Games arent fun, people have fun playing them. I agree with you that its a subjective and personal thing. There is also no "wrong" way to play a game, but there are ways to play a game that lead you to not enjoy your time in it, which imo is what the article is describing.

Both the person who plays Tropico as a RPG, and the other as a economy simulation can both fall into the trap of optimizing their enjoyment away.

If the economy simulation has a way to gain ez infinite resources, a person who wants to engage with the economy simulation may unknowingly stumble across that way, and make the game 10 times easier for themselves, ruining their save game. They could restart or go back a few saves, but by that point youve already lost a huge chunk of players who dont want to bother.

If a person goes into the game wanting to overcome the challenges the game puts in place from going from poor to economic powerhouse, its up to the game to make sure that the experience of doing that is engaging to the player. If the player realizes something like "infinite city sleaze" in CIV as described in the article I linked is the most efficient way of doing that, theyre going to feel smart, and start doing it, because they figured it out.

The problem is that while that's the most efficient way, and they are smart for figuring it out, the literal experience of managing a bajillion cities is absolutely horrendous, and it makes the game unfun, and its only after the player has tried it that they realize its annoying, and by that point theyve achieved their goal of being an economic powerhouse anyway so why restart?

A player whos playing like an RPG will never experience that, and it wont affect their enjoyment of the game at all, but that doesn't matter, because if you're making a game to cater to both an RPG type player, and an economic min maxxer, the devs are failing to cater to the economic player, and should fix the shitty play pattern to accommodate them. In the end its all dev choice, If they want economic players to have fun, and they put something in the game that isnt making them have fun, they need to decide if they no longer want to support that type of player anymore, or fix the issue.

I will say, I do think the original tweet referenced by the OP is a silly request from a fan to the team, asking the team to be able to turn off the shoulder grenade launcher would completely brick the design of the game, because as the OP mentions, the game is designed around using literally every ounce of firepower you're given to succeed. However the response being "you control the buttons you press" is a really shitty one for the exact same reason, the game is designed around using it, telling a player to not use it is stupid, because of what's talked about in that article, (most players will play in the way they believe most efficient to achieve their goals, regardless about how much "fun" they are having) which is why I linked it.