Tropico is a real-time strategy game that mixes elements of Sim City, the
various Tycoon games, and even a little of the Sims into a city-building,
managerial type game in a unique location.

You are the recently elected/installed/victorious (depending on how you
achieved office) president of a small Caribbean island named Tropico. Before
you lies a small community of people and a lush, rich island to improve or
exploit at your will. You can become a benevolent ruler who brings this third
world country into the realm of economic superpowers or you can be a ruthless
dictator whose sole goal is to leech as much personal wealth as he can from
the populace before they get the courage to rebel.

Using a modified engine from their previous game, Railroad Tycoon II, PopTop
Software utilizes isometric graphics on a 3-D terrain to represent the island.
Clouds float overhead, sometimes throwing lightning down, people walk from
their homes to their chores, and hills and forests get leveled in the name of
progress. All this happens at the user-specified speed and its the main user
interface as players specify new construction, lay down edicts, and keep tabs
on their citizens.

Each citizen is his or her own entity, with their own names, relationships to
other citizens, wants and desires. Some feel the need to excel in studies,
others seek religious enlightenment, some just want a good time. They even
take political affiliations and work towards those ends. The citizens of
Tropico do not blindly follow orders, they must be persuaded through meeting
their desires, or just pure greed or terror. If you wished, you could follow
the life of a citizen from childhood through his/her teenage years, through
the course of several jobs, all the way to retirement and death.

A single-player only game, there are both set scenarios and random islands to
play through, with various difficulty levels including a sandbox mode that
allows you to play around without worrying about money or political
ramifications.