Is the DLC worth it?

[Gumpo]

So, I don't own Tropico 6, but it is currently on sale for a few days, and I'm interested in picking it up. The last Tropico game I played for more than a few minutes was Pirate Cove, and back then I really liked both games I had played. The current one looks solid, but oh my god all the DLC.

Should I pick up just the base game for $14? Or should I go all-in for almost $80? Or grab just specific DLCs? (The all-in bundle technically doesn't save me any money, because I don't give a hoot about owning soundtracks, so its actually cheaper to buy all the DLC individually right now, so picking and choosing just the best DLC is actually somewhat sensible, if there is such a thing with this games DLCs.)

[joeball123]

I would say pick up the base game, see if you like it, and then if you like it enough pick up any DLCs that look interesting to you.

As far as the DLCs go:
- I frequently use many of the buildings added by New Frontiers, Caribbean Skies, and Tropican Shores.
- I rarely use the buildings added by Spitter and Festival, and I haven't bothered with Spitter's titular ersatz-Twitter or its faux celebrities at all outside of the mission that came with the DLC.
- Going Viral's diseases are functionally random disasters, which I've never found enjoyable in any city-builder I've ever played. You can turn off the actually-harmful diseases, which is nice, but on the other hand you'll still have the Harmless Cough, and despite this disease supposedly being about as concerning as the common cold it can still result in massively-overvalued trade routes for masks (and "cure doses" and whatever ingredient you chose to use for them, if you bothered developing a "cure") even if you do nothing at all to try to exploit the outbreak. On a more positive note, the service buildings that the DLC adds are at least somewhat useful, and the wells and water towers give you a pollution-mitigation option before you get to the Cold War era - just be warned that they can feel more like sucker-bait than useful service buildings if you're playing with harmful diseases enabled and get an outbreak of the Deadly Disease.
- Lobbyistico mostly adds buildings focused on generating Swiss money, which generates corruption when acquired or spent, or which provide a benefit (e.g. locking Conservative faction standing to 70 by choosing that option after inviting the Conservative faction leader to the El Presidente Club) at the cost of generating corruption. On the one hand, this does add a downside to generating and spending Swiss money, which is almost entirely absent without Lobbyistico; on the other hand, the benefits of the things that generate corruption are not usually particularly worth the penalties from corruption, especially later in the game when you should have a strong economy.
- The Llama of Wall Street's main feature is that it adds a degree of variability to the market value of the various goods and resources. This makes investing heavily into a small number of products riskier (although the Trading Post added in the patch that came out alongside Tropican Shores more or less entirely negates the risk that your most important export's price will collapse), but also enables the player to engage in a greater degree of speculation than would otherwise be possible and can sometimes produce absurdly-good trade deals, especially in combination with the player's other tools for manipulating import and export prices.

[LookToWindward]

I got the base game + El Prez for the same price (£14) and for the same reason as you, I enjoyed Tropico 1 and 2, Having played it now for over 100 hours I'm glad I didn't get the DLC. The game is ok, but the UI gets on my nerves, it's basically the same UI as Tropico 1 and 2 but with lots of extra stuff badly bolted on to it. Building upgrades are a nightmare to manage and the info screens are confusing and sometimes just plain wrong. They added features to the game but didn't revamp the UI to suit