Tropico 6

Guide for Economy in Tropico 6

This is a guide for earning money in Tropico 6. In any Missions or Sandbox, these methods will help.

1. Trading

There are several method of making money in trading. "Traditional trade" is the orthodox economy in the game where you produce resource goods in mining or farming, process them in the industrial buildings, and export the product from the dock. This type of trade is shown in the tutorial, so I would not explain that here.

"Processing trade" is another type of trading. Here, you would no more produce raw materials and instead of that, you import them through the dock. You build few industrial buildings near the dock (so that the teamsters will carry the resource goods quickly). Process the goods, and sell them. Although the profit is not high as the traditional trade, there are several merits in processing trade. One is that you don't need the plantations and mines any more. This is not small because these buildings tend to require more workers then industrial buildings based on the amount of the product. You can keep the population of the island low, needing less medical, religious, and entertainment buildings. Another merit of processing trade is that you would not need to care any longer about the fertility of the soil, climate of the land, and the abundance of underground resources. The method of processing trade is simple, but needs a little calculation. First, make a import contract for your desired goods. Freight ship will carry 1000 units of the goods on each arrival as long as you have only one dock in the island. The amount of goods each ship carries decline when you build additional docks so that you get 1000 when you multiply the amount per single carries by number of docks you have. This means that you can't increase the amount of imports simply by building docks. On the other hand, increasing the frequency of the arrivals of ships works. You can increase the budget of the dock, issue advanced boat services edict or build the Moai Heads wonder to do that. The ship will arrive approx 2.8 times per year, meaning 2800 units of raw materials can be earned through imports every year. Because the gain of the resources is fixed, industries with low resource consumption suits well with processing trade. Plastic Plants and Pharmaceutical Companies are good examples. Textile Mill and Fashion Company will be good too, if it works using both resources (cotton and wool / cloth and leather). Electronics Factory is not a good choice if you plan to import plastics, but if you plan to import oil and process plastics within the isle, making electronics from that will boost your profit.

"Relay Trading" is the third type of economy based on trading. Here, you import goods just like processing trade, but instead of carrying them to the factories, you just keep them at the dock and export the goods on the next ship. The profit comes from the difference of the price in the contracts you have made. In relay trading, you do not need any economic buildings except the dock, and makes it easy to keep the population of the island very low. To establish the economy with relay trading, you'd need to open at least 6 slots of trade routes. Next, complete small import deals from the superpowers. You can sell the imported goods with the market price, meaning that it might end up in negative profit, but the relation with the superpowers will improve and deals with better rates will be shown next January. When your relation with superpowers is high enough, search for pairs for import and export of the same goods in the trade route offers list, so that import price is a lot lower than the export price. Make contract with the biggest volume, and wait for the ships to bring you some money. Be aware that the first ship will only bring the import goods, so you have to pay for that. You get profit from selling the goods on the next arrival of the ship. Some goods can be consumed inside the island (sold in the grocery shop), and it can decrease your profit. In order to protect the goods from local consumption, you can simply disconnect the dock from the roads. Goods with higher price per unit suits in relay trading, such us boats, cars, and weapons. Be sure that you keep your funds to not be lower than $-10,000. Low funds will disable making new import contracts, and the relay trade economy will easily collapse.

2. Tourism

It is not easy to make profit from tourism if you do not design that way. Although, making money from tourist business is not that difficult, at least in Modern Times. All you need to do is to build some Yacht Clubs and operate them in tourists only mode (the fee will be 5 times more). The point for making profit is NOT to make other entertainment buildings or tourist buildings except accommodations. (Do not build too many entertainment buildings for the tropicans either.) Their fees are relatively low, and will waist time for the tourists to visit the yacht clubs. Even with less varieties of amusement, the tourist rating will not drop because the base service quality of the yacht club is high. The other point is to focus on tourist from single level of wealth. If you focus on rich tourists, set all yacht clubs' work mode to easy sunset, all tourist ports to luxury liner, and build some Cruise Ships, Beach Villas, or Skyscraper Hotels. If you focus on filthy-rich tourists, set all yacht clubs' work mode to Mucho Importante, airport work mode to luxury airliner, and build Luxury Hotels. If you focus on well-off tourists, set it that way. To focus on tourists from 2 or more wealth levels will not work, because filthy-rich tourists will visit not only yacht clubs for filthy-rich visitors but also clubs designed for rich or well-off visitors. This will lower the profit, and steal the slots from the lower wealth tourists to visit. You can build stadiums instead of yacht clubs if you focus on well-off tourists since the difference of the fee is not crucial.

3. Financial Buildings

Offshore office generates money in exchange for the relations to the superpowers. The profit from one offshore office reaches $12,000 per year, and in max, 5 buildings operating make $60,000 per year. This can be an enough income for small islands. In order to keep safe from foreign forces, you should complete little trade deals and keep relations high enough.

Banks generates 2% of the treasury as an interest each month when working on National Bank mode (100% efficiency, max workers). The profit from the bank have a limitation of $1000 per month. This limit is fixed regardless of the efficiency of the building nor the number of workers. So, the income will be maximized when you have $40,000 in the treasury, and from there on, it would be better to keep the budget of the building low and hire fewer workers. When you have more than approx $270,000, lowest budget with only one worker would be the best. When you have multiple banks working in the same mode, the profit from single building would decline described as 4/(3+X) where X represents number of banks. Thus, the maximum profit from the national banks would be around $32,000 per year (you need 5-8 banks). Banks in private banking mode also can make profit, but it requires rich or filthy-rich citizens, and is not likely to be the main source of the island's income.

3. Office Business

The profit from one office declines like banks if multiple office operates in the same work mode. The profit is described as 4/(3+X) where X is the number of office in the same work mode. This means that the total profit from offices in one work mode have a limit of 4 times the profit from single building. (There is 5 different work modes, thus building more than 20 offices is profitable.) Not like the bank, offices do not have a certain limit in profit, so it is better to open all job slots and give full budget.

The strategies to increase profits from offices differs by the work modes. The easiest work mode is the Official Business. In Official Business mode, the office generates $10 per month for each workers working in governmental or financial buildings. Police stations (with second shift upgrade) or dungeons can hire more than 4 workers per 6 tiles, and wages for one worker is $4 in minimum, $8 in average budget. This means if you have a office working in Official Business mode, the more police stations you build, the more profit you will gain monthly.

Corporate Business generates 2 times the total workers throughout the isle. (It seems that Tropico counts Penultimo, the ministers and unshown clerk workers in the ministry.) Consumer Business generates 4 times the number of married couples living in any housing except shacks. In these modes, the population of the island is important. With only one office, the profit is not quite enough to overcome the increase of the expenses from the population growth. The family will pay around $5-6 for the rent for their houses, while you need to pay at least $8 for the wage of the husband and the wife in total. You also need to build clinics and churches which always need operative expenses. So, even if you earn $4 for each families from the office, it isn't a enough fund. In order to keep it working, you would need at least total of 3 office buildings working in these modes. Once it gets on track, all you need to do is to make the population of the isle larger. This means office buildings in these modes are the most suitable economy for population growth. Immigrants will arrive as long as there is vacant job slots, so the most important point to keep the population increasing is to keep building buildings with open job slots. The population will be maximized when you build as many watchtowers or guard towers as you can, since it can hire more than any other buildings, up to 3 workers per tile. If you are trying this, be aware that the towers will decrease the liberty highly.

Solid and Progressive business are available by research, and these offices generates 1.5 times the number of citizens in certain factions. You can increase the faction population using TV stations, radio stations or newspapers, but even if almost all the population is an intellectualist, the profit from the progressive office do not exceed that of a corporate business (while you have the same number of offices working). Increase in the intellectual population means decrease in the conservative population at the same time, and you cannot improve profit in both solid business and progressive business. In conclusion, you have no reason to set the offices' work mode to these modes before constructing plenty of offices working in other 3 modes.

4. Economies by Special Buildings

Forced labor in prisons is another way to make profits. One prisoner makes $30 per month and by 100 prisoners, the yearly profit will be around $36,000. This maybe not enough for the budget of the whole island, but you can arrest more citizens in order to improve the income. The difficult point is where to find so many prisoners. One way is to arrest citizens that have never committed crime. This may result in decay of your support, but anyway, you can order martial law.

Raid buildings can raise money by treasure hunt raid. (Other raid missions can be useful too but will not give profit itself except loot missions of Pirate Coves.) Although the needed time for the missions is shown to be around 3-6 months, and when you have all 4 raid buildings and 2 missions is completed in each buildings every year, 8 missions can be completed per year in total. This means that Raid buildings may give around $20,000 per year in total but this income is not enough for maintaining the isle.

Using Space Program, you can generate money from knowledge. If you build 10 libraries, the Space Program can be kept executing commercial missions all the time even on the highest budget, where it takes 240 days to complete. The cost for electricity, library, and the space program is approx $9,000 per year in total, compared to the income from the missions around $30,000 per year. Although, this profit is not high enough to maintain an island alone, as long as the population is not very low.