Tropico 6 is a game of city building, political management, and population control, as players guide their budding banana republic from insignificant colony to Caribbean powerhouse. If that wasn't enough, the New Frontiers DLC for Tropico 6 has recently added the Space Race to the game, allowing players to race to the Moon, walk on Mars, or fake the whole thing in a movie studio.
No self-respecting Presidente should enter the Space Race without enough adoring citizens to support them, and players will need to keep their island population growing to provide workers for new industries and buildings. Raising population in Tropico 6 isn't a simple task, with many factors affecting birth rate, mortality rate, immigration, and emigration.
How To Raise Population In Tropico 6
The single most important factor for raising population in Tropico 6 is the Overall Happiness score. This score represents the combination of the eight different kinds of Happiness and covers everything from health and food supplies to faith and liberty. If the player's Overall Happiness is higher than the Caribbean Happiness, then new citizens will immigrate to their island seeking a better life, if it's lower they will lose citizens to emigration.
As well as boosting immigration, having a high Overall Happiness will also increase birth rates, creating a steady stream of new tax-paying Tropicans. The Food, Healthcare, Housing, and Job Happiness scores are particularly important in boosting births, as they'll allow families to feed, treat, house, and provide for their children. Of these four, Food and Healthcare can also reduce the population if left too low, as low quality or low access to groceries and clinics can lead to deaths from starvation or disease.
How To Boost Population Growth In Tropico 6
As well as increasing Happiness, there are a few other ways that players can boost their population growth in Tropico 6. The simplest is the Immigration Office building, which becomes available in the World Wars era. The Immigration Office grants a scaling boost to immigration rates and can be upgraded or modified for further buffs.
Players can also take a more proactive approach to immigration, by either paying to hire foreign workers to fill their vacant positions or by sending out Tropico 6 Raids to "Rescue" new immigrants using the Pirate Cove. Finally, there are a few Constitution Laws and Edicts that can help to raise population in Tropico 6:
- Penal Colony Edict - Provides a massive 50% boost to immigration as well as steady payments of $100 a month, but at the cost of new arrivals being 300% more likely to be criminals.
- The Contraception Ban Edict - Unlocked in Modern Times, banning contraception will increase the birth rate by 60%, pleasing Tropico 6's Religious faction but offending Intellectuals.
- Emigration Laws in the Constitution - Allows players to either allow free travel, actively encourage unhappy citizens to leave, or ban emigration entirely.
- Marriage Rights Laws in the Constitution - Allows players to enact Open Marriage or Forced Marriage. The first will allow same-sex marriage, which creates more families who will adopt children from outside Tropico, while the latter can significantly boost birth rates by forcing young people to raise families.
Combining these Laws and Edicts with a high Overall Happiness and an efficient Immigration Office can massively boost population growth in Tropico 6. However, players who are going all-in on growth will need to be ready to supply plenty of jobs and housing for their new citizens.
Tropico 6 is available on PC, Nintendo Switch, PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, Xbox One, and Xbox Series X/S.