You get your choice of 85 buildings, ranging from corn farms to fancy hotels to rum distilleries. Every single edifice is beautifully rendered and looks great even when you zoom in to the maximum. The great thing about virtually every building is the choices you are presented with - they all have their little quirks. Newspapers, for example, can either praise you as the wisest, most benevolent ruler that ever graced the face of the Earth - of which the intellectual populace of Tropico will see right through it and lose their respect for you. Alternatively, you can set the newspaper to be the democratic voice of the people - but don't be surprised when you get criticized for your malicous wrongdoings.
Balance is the key word here.
You have to be able to keep the majority of the population pleased or dire consequences will follow - and it's not always easy. Tropico has a wide variety of political factions, such as Intellectuals, Military, Religious, and as you can imagine, their expectations of how you should act are drastically different. The militarists would love nothing more than to see an armed guard standing by every house, but the rest of the factions would not be happy with this invasion of liberty. Luckily, you can always easily see just what is it that your people want from you. With the vast amount of information offered, PopTop did a commendable job of organizing everything into neat little categories, so that you don't have to browse through a million pages of information to find something.