Mission Difficulty: 8/10 (Change Difficulty to Easy)
Mission Time: 1 Hour, more depending on failures.
So The Referendum is unlike any of the missions before and it is BY FAR the hardest one in the game. You are on a time limit (sort of) and you will need to keep a lot of different people happy. There is only one objective this time, so let's start with that:
1. Have an Overall Average Happiness of 70, Have a 70% approval of 4 different factions.
That's it. The catch is that the mission is on a 20 year time frame, and you won't be able to truly meet these requirements until the final year. Any earlier, and you will have to wait around while maintaining the high happiness. In short, you don't need to be at these requirements until the final 365 days of the mission, so plan accordingly.
Economy
You'll have 1/2 of a good economy at the start of the mission, so build a Fashion Company next to the Textile Mills, and get some Iron/Coal mines going so that they can fuel a Steel Mill, which will fuel a Vehicle Factory (build a rubber plantation too). Speaking of plantations, you'll want to modernize them to Hydroponic Plantations fairly quickly. The job quality in the modern plantations is higher, and the workers will be happier. While you're playing, some of the Superpowers will also give you objectives that will grant $70,000. I didn't keep track of their specific needs, but you will need to have a relation of 60 with them to complete part of the tasks. I was able to get $70,000 from the USA and another $70,000 from China. BUT DO NOT ISSUE NUCLEAR TESTING FOR MONEY. That will lower all factions' support by 15, which you cannot afford to make up in this mission. The key to managing your economy is not blowing it all at once; you will have to divide your expenses between more industry and the buildings in the next section. I found that it was really helpful to make a save once I got my economy set up, and I had a decent amount of my happiness buildings built. This was about 10 years into the mission, and it allowed me to experiment a bit with how I got to that perfect happiness.
Overall Happiness
Do you remember how you had to have a high fun happiness in Tropicoland? Well, you need to do that, but for ALL different Happiness factors: Food, Fun, Liberty, Healthcare, Job Quality, Religion, Crime Safety, and whatever other ones I've missed.
I found that by putting 1-2 of these buildings on each of the 3 islands, I was able to cover most of my happiness needs:
-Newspapers, Radio Stations, TV Stations (for Liberty; later on in the mission, you will get optional objectives to build these; you will be rewarded with options to increase the personal experience of certain citizens. Additionally, do not change the work modes, as they will decrease Liberty.)
-Hospitals, possibly Clinics if you're poor (for Healthcare)
-Cathedrals (for Religion, but an upgrade will also let them emit Crime Safety)
-Police Stations (for Crime Safety, make sure to place them in spots where the Overlay is red or orange, like near the Prison or the Dock).
-Groceries (for Food happiness; make sure to have different types of foods for best effect. Get cans/juices going if you can afford it, and make sure "allow local consumption" is on).
-A mix of Houses and Apartments (for Housing of course; issue Urban Development before building a lot).
-Apparently Movie Theaters and Stadiums are good for fun? You can check Mikasz's guide on the original achievement in Tropico 6 for more information. In short, look to build fun places that have a high service quality AND a high capacity, found right under the cost of your building. Additionally, poor people need some high quality places to have fun too, so make sure wealth isn't going to be a barrier to entry.
This will get you most of the way there, but there will be some additional things that we'll do later on to wrap it up.
Faction Happiness and Edicts
The factions CAN be difficult to keep happy, but if you know how factions are split, it becomes easier.
Here are the factions that oppose each other:
-Capitalists VS. Communists
-Conservatives VS. Intellectuals
-Religious VS. Militarists
-Industrialists VS. Environmentalists
By siding with one faction, you will likely anger the other one, so you need to decide quickly which 4 you are making happy. I did Capitalists, Conservatives, Religious, and Industrialists. These four factions often want similar things, and should objectives for them arise, you should do them. And ALWAYS choose +5 faction standing as your reward, unless you are like 90+ for the faction already.
Some buildings can help out, but I would maybe wait for a demand if you could. For instance, a conservative demand I had was to build an Immigration Office and set it to "Tropico First" (I assume doing this alone would increase support, but I am uncertain). The religious faction will also probably like you when you get your Cathedrals up and running. I did not really mess with the Constitution unless a faction specifically asked me to (which happened once or twice), but if you see something in there that could help you push a faction over, do it. The following edicts gave me a good chunk of my faction support:
-Right to Arms (gives +7 to Industrialists AND Capitalists, AND it gives 15 Liberty happiness)
-Good Old Days (gives +10 to Conservatives and Religious; -10 Intellectual support)
-Experimental Ground Treatment (gives +10 Industrialists; -10 Environmentalist support)
-Contraception Ban (gives +25 Religious; -20 Intellectual support)
Beware that as you issue edicts, you might trigger a faction crisis, but thankfully, some of them can be ignored (I got the Intellectual crisis, and there was no timer for me to complete their demand, so the crisis never happened). Additionally, I wouldn't worry too much about issuing these until you start to get closer to the end, maybe 6 to 8 years from the end so that they have time to level up and take effect.
If you're able to do some Broker tasks, or find some other ways to get Swiss Bank money, you will also be able to purchase +7 or so faction support for a decent chunk of Swiss money. Broker's trades update at the start of every year, so that's when you should check if you are doing this. When you have elections, try to praise the lowest faction out of the 4 you are wanting to keep happy.
Pushing to the end
At about 4 or 5 years out, I had built most of what I wanted, and I got my Overall Happiness to about 60, which should be the magic number you are looking for. When I got to that point, I went and maxed the budget on all of the buildings, and got important upgrades, such as electrification for the Houses and Apartments, as well as whatever I could find that increased Job Quality. This hurt my economy a bit, but it brought up my Overall Happiness to about 73 which was great. If it hurts you too much, try to get closer to the end before you do this, and make sure you have some money for a faction demand if you think you're going to need one to set you over. If you get to the last year and you still have 4 different factions at 70+ happiness, and an Overall Happiness of 70 or more, you will be done with the hardest mission in the game.
