Tonight, I had a dream about what Tropico could be in a perfect world. i'd also remark that it was a dream so it's not that precise but my current mind also filled some holes as you can imagine. I just thought it would be fun to tell to the fan community.

I saw it as a much, much longer, game: a true marathon of gaming with four eras.

The first would be the Caribbean pre-columbian era. Your leader would be the King of The Tropics. Your economy would rely on agriculture, archaic mining (iron, gold, salt, stone, minor ores), raid warfare and traditional crafting. Religion would be of course much more important and serve many purposes. Factions would remain but be coherent with the period while the foreign powers could be changed into the opinion of the gods (with priests acting as ambassadors). For example, the sea god could provide bonus to fishery (through auto-suggestion) when he is happy and the priests could organize some feasts for free but if he is unhappy with your ruling, the fishers could refuse to go fishing because of fear or become rebels immediately should a tsunami happen. And the list of possibilities about that goes on.
The buildings would be separated between wood-based constructions (the poor ones) and stone-based.
Also, on various position on the map, you could build some great structures (wonders) which could serve various purposes in the different areas. It would essentially allow you to build in places where you normally can't (the nice parts of ruined city you currently can see on some maps).

What will happen to your city in later eras? The wood buildings will quickly disappear, leaving only the stone which will remain in a ruined state. The smaller ones like rich houses will just be remains improving beauty. The bigger one will be able to be transformed into pirate/secret police/evil lair, museums, archaeological sites or fancy hotels or attraction.

Second era, it's the colonization. What will essentially happen about the transition? You can first choose to welcome the strangers and allowing them to build some structures that would act as private buildings providing some services or products. The gods and the people will grow unhappy, though.
You could choose immediately to abandon the royal Caribbean crown and become El Governore. if you decided to let colonization happen in a peaceful way at first, the king will still be overthrown at a set time.
But the natives are still there... What to do about them?
- You can try to convert them and use them but that will be expensive and difficult.
- You can export them for slavery or use them as slave on the island.
- You can also simply wage war on them.
Or a bit of the three possibilities. The main idea is that the old city will slowly fall apart and your active population will drop to a more early-game number.
During that period, you can do colonial stuff (essentially what was seen in Tropico 2 or on various propositions on the forum).

What will happen to your city in the Cold war and Modern eras? Well, you can burn to the ground the poorer buildings or transform them into fancy tourism areas (your average student will love to drink rhum in a retro pirate tavern!) at high cost and bigger urban pollution. Either way, the population won't be that unhappy to gain something more modern. The greater building such as the palace, the churches or other will be able to be used in the other eras.

And now comes the Cold War and the slower Modern Times extension. Your early game may be more easy due to the presence of buildings and a bigger population but you'll also have a history behind your populations and early mistakes can provoke some great problems today while the great projects of yesterday will bring some interesting possibilities today.

There it is. I hope I didn't bore you too much.

I like your idea it would be fun to play Tropico on a very long time frame. Even though a game can take a few hours I never want it to end. The sooner we all have quantum computers the quicker we can begin creating our own little Tropico world. Eventually Tropicans will create their own quantum computers, and they will create their own vast universe, and so on. Then my people can truly worship me, or at least Swixel, as a true God!