Increase Happiness in Tropico 5
Tropico 5 will have you taking care of a whole nation of Tropicans on an island. You’ll need to take care of their needs and run the whole country with foreign policies, buildings, and social edicts. You’re in charge of making sure your people are happy, because if they’re not, you’re at risk for rebel threats, losing elections, and angering foreign powers. It’s important to have that happiness/approval rating percentage high, and it can be tracked by the numbered percentage on the bottom left of your screen. We’ll cover each aspect of a Tropican’s happiness and how you can increase each one. All of them together will bump your average and keep your people happy, so don’t neglect any of them.
Housing in Tropico 5
How to Increase Happiness
We have an in-depth guide on housing quality over here, but the basics are that you need to provide houses for your people. Shacks only give its residents 19 housing quality points. That really lowers the average in the grand scheme, so make sure to build houses and apartments. These two types of residential buildings provide the best housing quality for the buck. Houses won’t ever be improved upon any more and apartments are only upgraded to modern apartments once you’ve researched those. Make sure to enact the Mortgage Subsidies edict, too, because this will make your residences livable by people that may not make a lot at their jobs.
Here are the different residential buildings:
- Shack
- Country House
- House
- Mansion
- Tenement
- Apartment
- Modern Apartment
- Floating Apartment (Waterborne DLC)
And here are the edicts that will help you increase housing:
- Mortgage Subsidies
- Free Wi-Fi
- Urban Development
Entertainment in Tropico 5
How to Increase Happiness
Tropicans love a good time. Every single age group needs their entertainment fulfilled or else they’ll get bored kicking rocks about the island. You’re going to need to supply them with means to have some fun, and thankfully it’s very easy to. It’s recommended that you build one of each kind of entertainment building, and whichever you find is getting “sold out” in the capacity sense, you just build another of those somewhere on the island. Here are all of the entertainment buildings:
- Tavern
- Restaurant
- National Park
- Beach Site
- Circus
- Cineplex
- Opera House
- Casino
- Cabaret
- Ancient Ruins
- Museum
- Night Club
- Stadium
- Hang Gliding Club
And here are the edicts that will help you raise entertainment levels:
- Host the Olympics
- Mardi Gras
Religion in Tropico 5
How to Increase Happiness
Religion is important in Tropico, and it’s always free for your people. You need to keep in mind that not everyone is an atheist on the island, so it’s important to provide churches for your people. It’s recommended that you set the wage for your priests and nuns to the maximum budget to ensure people will want to work these jobs as they may not really be inclined to otherwise. Start with the Catholic Mission, as soon as you can build a Church, replace the mission. Keep an eye on the church and make sure that it’s not getting supremely full. Once it does, you need to build another. Once you finally can build the Cathedral, do so. Keep the amount of placements in your churches and cathedrals to more than your population. For example, churches can hold 200 and cathedrals can hold 400 (without the upgrade to double that). So, if you have 800 citizens, have two churches and one cathedral.
Here are the buildings for religion:
- Catholic Mission
- Church
- Cathedral
Here are the edicts that help with religion and your religious faction approval:
- Contraception Ban
- Prohibition
Here are the edicts that hinder your religious faction approval:
- Stem-Cell Research
Healthcare
How to Increase Happiness
Healthcare is extremely important as it’s what keeps your citizens, you know, alive. You’ll need to provide clinics and hospitals for your people to visit to ensure their life expectancy is nice and long. There are also numerous edicts you can do to help this, and once you build a Pharmaceutical Company, you can upgrade it to provide effectiveness to all the medical buildings on your island. It’s a smart choice to set the budget of medical buildings to their max possible to ensure you’ll always have college graduates clamoring to work at your clinics and hospitals. Again, keep the amount of these buildings to more than your population, and always upgrade them to get the extra hospitalization wing.
Here are the buildings for healthcare:
- Clinic
- Hospital
- Pharmaceutical Company
Here are the edicts that help with healthcare:
- Disaster Relief Fund
- Immunization Campaign
- Smoking Ban
Here are the edicts that hinder healthcare:
- Paid Healthcare
Crime Safety
How to Increase Happiness
Your citizens in Tropico 5 want to feel safe and not like they’re going to be shot up one random night. It’s important to take care of them and deal with any criminals. That’s right, rebels aren’t the only threats you’ll have. Increase the budget of your police stations to maximum efficiency so that you’ll always have protection. Make sure you place a police station where the red land appears, as that lets you know exactly where the crime is thriving. Your goal is to have an all-green grid. Use
Here are the crime safety buildings:
- Police Station
- Supermax Prison
- Dungeon (Espionage DLC)
- Police Blimp (Espionage DLC)
- Drone Command (Espionage DLC)
Here are the edicts that help crime safety:
- Martial Law
- Secret Police
- Big Brother
Food
How to Increase Happiness
Food is probably the most important aspect of a Tropican’s life. Without it, death is imminent. Therefore, you’re going to have to make sure you’re providing enough food for your people. The food quality not only depends on having enough of it, but having a variety of it, as well. Make sure to build all the different buildings at least once and also account for any factories that may take up your food. Also, marketplaces and supermarkets are a must, otherwise your people will need to go to farms to get their food and they hate that. Keep these at more than your population and centralized in civilization.
Buildings that help food quality:
- Country Houses (only residential building that provides food right off the bat)
- Banana Plantation
- Corn Plantation
- Pineapple Plantation
- Cattle Ranch
- Goat Ranch
- Pig Ranch
- Hydroponic Farm
- Factory Farm
- Wharf
- Fishing Trawler (Waterborne DLC)
- Marketplace
- Supermarket
Edicts that help food quality:
- Extra Rations
- Agricultural Subsidies
- GM Crops
Edicts that hinder food quality:
- No Free Lunch
Liberty in Tropico 5
Liberty is how free your people feel. If you don’t want them to get extra unrest from living in a totalitarian government, you’re going to need to choose your Constitution options carefully and go for the ones that increase liberty. Additionally, newspapers and TV stations will help you out in making your people feel free. Place them where ever there’s red on the grid and you’ll be good. Policemen and military lower people’s liberty, so find a balance.
Buildings that help liberty quality:
- Newspaper
- TV Station
Edicts that help liberty, too:
- Sensitivity Training
- Right to Arms
Edicts that hinder liberty:
- Martial Law
Jobs in Tropico 5
Jobs make your country go round. They’re also what keep people happy, since unemployed Tropicans aren’t producing any income, and that blows hard. So, you’re going to need to make sure there are jobs to go around, and that the quality at them is high. Plenty of upgrades to buildings provide increases in job quality, so make sure to invest in those if you’re having trouble getting this one higher. Also, you’ll want to increase the budget, because earning more makes for a happy worker. Some buildings, like the parking lot, are good to place around others as these too will increase happiness. And, finally, you need to set the Constitution options that will benefit workers and lead to happy workplaces.
Approval Rating in Tropico 5
Maybe your people’s happiness and needs are kept high, yet you’re still getting low percentage of approval? Are you at risk for losing the next election? What you need to do is simple: appease the factions. You’ll need to head over to the almanac and see which ones are hating and why. You’re very likely to be the victim of some edicts providing negative effects. So, while you think you’re choosing the best edicts possible for your people, you’re going to want to enact some others or cancel some to make your approval rating rise. You can issue the Social Engineering edict to pick whichever faction you have high ratings with and make them the most populated one, too. Also, there’s always bribing the faction leaders…
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