gamers will quickly find that being a benevolent ruler becomes hard when export quotas need to be met and when invasion seems imminent.

This is the moment when the difficulty of Tropico 5 starts to ramp up and money becomes important enough that it no longer makes sense to implement major tax cuts, provide relief from disasters or simply double the rations of the people.

These are all edicts that can be enabled in order to boost certain aspects of the society that one is building, but they cost money and during the early phase of the battles between the Allies and the Axis, currency is required in order to develop higher level goods, from steel to cigars and rum, and to make sure that you have a powerful military force.

I got squished by invasions more than once and even if you ally yourself with one of the two factions, you still need some solid tank regiments in order to deal with the armies that land on your shores.

This might be the single most infuriating element of Tropico 5 because combat is weak, with no actual tactics to use and numbers the only factor that can determine the final result.

I dread the moments when I have to fight and, unfortunately, the development team has offered no clear way to avoid these situations.

Everything is made even worse by the fact that I need to then reload an earlier save and basically ignore my economy, taking out bonds, in order to have the money needed to set up that powerful military to counter the threat that always seems to arrive at the same moment.

Tropico 5 can be a very interesting game, with a good mix of humor and classic mechanics, but there are times when the structure is too limiting for the modern player, who expects to have at least some freedom in all the missions included in the title.