I am playing the Xbox 360 Gold Edition.

Has anyone had problems with the cash flow in the game? For example, a ship will dock at the port, then leave and white text will slowly scroll up the screen "A freighter exported $75,000 worth of Tropican goods" but my Treasury balance will not adjust at all. This happens every other shipment at a minimum, and it happens in Campaign, Challenge, and Sandbox modes. I have multiple ports, all government and economic buildings...my ports even show the revenue under "exported revenue" but my Treasury does not.

This also happened at least 2 times with the Foreign Aid one game. Again, text would appear on the screen claiming I received some amount of Aid, and then my treasury balance would literally not move.

This happens a lot. I can play the game, but it means that I operate my economy on these wild swings (50k in debt, 50k in the black, 50k in the red, 50k in the black). Honestly, it is extremely frustrating and makes the game unplayable having to sit and wait for the next shipment every time and I feel like the game is taunting me.

Is this a bug? Or is my Tropican government just especially corrupt and utilizing hidden embezzlement mechanics? Am I just dumb? Any info would be great.

I can only speak from my experience playing Tropico 3 on PC, but I found in that game that it can take a little time for income to roll in from sources (e.g. ships loading/unloading, which seems to go faster with more dock workers). The text notification for income only appears after an income-generating process has completely finished, so you often actually receive the money in one or multiple increments a short while before the message shows up. If you keep a close eye on your balance before an income process begins (and don't start any new construction while you're watching), you should see your balance increase in total by the amount that the income message will indicate once it pops up after the fact.

I've had this happen to me a bunch. Not really sure why unfortunately.

Check your overhead, it's under Economy, Island expenses in the almanac. When you start having military bases, colleges, cathedrals, police stations, really all the buildings that don't produce income your overhead jumps up exponentially. At this point, if you're in mountains of debt that you can't pay off just start over and focus more on your economy. Fuck factories, they use too much raw materials that you don't have and need to import. Factory workers are always the first ones to ditch their jobs whenever a new police station is built or move on to get a college degree whenever a college educated worker is needed. Too much experience is lost in the process and your highschool is overloaded with students that want to get those factory jobs. Don't invest in tourism either, tourists just clog up your already congested single-lane roads and I find that there are too many buildings specifically built for tourists that aren't being visited by them. Cash crops are the only way to go.

@deathstriker666: Thanks for the advice, but money is not an issue. Of the 10 campaign missions I've done my income always outstrips my expenses by 100k or more and I'm never actually in debt. I swing between debt and wealth, because only 1 out of 2 or 3 shipments actually registers income in my bank. I would have hundreds of thousands in my Treasury, often from one single ship in one port, but the text appears on my screen "You exported 120,000 of Tropican Goods", the ship leaves the port, and the money does not appear in my treasury. I have plenty of income, but I just have to sit and wait twice as long as other players because of this glitch.

So far I have searched the internet, and it's probably either an obvious bug. or a lack of banks to store cash, if that's a game mechanic. I'll check tonight.

As for your play advice, I'm not so sure. I build everything that is profitable, on every island. Industry is awesome, because it automatically imports less than it exports. The profits are often way higher than the costs, it just requires a little more Treasury management if you care at all about foreign relations. If you don't, you can just go into debt importing until the next ship comes to port and you reap fat export profits. Tourism is also an excellent supplement to any economy, and should always be separate to avoid congestion. I build in loops and avoid building intersections to avoid congestion anyway. I usually use cash crops to get a steady export income going, then tourism to supplement the games glitched exports, and then finally industry once I know I will have steady income to support imports.

Thanks again for the reply.

@Savage: Thanks for the reply, and I have seen that happen a few times, but I am rarely not watching my Treasury balance and most of the times that I have this problem the cash just never shows up. Sometimes there will be a delay of 30 or so seconds, and I attributed this to the Teamsters having to carry money from a port to my banks (probably not the case). But that rarely happens, leading me to believe the game just has multiple bugs.

Never noticed any problems on the PC version. Do you have expenses (imports, maintenance etc.) that counteract your export income?
 
Also, cigar factories are fucking awesome. Had 4 of them going, regularly exporting 200k+.

@Dezztroy: Thank you for the reply, but I clearly explained that income does not appear in my treasury. Even with expenses higher than my income, the money would go into the Treasury and then slowly be spent, it does not automatically cancel out.

What I don't know is if there are hidden mechanics (can only one port accept income, are certain numbers of banks required to store certain amounts of cash) blocking income from appearing and no one has mentioned anything like that so this is obviously just a bug.

Banks don't store cash. The treasury is only represented in-game by a ticker, the money is just a number that goes up and down. After all, the banks are too small to store cash, why do you think the Presidential palace is so big?

Tropico 4 is a mess of bugs/freezing issues, most of which has been fixed on the PC. I don't know if Kalypso is actually supporting the 360 version, it looked to be a PC port from the Quicklook. I've never had any camera/selection issues on the PC, Tropico 4 doesn't seem to be well-optimized for a controller. I can't shake off the feeling that a lot of Kalypso's recent games have felt like budget titles. Jagged Alliance BIA felt rushed and very unpolished, many of the mechanics or really lack of mechanics (cover, suppression) simply are non-existent. Generic voice actors with characters that sprout out hammy one-liners, lack of any real music in the game. Just a very rough product altogether much like Tropico 4.

I can tell you from playing Tropico 4 on PC that the money from exports doesn't come when the message on the screen shows you have exported goods. It comes when the dockworkers take wheelbarrows from the warehouse on the dock to the actual ship. When they do this the stock of crates on the dock will diminish and you will get the money. By the time the ship leaves the dock and the message shows how much you have exported you have already gotten the money.

If you select the dock and watch the dockworker and the exports list you should see it working. That being said, there could be an issue with the Xbox that is screwing you over.

I've restarted mission 5 twice now because of major cash flow problems. I think I need to slow down and not take on these "world's greatest" quests without building a more robust and diverse economy to back it up.

The problem I seem to be running into is that half of my farms and mines are producing absolutely zero, even in the "lifetime" column. They're fully staffed, but no production. I don't even get that little garbage bag icon over the building so I don't notice until my overhead has gotten out of control. Not sure what's going on here but it feels bugged. If not, the game must not be happy with road placement or building spacing. I just can't see what I'm doing wrong, so I can't help but think it's a bug.