When I try to play Tropico 5 on linux mint it just has a black screen with music.
Do other games work ok? It ran fine for me on Fedora23 with the latest Nvidia drivers.
I am trying to run it off of a laptop so I am using Intel graphics.
All I can suggest is you check if other OpenGL games run. If they don't it means you need to get your drivers sorted out. If they do it must be related to Tropico.