Tropico 6 is both a continuation of the classic formula as well as a new twist all its own. You -can- play on either a single large island or a bunch of smaller ones, using the map generator. This in itself has changed up the game a bit, because you have to do some real planning this time around.
There's a very real limit to how far your population will move to work, to get food, or to find entertainment. If you place a mine quite far away from teh rest of your city, you'll have to build infrastructure, housing, and everything else around it as well. Add in the limitations of actually transporting materials around, and you'll basically have to plan out mini-cities based around the resources and industries you place there.
This is even more pronounced with all the islands you can settle. It's similar to the ANNO games, except you can connect everything with bridges and whatnot. It's a delicate balance between population management, resource management, transportation management and finances. Unlike Tropico 5, where if you are smart you can spam a lot of industry and whatnot, in Tropico 6 you have to be smart about where you place things and how you want the bits and pieces to develop. After all, you only have so much space to put up additional houses for all the workers, leaving room for beauty (gardens) options, entertainment businesses (which require even MORE population), schools and ect. Missing out on these can really mess things up as you try to balance the politics too.
That said, the game is missing tools that'd be quite helpful. Like a traffic spotlight and whatnot. Lol. Oh, and modding. Tropico 5 has some nice mods, and I'm hoping they can get translated over to Tropico 6 sometime here soon too~ Haha.
Anyway, rant end.